Our previous group of comments reached the 500 mark, which is a limit on FreeThought Blogs, so the thread has automatically rolled over to begin a new chapter with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous chapter.
This coming Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia will present “A Hearing Investigating Baby Organ Harvesting Black Market Live Stream,” with special guests David Daleiden and Terrisa Bukovinac.
What is that about? you may be asking yourself. Have babies been waking up in motel rooms in baths of ice with notes telling them to call 911, but then they die because they are babies and cannot read? Because, not gonna lie, that is the first place my brain went to. […] But no, it’s about abortion shit.
Terrisa Bukovinac you may remember from the time she and her good buddy Lauren Handy got in some trouble over their collection of dead fetuses, which they stole from a clinic they were illegally trespassing in. She is also running for president as a Democrat and has so far raised a grand total of $28,000. [the mind boggles]
As for David Daleiden, nearly a decade ago now (and yet it seems like yesterday), he made headlines when he released a series of heavily edited videos purporting to prove that Planned Parenthood workers were illegally selling dead fetuses. Which they weren’t — there are financial charges associated with procuring fetal tissue, but no, no one was charging, say, $3,000 for a tiny liver.
Daleiden posed as the “procurement manager” of a tissue procurement company the group invented called Biomax and held meetings with Planned Parenthood staff, which they recorded for the purpose of proving the organization was “selling” fetuses. They then published the heavily edited videos to the internet and were subsequently sued by Planned Parenthood […] [Ah, I see. People of very high integrity then.]
As full of shit as Daleiden was, his nonsense was incredibly effective. It created a whole ass hysteria from people who didn’t bother to find out whether what he said was true or those who thought they were being “reasonable” by saying “Well that video might have been edited but we don’t know it’s not happening for real other places.” […]
The whole thing was part of a larger hysteria and push to flood people’s understanding of abortion and groups like Planned Parenthood with lies and misinformation, thus making every other lie they told seem more plausible. [Yep. That’s exactly how it works.] And, I’d argue that it certainly helped along the process of overturning Roe.
I think that what Greene is doing here is trying to recreate that whole hysteria in hopes that it will drown out real concerns about reproductive rights and help Republicans in the next election.
I’d love to say that people are smarter now and won’t fall for it … but unfortunately I have absolutely no reason to believe that.
Today is the day we celebrate St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland by getting drunk, which actually feels a little fucked up when you think about it. I mean, how many other holidays do we celebrate by way of unflattering ethnic stereotypes? Of course, St. Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland, as there never were any snakes in Ireland to begin with. “Snakes” was actually just code for pagans, which also feels pretty fucked up when you think about it. […]
The suspected shooter, Andre Gordon, knew the three people killed, police said.
Three people were killed in multiple shootings Saturday morning outside of Philadelphia, police said, and a search for the suspect continues.
The suspected shooter, Andre Gordon, 26, allegedly shot and killed the victims at two locations in Levittown, Pennsylvania, before fleeing to Trenton, New Jersey.
Authorities in Pennsylvania said Gordon had been “tracked to his home” in Trenton and SWAT team members from the Trenton Police Department were on scene.
The incident began around 8:52 a.m. when officers were dispatched to a residence on Viewpoint Lane in Levittown following a report of a shooting, Falls Township, Pennsylvania, police said in a news release.
Authorities said Gordon, driving a stolen vehicle, shot and killed two people living at the residence.
Following that incident, Gordon allegedly shot and killed another person at a residence on Edgewood Lane in Levittown before fleeing, police said.
At around 9:13 a.m., he allegedly carjacked a driver at gunpoint in the parking lot of a Dollar General store in Morrisville. The driver was not injured, authorities said.
It’s believed that Gordon knew the three people shot, police said.
The shooter is believed to be driving a 2016 gray Honda CRV with a Pennsylvania license plate and a “Namaste” sticker in white letters on the right bumper, according to authorities.
Police in Pennsylvania said Gordon is believed to be homeless with connections to Trenton. He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and is believed to be in possession of an assault rifle, which police said he used in the shootings. He could be armed with additional weapons, police cautioned.
[…] The shootings led to a shelter-in-place in Falls Township. Police had told residents to lock their doors and move to a secure location away from windows. The shelter-in-place order was lifted Saturday afternoon.
A Bucks County St. Patrick’s Day parade scheduled for Saturday morning was canceled, and the Pennsbury School District postponed activities.
[…] Levittown is in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, about 26 miles from the city.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”
Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 115 square miles (297 square kilometers) to ensure success.
If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.
The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.
The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.
Undisturbed, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.
The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.
[…] “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”
Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.
Rough estimates indicate there are more than a million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.
Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.
[…] Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.
The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.
“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”
[…] They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors. […]
Russia has or is building 30 military or dual-use facilities in the Arctic, including elaborate air bases, ports, nuclear facilities and radio nodes.
Video and details at the link.
[…] For nearly two weeks, they lived, slept and trained on this stretch of tundra on the northern tip of Norway where temperatures regularly dip below zero.
But when the orders came to change position, they packed the tents and hurriedly filled in the ditches. Within around two hours, they’d taken off on snowmobiles and tracked vehicles, leaving barely a trace behind.
The fact that troops from the II Marine Expeditionary Force traveled thousands of miles from their base in North Carolina for two weeks of exercises, is a sign of the Arctic’s emergence as a new battlefield in a growing competition between East and West. As climate change exposes once-unreachable parts of the planet, the U.S., Russia and China are all in a race for military and economic dominance.
“The Arctic is absolutely critical,” the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Christopher Mahoney, said in an interview in Norway before the exercises wrapped up this week. “The opening of the Arctic as far as maritime waterways, in lines of communication, make it that much more important.” […]
I forgot to mention that Sweden and Finland are also involved in the “Nordic Response” exercise.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #3…
Patrick is the patron saint of Engineers…for inventing the worm drive.
lotharloosays
The 4 hours debate between Norman Finkelstein, Benny Morris, Mouin Rabbani and the idiot child Destiny. It’s worth listening except for when Destiny opens his stupid mouth to say stuff he read on wikipedia. I recommend fast forwarding when he talks, he never says anything useful but it’s interesting hear the other three argue.
Despite years of professing massive wealth and boasting of his desire to “drain the swamp,” the deeply transactional former president is leaning yet again on the cash of others, turning Mar-a-Lago into a staging ground for billionaires and others with their own agendas. One potential leverage point with the biggest G.O.P. financiers is the package of tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. Many of those cuts expire at the end of 2025, and Mr. Biden has vowed not to extend them for the nation’s highest earners.
Commentary:
[…] it’s telling that Trump is currently pumping his wealthy donors for even more cash infusions. As The Times reported, “at least two donors who made seven-figure pledges to support Mr. Trump this year were nudged to see if they could cut an eight-figure check—meaning $10 million or more—instead, according to a person familiar with the request.”
Yet some top donors are apparently reluctant to give to Trump, out of concerns that those donations would simply go to covering his legal fees, “even as his advisers have publicly said the R.N.C. won’t do so.”
Who knows where they ever got that idea?
The Associated Press:
Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and handpicked choice to help lead the Republican National Committee said she thinks Republican voters would support having the political organization pay the former president’s ballooning legal fees.
Lara Trump said Wednesday while campaigning for her father-in-law ahead of the South Carolina primary that she was not familiar with the RNC’s rules about paying Donald Trump’s legal fees in a multitude of criminal and civil cases.
But she said she thought the idea would get broad support among GOP voters who see his legal cases as political persecution.
[…] After the New Hampshire primary, a victorious Trump name-checked billionaire casino magnate Steve Wynn and hedge fund manager John Paulson. “You know what? Put him at Treasury,” Trump said of Paulson, who is scheduled to host a fundraising dinner for Trump in April.
And here I thought cabinet positions were available only with the purchase of a 10-pack of Trump NFTs and a pair of signature gold shoes. Guess Trump isn’t quite the man of the people that he claims. Unless those people are Elon Musk and Sheldon Adelson’s widow, of course. But that pretty much goes without saying.
What in the name of all the Earth and its domains and the heavens above is this asshattery?
The family of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is very much up in arms at something called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation over its decision to give a leadership award named after the former Supreme Court justice to *drumroll* … Elon Musk.
Y’all remember Elon Musk. Weird face, billions of dollars, currently spending most of his time on the Social Media App Formerly Known as Twitter spreading deranged racist conspiracy theories and complaining that AI is being programmed to be too woke? Yeah, that guy. No wonder the Ginsburg family is pissed. The only reason for Ginsburg’s name to be in the same sentence with that of Elon Musk is if the sentence is, “The ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared in Elon Musk’s house last night, where she spit in his face before giving him an atomic wedgie and hanging him by his underwear from the nosecone of one of his stupid rockets.”
[T]he family called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation’s plans to give its “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award” to conservative billionaires Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, among others, “an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother.”
Oh yeah, Rupert Murdoch is also getting this year’s Leadership Award, along with Martha Stewart (weird but whatever), Michael Milken (what?), and Sylvester Stallone (no, seriously, fucking what?).
A press release from the foundation says Musk is being recognized for entrepreneurship, which is a funny word for “spent the last year and a half turning the world’s most widely used social media platform into a Nazi bar.” Murdoch is being recognized for “media mogul,” which is to say he’s being recognized for being Rupert Murdoch.
Stewart is being recognized for “industry leadership,” Milken for philanthropy, and Stallone for being a “cultural icon.” Which he is! In 1987.
The award is all of four years old, and has previously gone to “individual women of prominence.” Did we run out of those or something?
“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,” the Ginsburg family statement said. “She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies.”
Well, when you think of women’s equality and empowerment, why wouldn’t you think of a wizened goblin of a media mogul about to embark on his fifth marriage, or the “Junk Bond King” of the 1980s who once spent a couple of years in prison for securities fraud? Who, as a final insult, was eventually pardoned by Donald Trump?
“[T]he foundation this week vaguely explained its decision to honor men as a way to “embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”
[…] Anyone with a tangential relationship to the award is now getting as much distance from it as possible. The Ginsburg family noted that they have nothing to do with selecting the award’s winners. The Library of Congress, which was set to host the awards ceremony, released a statement saying that it was only serving as a “venue” for the event and otherwise had no affiliation with the Opperman Foundation. (Aside from receiving just over a million dollars in gifts from the foundation over the last four years, of course.)
You probably are also wondering the same thing we were — well, one of several things — which is how in the hell Sylvester Stallone got on this list. Is the next Rambo movie going to nod to modernity by rebooting the franchise with a bloodthirsty female Green Beret? Does he have a heretofore-unknown-to-us reputation as being a feminist filmmaker?
But last year’s 12-member award committee included Stewart as well as Jennifer Flavin Stallone, Sylvester’s wife.
Ah. Well then.
You know who’s probably the maddest about this travesty? Donald Trump. Because how dare there be an award anywhere that he isn’t getting.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Lynna… at @ 5, quoting NBC News: If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.
Wouldn’t such an inbred population have a lot of difficulty surviving and expanding?
lotharloosays
@Lynna:
Yeah sorry I know I just don’t remember how not to embed. I guess I need to remove the http thing at the beginning? It was not showing as embedded when I previewed.
John Moralessays
[meta]
lotharloo, easiest way is to not post a naked YouTube URL as the first part of a line of text.
Birger now uses (when he remembers) a full stop in front of the URL, but there are other ways.
That’s more like a fig leaf, an anchor tag is more sartorial.
But yes, preview does not show the embedding.
Weird rule, but here we are. Multi-screen text copypastas, no worries. One image, big deal. Naughty.
Anyway. Put something in front, or put the URL in parentheses, or whatever.
StevoRsays
Ben G Thomasés latest 7 days of Science news round up here incl Sturtian era snowball earth study, avian flu in Antartcia, Spinosuar debate latest Anthropocene rejection and more. Just over a dozen mins long.
A wild feud between a rising GOP star and the mom of her late ex-husband erupted into public view on Wednesday when candidate Elizabeth Helgelien’s infuriated former mother-in-law accused the MAGA-centric Nevada politician of being a liar and an adulterer.
Daniel Halseth, Christine Halseth’s son, was stabbed to death in 2021 by the couple’s teenage daughter, Sierra Halseth, and her boyfriend, Aaron Guerrero. The pair are now serving life sentences.
In a scathing op-ed published Wednesday in The Nevada Globe, Halseth pleaded with Helgelien to drop out of the race for the state’s 3rd Congressional District “for my family’s sake, and out of respect for voters and the office she’s seeking.”
“Elizabeth raised a murderer, was forced out of office after a series of sex scandals, was caught in a series of lies, posed for lewd photographs, and has already proven to be unelectable,” Halseth wrote. “…We cannot, in good conscience, allow Elizabeth Helgelien to represent honest, decent Americans in Congress.”
“I don’t care about the politics,” Halseth told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “I just want to stop her.” …
To the editor: Jonah Goldberg’s column on the takeover of the Republican Party establishment by former President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” faction is timely and insightful.
Trump’s ascension to the GOP nomination and takeover of the Republican National Committee cannot be ascribed solely to his MAGA cultists. They were a minority within the GOP until most elected Republicans joined them to ensure the survival of their careers.
As a nonagenarian and lifelong middle-of-the-road Republican whose grandparents were among the “huddled masses” who fled tyranny and embraced the blessings and obligations of U.S. citizenship, I denounce the loss of the former GOP establishment. I wonder how and if it can ever be resurrected with leadership committed first to country and second to party.
Mel Spitz, Beverly Hills
..
To the editor: The Grand Old Party didn’t just lose its way because Trump came along. It has been on this train ever since 1964, when the Southern segregationists and the Barry Goldwater wing of the party found common ground in response to the Civil Rights Act.
The Southern Democrats were cast adrift because their party decided that Black Americans should be allowed to vote and go to integrated schools. For the 1968 election, Richard Nixon and his party decided that they could swell their diminishing numbers by making the southern segregationists feel welcome in the GOP.
This strategy spawned GOP’s anti-democratic wing, which now controls the party that once fought racism. The Republican Party has been a “maid in waiting” for a suitor that would fully embrace its worst tendencies. Trump is that suitor.
Former President Donald Trump’s team went on defense after campaign advertisements ran alongside pro-Nazi content on the streaming service Rumble…
As noted by Rolling Stone, Trump ads were circulating at the beginning of a new Rumble video as of Monday by far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters…
Rolling Stone requested comment from both Rumble and Peters, neither of whom responded, making it still unclear how the ad for Trump wound up on Peters’ video. A spokesperson from Trump’s team told Rolling Stone that the campaign is not “picking any particular video or channel to run ads on, and we are not given visibility into every single ad that is served during every video,” blaming Rumble for placing the Trump ad alongside Peters’s video. Rolling Stone also noted that Trump’s team did not say if it was concerned about monetizing Peter’s content but more about general advertising on Rumble…
That’s the problem with algorithms: they are too accurate!
Whooping cough is on the rise across Europe, and the Czech Republic is no exception. However, a week marked by confusion surrounding official guidance and a controversial public appearance by Prague’s mayor has left some wondering if anything was learned from Covid-19.
In the first week of January, say the Czech authorities, there were 28 registered cases of whooping cough.
That figure now stands at 3,084 – a number not seen since 1963.
Sufferers include the 80-year-old mayor of Prague, Bohuslav Svoboda, who is an MP as well as an eminent gynaecologist…
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is considering running for re-election as an independent despite his bribery scandal and upcoming trial, according to NBC News.
Menendez is considering the bid, in part, because “legal bills are expensive” and he “can fundraise as a candidate,” NBC’s Julie Tsirkin reported…
This week, Menendez also tried to claim legislative immunity for four charges relating to alleged bribery and obstruction of justice. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein said in a written ruling, “the fact that this information sharing is part of a corrupt scheme prevents a characterization of those discussions as legislative acts.” …
Trum, Santos, and now Menendez – our democracy is in deep trouble if we are headed to a state where only indicted people run for office.
In order for the Biden administration to hit its goal of a 100 percent clean power grid by 2035, the nation needs to rapidly increase the rate of new wind and solar power installations. Hard-won federal policies like the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act put that target within reach. But at the local level, challenges are mounting. A report from Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law identified nearly 230 local measures across 35 states that have been enacted to restrict renewable energy development. Matthew Eisenson, the report’s author, said these could amount to a “serious obstacle” to achieving US climate goals.
Many such measures bear the fingerprints of “wind warriors” who have reemerged in dozens of local fights to stymie the energy transition at key points. For more than a decade, climate deniers and fossil fuel interests have quietly cultivated ties with these activists, equipping them with talking points, legal muscle, model ordinances, and other tools to try to subvert renewable energy adoption. Now, from coastal hamlets in New York to rural farming towns in Ohio, residents supporting wind and solar in their communities are running up against the same barrier: a chorus of disinformation, much of it tied to, or even circulated directly by, fossil-fuel-backed groups waging an existential fight to preserve the status quo. […]
It should be no surprise that the fabricators of climate science denial are still hard at work using whatever tools they can muster to undermine U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis. If that means setting up a fake grassroots citizens group pretending to be worried about offshore wind turbines’ effects on whales [smells like Trumpism], as Burns points out, they’ll happily do so even if none of them ever gave a thought to whale harm when it comes to offshore drilling for gas and oil, with all the potential for spills that damage entire ecosystems. Outright lying is their chief tool. In some states, they’ve taken that directly into legislation. […]
I particularly don’t like the efforts to restrict data collection, one of many of the kinds of legislation that Republicans have passed at the state level to ban public spending on climate action.
[…] the Biden Budget would help hard-working Americans. […]
• make home-ownership more affordable
• help reduce homelessness
• strengthen the WIC program
• provide affordable child care, and universal Head Start or preschool — for free
• restore the expanded Child Tax Credit, which was quite popular during the Pandemic
The Biden Budget would also protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA — all of which are on the MAGA chopping block. […]
In addition to voting Biden-Harris back into office — we have to give them a democratic Congress too […] […]
[…] So how do we get prosperity for the rest of us? By taxing extreme wealth and investing those revenues in social goods like education, housing, food and health care. President Biden’s recently released federal budget plan follows that blueprint, putting the value of investing in American families and communities ahead of slashing taxes for the rich. [Trump has said that he does want to cut taxes for the rich … again.]
The budget for the fiscal year 2025 would generate about $5.3 trillion in revenues over the next decade. That’s a $388 billion boost compared to last year’s budget — and it all comes from fairer tax policies targeting wealthy individuals and large corporations. Households earning less than $400,000 would see no tax increases, with many seeing reductions.
The proposed budget invests $2.3 trillion towards essential public services for hard-working families while reducing the national debt by almost $3 trillion. That’s a great start toward filling critical investment gaps for families and communities. […]
There will definitely be our military responses to Russia. These weeks have demonstrated to many that the Russian war machine has vulnerabilities that we can reach with our weapons. I am grateful to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, and Defense Intelligence for their new Ukrainian long-range capability. I am equally grateful to our defense-industrial complex and everyone who works for Ukrainian strength. What our own drones are capable of is a true Ukrainian long-range capability. Ukraine will now always have a strike force in the sky.
The Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) reportedly conducted a series of successful drone strikes against three Russian oil refineries in Samara Oblast on March 16. Understanding War link
Pierce R. Butlersays
Lynna… @ # 26: I particularly don’t like the efforts to restrict data collection, one of many of the kinds of legislation that Republicans have passed at the state level to ban public spending on climate action.
Such efforts go way back before public awareness of the climate crisis. After approving a large cement plant upwind of a near-pristine river, f’rinstance, Florida’s then-Gov Jeb! Bush promptly de-funded air quality monitoring throughout the area. (Though first he had himself photographed canoeing down said river and vowing to defend it, of course.)
Trump talked about immigrants during a rally in Ohio yesterday:
“I don’t know if you call them people,” he said at the rally. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.” […]
Russian messaging and media are growing in Mexico, which is holding federal elections in June and whose proximity to the United States makes it an invaluable intelligence target.
Russia’s diplomatic footprint in Mexico is also disproportionately large compared to Mexico’s representation in Moscow, a disparity that’s raising concerns about potential Kremlin espionage and cyber activity in North America.
According to official data from the Mexican Foreign Ministry, 72 Russian diplomats are currently accredited at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, compared to 46 accredited diplomats at the U.S. Embassy, 38 at the Chinese Embassy and only 10 diplomats accredited at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow.
[…] Though the Russian presence in Mexico is more palpable now than in previous years, a key sector of Mexican civil society and political structures has historically sought closer relations to the Soviet Union, and now to Russia.
[…] López Obrador, a former member of the PRI, has kept a neutral stance on geopolitical issues broadly, and specifically those that involve Russia. He has refused to take sides in the invasion of Ukraine, and has yet to condemn the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“Geopolitically, what the Russians want with Mexico is to drive a wedge between Mexico and the United States, its principal trading partner, friend and ally,” said Dolia Estévez, a Washington-based Mexican journalist who first reported on the growing Russian diplomatic footprint in Mexico.
[…] Russian media network RT — banned in Europe and generally decried as propaganda in the West — advertises on billboards throughout Mexico City and is broadcast on screens in the city’s Metro system, which carries about a billion individual rides per year. […]
On the final day of a presidential election with only one possible result, Russians protested Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian hold on power by forming long lines to vote against him at noon Sunday — answering the call of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had urged the midday action before dying suddenly in prison last month.
The “Noon Against Putin” protest, with voters forming queues outside polling stations in major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, was a striking — if futile — display of solidarity and dissent designed to counteract the Kremlin’s main message: that Putin is a legitimate president commanding massive support.
Many polling stations in Moscow were deathly quiet on Sunday morning, but long lines appeared at exactly 12 p.m. — despite authorities sending mass text messages warning people against participating in “extremist” actions and in the face of severe repression of dissent since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests.
Navalny, who had long crusaded for free and fair elections in Russia and was blocked from running for president in 2018, had urged Russians to vote against Putin at noon Sunday. It turned out to be Navalny’s final political act before his death. […]
Many voters also posted photographs of their spoiled ballots with protest slogans such as “Navalny is my president,” “No to war, no to Putin,” and “Putin is a murderer.”
[…] Voting was also taking place in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian military, with reports of electoral teams accompanied by soldiers forcing people to vote at gunpoint. […]
In addition to Putin, three other candidates were on the ballot, all essentially Kremlin-friendly figures with low profiles, in a highly managed election designed to offer a veneer of legitimacy without posing any serious threat. Two antiwar candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who might have become flash points for antiwar sentiment, were barred from running.
[…] This month, thousands waited in huge lines to attend Navalny’s funeral and for days afterward to lay flowers and leave letters at his grave.
[…] Some frustrated Russians […] expressed their anger as soon as voting started on Friday, by setting fire to polling stations or ballots or dumping liquid into ballot boxes.
[…] It is difficult to stage any form of protest in wartime Russia. Authorities swiftly disperse even small street gatherings and have cracked down mercilessly on activist and opposition groups. Citizens have been arrested for laying flowers at memorials for Navalny, and some have been detained for standing alone holding up blank sheets of paper.
Russian courts, one of the regime’s major tools of control, have imposed long prison sentences on people for trivial actions, such as social media reposts or replacing price tags in supermarkets with information about the war. […]
“People in the Kremlin don’t understand how absurd and stupid they look,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos Oil tycoon who was imprisoned in Russia for 10 years and now lives in exile, told the crowd in Berlin. “We, who are against Putin, we are not marginal, we are the majority. Freedom for Ukraine! Freedom for Russia!”
[…] Stanislav Andreyshuk, co-chairman of Golos, an independent election watchdog that was declared a foreign agent by Russian authorities, said there had been many reports of apparent ballot stuffing, with bundles of voting papers in the official boxes. He said signs of anomalies also were seen in the turnout data published by the Central Election Commission.
By midafternoon Sunday, Golos mapped more than 1,400 reports of potential violations. […]
Eyeopening and disturbing report from The Washington Post: “The education of a true believer.”
Linda Wenhold absorbed Patriot Academy’s message that America is falling apart as it drifts from its biblical roots. Then she won a seat on her local Pennsylvania school board
Yes. “True Believers are being “educated,” which I translate to mean radicalized by the far-far rightwing.
[…] To Wenhold, it often felt as if the country was moving from a state of “freedom,” by which she meant a society built on a foundation of biblical truth, to one of “bondage” […]
Linda Wenhold means well, but she harbors a twisted version of every “fact” she thinks she knows. From the details in the report, it looks like Wenhold exudes an aura of unctuous ass-kissing for all “biblical” priorities, and the result is that she is cloyingly “better than you” while donning a supposedly unassuming mask of humbleness. Really disquieting.
The Post article also tries to end on a happier note by showing Wenhold and other school board members talking to each other in a civil manner. I don’t really see how that is going to stop Christian Nationalists from fighting against diversity programs that level the playing field for high school age girls, as just one example.
Their claims of censorship have successfully stymied the effort to filter election lies online.
In the wake of the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, a groundswell built in Washington to rein in the onslaught of lies that had fueled the assault on the peaceful transfer of power.
Social media companies suspended Donald J. Trump, then the president, and many of his allies from the platforms they had used to spread misinformation about his defeat and whip up the attempt to overturn it. The Biden administration, Democrats in Congress and even some Republicans sought to do more to hold the companies accountable. Academic researchers wrestled with how to strengthen efforts to monitor false posts.
Mr. Trump and his allies embarked instead on a counteroffensive, a coordinated effort to block what they viewed as a dangerous effort to censor conservatives.
They have unquestionably prevailed.
Waged in the courts, in Congress and in the seething precincts of the internet, that effort has eviscerated attempts to shield elections from disinformation in the social media era. It tapped into — and then, critics say, twisted — the fierce debate over free speech and the government’s role in policing content.
[…] While little noticed by most Americans, the effort has helped cut a path for Mr. Trump’s attempt to recapture the presidency. Disinformation about elections is once again coursing through news feeds, aiding Mr. Trump as he fuels his comeback with falsehoods about the 2020 election. […]
They have worked alongside an eclectic cast of characters, including Elon Musk, the billionaire who bought Twitter and vowed to make it a bastion of free speech, and Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official who previously produced content for a social media account that trafficked in posts about “white ethnic displacement.” (More recently, Mr. Benz originated the false assertion that Taylor Swift was a “psychological operation” asset for the Pentagon.) […]
Tons of crucial aid were offloaded from the Open Arms ship onto Gaza’s shores Saturday, as World Central Kitchen loaded a second vessel with food bound for the enclave.
[…] WHO IS ST. PATRICK AND WHY DOES HE EVEN HAVE A DAY?
Patrick was not actually Irish, according to experts. Born in the late fourth century, he was captured as an adolescent and ended up enslaved in Ireland. He escaped to another part of Europe where he was trained as a priest and returned to Ireland in the fifth century to promote the spread of Christianity.
Several centuries later, he was made a saint by the Catholic Church and like other saints had a day dedicated to him, which was March 17th. He became Ireland’s patron saint, and even when religious strife broke out between Catholics and Protestants, was claimed by both, says Mike Cronin, historian and academic director of Boston College Dublin.
HOW DID AN IRISH SAINT’S DAY BECOME AN AMERICAN THING?
The short answer: Irish people came to America and brought their culture with them. St. Patrick’s Day observances date back to before the founding of the U.S., in places like Boston and New York City. The first parade was held in Manhattan in 1762.
[…] Oh, and by the way, for those who like to shorten names: Use St. Paddy’s Day, not St. Patty’s Day. Paddy is a nickname for Pádraig, which is the Irish spelling of Patrick.
[…] WHAT’S WITH FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS, ANYWAY?
A popular sight around the holiday is the shamrock, or three-leaf clover, linked to Ireland and St. Patrick.
The lucky ones, though, come across something that’s harder to find: a four-leaf clover. That’s because it takes a recessive trait or traits in the clover’s genetics for there to be more than the normal 3 leaves, says Vincent Pennetti, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. […]
[…] many women trained to speak in this way have behaviors that coincide with their sweet-as-honey voice that not only reveals the horrific mind fuck behind what causes FBV [Fundie Baby Voice], it underscores the psychological abuse heaped upon these ladies, a type of emotional browbeating that can exist even outside of the Christain Conservative bubble.
[…] Before COVID raised its evil head, I was able to attend the Coverfly/Screencraft convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I was a guest judge alongside Pool Boy writer Julie O’Hara, and our job was to listen to TV and film pitches from aspiring scriptsmiths.
[…] While her story was truly astounding, what stuck out was her demeanor.
By her own admission, the woman had been two years out of the fundi “cult,” but she had great difficulty making even the decision to sit or stand.
“Should I sit down or stand up?” she asked Julie and me. We looked at each other, and I replied, “Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable.”
“I think I would feel more comfortable if you told me what would be best,” she said
[…] That pitch sticks with me to this very day.
[…] Despite most men saying they want women to make the first move, the majority I approached were weirded out by it. Likely because being the first to ask a man out wasn’t a submissive posture—I would likely be one of those overly confident, mouthy women who would be hard to control.
Okay—yeah. I resembled that remark, but I earned those stripes.
This is how and why I slowly recognized Fundi Baby’s voice as a form of extreme psychological abuse—and why I pity the women who feel the need to use it.
As Jess Piper aptly discussed in her brilliant Substack article, Fundie Babie Voice is one of the few tools women in strict Christian Societies are given to be able to ask for a receive what they need without seeming “aggressive.” Conversely, they were demeaned and browbeaten as manipulative for using the very device they were trained to use.
This leads me to another potent tool of Fundamentalism—the double standard. If you are wrong, no matter your choice, they always get to be right.
[…] FBV, in my humble opinion, as annoying as it may be, is one of the worst manifestations of emotional abuse we might encounter outside of a feral demeanor. It is made worse because it comes wrapped in nice clothes and respectability, packaged as “caring for women’s social roles.” […]
People living in Eastern Canada and U.S. are probably familiar with the smart, adaptable wild canine that lives in their forests, neighborhood parks and even cities. What they may not know is that eastern coyotes aren’t true coyotes at all. They might better be known as hybrids, or coywolves.
Coywolves only emerged over the last century or so and have since spread successfully over much of eastern North America, reports Zachary Davies Boren for The Independent.
As deforestation, hunting and poisoning depleted the population numbers of eastern wolves, they interbred with western coyotes. A report from PBS writes that the first eastern coyote or coywolf appeared around 1919 in Ontario, Canada. Today, wolf DNA has popped up in “coyote” poop as far south as Virginia.
The hybrid, or Canis latrans var., is about 55 pounds heavier than pure coyotes, with longer legs, a larger jaw, smaller ears and a bushier tail. It is part eastern wolf, part wester wolf, western coyote and with some dog (large breeds like Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds), reports The Economist. Coywolves today are on average a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.
That blend helps make the hybrid so successful that it now numbers in the millions, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University tells The Economist…
The violence has left Haiti’s government in a state of turmoil and prompted Prime Minister Ariel Henry to pledge that he will resign, a key demand of the gangs.
As Haiti once again spirals into chaos with another wave of gang violence, a number of government and aid agencies reported Saturday that their facilities and aid supplies have been looted.
Gangs have raged through Haiti in recent weeks, attacking key institutions and shutting down the main international airport. The chaos has pushed many Haitians to the brink of famine and left many more in increasingly desperate conditions.
On Saturday, UNICEF said one of its containers containing “essential items for maternal, neonatal, and child survival, including resuscitators and related equipment” were looted in the capital of Port-au-Prince’s main port, which was breached by gangs last week.
“Looting of supplies that are essential for life saving support for children must end immediately and humanitarian access must remain safe,” Bruno Maes, UNICEF representative in Haiti, said in a statement.
The aid agency said the looting and overall violence has further cut some of the country’s most vulnerable from basic supplies, coming “at a critical moment when children need them the most.” […]
The United States had flown in military forces to beef up security at the American Embassy and seemingly quash speculation that senior U.S. government officials might be leaving.
While Haiti’s main airport in Port-au-Prince remains closed following gang attacks, the U.S. State Department said it would be offering limited charter flights for American citizens from the less chaotic northern city of Cap-Haïtien. But it warned that U.S. citizens should consider the flights “only if you think you can reach Cap-Haïtien airport safely.
Former President Donald Trump told an entirely fictional story on Saturday about how he had supposedly outwitted his Democratic opponents by releasing “the tape” of the 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was a key factor in Trump’s first impeachment.
Speaking at a Saturday campaign rally in Ohio, Trump claimed he let Democrats make “wilder and wilder” claims about what he said to Zelensky, “and then we released the tape.” Trump proceeded to claim that when Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, who was then the speaker of the House, “heard” this tape, she was angry that she had been deceived by her allies’ previous “false” descriptions of the call; he claimed that Pelosi said to “her people”: “What the hell did you get me into? You hear this call? He didn’t do any of this stuff!”
Trump claimed that Pelosi was told, “Let’s just pretend he did and keep going forward.” He continued, “After they made up the story and then after that they heard the tape, they died. They didn’t know that phone call was taped. That was one good case of a phone call being taped. And they were taped and they got caught.”
Facts First: Trump’s story is a complete fabrication. No tape of his call with Zelensky was ever released…
Thousands of believers in extra-terrestrial life form descended on the quiet French town of Limoges on Saturday, hoping to connect with the aliens they are so certain exist.
Several thousand self-professed awakening individuals made their way to the Zenith Limoges Metropole building in a field off one of the main highways.
The silver, saucer-shaped building is a fitting setting for the three-day conference which features a cosmic line-up of galactic speakers who will be discussing mind-bending moments and “encounters with celestials in altered states of consciousness”.
Symposium Exovision is expected to draw 2,200 attendees who have paid between 150 to 190 euros to attend.
The event, organised by a group called Alliances Célestes, or Celestial Alliances, claims to want to prepare and train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials or “new-style encounters”…
Latvia´s state security service has started criminal proceedings against an European Parliament lawmaker and a citizen of the Baltic country who is suspected of cooperating with Russian intelligence and security services, according to Latvian media reports Saturday.
Latvian media outlets reported that the security service, known by the abbreviation VDD, has been investigating the activities of Tatjana Ždanoka, 73, and her alleged Russia ties over the past several weeks since reports were published in January by Russian, Nordic and Baltic news sites saying that she has been an agent for the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, since at least 2004…
When people think of the Orthodox Christian Maslenitsa (Shrovetide), they almost all think of one food: pancakes (blinis). But pancakes are not a purely Russian culinary achievement, and it’s silly to associate them solely with Orthodox traditions. Pancakes have been around for much longer.
The Mari people (in Russia once called Cheremis) live mainly between the Volga and Vetluga rivers. This Finno-Ugric people has faithfully preserved their own traditional religion and are sometimes called “the last pagans of Europe.”
A few years ago we went to ShangaFest, a festival of cuisines of Finno-Ugric peoples held in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic. Shanga are open-faced pies, which are traditional among these peoples. Mari cuisine made one of the strongest impressions on us.
But before we describe their culinary traditions, here’s a little history…
birgerjohanssonsays
Some guy in Russia just won a totally legit election by 88%.
It reminds me of a specifik episode of Black Adder.
For decades, the USSR and then the Russian Federation competed with the US to dominate the global arms market. In 2023, according to SIPRI, Russia didn’t even make the top five list of exporters.
In this episode, I look at the evolution of Russian arms exports in 2022 and 2023, examine the drivers, and look at some of the nations (like France) that have taken market share as Russia drops.
Timestamps:
00:00 — Opening Words
01:18 — What Am I Talking About?
02:00 — Caveats & Notes
02:55 — The Russian Market Collapse
14:57 — What is Driving the Decline?
27:15 — Filling the Void?
35:32 — Why Russian Exports Matter
45:04 — What Next for the Russian Arms Sector?
55:15 — Channel Update
Pierce R. Butlersays
Reginald Selkirk @ # 40: Coywolves today are on average a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.
The Smithsonian article you cite comes from 2015. Betcha the dog percentage has risen since then.
blockquote>The domestic dog allele averages 10% of the eastern coyote’s genepool, while 26% is contributed by a cluster of both eastern wolves and western gray wolves. The remaining 64% matched mostly with coyotes. … A 2016 meta-analysis of 25 genetics studies from 1995 to 2013 found that the northeastern coywolf is 60% western coyote, 30% eastern wolf, and 10% domestic dog.
<
blockquote>
so I lose my own bet. Time to go to bed!
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 52
Insects of various kinds tend to endure- I recall a Gary Larson cartoon with insects looking at a mushroom cloud and dancing with joy (over being the new bosses).
. .. . .. . ..
Trump Struggles to Answer Simple Question During Interview
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WOfJeLpdk0U
Not if the biosphere gets f@€&ed, as you so coyly put it.
Words mean things, you know.
—
“Trump Struggles to Answer Simple Question During Interview”
I bet he doesn’t. I see a million of those stupid, stupid clickbait thingies all the time. Someone opining.
Never true. Always bait’n switch. Crap, basically.
Bah.
birgerjohanssonsays
I am bored. The Tories are shooting themselves in the foot again, but it gets monotonous after the first 10,000 times.
After leaning towards a May election, they now seem to want to delay it further. They will be able to cause more damage but will lose even more voters, this time to Nigel Farage’s Xenophobe party.
If the tory-hating majority do ‘tactical voting’ on a large scale the tories can realistically be reduced to the third largest party, which is a definite death blow. Traditional tory voters would give the Lib Dems a chance once they reach second place.
I lack knowledge of this technology.
Would this allow electric cars to get a temporary power boost- like accelerating for overtaking a car ahead- that would be impractical using ordinary batteries?
An electric drone might also need extra power for take-off and landing, especially one big enough to carry people.
(There is no information about the energy per weight unit, which is a pity)
[…] Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager he pardoned, as a campaign adviser later this year, according to four people familiar with the talks. The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.
Yes, Manfort is the guy brought up on federal criminal charges seven years ago.
Commentary:
[…] In 2016, Manafort oversaw Trump’s political operation before he was convicted of a variety of felonies, including tax fraud and bank fraud. He even served some time in federal prison — right up until Trump pardoned him shortly before Christmas 2020, rewarding his former aide for failing to cooperate with law enforcement.
Just as notably, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Manafort “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” in 2016 due to his relationship with a Russian intelligence officer.
“The Committee found that Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign,” the Senate report added.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report literally pointed to a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services,” it was referring in part to Manafort “directly and indirectly” communicating with an accused Russian intelligence officer, a Russian oligarch, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.
Even after receiving an indefensible pardon from Trump, Manafort’s troubles did not disappear. Two years ago this week — around the time he announced that he was getting back into the consulting business — Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it departed for Dubai because he was carrying a revoked passport.
A month later, NBC News reported the Justice Department was again targeting Manafort over allegations that he “failed to report interest in foreign bank accounts.”
As for why Trump might be “determined to bring Manafort back into the fold,” despite this recent history, I am eagerly looking forward to hearing the explanation.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was kicked out of office over his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Former Otero County commissioner Couy Griffin, a cowboy pastor who rode to national political fame by embracing then-President Donald Trump with a series of horseback caravans, is the only elected official thus far to be banned from office in connection with the Capitol attack, which disrupted Congress as it was trying to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump.
At a 2022 trial in state district court, Griffin received the first disqualification from office in over a century under a provision of the 14th Amendment written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.
Though the Supreme Court ruled this month that states don’t have the ability to bar Trump or other candidates for federal offices from the ballot, the justices said different rules apply to state and local candidates.
“We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion.
The outcome of Griffin’s case could bolster efforts to hold other state and local elected officials accountable for their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. […]
“Kamala and I and the members of the administration here tonight are proud — proud of our accomplishments on behalf of the American people: record job growth, wages rising, rigging the Super Bowl for Taylor Swift.”
“Our big plan to cancel student debt doesn’t apply to everyone. Just yesterday, a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, ‘I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.’ I said, “Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.'”
“I heard House Republicans were going to do a skit tonight, but they couldn’t get a speaker.”
Comments from President Biden that were not jokes:
“As I said in my State of the Union Address, we live in an unprecedented moment in democracy, an unprecedented moment for history. Democracy and freedom are literally under attack. […] The lies about the 2020 election, the plots to overturn it, to embrace the January 6th insurrectionists pose the gravest threat to our democracy since the American Civil War. […]
“All the while, the other guy calls you the free press. Well, he calls you the enemy of the people, even as many of you risk your lives to do your job and sometimes even give your lives to do your jobs. […] Let me state the obvious. You’re not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society.” […]
Former President Donald Trump has not been able to get a bond to secure the $464 million fraud judgment against him, his lawyers said in a court filing Monday.
Trump and his company need to post a bond for the full amount by next week in order to stop New York Attorney General Letitia James from being able to collect while he appeals. They’ve asked an appeals court to step in in the meantime and said Monday that they have not had any success getting a bond.
“Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility,'” the filing said. “These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers.”….
…bond companies will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities),” the filing said. He also noted those companies typically “require collateral of approximately 120% of the amount of the judgment” — which would total about $557 million….
While the filing says Trump can’t afford the bond, it also argues that the attorney general doesn’t have to worry about being able to collect her judgment.
“Defendants’ real estate holdings — including iconic properties like 40 Wall Street, Doral Miami, and Mar-a-Lago, — greatly exceed the amount of the judgment. Such assets are impossible to secrete or dispose of surreptitiously, leaving the plaintiff effectively secured during the pendency of an appeal,” the filing said.
[…]
In a filing last month, Trump’s lawyers asked that the bond amount be reduced to $100 million, but Monday’s filing argues he shouldn’t have to put up any bond at all.
James’ office has argued that Trump should put up the full amount.
Trump also asked that if the state Appellate Division denies his request, they enter a temporary stay so he can try to make his case to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
Huawei is reportedly developing a new archival storage system using magnet-electrical disks that will reduce power consumption by 90% compared to standard hard drives (HDDs). As reported by Blocks and Files, this new system will be released in the 2nd half of 2025 overseas (with a China-specific release date being potentially sooner)…
Magnetic-electrical disks will reportedly feature 90% less power consumption compared to hard disk drives and 20% less power consumption than tape drives while having 2.5x the performance of tape drives. According to a screenshot of a Huawei presentation, Huawei says its Magneto electric disks only generate 71W per PB, while traditional HDDs generate 450W per PB — an 84% improvement in energy savings…
birgerjohanssonsays
PZ Myers @ 61
I am told there are far less bugs going splat! on the windshields than there used to. Inevitably the consequences will be felt higher up in the chain with fewer birds, insectivores and so on.
As the board of supervisors for Arizona’s largest county abruptly ended a meeting late last month, a swarm of people rushed toward the dais, shouting that the members were illegitimate.
The Maricopa County leaders made a beeline for a side door and were swiftly escorted out of the chamber by security guards, who called for backup from the sheriff’s office. After the meeting’s live-feed went dead, a member of the crowd yelled that a “revolution” was underway.
“I’m here today to put you on public notice and to inform you that you are not our elected officials,” said Michelle Klann, co-founder of a pro-Trump group, from a podium she had commandeered. “This is an act of insurrection. Due to all the voter fraud, you have never been formally voted in.”
The scene at the Feb. 28 meeting terrified many Maricopa employees and others who were reminded of what happened after Joe Biden won the county — and, with it, Arizona — in the 2020 presidential race. Back then,Trump supporters used baseless fraud claims to try to pressure or scare elected leaders into changing the results for the metro Phoenix county, which is home to more than half of Arizona’s residents.
Now, with another presidential election quickly approaching and Arizona again likely to be central to Donald Trump’s electoral strategy, the incident late last month has revived fears that officials responsible for running Maricopa County elections will be targeted with a campaign of threats and abuse — or worse.
“This was an organized, coordinated attack,” said one top county official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters. “It was a dress rehearsal for the election.”
Since the 2020 vote, theMaricopa supervisors — most of whom are Republicans — have faced relentless public ridicule, conspiracy theories and death threats for signing off on the results and refusing to go along with Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome.
Trump’s razor-thin loss of the state — a mere 10,457 votes of nearly 3.4 million cast — thrust its most important battleground county into the heart of national efforts to undermine confidence in elections.
[…]
birgerjohanssonsays
I just learned Trump is unable to post a bond for the near-half billion $ needed.
Watch out of an all-caps rant any moment now, not to mention the talking heads on Fox News going ballistic about… actions having consequences.
birgerjohanssonsays
I just learned Trump is unable to post a bond for the near-half billion $ needed.
Watch out of an all-caps rant any moment now, not to mention the talking heads on Fox News going ballistic about… actions having consequences.
birgerjohanssonsays
Oops. Normally, the system stops doublets from being posted.
whheydtsays
Re: birgerjohansson @ #72…
In this case, the situation warrants the news being posted twice.
A sovereign citizen and mildly-famous singer from Florida has been arrested and detained by police on multiple occasions for using fake diplomatic plates on more than one car. The 32-year-old woman, Cecilia Mercado, goes by the name “Sessi” as a singer, and has a modest fanbase on social media. Video of her being forcibly dragged out of an Audi Q5 went viral after Mercado’s boyfriend posted the footage online, as WSVN reports…
re Reginald Selkirk @74: Every time I see a video of sovereign citizens trying to bullshit the cops then getting dragged out of their cars and arrested, it makes me smile a little. Not that I am a fan of the cops, but they usually show amazing restraint and patience with the foolish actions of the sovereign citizens, who think that the laws just don’t apply to them. Surprise, surprise!!
tomhsays
Re: #73 “In this case, the situation warrants the news being posted twice.”
Or even three times, see #66. If Trump really can’t post the bond, and the court doesn’t give him a stay, then he can’t appeal the judgement. The case would be over and NY could start confiscating property, or whatever he has that adds up to half a billion dollars.
In a court filing on Monday, Donald Trump’s lawyers sprung the news we’ve all suspected: Trump doesn’t have the money to pay the $454 million civil fraud judgment levied against him lying to banks and insurers about his supposed wealth for decades. Trump has appealed that ruling, or is trying to, but there’s a catch: In order to appeal the verdict, he has to post a bond fully covering the judgment against him—and the coup-attempting “billionaire” doesn’t have it. […]
Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld gives more details from Trump’s filing, including the assertion that “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world” have proven that coming up with an appeal bond for the full amount “is not possible under the circumstances presented.”
Most surety companies don’t want to—or legally can’t—issue a bond approaching half a billion dollars, and the ones that might be willing to do so won’t accept assets like real estate as collateral, according to his lawyers. So Trump seems to be out of luck. He’s again pressing the courts to allow the appeal to move forward without posting bond, or by posting a smaller amount. So far, he’s had no luck.
While Trump’s team’s admission that it is “not possible” for him to come up with the money is surely humiliating for the alleged billionaire, the news that he hasn’t been able to convince the Chubb insurance company or anyone else to cover the bond might be more delicious. Chubb is the company that was willing to post the $91.6 million bond necessary to appeal the judgment against him regarding writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit; it appears even that well has run dry.
There was also speculation that fellow xenophobic billionaire Elon Musk might chip in support Trump after Musk visited Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. However, Musk himself publicly shot down the idea that he’d be donating to either the Trump or Biden campaigns—but you can take that promise about as seriously as you can take one from anyone else in Trump’s orbit.
What’s clear, though, is that no one appears willing to risk losing a half billion dollars for the sake of propping up Donald Trump. It’s not just that Trump’s countless lies about his supposed assets make it risky to do business with him; Trump’s currently running for president again, and this time around he and his subordinates are making it clear that they intend a far more radical, fascist, and authoritarian-minded Trump administration this time around.
If Trump does retake the presidency, what are the odds that both his administration and a compliant Republican Congress will simply void all his debts and tell his creditors to pound sand? Not small. And certainly not small enough that anyone is willing to take the risk. [Hmmm. Is that possible?]
Wow, those are tough breaks, Donald. What a shame it is that a lifetime of crookedness, both petty and not, is coming back to bite you. Who would ever have expected that actions have consequences, and so on and so forth?
Posted by readers of the article:
He does not get to appeal the judgement because he cannot meet the criteria specified by law.
————————–
Hunter misspoke. He said Trump has to post a bond “In order to appeal the verdict” That is incorrect. Trump has to post a bond to prevent his property from being seized while he is appealing. He can appeal without posting bond. He just can’t prevent his property from being seized (in a few days from now), whether he appeals or not.
————————–
I would like to see what the bankruptcy rules are around civil appeal bonds.
—————————-
“Hey, how come I can’t find anybody to lend me money to pay off the penalty in the court case that showed that for decades I’ve been ripping off everybody who lends me money?”
The question isn’t whether Liz Cheney and her Jan. 6 committee colleagues did anything wrong; it’s whether Trump will try to prosecute them without cause.
[…] It’s one thing for presidents to criticize their opponents; it’s something else for presidents to routinely and falsely accuse their opponents of felonies.
Trump, of course, is no longer in the White House, but as he hopes to return to power, he’s sticking to the habits that bring him comfort. USA Today reported:
Trump, who has called for prosecuting a number of political opponents should he return to the White House, targeted [former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney] over dubious claims that the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot sat on evidence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. “She should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Trump said Sunday in a Truth Social post.
Hours after publishing the missive to his social media platform, Trump targeted the former House GOP leader again, adding, in reference to Cheney, “SHE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED FOR WHAT SHE HAS DONE TO OUR COUNTRY! SHE ILLEGALLY DESTROYED THE EVIDENCE. UNREAL!!!”
Given the larger context, “unreal” was an interesting choice of words.
This morning, the former president kept the offensive going, suggesting Cheney and her colleagues on the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee were responsible for “serious crimes.”
[…] Last summer, Trump whined incessantly about the congressional investigation — he apparently thought discrediting the committee would help with his criminal defense in the federal election case — accusing members of the bipartisan panel of being “criminals” who engaged in “highly illegal” misconduct. He kept the offensive going for months.
To date, neither the former president nor his allies have presented any evidence whatsoever of the committee engaging in any wrongdoing, and a closer look at Trump’s allegations suggest they’re complete nonsense.
But if the claims are absurd, and the presumptive GOP nominee has been at this for a while, what makes Trump’s latest rhetoric notable? For one thing, the hypocrisy is increasingly jarring: While falsely accusing the Biden administration of politicizing and weaponizing federal law enforcement, Trump routinely calls for the politicization and weaponization of federal law enforcement. The Republican Party addresses this obvious conflict by choosing to ignore it.
For another, the former president has become increasingly explicit about his intentions to retaliate against his perceived foes with politically motivated criminal cases. Indeed, let’s not forget that it wasn’t long ago when Trump said he’d have “no choice“ but to prosecute his political opponents in a possible second term.
He added soon after that when prosecutors took steps to hold him accountable for his alleged crimes, “what they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box.” (I assume he meant “bottle.”) […]
As summarized by Steve Benen from a New York Times article:
The crypto industry has a super PAC with quite a bit of money, which it used to help derail Rep. Katie Porter’s Democratic U.S. Senate campaign in California. Now, crypto advocates are reportedly prepared to invest in Ohio’s and Montana’s Senate campaigns in the hopes of defeating incumbent Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester.
Even some of the right-wing justices hitched up an eyebrow Monday when a couple of red states argued against nearly any government intervention in social media content moderation.
The case stems from Biden administration officials sometimes heatedly — to the pearl-clutching shock of Justice Samuel Alito — flagging misinformation to the social media platforms and urging them to crack down on it. Much of the communication centered on anti-vaxxer content at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Traveling a friendly and familiar gauntlet, the respondents — Missouri, Louisiana and a few individuals, whose standing was questioned heavily Monday — arrived at the Supreme Court via a win from U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, and then another from the uber-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Still, justices from both ideological ends of the bench balked Monday at the extent of free speech rights the red states demanded.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised a hypothetical where kids are participating in a social media trend by jumping out of windows at increasing heights, injuring and even killing themselves.
“The moment that the government tries to use its ability as the government and its stature as the government to pressure them to take it down, that is when you’re interfering with third-party speech rights,” Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga (R) replied, referring to the people who promulgated the hypothetical trend with their posts.
An incredulous Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted.
“Under my colleague’s hypothetical it was not necessarily to eliminate viewpoints, it was to eliminate instructions about how to engage in some game that is seriously harming children around the country, and they say ‘we encourage you to stop that’ — that violates the Constitution?” he asked.
Other justices, particularly Justice Sonia Sotomayor, took issue with the wobbly standing of the respondents in the case, finding it very difficult to track various instances of accounts or posts being blocked with direct government action, rather than the enforcement choices of the platforms themselves.
As part of this argument, she also underscored that the red states seemed to actually fudge the facts at points.
“I have such a problem with your brief,” Sotomayor said to Aguiñaga, ultimately prompting him to apologize. “You omit information that changes the context of some of your claims. You attribute things to people who it didn’t happen to — at least [for] one of the defendants, it was her brother that something happened to, not her.”
[…] The case is a banner example of the culture war content increasingly filling the high court’s docket, helped along by (often Trump-appointed) lower judges’ willingness to grant sweeping relief far beyond what the plaintiffs seek. […]
tomhsays
I’m mistaken in #77. Trump was not required to pay his penalty or post a bond in order to appeal. However, filing the appeal does not automatically halt enforcement of the judgment. James has said she will enforce it when the 30 days are up next week.
Niger is pulling its military cooperation deal with the United States and ordering some 1,000 American military personnel to leave the country, a startling development that comes after U.S. officials last week traveled to the capital of Niamey to “raise a number of concerns” about Niger growing closer to Russia and Iran, the Pentagon said Monday.
The ruling military junta on Saturday revoked a major accord known as the status of forces agreement, which allows U.S. forces in Niger. Biden administration officials are aware of this and are “working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.
[…] The future of a U.S. military presence in Niger has been in question since a military junta in late July put the country’s president on house arrest and took control of the government. […]
KGsays
birgerjohansson@59,
I think an early election has become more likely with the multiple blows Sunak has suffered just in the last week – I think one more deection to Reform might force him to call the election while he still has a party to lead, for example; but to hold it along with the local elections on 2nd May he would have to declare it by 26th March. If not then, June would be a possibility, either to follow unexpectedly less-than-utter-disaster in the May 2nd local elections, or following disaster in those elections with a desperate throw to prevent a leadership challenge.
In the seemingly ever-lasting search for economically-viable superconductors, a variety of scientists and researchers have published findings on naturally-occurring mineral miassite as an “unconventional superconductor.” These findings (“Nodal superconductivity in miassite”) were published for Open Access viewing on Nature.com and include contributors from a variety of US universities, as well as institutions in France and New Zealand…
According to the paper, miassite functions as a superconductor at 5.4 degrees Kelvin, or -449 degrees Fahrenheit…
Lawmakers in Gambia will vote Monday on legislation that seeks to repeal a ban on female genital mutilation, or FGM, which would make the West African nation the first country anywhere to make that reversal…
The bill is backed by religious conservatives in the largely Muslim nation of less than 3 million people. Its text says that “it seeks to uphold religious purity and safeguard cultural norms and values.” The country’s top Islamic body has called the practice “one of the virtues of Islam.” …
The MAGA crowd will be furious with Kavanaugh. While they correctly assume he was appointed to provide a rubber stamp on Republican legislation, they will not like that he interpretes a far-right legislative agenda differently than they do. Kavanaugh will want to have at least a legal fig leaf for any outrageous decision he makes. The MAGAites just don’t care.
The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study…
Former President Donald J. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News on Monday, arguing that the anchor George Stephanopoulos had harmed his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that Mr. Trump had been found liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll.
A jury in a Manhattan civil case last year found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, but did not find the former president liable for rape. The judge, however, later clarified that because of New York’s narrow legal definition of “rape,” the jury’s finding did not mean that Ms. Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” …
Rejected twice by federal judges in their effort to stop the use of electronic voting machines, Republican candidates for office Kari Lake and Mark Finchem have now taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawyers for Lake, who is running for U.S. Senate, and Finchem, who is seeking a state Senate seat, filed a 210-page petition with the nation’s top court last week asking it to consider their case. The duo challenges the use of electronic machines that count votes, alleging they are hackable and not properly tested…
A pro-Trump lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election was arrested Monday after a court hearing about her recent leak of internal emails belonging to Dominion Voting Systems.
There was an existing arrest warrant for the attorney, Stefanie Lambert, stemming from her failure to appear at recent court hearings in her separate criminal case in Michigan, where she was charged with conspiring to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.
Lambert and a cadre of election deniers have disrupted one of Dominion’s many ongoing defamation lawsuits by publicly leaking thousands of the company’s internal emails in recent days, using the disclosures to resurrect false claims about voter fraud.
The controversy erupted when Lambert provided the confidential Dominion documents to Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, who has embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and has used his office to hunt for supposed voter fraud against Donald Trump. In the last 24 hours, Leaf has posted more than 2,000 internal Dominion documents on his social media account.
Lambert had access to the Dominion files because she represents former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who is being sued for defamation by the voting company over his 2020 election lies. As part of the case, they have access to “discovery” from Dominion, whose lawyers said they have already turned over more than a million documents…
The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him…
KGsays
People living in Eastern Canada and U.S. are probably familiar with the smart, adaptable wild canine that lives in their forests, neighborhood parks and even cities. What they may not know is that eastern coyotes aren’t true coyotes at all. They might better be known as hybrids, or coywolves. – Reginald Selkirk@40 quoting Smithsonian Magazine
The wolves and coyotes don’t appear to agree with human taxonomists! I’d say it’s obvious wolves, coyotes and dogs (and dingoes) are all one species: they interbreed freely whenever they get the chance, producing viable descendants indefinitely.
Heather Cox Richardson writing for her “Letters of an American” Substack:
[…] Trump, who is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee…tried to spark attacks on President Joe Biden by asking on social media if people feel better off now than they were four years ago. This was perhaps a mistaken message, since four years ago we were in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Supermarket shelves were empty, toilet paper was hard to find, healthcare professionals were wearing garbage bags and reusing masks because the Trump administration had permitted the strategic stockpile to run low, deaths were mounting, the stock market had crashed, and the economy had ground to a halt.
On this day four years ago, I recorded that “more than 80 national security professionals broke with their tradition of non-partisanship to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president, saying that while they were from all parties and disagreed with each other about pretty much everything else, they had come together to stand against Trump.”
Aaron Blake, writing for The Washington Post:
[…] Regardless, a focus on the one word [bloodbath] misses the point. It’s not that this isolated comment is particularly egregious; it’s that it is merely the latest example of this kind of rhetoric. And the rhetoric is often more direct:
Trump in 2016 said that if he were denied the presidential nomination at the GOP convention, “I think you’d have riots.”
Trump in November 2020 responded to an adverse ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by saying it would “induce violence in the streets.” (Trump later expanded, saying, “Bad things will happen, and bad things lead to other type things. It’s a very dangerous thing for our country.”)
Trump warned last March of “potential death & destruction” if he were charged by the Manhattan district attorney. He also mocked those who urged his supporters to stay peaceful, saying, “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”
Trump warned in August, after the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, that “terrible things are going to happen.” He later promoted a comment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump were charged.
Trump in January warned of “bedlam in the country” if the criminal charges against him succeeded. Days earlier, he targeted efforts to remove him from the ballot using the 14th Amendment, saying: “Because if we don’t [get treated fairly], our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying? I think so.”
And this doesn’t even account for the many, many examples of his alluding more suggestively to righteous violence by his supporters. He does this a lot. Sometimes it’s direct; sometimes it’s veiled and carries with it the plausible deniability that he craves.
One of Rep. Paul Gosar’s former interns has been arrested for her role in storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to court records, Isabella Maria DeLuca was caught on video climbing through a broken window to enter the Capitol during the insurrection, then passing a stolen table out of another broken window to rioters.
The table was then used as a weapon against police officers.
Twenty months later, DeLuca was back at the Capitol, working for Gosar…
She was his intern from September 2022 through January 2023, according to congressional pay records obtained by the Arizona Mirror, but Gosar’s spokesman insists nobody in the office had any idea she was under investigation by the FBI.
“We have no knowledge of any alleged participation in activities on January 6, 2021,” Anthony Foti told the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy.
I believe him. Had Gosar known that his intern was one of the rioters who broke into the Capitol, he probably would have … promoted her…
Rudy Giuliani says his public plummet into disgrace and his support of Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results “will help me in heaven.”
[…] “I know who won in 2020. And I know the damn ballots got burned and I know how high it goes,” Giuliani claimed.
The bar association is going to crucify me no matter what. I will be disbarred in New York. I will be disbarred in Washington. It will have nothing to do with anything I did wrong. And I consider that something that will help me in heaven for sticking to my principles and not being a weakling like all these weaklings who are afraid to represent Trump.
When Giuliani was first suspended from practicing law in New York, the court said he had “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large,” and his conduct “threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.” A legal ethics committee later recommended his disbarment in Washington, D.C., for similar reasons.
Giuliani’s predictions about his law license and the afterlife came just days after creditors filed a motion to force him to sell his $3.5 million Florida condo to pay his debts. The motion points out that Giuliani maintains a “homestead exemption” in New York City, and that he continues to pay out tens of thousands of dollars in expenses—including his podcast co-host Maria Ryan’s credit card statement.
Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in December after a jury ordered him to pay $146 million in damages to Fulton County, Georgia, election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who sued him for defamation in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Adding to his financial woes, The Wall Street Journal reported that Giuliani owes over $1 million in unpaid federal and state taxes, as well as overdraft fees and a few hundred dollars in membership dues to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Maybe those membership dues can be credited from the $2 million Giuliani claims the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign owe him for his work on the 2020 election?
After bragging about his integrity and how it would help him in heaven, Giuliani spent the rest of his podcast railing against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who included Giuliani as a defendant in her racketeering case against Trump, as well as the jury that ruled he owed nearly $150 million in damages for defamation.
I would offer thoughts and prayers but it seems Giuliani feels being a fraud is looked upon well in heaven.
Even before his 2020 election defeat, Donald Trump became unusually litigious when it came to independent news organizations. [Trump’s] campaign filed suit against CNN, for example, and it didn’t turn out well. Trump also sued The New York Times, which also proved pointless. His suit against social media giants was also dismissed.
After leaving the White House, the former president kept suing media outlets, and kept losing, though the defeats apparently haven’t deterred him. The New York Times reported:
Former President Donald J. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News on Monday, arguing that the anchor George Stephanopoulos had harmed his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that Mr. Trump had been found liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll.
According to the reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Stephanopoulos was named as a co-defendant in the case.
The controversy, to the extent that one exists, began nine days ago, when Republican Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and faced a difficult line of inquiry: Stephanopoulos asked the South Carolina congresswoman, who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, about how she reconciles her support for rape victims with her support for Trump.
“You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony that we just saw?” Stephanopoulos asked Mace.
The ABC host was, of course, referring to E. Jean Carroll’s case, in which Trump was held liable for sexually abuse. The jury did not find the defendant liable for “rape” as defined in the applicable state law, though the judge in the case later concluded that the former president, for all intents and purposes, “‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Mace condemned the questions for reasons that were difficult to discern, but Trump is going a step further with his civil suit, claiming that the anchor’s line of inquiry with Mace was “false, intentional, malicious and designed to cause harm.”
Legal experts can speak with more authority than I can about the case’s prospects — though given recent history, the former president and his followers should probably keep their expectations low — but I wonder if Team Trump appreciates the political risk it’s taking.
Indeed, the “Streisand Effect“ keeps coming to mind.
Remember, recent polling suggests many Republican voters have no idea that Trump was recently held liable for sexual abuse. The more the former president goes after Stephanopoulos and ABC, the more likely it is that voters will hear about the case — in an election year — which is the opposite of what the presumptive GOP nominee should want.
Abortions in the US have sharply increased despite bans implemented in Republican-led states after the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.
More than 1m abortions were performed in the US in 2023, a 10% increase from 2020, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute, an American policy organization which advocates for sexual and reproductive health…
When North Carolina held primary campaigns earlier this month, there wasn’t a lot of national interest in the Republican race to overseeing the state’s public-school system. There was a surprise outcome in the GOP contest — conservative activist Michele Morrow upset incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt — but outside of the state, this didn’t generate headlines.
That changed when CNN ran this report.
The Republican nominee for superintendent overseeing North Carolina’s public schools and its $11 billion budget has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats.
Yes, the Republican nominee to oversee public education in North Carolina, as recently as 2020, said on social media that she wanted to watch Barack Obama’s execution and also suggested killing Joe Biden.
[…] Morrow used social media between 2019 and 2021 to also make “disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.”
Morrow also apparently doesn’t much care for public schools, having derided them as “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers.” The activist, who claims several years of homeschooling experience, has also called for the abolishment of the state Board of Education.
[LOL. Perfect Republican elected official to oversee North Carolina’s public schools. Sheesh.]
[…] she’ll appear on the same ballot as Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who easily won his statewide primary and is the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nominee.
Robinson, of course, is an extraordinarily radical voice in GOP politics, known for, among other things, his overt antisemitism and his doubts about whether the Holocaust occurred. As we recently discussed, Robinson has also condemned the LGBTQ community as “filth,” and boasted about having an AR-15, which he said he was prepared to use against his own country’s government.
[…] “Robinson is also a regular proponent of conspiracies claiming the music industry is being run by Satan and the Illuminati. … [He also] warned on Facebook that the reality-TV shows ‘American Idol,’ ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and ‘Chopped’ are a sign of an impending New World Order.”
[…] the use of antisemitic tropes; the Facebook posts calling Hillary Clinton a ‘heifer’ and Michelle Obama a man.”
Robinson is also running on a platform of banning all abortions without exceptions, election denialism, and climate denialism. [Trifecta!]
[…] Will having Morrow and Robinson on the same ballot help encourage mainstream voters to turn out and support Democratic candidates?
President Biden’s re-election team sees an opportunity. Axios reported last week that the incumbent’s political operation in North Carolina is growing, and Team Biden is including the state in its ad buys. [Good]
…
Jimmy Kimmel admitted he’s a bit disturbed by the increasingly blatant language Donald Trump is using, like the “bloodbath” Trump talked up in a speech over the weekend.
In part, Kimmel is concerned because “the issue is that he’s such a lunatic. we actually have to debate if he meant it literally.” …
[…] Sen. Tommy Tuberville is known for his election denialism, his provocative rhetoric about race, his disparagements of the U.S. military, his difficulties with basic details related to civics and modern American history, his inability to discuss policy details, and his willingness to give Russia’s Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt.
But sometimes, the GOP senator’s perspective is just plain bizarre. [LOL]
As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown noted, it was just last week when Tuberville lashed out at President Joe Biden as a “garbage human being.” Three days later, as The Salt Lake Tribune reported, the right-wing lawmaker traveled to Utah to campaign for a Senate candidate and shed additional light on his curious beliefs.
Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville had a stark warning for the approximately 100 Utah GOP delegates who crowded into a Bluffdale warehouse to hear him speak on Friday afternoon: Malevolent supernatural forces are working to undermine America.
“I’ve traveled all over the country — all 50 states — I’ve been in good places and bad places,” the coach-turned-politician said. “The one thing I saw, we are losing our kids to a Satanic cult.”
“[…] We’ve got to get back to the Constitution, and we have got to get back to the Bible. We’ve got to get God back in our country. There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.” [Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia — is quite literally a Christian pastor]
It’s difficult to unpack such angry-guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar remarks, though I’d be curious to know more about how Tuberville expects the United States to “get back to” both the secular U.S. Constitution and his preferred holy text.
As for the senator’s insistence that zero Democrats are willing to “stand up for God,” it’s also worth noting that President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic who regularly attends church services […]
The Salt Lake Tribune report added:
Tuberville even went so far as to claim the federal government has been corrupted to go after conservatives instead of criminals, which was seemingly an indirect reference to the hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged after attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’ve lost our Department of Justice,” the Alabaman said. “In most of the country, we don’t have a criminal justice system anymore. Nobody goes to jail, unless you’re an innocent person that really loves this country, then they’ll put you in jail. We have never overcome a cult like we’re dealing with right now.”
Tuberville added that it’s Democrats who are trying to “push this cult on us.”
I’d be curious to know how many other GOP senators agree that a Satanic cult is gradually seizing American children — with the apparent cooperation of Democrats — and that “nobody” in the United States goes to jail except patriots who love their country.
Reginald @105, Jimmy Kimmel is spot on with that analysis: “the issue is that he’s such a lunatic. we actually have to debate if he meant it literally.”
More Trump weirdness:
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, on Gorka’s web show. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump continued, going on to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions. [as reported by NBC]
Commentary:
[…] Trump’s campaign spokesperson, showing the kind of measured restraint that’s come to define Team Trump, added, “The Democrat [sic] Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.”
[…] Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued an especially pointed response, noting, “Luckily I don’t know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish. After all, this is the guy who saw ‘very fine people on both sides’ of an antisemitic riot and entertained the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes over at his house at Mar-a-Lago for dinner.”
Part of the problem, of course, is Trump’s twisted perspective. [His] sense of entitlement is so overwhelming that he believes he effectively completed a transaction with the assumption that Jewish voters would feel compelled to put aside their values and judgment, and support him in droves.
[…] After his defeat, Trump kept this going, whining that Jewish voters “don’t love Israel enough,” dining with prominent antisemites at Mar-a-Lago, and arguing that Jews need to “get their act together” and “appreciate” Israel “before it is too late.”
In late 2022, the former president went so far as to declare that Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” over their “lack of loyalty.” Around the same time, he added to the list, using related rhetoric about Jews with a documentary filmmaker.
Or put another way, Trump’s latest example of antisemitism was offensive, but it was not surprising.
MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and author, had promised to give $1 million to 250 organizations last year through an “open call” for applications. On Tuesday, she announced she would give $640 million to 361 organizations instead…
I think she just wanted to prove that she could have paid Trump’s bond – but didn’t.
Nebraska lawmakers are calling for the resignation of State Senator Steve Halloran (R) after he repeatedly inserted the name of two fellow senators into an extremely graphic rape scene he read to the chamber.
On Monday, while debating a bill that would revoke prosecution exemptions granted to “educational institutions providing obscenity to minors in grades K-12,” Halloran directed his comments at Sens. Machaela (D) and John Cavanaugh (D), siblings who serve alongside Halloran in the state Senate and opposed the proposed legislation.
Halloran began reading an excerpt from “Lucky,” a memoir by the author Alice Sebold exploring the impact being sexually assaulted at age 18 had on her life. Halloran read Sebold’s description of the attack, misrepresenting it as a piece of titillating literature and inserting “Sen. Cavanaugh” at various points — without clarifying which of the two lawmakers he was referring to…
Reginald Selkirksays
@112:
…
Last year, Halloran was at the center of a firestorm of controversy after the claimed that women cannot get pregnant by force. “No one’s forcing anyone to be pregnant. Pregnancy’s a voluntary act between two consenting adults,” he said during a floor debate.
President Joe Biden and congressional leaders announced Tuesday that they had reached a government funding deal, signaling the close of a months-long saga that featured numerous shutdown threats.
With a tight window left to consider funding bills, it is possible that there will still be a brief government shutdown over the weekend. However, it will likely have little impact on services or federal workers unless it stretches into next week.
“We have come to an agreement with Congressional leaders on a path forward for the remaining full-year funding bills,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday. “The House and Senate are now working to finalize a package that can quickly be brought to the floor, and I will sign it immediately.” …
birgerjohanssonsays
God Awful Movies takes on an ‘animated’ version of what was originally a German radio story for children. I don’t get how they emerged from this with their sanity intact.
[…] “Pretty soon, I’m gonna be making a decision. I would like to see if we could make both sides happy,” the Republican added.
Trump went on to boast about his role in ending the Roe v. Wade precedent and sending the matter “back to the states,” before concluding that Democrats support abortion “even after birth.”
So, a few things.
First, Trump and his party did not, strictly speaking, send the matter “back to the states.” Under the Dobbs ruling from Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, Congress could approve and impose a federal abortion ban, which is precisely why the candidate’s position on the issue remains highly relevant.
Second, there’s no such thing as abortion “even after birth” — I believe that’s better known as “murder” — and literally zero Democratic officials have endorsed such an absurdity.
And third, what makes Trump’s rhetoric so notable is that he genuinely seems to believe that he might be able to come up with a national abortion ban that satisfies both opponents and proponents of reproductive rights.
He’s mistaken. This issue has been contentious for so long because a grand compromise isn’t possible.
Trump doesn’t seem to understand this, and this confusion has led him to believe he can and should pursue an abortion ban at the federal law.
Remember, Kurtz asked the former president whether he believes a 16-week national abortion ban “could be politically acceptable.” Trump didn’t challenge the premise of the question; he instead said, “So, we’re gonna find out.”
[…] “More and more I’m hearing about 15 weeks.” (He didn’t say from whom he’d heard the figure.)
While it’s true that Trump hasn’t explicitly presented a detailed plan, his on-air comments leave little doubt that he’s pondering how to advance a national abortion ban, not whether to advance a national abortion ban.
The Republican’s rhetoric could be clearer, but for those concerned about the future of reproductive rights, there’s no real ambiguity here: If given the opportunity, Trump continues to put a national abortion ban on the table.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has unlocked new achievements in weirdness and incompetence.
On Monday, she issued an order directing Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to each come up with a set of proposed jury instructions based on two hypothetical interpretations of the Presidential Records Act. Both of her interpretations are wrong as a matter of law and favorable to Trump, putting Smith in an extraordinary bind.
If this is confusing, trust me, it’s not you. This is a strange and unusual place to be at this stage in a criminal case. Cannon clearly doesn’t understand her role or the law at issue. She is casting about for help, but doing so in a way that is not going to be helpful to her or to the case.
This is where I would usually insert a brief (and incisive!) explanation of the legal issues, but that’s impossible to do here. It makes no sense.
It’s an utter mess and left legal observers flabbergasted.
A Sampling Of The Reaction To Cannon
George Conway: “In the decades that I have been a lawyer, this is the most bizarre order I’ve ever seen issued by a federal judge. What makes that all the more amazing is that the second and third most bizarre orders I’ve ever seen in federal court were also issued by Judge Cannon in this case.”
Joyce Vance: “[I]t’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act.”
“This is the kind of legal inanity that could lead Jack Smith to seek to mandamus Judge Cannon- ie to get the 11th Circuit appeals court to hear this and reverse her for the third time- which could also be the proverbial three strikes and you’re out,” Andrew Weissmann said.
[…] Weissmann repeated this on MSNBC.
“There’s a reason you’ve never seen anything like it,” Weissmann said, before dropping two M-words: the first was “meshuggenah,” describing the order, and the second was mandamus.
“Please draft a jury instruction assuming that the earth is flat. And the second one is please draft a jury instruction that the earth is square,” Weissmann characterized the order. “And so, the second M-word is mandamus. Mandamus is the ability — it’s not an appeal. It’s for extraordinary actions by a district court that so clearly violate the law that you can appeal it right then and there.”
The April issue of Scientific American arrived yesterday. It focuses on AI. There’s an article titled, I kid not, “Shortcuts to God”. The email about the new issue says this about the article:
“The God Chatbots Changing Religious Inquiry: Large language models trained on religious texts claim to offer spiritual insights on demand. What could go wrong?”
Ex-Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro reported to a federal prison in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to begin a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“They can put me in prison; they can put you in prison,” Navarro said during a parking lot press conference Tuesday just before he reported to the facility. “Make no mistake about that, and make no mistake about this: They are coming after Donald Trump with the same tactics, tools and strategies they used to put me over there today.” […]
Navarro, 74, was convicted last year of two counts of contempt of Congress — one for failing to produce documents related to the probe, and another for skipping his deposition before the selection House committee that investigated the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. […]
Here’s some great news for people who have asthma or COPD and also enjoy breathing! Astrazeneca announced on Monday that it will be capping the prices of its inhalers at $35, becoming the second major pharmaceutical company to do so (Boehringer Ingeleheim was the first).
While surely this was done out of the goodness of their hearts, it did come, very coincidentally, after Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico), and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) sent letters to Astrazeneca, Boehringer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Teva announcing an investigation into the wild amounts of money they charge American consumers for inhalers (despite selling them for much less in every other country on earth). […]
In the letters to Astrazeneca and the other pharmaceutical companies, the senators requested “that the companies provide information and documents on the internal decisions that ensure their inhalers do not face competition and can continue to bring in massive revenues.”
– How executives decide to add new features to old inhalers or to move patients off of old products and onto new products, both of which are common tactics to keep lower-cost generic competitors off the market.
– Whether the companies have evidence that their new products have any real clinical benefits compared to the old products.
– The costs involved in manufacturing their inhalers and information about their patient assistance programs – which provide free or discounted inhalers to patients – including how much the companies deduct from their corporate taxes for operating those programs.
– Finally, the letters request information on how much the companies spend on research and development for asthma and COPD.
It seems highly unlikely that this information would justify $645 inhalers that have been on the market for decades. I think we can assume it did not and that is why they are lowering the prices. […]
On Jan. 7, the Israeli military conducted a targeted missile strike on a car carrying four Palestinian journalists outside Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
Two members of an Al Jazeera crew — Hamza Dahdouh, 27, and drone operator Mustafa Thuraya, 30 — were killed, along with their driver. Two freelance journalists were seriously wounded.
They were returning from the scene of an earlier Israeli strike on a building, where they had used a drone to capture the aftermath. The drone — a consumer model available at Best Buy — would be central to the Israeli justification for the strike.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the next day it had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops.” Two days later, the military announced it had uncovered evidence that both men belonged to militant groups — Thuraya to Hamas and Dahdouh to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, its smaller rival in Gaza — and that the attack had been in response to an “immediate” threat.
The Washington Post obtained and reviewed the footage from Thuraya’s drone, which was stored in a memory card recovered at the scene and sent to a Palestinian production company in Turkey. No Israeli soldiers, aircraft or other military equipment are visible in the footage taken that day — which The Post is publishing in its entirety — raising critical questions about why the journalists were targeted. Fellow reporters said they were unaware of troop movements in the area.
Interviews with 14 witnesses to the attack and colleagues of the slain reporters offer the most detailed account yet of the deadly incident. The Post found no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day. Both passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war; Dahdouh had recently been approved to leave Gaza, a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant.
In response to multiple inquiries and detailed questions from The Post, the IDF said: “We have nothing further to add.”
The Post could not identify other instances during the war when journalists were targeted by the IDF for flying drones, which have been used extensively to capture the extent of the devastation in Gaza.
[…] n a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the “assassination of Mustafa and Hamza” and pledged to “take all legal measures to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Ninety journalists and other media workers in Gaza have been killed in just over five months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — the deadliest period for the profession since the group began collecting data in 1992.
“It should be incumbent on the IDF to investigate what happened” on Jan. 7, Irene Khan, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told The Post in February.
“It’s not enough to say that we suspected them so we killed them,” she said. “It’s very easy to say that in a combat situation.” […]
Preligens, a geospatial artificial intelligence firm, ran the Jan. 7 satellite imagery provided by The Post through its AI vehicle detector and did not find any armored vehicles within 9.7 square miles.
Thuraya’s drone was a commercially available Mavic 2, manufactured by the Chinese company DJI, roughly the size of a typical shoe box but slimmer. Thuraya stopped recording at 10:55 a.m., the metadata shows.
A second strike hit the site at 11:01 a.m., according to Amr, who said he and his colleague Ahmed al-Bursh were hit by shrapnel. Bursh was doubled over in pain as he stepped into a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance, seen in a video filmed by Amr, who joined him in the ambulance and recorded most of their ride.
“I did it out of fear,” he said. “I was afraid that we would be targeted.” […]
More at the link, including photos of journalists and biographical details.
The Biden administration sued to block the law, saying it tramples on the federal government’s exclusive authority to oversee immigration issues.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Texas to enforce a contentious new law that gives local police the power to arrest migrants.
The conservative-majority court, with three liberal justices dissenting, rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration, which said states have no authority to legislate on immigration, an issue the federal government has sole authority over.
That means the law can go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts. It could still be blocked at a later date.
“The court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.
The majority did not explain its reasoning, but one of the conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett, wrote separately to note that an appeals court has yet to weigh in on the issue.
“If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this court,” she wrote. Her opinion was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The law in question, known as SB4, allows police to arrest migrants who illegally cross the border from Mexico and imposes criminal penalties. It would also empower state judges to order people to be deported to Mexico.
The dispute is the latest clash between the Biden administration and Texas over immigration enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border.
A federal judge blocked the law after the Biden administration sued, but the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a brief order that it could go into effect March 10 if the Supreme Court declined to intervene.
On March 4, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary freeze on the law to give the Supreme Court time to consider the federal government’s request.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers that the Texas law is “flatly inconsistent” with Supreme Court precedent dating back 100 years. […]
More at the link.
Other reports confirm that police have not been given any instruction concerning how to implement SB4. Police are in the dark on this.
Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden announced a deal Tuesday morning to fund the government ahead of a weekend deadline, breaking an impasse regarding money for the Department of Homeland Security, which had held up talks.
With her confirmation by the Senate on Tuesday, Nicole Berner became the first openly gay judge and the first labor lawyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, a court covering the Mid-Atlantic that over the past decade has gone from one of the most conservative to one of the most liberal in the country.
Rising costs on nearly every line of a carrier’s income statement have compressed truckload margins, forcing fleets to come up with ways to protect profits. The use of solar energy to power tractor cabs is one such solution. The improvement in solar panel technology in the past couple of years has led to increased adoption from carriers.
The flexible panels weigh less than 20 pounds and have an adhesive allowing them to be attached to the roof of a truck, where they capture the sun’s energy. The energy is stored in the battery bank of a cab’s electric power unit (EPU), significantly reducing fuel costs by minimizing time spent idling. The panels can power everything inside a sleeper cab throughout the night or keep drivers cool while they endure long waits at delivery docks…
He said the technology will save the company roughly $1,700 per tractor per year. The math assumes an average diesel price of $4 per gallon and annual mileage of 110,000 miles per truck. That’s approximately the cost to install one unit when buying them in bulk…
The math doesn’t include the benefit from longer battery life as parasitic drain is eliminated. Jump-starts of dead batteries, which can be very costly in remote locations, are also removed.
Further, a reduction in “ghost mileage,” or the hours when the engine is running but the wheels aren’t turning, extends the life of the engine and the alternator…
Murali said the return on investment on the devices is less than a year, which is significant in an industry that works on “tight margins.” …
[…] The Cowboys for Trump co-founder went to Washington, D.C., for Jan. 6, and was ultimately convicted in federal court for entering Capitol grounds without going inside. Griffin was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.
Six months later, a New Mexico judge, pointing to the Jan. 6 conviction, not only barred the Republican county commissioner from seeking re-election, the judge also ordered Griffin to give up his local elected position immediately.
It was the first time since 1869 in which any public official had been disqualified for participating in government due to insurrection allegation.
(Griffin’s name was already familiar in some circles: The Republican rose to national attention in May 2020 when he spoke at a New Mexico church and declared, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” Trump then thought it’d be a good idea to promote a clip of the remarks via social media.)
Griffin ultimately appealed his defeat, but the Supreme Court passed on his case.
As for why the 14th Amendment applied to the New Mexico Republican and not Trump, my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained that the high court’s ruling blocked states from disqualifying would-be candidates for federal offices, but states are still able to disqualify would-be candidates for state offices.
Or as Jordan concluded, the Cowboys for Trump co-founder can’t run for the county commission in New Mexico, but thanks to the Supreme Court, he could run for president.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law also says Israel should bulldoze an area of the Negev desert and move Palestinians there.
[…] Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.
The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 8 March.
Kushner was a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency and was tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East. Critics of the plan, which involved Israel striking normalisation deals with Gulf states, said it bypassed questions about the future for Palestinians.
His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. […]
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.” […]
It is a leap year and presidential election year, which means it is also something much more important: the Summer Damn Olympics, which are in Paris.
Are you better off than you were four years ago? The Olympics sure are, considering how they weren’t allowed to happen in 2020, due to […] worldwide plague
In 2021, when the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics actually happened, it was all weird and stuff, with hardly any spectators, and even worse, the athletes weren’t allowed to bone each other incessantly, as per Olympic tradition. (It has been suggested that some athletes went ahead and fucked each other a lot in Tokyo.)
This year, thank God, the tyranny is over, and fucking is officially once again an Olympic sport, and all nations are invited to compete. (Except Russia, obviously, and Belarus, which are officially banned, but whose athletes can compete as “Individual Neutral Athletes.” And obviously we hope nobody wants to fuck them anyway.)
The Washington Post reports that the International Olympic Committee has lifted the so-called “intimacy ban,” and will have 300,000 condoms — 300,000! free! condoms! — available for athletes to use during their fuck events and competitions.
With that quantity, every resident “will have what they are expecting and what they need,” said Laurent Michaud, director of the Olympic and Paralympic Village, in an interview with Sky News. […] Michaud said organizers’ goal is for the more than 14,000 athletes, staff and members of the press in the Village during the Games to “feel very enthusiastic and comfortable,” he said. The Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place between July 26 and Sept. 8.
You were about to Google to see how many condoms we’re talking about per person. So it’s 14,000 athletes, and we’re assuming staff members and reporters are also going to bang everyone, so carry the two, assume 10,000 of them will “break,” and it’s still probably five apiece, right?
Use your rations wisely, oh sexy ones!
There will be no alcohol — as is common for Olympic Villages — but “it’s going to be a great place so they can actually share their moment,” he said.
“Share their moment.” God bless the French. (Also the article notes that while there’s no booze officially in the village, the city of Paris will remain just fucking full of it.)
The Post has a nice little history of condoms at the games, noting that it started at Seoul in 2008, and peaked in Rio — obviously — with 450,000 free ones floating around and landing on assorted genitals.
Also, it says there actually were some in Tokyo, but they weren’t for onsite fucking, wink wink, nudge nudge, bone bone:
Organizers planned to give out 150,000 condoms, but told Reuters they were “not for use at the athlete’s village, but to have athletes take them back to their home countries to raise awareness.”
Awareness of fucking.
Anyway, in summary and in conclusion, the Olympics is back and it’s fun again, and it will provide America a nice break from the joint horrors of our political conventions, which will be happening just before and after it.
This appears mostly to serve the purpose of selling Peter Navarro’s book.
In recent days, MAGA media have been sending subtle (and not so subtle) messages to their supporters that they ought to be willing and prepared to go to jail on behalf of the Trump movement.
While giving a keynote address to the Patrons for American Statecraft Conference, put on by the right-wing organization American Moment, War Room host Steve Bannon told the audience, “You have to be prepared to go to prison” for “deconstructing the administrative state,” bragging, “I’ve got prison sentences all over.”
[…] This message has since spread across the conservative media ecosystem. On March 19, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro reported to federal prison. Convicted of contempt of Congress, Navarro was sentenced to serve four months after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee in February 2022. Before surrendering, he gave a rambling press conference during which he promoted his forthcoming book and offered reporters advanced copies.
After taking the press conference live on War Room, returned to sing Navarro’s praises. “The composure he had, the courage he has, and that courage is contagious,” Bannon said, suggesting others will follow in Navarro’s footsteps to prison, “It’s one of the things the Biden regime is afraid of.” He later added: “I love the fact he makes a pitch for the book right there. It’s pure Navarro. That’s Trumpian.” […]
Videos at the link.
[…] On March 18, Navarro appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered with Donald Trump Jr. Trump Jr. — whose publishing company, Winning Team Publishing, is behind Navarro’s new book — praised Navarro for appearing on his podcast before reporting to prison. “I wish every conservative had your balls, but more importantly your heart,” said the former president’s eldest son, “I think everyone watching has to understand that. Because that’s honestly — that’s a lesson in patriotism, right there. It’s amazing to me. It truly is. And, man, I wish we had a billion of you.” […]
StevoRsays
PBS Newshour has a good discussion on Trump’s extreme violent rhetoric here :
Although they don’t describe it as stochastic terrorism – which it is.
Just heard on the radio news that Trump has attacked our Aussie ambassador and ex-PM Kevin Rudd :
Mr Trump, who recently secured the Republican Party’s endorsement for the 2024 presidential election, was asked about the former prime minister during an interview on British television.Politician-turned-broadcaster Nigel Farage told Mr Trump that Dr Rudd had “said the most horrible things” about him, including calling him a “destructive president” and a “traitor to the West”.
“He won’t be there long if that’s the case,” Mr Trump responded. “I don’t know much about him. I heard he was a little bit nasty.”
Wow, if Rudd is “nasty” for telling the truth what does that make a guy who literally incited an attempted coup against his own nation and just dehumanised migrants among all the other Trump comments? Oh and Farage is a flippin’ journo now? Seriously?
Also via PBS Newshour, sadly more disappointing news :
For the last few decades, the story of LGBTQ plus rights in America has been one of increasing public support. But now a new survey finds that for the first time in years, there’s a slight decline in that support. William Brangham takes a closer look.
“Is it just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?” Liz Cheney tweeted. “Donors better beware.”
StevoRsays
In 2009, theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde proposed a radical reformulation of gravity. In his theory, gravity is not a fundamental force but rather a manifestation of deeper hidden processes. But in the 15 years since then, there hasn’t been much experimental support for the idea. So where do we go next?
Emergence is common throughout physics. The property of temperature, for example, isn’t an intrinsic property of gases. Instead, it’s the emergent result of countless microscopic collisions. … (Snip)… In Verlinde’s picture of emergent gravity, as soon as you enter low-density regions — basically, anything outside the solar system — gravity behaves differently than we would expect from Einstein’s theory of general relativity. At large scales, there is a natural inward pull to space itself, which forces matter to clump up more tightly than it otherwise would.
This idea was exciting because it allowed astronomers to find a way to test this new theory. Observers could take this new theory of gravity and put it in models of galaxy structure and evolution to find differences between it and models of dark matter.
Echoes of MOND but intriguing cosmological hypothesis there.
Akira MacKenziesays
Great news! I’ve got an in-person interview at a local generator manufacture. If all goes well, this should be my shortest stint of unemployment.
StevoRsays
The first data from a new telescope array is in. The Condor Array has revealed a stunning look at a distant dwarf nova — a scene that offers astronomers a new, very-low-brightness view of the universe to marvel over. .. (Snip!)… One of the first missions assigned to Condor was to focus on the dwarf nova named Z Camelopardalis. In particular, American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael M. Shara wanted to know if this dwarf nova has anything to do with a “new star” that Chinese Imperial astrologers recorded in the year 77 BCE. Not only did the new telescope array strengthen this link, but it also discovered intriguing, never-seen-before features of the dwarf nova.
Former President Donald Trump is continuing to rail against the $464 million judgment in his New York civil fraud case, claiming Judge Arthur Engoron is trying to take away his rights and that he could be forced to sell his properties at “fire sale prices.”
“Judge Engoron actually wants me to put up Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for the Right to Appeal his ridiculous decision,” Trump posted on his social media platform Tuesday morning. “In other words, he is trying to take my Appellate Rights away from me,” Trump said, in part.
“I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense?” Trump continued, in part.
Now where did I put that tardigrade sized violin….
Trump’s pick wins: Bernie Moreno will win the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, CNN projects, a victory for former President Donald Trump, who had endorsed the businessman in the three-way contest. Moreno will take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a fall election that will be crucial to deciding Senate control…
It is possible that the MAGA wing of the GOP has gone so far that “moderate” Republicans will not show up to vote for them. One can hope.
Montana’s Supreme Court said a proposed ballot measure to protect abortion can continue through the initiative process, overruling the state’s attorney general and bringing the measure one step closer to the ballot.
In a 6-1 decision released Monday, the justices ruled that Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) exceeded his authority when he concluded the ballot measure was invalid because it included multiple subjects that should have been separated…
Howard Kurtz
What’s revealing is how he chose to answer the most sensitive questions, or to deflect them, and how various media outlets chose to frame them.
Some, like the New York Times, ABC and the Hill, played it straight. Other operations, many of them left-leaning, cherry-picked quotes to make Trump look as awful as possible, while ignoring the reasonable-sounding things he said…
“paging Doctor Dunning and Doctor Kruger – code blue in admittance”
You see Mr. Kurtz, saying reasonable-sounding things isn’t particularly noteworthy nor newsworthy. It is expected.
Scientists say they have successfully eliminated HIV from infected cells, using Nobel Prize-winning Crispr gene-editing technology.
Working like scissors, but at the molecular level, it cuts DNA so “bad” bits can be removed or inactivated.
The hope is to ultimately be able to rid the body entirely of the virus, although much more work is needed to check it would be safe and effective. ..
It would be very challenging to make that work in people. You would have to eliminate the HIV from all cells for it to be cured.
John Moralessays
Other operations, many of them left-leaning, cherry-picked quotes to make Trump look as awful as possible, while ignoring the reasonable-sounding things he said… [sic — ellipsis not in original quotation]
You see Mr. Kurtz, saying reasonable-sounding things isn’t particularly noteworthy nor newsworthy. It is expected.
You see, Mr. Selkirk, what you quoted was neiither praising nor noting the reasonably-said things, it was noting the elision of those things from slanted coverage. Which I’ve myself noted, which you’ve ignored, in the best tradition of Doctor Dunning and Doctor Kruger, as you yourself put it.
If you’re gonna try to snark, at least be on point. Bah.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 140
Thanks John. I’m actually feeling positive about this for a change. My last job I had to deal with debit/credit card fraud was depressing as hell. People tend to get really emotional when money is involved and those feelings are rarely good. This job is for a technical customer service job to help customers with their generator questions. I think I can handle that a lot better.
Sound waves fossilized in the maps of galaxies across the Universe could be interpreted as signs of a Big Bang that took place 13 billion years earlier than current models suggest.
Last year, theoretical physicist Rajendra Gupta from the University of Ottawa in Canada published a rather extraordinary proposal that the Universe’s currently accepted age is a trick of the light, one that masks its truly ancient state while also ridding us of the need to explain hidden forces.
Gupta’s latest analysis suggests oscillations from the earliest moments in time preserved in large-scale cosmic structures support his claims.
“The study’s findings confirm that our previous work about the age of the Universe being 26.7 billion years has allowed us to discover that the Universe does not require dark matter to exist,” says Gupta…
A federal appeals court late Tuesday night put Texas’ controversial immigration law back on hold, hours after the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the state to begin enforcing the measure.
In a brief order, a three-judge panel at the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to wipe away a previous ruling from a different panel that had temporarily put the law, which would allow state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, into effect.
The panel of judges that issued Tuesday night’s order is already set to hear arguments Wednesday morning on Texas’ request to put the law, Senate Bill 4, back into effect pending the state’s appeal of a federal judge’s block on the law…
Odd. It appears that an appeals court is overruling the Supreme Court.
Throughout his time on Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa has been known to rub some people the wrong way. In one especially memorable example from 2016, then-President Barack Obama publicly chided the California Republican for spending years recklessly going after him, only to pretend to be an Obama ally when running for re-election.
But it’s not just Democrats who occasionally get annoyed with Issa.
At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, members took turns asking questions to former military officials who were involved with the operation. When allotted Issa’s time expired, Committee Chairman Michael McCaul tried to move on to the next lawmaker, only to have Issa keep talking.
It led McCaul to quietly mutter to Issa, “Go f— yourself.” (Note, the audio is a little difficult to hear, but given the language, it should probably come with a “not safe for work” warning.) [video at the link]
As NBC News reported, the Texas Republican who leads the panel apologized soon after.
McCaul apologized in a statement, saying, “It was a long day, and I lost my temper.” … “That is uncharacteristic of me and I apologize to Mr. Issa, who I consider a friend,” he added.
Issa laughed it off and there’s no reason to think this will lead to a larger controversy. That said, it’s not every day when a powerful committee chairman directs such coarse language at a colleague from his own party, and it was emblematic of the House GOP’s broader issues.
After all, this comes on the heels of an annual House Republican retreat — ostensibly focused on “unifying the conference“ — which most GOP members decided to skip.
One lawmaker told reporters for Axios and Politico, in reference to the conference’s retreat, “I’d rather sit down with Hannibal Lecter and eat my own liver.”
Or put another way, members of the House Republican Conference were divided over an event intended to unify.
What’s more, resignations in the GOP-led chamber have reached a generational high; legislative progress has slowed to a pace unseen in nearly a century; lawmakers are struggling mightily to complete basic tasks; and it’s become increasingly easy to argue that this is the worst Congress ever.
A recent Punchbowl News report concluded, “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress.”
It was against this backdrop that the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was heard telling one of his GOP colleagues, “Go f— yourself,” which helped encapsulate the troubles affecting the hapless majority conference.
The Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar will step down as party leader immediately and will resign as taoiseach as soon as his Fine Gael successor is selected.
Announcing his resignation, Mr Varadkar described leading his country as “the most fulfilling time of my life”…
[…] Jeff Asher, a former CIA analyst who now studies crime trends, told NBC News that the latest reporting from the FBI “suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded.”
The White House not only touted the news, it also framed the new data in a not-so-subtle election-year context.
“Across America, families want the same thing: the freedom to feel safe in their community. To know their kids are secure. My administration is making it a reality,” Biden said in a written statement. “This week, the FBI released data showing that crime declined across nearly every category in 2023. Last year, we also had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime in more than 50 years and the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history. That’s good news for the American people.”
“In 2020, before I took office, the prior administration oversaw the largest increase in murders ever recorded. My administration got to work on day one to fix that. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which every Republican in Congress voted against, we made the largest-ever federal investment in fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history. That enabled cities and states to invest $15 billion in public safety. This record investment in crime reduction — in community violence intervention, mental health and additional officers — is delivering results.”
Late last year, Donald Trump asked someone to name “one thing“ that’s improved during Biden’s tenure. As it turns out, the list is rather long, but as the FBI has reminded us, crime rates are among the most notable areas of improvement.
To be sure, I’m mindful of the fact there’s a gap between public perceptions about crime and actual evidence — driven in part by conservative media outlets and their partisan motivations to scare the bejesus out of as many voters as possible.
But to the extent that reality still has any meaning in the public discourse, Biden and his team have an encouraging story to tell.
Donald Trump is a walking, talking, breathing national security risk. He can’t pass a background check. He can’t get a security clearance. He’s a risky borrower. This is a man who you wouldn’t buy a used car from.
You could scarcely invent the constellation of national security risks that Trump poses: deep financial and emotional insecurity, ongoing criminal liability, susceptible to flattery, a pathological personality. But beyond the risky personal traits, he presents an unrivaled track record of proven misconduct in the national security realm: swiping the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, casual disregard for the handling classified information, a willing target of foreign interference and influence, an inability to distinguish the self from the state.
In any other era of American politics, the 2024 election would come down to trust. No one trusts Trump, not even many his own supporters. That’s not his appeal, for them, nor the point. But Trump is not without any precedent in our history; he is of a type.
The American myth has always been two-fold: the pastoral democracy in a New World Eden and the land of the huckster, the flimflam artist, the speculator, the boom-chaser, the booster. We have glorified both in our national story.
Trump is the latter tradition incarnate, the fast-talking, fly-by-night, always-be-closing snake oil salesman constantly reinventing himself to spring a new trap on the next easy mark.
His presidential candidacy itself is a long con. He’s running because it’s his best legal defense to the criminal liabilities he faces and a surefire way to subsidize his legal bills on the backs of contributors.
What’s different about the current era is that until now we’d largely managed to keep the worst of the hustlers out of the Oval Office.
Wealthy businessman Bernie Moreno decisively beat state Sen. Matt Dolan 51-33 in Tuesday’s Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, an outcome that Donald Trump and Senate Democrats both badly wanted. A third candidate, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, finished a distant third with 17%.
However, while Trump boosted Moreno so that he could have another MAGA toady in the Senate, Brown’s allies believe that the longtime luxury car dealer will be an effective foil for the progressive populist. Democrats are also sure to highlight Moreno’s calls for a 15-week federal abortion ban even though Ohio voters last year decisively approved an amendment to the state constitution to safeguard the procedure until fetal viability, which is about 22 to 24 weeks into pregnancy. […]
Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, but a supercomputer just modeled stuff that’s even harder. Called a ‘super-diamond,’ the theoretical material could exist beyond our planet—and maybe, one day, be created here on Earth.
Like normal diamonds, super-diamonds are made from carbon atoms. This specific phase of carbon, composed of eight atoms, should be stable at ambient conditions. In other words, it could exist in an Earth laboratory.
The specific phase, called BC8, is a high-pressure phase typically found in silicon and germanium. And as the new model suggests, carbon can also exist in this particular phase…
Around 97% of eligible voters can vote ahead of Election Day this year, marking a major change from just a couple decades ago, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center for Election Innovation & Research, with experts saying the increased early access bolsters election integrity and protects against misinformation.
[…] in 36 states and Washington, D.C., voters also have the option to vote by mail without being required to provide a specific reason.
Meanwhile, the percentage of total ballots cast before Election Day has risen over that time period—from 14% in 2000 to 50% in the 2022 midterm elections. And the increase is expected to continue this year.
* For those that may not be familiar with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings mythology, the Nazgul were originally nine mortal men corrupted by lesser rings of power under the control of the One Ring (depicted above [image at the link]), and eventually turned into Ringwraiths to serve as the Dark Lord Sauron’s most fearsome lieutenants.
So there was a vote yesterday on a resolution in the US House of Representatives to condemn the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian forces during their full-scale invasion of that unfortunate country that is now well into its third year.
What could possibly be controversial about such an innocuous but purely symbolic resolution you might ask? After all, this “Sense of the House” bi-partisan resolution originally sponsored by Susan Wild (D-PA) didn’t require any actual action to be taken or allocate any funds to be spent, and it had sailed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a unanimous 44-0 vote back in November.
Nonetheless, even though 390 House members dutifully voted for the resolution, making it one of the most universally endorsed measures in recent years, nine members of the GQP Treason Caucus still found some reason in their twisted and tortured souls to vote against HR-149. And who are these Nazgul Nine that apparently serve only the interests of their Orange Lord in Merde-a-Lago, and his Puppet Master in Moscow? Curtesy of Mediaite they are:
Andy Biggs of Arizona
Eric Burlison of Missouri
Warren Davidson of Ohio
Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
Clay Higgins of Louisiana
Thomas Massie of Kentucky
Matt Rosendale of Montana
Chip Roy of Texas
Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin
[…] I also couldn’t help but notice that HR-149 was introduced clear back on February 21, 2023 to mark the 1st anniversary of Russia’s wanton and illegal invasion — and it still took over a year to get it passed. One more reason we need a Blue Tsunami in November!
The Vietnamese Communist Party has accepted the resignation of President Vo Van Thuong, the government said on Wednesday, in a sign of political turmoil that could hurt foreign investors’ confidence in the country.
The government said in a statement that Thuong had violated party rules, adding that those “shortcomings had negatively impacted public opinion, affecting the reputation of the Party, State and him personally”…
Nine House Republicans Bravely Stand Up For Putin’s Right To … [Checks Notes] … Steal Ukrainian Babies?
Over the past several years, there have been a number of opportunities for MAGA Republicans to do the absolute bare minimum to demonstrate that they’re not monsters, specifically regarding their apparent allegiance to Vladimir Putin.
Like, say, back in 2019, when Donald Trump was still president, a good long while before Putin started the latest phase of his genocide in Ukraine. There was a simple vote on a resolution in the House saying Trump wasn’t allowed to sneak his boyfriend Putin back into the G7 group of nations, no matter how much he begged. (Back then, Trump was babbling continually about how Putin should be allowed back in.)
Fully 71 House Republicans voted against the resolution.
Back in 2022, six House Republicans voted against a bill directing the government to collect information on the war crimes Putin had committed in Ukraine. (Andy Biggs, Warren Davidson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, Scott Perry. […])
The same year, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Traitor Greene, and Massie voted against a bill to end regular trade relations with Russia and its fluffer Belarus.
Banning Russian gas and oil imports that year? Voting against were Greene, Massie, Gaetz, Biggs, Gosar, plus this time Chip Roy and Dan Bishop. (And for some godforsaken reason, Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush.)
They are given opportunities all the time. And all the time, a certain handful stands up and says that no matter what you throw at them, they are ride-or-die for the genocidal dictator in the Kremlin, which pretty much by definition means their allegiance is not to this country.
Yesterday, they got one more opportunity, when nine House Republicans voted against a resolution condemning … [checks notes] … Putin’s constant kidnapping and stealing of Ukrainian babies. [children … they are not all babies]
Sponsored by Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, it affirmatively states that Russia has been doing this, and says it’s genocide.
The resolution’s summary reads:
This resolution states that the House of Representatives holds the Russian government responsible for the illegal kidnapping of children from Ukraine and condemns these actions. The resolution also (1) declares that illegal adoptions are contrary to the Genocide Convention (the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide); (2) claims that Russia is attempting to wipe out a generation of Ukrainian children; and (3) asserts that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased the risks of children being exposed to human trafficking, exploitation, child labor, gender-based violence, hunger, injury, trauma, deprivation of education and shelter, and death. […]
We’re looking through the text of the resolution to try to find out what [some Republicans] could possibly find objectionable.
The part where it holds Putin responsible for his military kidnapping Ukrainian babies and taking them back to Russia?
The part where it holds Putin responsible for his military attacking a maternity hospital in Mariupol?
But real talk, has even one congressman on that list earned the right to ask for time to proffer an explanation to the American people why they’re siding with Putin again?
Arizona state Sen. Anthony Kern, who “is currently being investigated by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for his role as a “fake elector” for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, as well as by the FBI for being exactly where you’d think he was on January 6, 2021,” spoke out concerning his twisted version of history:
“Our history is the Ten Commandments,” the Republican from Glendale told the committee Tuesday afternoon. “Our history is Judeo-Christian values.
“It is because of the Christian religion that we have allowed other religions to come in and be known,” he added. “It’s because of us being very tolerant.”
[…] Kern said his bill wouldn’t violate the First Amendment because it doesn’t require the Ten Commandments to be posted, rather, it gives teachers the option.
“It’s not favoring one religion over another,” he said. “It is simply an opt-in.”
[Kern also said that he would not vote for teachers to be allowed to put up anything from any other religions.]
Kern said the foundation of the U.S. government, including the three branches of federal government and the structure of legislative districts, are based in the Old Testament of the Bible.
“Could you tell me what founding documents the Ten Commandments appear in?” asked state Representative Judy Schwiebert, a Democrat from Phoenix.
Kern conceded that they are not found anywhere in the nation’s founding documents, but he argued that representative government is inspired by Moses in the Old Testament.
“Our way of life and our system of government and the reason why America is America is because of the Ten Commandments,” he said.
[…] Public schools are, of course, state actors — meaning that putting up the Ten Commandments in a classroom would be “establishment of religion.” […] Their purpose is to offer opportunities for evangelizing and also to, more or less, piss on a fire hydrant to declare their territory. They want even students who are not Christian to accept that they live in a country where Christians are the boss […]
The separation of powers comes from Montesquieu’s Spirit of Law, which Kern might have learned in high school had he not been busy pining away for a slate of Ten Commandments to stare at. Representative government goes back to the Roman Republic, where most people were polytheists who believed in Jupiter and Venus and Mars and Neptune and other gods that were not the namesake of any planets.
I mean, there are only two (2!) commandments that are the law in this country — murdering and stealing — and they also happen to be the law in pretty much every other country on earth regardless of what religion (or lack thereof) the people there practice. Otherwise, we’re all free to covet all over the place, we are free to put other Gods before the Christian God if we so choose, we can take any Lord’s name in vain we’d like. We can also build idols if we so choose [Image of Jackson Browne sculpture]
If Kern wants […] tell the children how to do religion, he will have to start his own cult.
Law enforcement in Kansas recorded the front of a man’s home for 68 days straight, 15 hours a day, and obtained evidence to prove him guilty on 16 charges. The officers did not have a search warrant, using a camera on a pole positioned across the street to capture Bruce Hay’s home. A federal court ruled on Tuesday that it was fine for law enforcement to do so, in what’s potentially a major reduction in privacy law.
“Mr. Hay had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a view of the front of his house,” said the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision on U.S. vs Hay. “As video cameras proliferate throughout society, regrettably, the reasonable expectation of privacy from filming is diminished.”
Hay, an Army veteran, was found guilty of lying about his disability status to collect benefits from the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). However, the concerning part of this case stems from how VA officers collected evidence against Hay. The veteran appealed his case, arguing that the months-long surveillance of his home crossed a line. However, the federal court ruled that law enforcement can videotape the outside of your home, partially because of how prominent video cameras have become in society…
An update on the cases in which police officers have filed lawsuits against Trump:
[…] In March 2021, two Capitol Police officers, James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, sued Trump, claiming he was liable for the injuries they suffered during the riot.
In August 2021, seven more police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot sued the former president
.
In January 2022, three more police officers — including two who aided the evacuation of lawmakers — sued Trump, seeking damages for their physical and emotional injuries.
In January 2023, the longtime partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the Jan. 6 riot, filed a wrongful death civil suit against Trump.
The former president and his defense team have repeatedly tried to claim that Trump has “immunity” from such cases — a defense that was rejected by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December, and then again earlier this month.
It’s against this backdrop [that Trump] and his lawyers have now rolled out a new pitch, asking that the civil cases related to Jan. 6 be delayed until after the criminal cases related to Jan. 6 are resolved. As Team Trump no doubt knows, it’s an open question as to whether there will be a criminal trial before Election Day 2024 — it’s quite likely that there will not — so the request is to push off the civil proceedings for quite a while.
[…] Chubb came up with the 91 million dollars for the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit.
Turns out the the CEO of Chubb got into hot water with his investors over that:
Chubb’s agreement to underwrite Trump’s Carroll defamation bond was followed by criticism aimed at its CEO, Evan Greenberg, who had been appointed by Trump to a trade policy advisory committee and a business group to stymie the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday last week, Greenberg sent a letter to investors, customers and brokers who had expressed concerns about that bond.
“As the surety, we don’t take sides, it would be wrong for us to do so and we are in no way supporting the defendant,” Greenberg wrote. “When Chubb issues an appeal bond, it isn’t making judgments about the claims, even when the claims involve alleged reprehensible conduct.”
He added that Trump’s bond in the defamation case was “fully collateralized.”
To make matters worse for Trump, he was counting on Chubb to bail him out again. Trump was in negotiations with Chubb on the fraud bond. Trump was offering up real estate he supposedly owns as collateral. Everything looked like it might work out again for our con artist, when suddenly, “Whoosh!” Chubb pulled out of the negotiations.
[…] It’s an open question of how much property Trump actually owns outright. Besides inflating the values of all of his properties, many of those same real estate holdings may have loans or liens on them. Trump may only be a partial owner in several of them, and trying to sell off those properties might be very complicated.
After Monday, we the public might start to learn more details of Trump’s so called business empire because Tish James will have to go through Trump’s financies to obtain any of the money New York State is owed. And I imagine that has Trump terrified. Everything comes down to wealth for Trump, and his whole identity is wrapped up in his fraudulent “wealth.” Once that curtain is pulled back, what happens to the little crook behind those curtains?
For years, Catholic Charities has been fighting for its First Amendment right to screw over its employees by not paying into the state’s unemployment insurance system. Last Thursday, the Wisconsin supreme court ruled 4-3 that four affiliates of the Superior Catholic Diocese are not exempt from Wisconsin’s unemployment law and have to pay into the system, like (almost) everyone else.
Essentially, the court reasoned that the work Catholic Charities was doing was “charitable and secular,” rather than “operated primarily for religious purposes.”
That may sound weird, but I’m not sure the court is wrong … though I’m also not sure we’ve seen the end of this case. Let’s get to it.
Here’s the background
The deal is that most employers have to pay into unemployment insurance. That’s what keeps the system running and allows people to receive unemployment […]
[…] The specifics vary by state. In general, churches themselves are exempt from paying into unemployment, but not all religious-based nonprofits are. Wisconsin law says whether or not organizations have to pay into the system depends on whether or not the organization is “operated primarily for religious purposes and operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches.” This mirrors the language in the Federal Unemployment Tax Act and is used by a lot of states.
A bunch of back-and-forth eventually led to this decision. Catholic Charities has been paying into unemployment since 1972, when it filed a form with the state describing its purposes as “charitable,” “educational,” and “rehabilitative,” not “religious.” In 2015, after another Catholic Charities sub-entity, not involved in this case, sued the state, a lower court found that another Catholic Charities organization was “operated primarily for religious purposes” and therefore exempted from the state’s unemployment laws. Since then, more Catholic Charities affiliates in the state have been trying to get the same exemption.
Let’s talk about Catholic Charities
[…] As for the services it provides, Catholic Charities operates 63 programs “to those facing the challenges of aging, the distress of a disability, the concerns of children with special needs, the stresses of families living in poverty and those in need of disaster relief.”
Catholic Charities Bureau acts as kind of an umbrella organization that helps manage and operate its other nonprofit organizations. Four Catholic Charities affiliates were involved in this case: Barron County Developmental Services, Black River Industries, Headwaters, and Diversified Services. These organizations provide services like job training, job coaching, and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and there is no religious aspect to the services provided. All four receive most of their funding from government contracts, and none are funded by the local Diocese. […]
Let’s get into the decision.
First, the court had to decide how to figure out whether an organization’s primary purpose is religious. Catholic Charities says that these organizations are operated for religious purposes; shouldn’t that be the end of the analysis?
Well, if you let organizations self-identify, they have a monetary incentive to choose the one where you don’t have to pay into unemployment. As the court noted […]
The court also looked at the actual text at issue: “operated primarily for religious purposes.” Because the statute talks about both “purposes” and how an organization is “operated,” it reasoned, you have to look at both the motivation behind an organization and what it actually does. [makes sense to me]
In the end, the court found that the organizations’ activities in this case were “primarily charitable and secular.” The services they provide “can be provided by organizations of either religious or secular motivations, and the services provided would not differ in any sense.” […]
But wait, there’s more
Catholic Charities didn’t only argue that it should qualify for the unemployment law exemption; it also claimed that the court’s analysis was, itself, a violation of the First Amendment. According to Catholic Charities, an analysis of its operations “requires Wisconsin courts (and government officials) to conduct an intrusive inquiry into the operations of religious organizations that seek the religious purposes exemption.” [LOL]
This, of course, ignores the fact that the First Amendment has never meant the government can’t analyze whether organizations with a religious hook qualify for things like tax exemptions. […]
The court wasn’t deciding whether the organizations’ “activities are consistent or inconsistent with Catholic doctrine” or “whether they are ‘Catholic’ enough to qualify for the exemption”; it was deciding whether, based on their operations, they qualify for a tax exemption. Just like it would do with any other business.
Quoting Jesus to Own the Libs
We don’t need to get into the weeds on the dissents, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the dissent penned by Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley (not to be confused with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, because yes, the Wisconsin supreme court has two Justice Bradleys). Justice Rebecca Bradley, who has apparently been taking some community college creative writing classes […], began her dramatic dissent about the importance of the separation of church and state by … quoting the Bible. (I wish I were kidding.)
Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
Well, if the BIBLE says so, I don’t know how the court could possibly disagree! (Also, wasn’t that particular quote actually about how people should, in fact, pay their taxes?)
What’s next?
My hottest take, here, is that we need to change the law.
I absolutely think that these organizations should have to pay into unemployment […] I’m also afraid this could result in organizations doing things like forcing people to pray to baby Jesus to receive their services, like Salvation Army does. From a policy — and human — standpoint, that’s a morally reprehensible practice that should not be encouraged.
That said, allowing businesses to decide for themselves what tax breaks they qualify for isn’t exactly a brilliant idea, either — as shown by this case! The only reason we’re talking about this is because Catholic Charities is fighting tooth and nail for its right to screw over the employees it lays off. You know, just like Jesus would have done.
Also, Catholic Charities has already said it plans to take this case to the US Supreme Court […]
This case gives SCOTUS the opportunity to both give a present to religious organizations AND throw a wrench in our unemployment insurance system — two things they would probably really enjoy. […]
There is a simply policy fix, here (at least until SCOTUS makes Christianity our official state religion): STOP EXEMPTING RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS FROM LAWS THAT APPLY TO EVERYONE ELSE.
If you’re a business that would otherwise have to pay into unemployment insurance, you shouldn’t be able to get out of it by forcing people to pray. That’s just absurd.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will hold up a $1 trillion “minibus” spending package that needs to pass by the end of the day Friday to avoid triggering a partial government shutdown.
“I will hold it up primarily because we’re bankrupt and it’s a terrible idea to keep spending money at this rate,” Paul told The Hill on Wednesday…
In other words, because he’s an asshole. He’s not going to stop the bill, he’s just going to slow it down.
There were primaries last night in America. It might not be the biggest news in the presidential race, since both nominees officially cinched their nominations last week. […]
But if we were the Trump campaign, we would be absolutely panicking right about now, because of how Donald Trump is still consistently losing 20 percent of the primary vote, to Nikki Haley and others.
[…] In Florida, where Trump won 94 percent in the primary in 2020, he only won 81.2 percent last night. Meanwhile, 13.9 percent went for Nikki Haley, who quit the race after Super Tuesday, and 3.7 percent made a point of voting for Ron DeSantis, their governor who dropped out of the race humiliated months ago and endorsed Trump.
You want to talk about humiliating? Trump’s results are humiliating. And before anybody wonders if Democrats are playing in the Florida Republican primary, the answer is no, Florida is a closed primary state.
The results for Trump are humiliating across the board. [snipped details of other results]
We are sensing a pattern here, folks.
Despite how generally bonkers polling has been lately, one constant has been that voters are saying over and over again that if Trump is convicted of crimes — any crimes — they’ll be far less likely to support him. Well, he looks like a stone cold loser already, unable to make his $454 million bond in the case where he was found liable for rampant fraud in New York. […]
And his New York criminal trial is just about to begin. […]
By the way, in the places that had Democratic primaries last night, there was of course some non-Biden vote. It averaged out to more like 10 percent, as opposed to Trump’s 20.
But the thing is, between now and November, there’s really nowhere for Trump to go but down. He has no money. Everybody hates him. A number of Nikki Haley’s fundraisers are now backing Joe Biden. […]
Yeah, if we were Trump, we’d be having full-blown panic attacks every day now.
Oh well, sucks for him, this is what happens when God has abandoned you forever.
An Indian investigation has found that rogue officials, not authorised by the government, were involved in a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader in the United States, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
The report, citing unnamed senior officials, said at least one person directly involved in the alleged plot is employed by the Indian government but is no longer working for India’s foreign spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.
New Delhi has submitted the findings of the government-appointed investigation panel to U.S. authorities, the report said…
OLED technology is quickly gaining traction in the PC market and powers some of the best gaming monitors. However, the Achilles heel of OLEDs has always been its burn-in, which inevitably reduces the lifespan of OLED monitors and TVs. No one has been able to fully rectify this issue. However, a new OLED design philosophy created by researchers at the University of Cambridge and reported by Nature has the potential to kill off burn-in for good.
To address this, the University of Cambridge has developed a new OLED design that better controls the light from a blue-light-emitting diode and reduces its power consumption. The blue light-emitting diodes are covalently encapsulated by insulating alkylene straps…
During a ludicrous forced-birther symposium on Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene breathlessly said, “We will repeal the FACE Act if we can get our opportunity,” referring to the 1994 law that protects health providers and patients from the intimidation and violence associated with the “pro-life” movement’s activism. The hearing, titled a “Investigating the Black Market of Baby Organ Harvesting,” featured a lot of imagery meant to elicit trauma, and little meaningful evidence showing that reproductive health has anything to do with “harvesting” anything.
[Video at the link]
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was passed in response to the rising violence of anti-abortion activists. And Greene’s reference to the law is just the latest maneuver by right-wing extremists to take away even more access to reproductive health care following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.
While Greene made her promise, she was joined by Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who has authored legislation to repeal the FACE Act. Roy’s bill has 39 cosponsors, and the Senate’s companion bill, authored by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has five, including the always-extreme Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi, the cowardly J.D. Vance of Ohio, and the misogynistic and ignorant Josh Hawley.
The mythology that anti-reproductive-rights activists and politicians like Greene are trying to create is that the FACE Act represents a double-standard for anti-abortion activists, whom Greene and Roy frequently paint as “peaceful” protesters persecuted by a law that has become “weaponized.” Of course, when you look into the people prosecuted under the FACE Act, these right-wing postulations fall flat.
The Department of Justice’s list of violent “pro-life” activists is very long. It includes people who have allegedly thrown molotov cocktails at and into clinics. It includes people who have allegedly thrown concrete blocks through clinic windows. It includes people using ropes, chains, and their own bodies to block women from accessing clinics and the reproductive health care the clinics provide. It also includes mass shootings.
The Republican Party does not have solutions for the many ills our country faces. They do have real plans to roll back many of the rights we have enjoyed for decades if they are able to take back the Congress and the White House this fall.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing increased pressure on Ukraine aid, and he is running out of excuses for not bringing to the floor the supplemental aid bill the Senate passed in February. He’s caught between the MAGA House Republicans and the White House, the Senate, and House Democrats, all of whom are pushing for him to stop dithering and help save Ukraine. Out of that mix, an unlikely potential savior for Johnson has emerged: GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Graham recently met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, where the senator floated what he calls, “President Trump’s idea of turning aid from the United States into a no-interest, waivable loan.” That statement’s a blatant attempt to flatter Trump into thinking it’s his proposal and easing objections from the House MAGA wing, which could definitely work.
As of Tuesday, the idea is starting to take hold in the Republican Senate. The premise is to make about $12 billion of Biden’s requested $60 billion aid package a direct low- or no-interest loan. And the other $48 billion in the package would essentially stay in the U.S., going to the armaments industry that’s manufacturing the weapons that would eventually be shipped to Ukraine. It would be creating jobs and capacity for the U.S. defense, the argument goes.
So far, Democrats in the Senate aren’t biting. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois dismissed it, saying, “I also would like some waivable loans,” and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Politico that it’s “one of those back-of-the-napkin ideas that sounds really good until you actually try to operationalize it.” Murphy went on to say it’s a “fool’s errand” to try to placate Trump, and “a pretty dumb idea.” However, he added, “But I’d be interested to hear more.”
The White House isn’t dismissing the idea. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that the solution is for the House to pass the bill it has now, which has already passed in the Senate, but she also did not say that President Joe Biden would be opposed to a loan for Ukraine.
Johnson has said he’ll turn to Ukraine aid once the government funding package has been passed, but so far, he hasn’t stopped wavering on how he’ll address it. “There’s a number of avenues that we’ve been looking at to address that,” he told reporters Wednesday. “And I’m not going to say today what that is.”
Johnson has talked about splitting the supplemental package up with separate votes for Ukraine and Israel aid, but he hasn’t done it yet. The problem with that—as with Graham’s loan idea—is that it will take even more time to finish since all the details still need to be hammered out.
As of now, Congress is scheduled to start a long Easter recess once the funding bill is passed, which suggests that the soonest the House would work on it is April 9, when the chamber returns from break. Any new proposal—either split aid bills or the loan idea—would then have to be passed by the Senate, where MAGA senators would have more opportunity to drag out the process.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push Johnson. “The clock is ticking, and we have to get the bipartisan national security bill over the finish line … It’s reckless to do otherwise,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently told reporters. “We cannot go home for Passover and Easter—we must have this assistance to Ukraine,” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
Democrats have secured 182 signatures on their discharge petition to force the Senate’s bill onto the floor, but so far, no Republican members have signed on. To succeed, the petition will need at least some Republican signatures.
Lev Parnas, a convicted former aide to Rudy Giuliani, named members of Congress on Wednesday he alleged were “doing the bidding” of Russia by attempting to dig up “dirt” on President Biden during his 2020 campaign.
At a GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing titled “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office,” Parnas named Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) during his testimony as collaborators in their efforts.
The accusation came in response to ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who asked Parnas how he and Giuliani were “able to take these false allegations, peddled by corrupt officials and Russian agents, and promote and amplify them here in the United States, in our political system.”
“Weren’t media groups skeptical of your claims?” Raskin asked.
“Most media groups — I’d probably say all, except for Fox and a few other right-wing media groups — didn’t want to take any of the information, and that aggravated Rudy Giuliani and John Solomon and other players,” Parnas said. “And the main group that it was being pushed through was Fox — Sean Hannity and some other media personalities over there.”
“But then there was also other people that were doing the bidding for the Russians — people in Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson, like Congressman Pete Sessions, who sits here right now,” Parnas said, gesturing toward the Texas congressman, who sits on the committee.
Sessions, Parnas continued, “was with me from the very beginning on this journey, into finding of the, giving dirt on Joe Biden.”
[snipped denials offered by various Republicans]
Parnas, whom Democrats selected as a witness, was indicted on fraud and campaign finance crimes and was sentenced to 20 months in prison in 2022. Since he was released last September, Parnas has been outspoken against Republican efforts to push the narrative that President Biden took action in Ukraine to benefit his son, Hunter Biden.
The indictment accused Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman, who was also indicted, of heavily lobbying an unnamed congressman for the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The indictment said they “committed to raise $20,000 or more for a then-sitting U.S. Congressman.”
The unnamed congressman, “Congressman-1,” was later reported by multiple outlets to be Sessions. A grand jury then subpoenaed Sessions for documents about his relationship with Giuliani and the associates who were indicted.
[snipped some of the denials from sessions]
“I have been friends with Rudy Giuliani for more than 30 years,” Sessions added at the time. “I do not know what his business or legal activities in Ukraine have been.”
Here are some excerpts from Lev Parnas’s words, via NBC News:
“The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas said in his opening statement. “They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.” […]
“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” he said. “The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.” […]
“The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents,” he said, adding that impeachment proceedings against Biden were “predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin.”
Parnas noted the recent indictment of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov for allegedly providing false intelligence about the president and his son during the 2020 presidential campaign. Prosecutors said the information Smirnov shared about the Bidens came from “officials associated with Russian intelligence” and that he was peddling “new lies that impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.” Smirnov has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Parnas also referred to an arrest for alleged treason of a Ukrainian lawmaker in November who aided Giuliani in his unsuccessful efforts to find information on the Bidens and has claimed he is innocent of the recent charges.
“I believe that what we are facing now is the culmination of a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States,” Parnas said.
[…] We like how he really laid out how Rudy would knowingly give him Russian disinfo to give to John Solomon who would barf it on Sean Hannity live on air. Pretty cool. […]
More at the link, including comments about, and video of Tony Bobulinski, “known liar, one with some very weird Russian ties.”
“Religious freedom” is having a moment in federal courts. One of the big successful goals of the conservative legal movement was that religious freedom would be advanced in a way that it supposedly had not been before. However, while the courts have certainly presented Christian legal interests with significant wins over the last several years, now that the takeover of the federal judiciary by conservative movement judges has advanced, left-leaning fears of religious favoritism in the judiciary appear to have been validated. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit demonstrated in an opinion issued earlier this month in Apache Stronghold v. United States, for religious practitioners outside of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, religious freedoms may actually be more restricted than they were under previous legal regimes…
birgerjohanssonsays
You will be shocked to learn Arvi Loeb was wrong
“Major Updates About Avi Loeb’s Spherules – Probably a Truck and Not Aliens”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=w5TQFXU8tic
The House Freedom Caucus voted to remove Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) from the group Tuesday night, three members of the conservative group told The Hill, a dismissal that comes days before he is set to retire from Congress.
One of the Freedom Caucus members, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal proceedings, said the group decided to oust Buck because he has not been a member in “good standing” and has not regularly attended meetings of the body “in months.”
The source also said Buck — who has frequently broken from his party on various issues — was removed because “he hasn’t been with conservatives on several major issues” and “is leaving the conference hanging with a historically narrow margin.” …
Yeeha! They sure know how to drum up support in an election year.
Do they? In what sense?
I know you’re trying to be sarcastic and thus are trying to state the opposite of what you ostensibly did, but you offer zero (none) reasoning for your opinion.
I know you shan’t, but: care to lay out the basis upon which you made that claim?
(I suppose it’s possible, in principle, that it’s not a vacuous and stupid claim. But, again, I know you shan’t even try)
whheydtsays
Re: John Morales @ #186…
Given the title on the link, Mr. Selkirk’s response and the overall political climate, you comment is uncalled for.
John Moralessays
whheydt, did I call for your comment? No. There was no need for it, was there?
Yet, there it is. Like mine was.
This is the endless thread, so… fine.
—
Now, whether or not “uncalled for”, my point remains.
One can spam some bullshit link to some crap, and then make a snide comment without any justification.
With no basis, really. And that’s Reginald, in a nutshell.
Tell ya what: care to lay out the basis upon which Reginald made that claim?
That is, that they [House’s largest conservative caucus] sure know how to drum up support in an election year. That’s the claim, no?
Because Reginald did not care to do so. Nor have you.
Now, I noted that once, but now, thanks to you, I note it again.
(Also, I am not wrong, am I?
Reginald used to try to dispute me, but no more. He’s learned to be silent.
So, no, he won’t even attempt to justify himself or dispute my criticism)
John Moralessays
I mean, it’s pretty obvious, no?
They [House’s largest conservative caucus] may or may not know how to drum up support in an election year, yet there they are, imposing their views, holding up legislation, preventing support to Ukraine, barely passing funding bills, controlling the Speaker, etc. In an election year.
Making the news.
So, either they [House’s largest conservative caucus] need no support [in an election year] to do what they actually (demonstrably) do, or they have garnered enough support to to do what they actually (demonstrably) do [in an election year]. Either way, the reality doesn’t gell with the claim, does it?
So.
Why is asking for some justification or basis for some claim “uncalled for”, but making that claim without anyone calling for it not likewise?
Bah.
John Moralessays
Perhaps it’s a transitive property; if something is “uncalled for”, then it follows any criticism of that something is perforce “uncalled for”. But then, that would mean that it’s “uncalled for” to claim that a response is “uncalled for” when it relates to a claim that is “uncalled for”.
Anyway.
I shall try not to belabour the point further, though not because it’s “uncalled for”.
Unless, of course, it’s called for.
What’s red, black, and hairy all over? A new species of bug discovered in Australia, dubbed by some as a “punk beetle” for its shaggy white locks.
A Queensland researcher spotted the fluffy specimen by chance while camping and initially mistook it for bird poo…
In fact, it’s so unlike any other species that it was declared an entirely new genus or family group of longhorn beetles by the ANIC, officially called Excastra albopilosa – Excastra meaning “from the camp” in Latin and albopilosa “white and hairy”…
Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer who has crusaded to try to prove Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Michigan, was arrested in federal court and released on bond after refusing to comply with court orders in a separate Michigan case alleging she tampered with voting machines after the 2020 election.
During her arraignment on Tuesday, a judge released her on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Lambert has refused to submit fingerprints in the Michigan case accusing her and two other state Republicans of illegally breaching Michigan voting machines…
Reginald @184, well that sounds like a petty response from the Freedom Caucus. They’re going to make sure they kick Ken Buck out of their whacko club before he can retire and leave the whacko club behind. That’ll teach him … or not. Chances are Ken Buck doesn’t care.
By any fair measure, the House Freedom Caucus has seen better days. The chamber’s GOP leadership, for example, has been working on appropriations bills to prevent government shutdowns by largely ignoring the right-wing faction’s demands. [Sounds kind of good. I wish the House Freedom Caucus could be ignored more.]
What’s more, the Republican Main Street Partnership recently made the unusual decision to go after a sitting Republican member of Congress: The center-right contingent agreed to support a primary challenge to Rep. Bob Good, the Freedom Caucus’ controversial chairman.
Complicating matters, the House Freedom Caucus appears to be shrinking.
Last summer, members of the group agreed to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from the faction. It was the first time the Freedom Caucus had ever chosen to kick out one of its members.
But it wasn’t the last time. Politico reported last week that Rep. Randy Weber was pushed out of the conservative group because he hadn’t attended enough caucus meetings. If the Texas Republican wanted to rejoin the Freedom Caucus, he’d “effectively have to reapply.” Weber told Politico soon after, “This just isn’t the Freedom Caucus I joined 10 years ago.”
This week, the group reportedly showed another member the door. The Hill reported: The House Freedom Caucus voted to remove Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) from the group Tuesday night […] [See Reginald’s comment 184].
It’s worth noting for context that the Colorado Republican’s last day on Capitol Hill is tomorrow — Buck recently announced his resignation — making it wholly unnecessary for the Freedom Caucus to vote to oust him. But evidently the far-right group wanted to deliver one final, symbolic rebuke before Buck walked away. [LOL]
As for the idea that the Coloradan “hasn’t been with conservatives on several major issues,” a closer look suggests Buck drew his party’s ire by acknowledging reality on GOP impeachment-related efforts.
What we’re left with is a House Freedom Caucus with a shrinking list of members and a Republican leadership that sees the group largely as an annoyance. If recent history is any guide, this is usually around the time the faction’s members do something dramatic to remind the political world of their relevance.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who’s earning a reputation as a Republican who “cries wolf,” published a social media message this week professing his deep admiration for Donald Trump. The Ohio congressman began his missive, “They spied on his campaign.”
It’s a false claim that Jordan has been pushing for years, as if it were true. It’s not.
A few days earlier, Trump sat down with Fox News’ Howard Kurtz and added new details to this ridiculous story. [video at the link]
“They were, Biden and Obama and the whole group, they were spying on my campaign,” the former president claimed, adding, “They heard I was going to run. They started spying on my campaign. That was before I came down the escalator.”
Kurtz reminded his guest, “The spying accusation, as you know, is very much a subject of dispute.”
Trump, incredulous, replied, “It is?”
Yes, actually, it is.
It’s bizarre that the presumptive GOP nominee and his acolytes continue to pretend that this is a real controversy. It’s even more bizarre that Trump, years later, is still tweaking the story with strange new fabrications, as his allies play along.
As regular readers might recall, over the course of his presidency’s first year, Trump seemed quite excited about something he called “Spygate.”
He had a hard time explaining exactly what he thought the story was all about, which in turn led to multiple iterations of the fantasy. [LOL. So true.] In 2017, for example, Trump invested a fair amount of energy pretending that Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. (There was no such wiretapping.) A year later, “Spygate” involved an imagined scheme in which the FBI put a spy in his 2016 political operation. (That didn’t happen, either.)
In time, Trump suggested that it wasn’t Obama who spied on him, but rather, it was Hillary Clinton, who left public office several years before Trump launched his political career.
Now, evidently, Americans are supposed to believe that officials in the Obama/Biden administration were so aggressive in launching an espionage operation that they spied on the Trump campaign before there was a Trump campaign, which is every bit as absurd as it sounds.
For much of the Republican Party, the basic idea behind this entire narrative is that some Trump campaign communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies while those agencies were conducting surveillance on Russian targets. But that really doesn’t do Team Trump any favors: It’s an argument rooted in the fact that the Trump campaign partnered with Russian allies during a Russian attack on U.S. elections, which in turn meant that some of the GOP operation’s messages were inadvertently caught up in routine intelligence gathering. [Yep.]
Given these facts, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the former president feels the need to make up new details about a story that he’s lied about for years?
Nah. It’s not the relevant facts that spur Trump’s continuous rewriting of his fantasy scripts. Maybe Trump does that as a self-soothing routine? Maybe Trump himself has no fucking clue, but he carries on as he always has.
An investigation has found that the physicist who claimed to have developed one of the first room-temperature superconductors engaged in “research misconduct,” as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Ranga Dias, a researcher and assistant professor at the University of Rochester, has been under investigation by a committee of outside experts since last August over concerns about the accuracy of his findings…
Astronomers have discovered a cavalcade of monster galaxy superclusters, incredibly massive collections of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the universe.
The most striking example of these 662 new superclusters is located around 3 billion light-years away from Earth and has been named the “Einasto Supercluster.” This particular supercluster is named in honor of Estonian astrophysicist Jaan Einasto, one of the discoverers of the large-scale structure of the universe.
The Einasto Supercluster is staggering in terms of its sheer size and mass. It contains the same mass as around 26 quadrillion suns (26 followed by 15 zeroes). This supercluster is so vast, in fact, that it would take a light signal 360 million years to travel from one side of it to the other…
My fear is that readers are going to see the words “budget plan” and “study committee,” assume this is boring, and quickly click away. But don’t abandon the post just yet, because this is going somewhere.
Roughly 50 years ago, when there were still plenty of moderate and even liberal Republicans, a group of conservative lawmakers created something called the Republican Study Committee. The goal was simple: These GOP members wanted to create a Capitol Hill home exclusively for lawmakers on the right.
In the years that followed, as centrist Republicans became an endangered species, the Republican Study Committee became one of Congress’ largest caucuses — to the point that more than three-quarters of the House Republican Conference, including the entirety of the GOP leadership team, have joined the far-right contingent.
With this in mind, when the Republican Study Committee releases a budget plan, as it did this week, it represents the views and priorities of most of the House GOP and all of the conference’s leaders. It’s against this backdrop that NBC News reported that the Republican Study Committee’s newest blueprint goes after Social Security and Medicare, which in turns helps set the stage for a political fight Democrats are eager to have. [See Reginald’s link in comment 185]
[…] this budget plan, if implemented, would impose a series of related disasters. The White House released an accurate summary of the GOP agenda, highlighting not only the damage the Republican budget would do to social insurance programs (so-called entitlements), but also the Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Internal Revenue Service.
But the Republican Study Committee’s agenda — which its members have named the “Fiscal Sanity to Save America” plan — doesn’t just focus on fiscal issues. NBC News’ report added:
Apart from fiscal policy, the budget endorses a series of bills “designed to advance the cause of life,” including the Life at Conception Act, which would aggressively restrict abortion and potentially threaten in vitro fertilization, or IVF, by establishing legal protections for human beings at “the moment of fertilization.”
“The gift of life is precious and should be protected,” the Republican Study Committee’s blueprint argues, adding that the RSC “celebrates the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision,” which overturned Roe v. Wade.
In fact, this budget plan features quite a few culture-war priorities, from building a border wall to restricting LGBTQ+ rights, from ending birthright citizenship to going after the right’s understanding of critical race theory. […]
despite recent election results, the Republican Study Committee appears especially eager to dramatically overhaul reproductive rights in the United States, putting the future of IVF treatments in jeopardy, banning medication abortions, banning abortions for those serving in the U.S. military, and even threatening to cut off federal funding for American universities “that partner with or host student health services that provide abortions.”
Democrats would love to make the 2024 election cycle a referendum on abortion rights. The Republican Study Committee is making that easier.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a darling of the right after shooting three protesters in 2020, hightailed it off a stage at the University of Memphis on Wednesday night as a crowd of demonstrators booed him.
Video from the event showed several protesters in black T-shirts in attendance. One of them stood up and questioned Rittenhouse about Charlie Kirk, the far-right conservative activist whose youth organization, Turning Point U.S.A., sponsored Rittenhouse’s appearance…
“I’m not gonna comment on that,” Rittenhouse answered, as the room once again erupted in boos. Rittenhouse waited on stage for a beat, but stormed off after he was approached by one of the event’s organizers. He did not look back or make any other comments as he left the stage.
The boos turned to cheers as he walked off…
Rittenhouse posted from the safety of a hotel room after his abrupt Memphis exit Wednesday night, claiming he wasn’t booed off stage but simply “had a hard cut-off time” and decided to end the event there.
Lev Parnas was a Ukrainian American businessman who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani in the recent past, and their work had a specific focus: The goal was to dig up dirt on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Parnas, who ultimately went to prison, later turned on Team Trump and brought damaging allegations to the public about the anti-Biden smear campaign.
[…] Parnas appeared at the latest House Oversight Committee hearing, where he delivered sworn testimony that Republicans probably didn’t want the public to hear.
“The American people have been lied to by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas said. […]
But of particular interest was Parnas’ comments about Team Trump’s congressional allies who helped spread anti-Biden misinformation.
The witness specifically told lawmakers, for example, that there were people “doing the bidding for the Russians — people in Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson.” Referring to his disinformation efforts with Giuliani, Parnas added, “Ron Johnson was our guy in the Senate.” [video at the link]
As The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, [Ron Johnson] wasn’t altogether pleased with the testimony.
A spokeswoman for Johnson dismissed the comments as “baseless.” … “Anyone who ties Senator Johnson’s legitimate and accurate oversight work to Russia is amplifying a despicable lie that Democrats spread in 2020 to discredit the senator’s work and protect Joe Biden.”
I can appreciate why the GOP senator is a bit sensitive about such accusations. It was, after all, just last month when the public learned that Alexander Smirnov — the witness at the heart of the Republican Party’s impeachment crusade against President Biden — was arrested for lying to the FBI about the Bidens and allegedly received information from foreign intelligence officials, including lies from Russia.
Ron Johnson wasted little time in declaring that Smirnov is “innocent until proven guilty,” and suggested that the Justice Department’s investigation might be “corrupt.” [LOL … sheesh]
A couple of weeks earlier, Johnson denounced U.S. aid to Ukraine, criticized U.S. sanctions against Russia, and expressed agreement with Vladimir Putin’s recent rhetoric. [Ha ha ha ha ha!]
Years earlier, Johnson conceded that he received an FBI briefing, warning the senator that he was a target of Russian disinformation. (He blew off the warnings.)
Before that, U.S. intelligence officials warned senators and their aides that Russia was engaged in a campaign “to essentially frame“ Ukraine for Russia’s 2016 election attack. Soon after, Johnson nevertheless appeared to endorse Russia’s line. [again … FFS]
A year earlier, Johnson was part of a Senate delegation that spent the 4th of July in Moscow. Upon his return, the Wisconsin Republican questioned the utility of U.S. sanctions against Russia.
And now a former Giuliani associate and former Trump ally has delivered sworn testimony that Johnson could be counted on to do “the bidding for the Russians.”
The news that Donald Trump is considering bringing back archvillain Paul Manafort for some role at the Republican convention is a five-alarm warning of potential nefariousness given Manafort’s past ties to Russian intel, his previous money-laundering conviction, his refusal to ever turn on Trump, and Trump’s subsequent end-of-term pardon of him. But you get that, and I don’t need to explain it in depth.
Here’s what you may not have picked up on.
Coupled with the separate news that Trump is also considering bringing back Corey Lewandowski, Manafort’s immediate predecessor as Trump 2016 campaign manager, the whole thing looks even more like a mob boss move: Trump is a sending a powerful signal that as long as you stay loyal and don’t cross him, even if it means serving jail time, you will be protected. Your loyalty counts, it’s noticed, and it’s rewarded.
[…] It’s striking how vague the news reports are about what exactly Trump is “considering” and what roles Manafort or Lewandowski would actually have.
[…] I remain particularly interested in the two co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case, vulnerable because they’re Trump employees, have no constituency of their own, and are having their legal bills paid by him.
You don’t think people in Trump’s orbit notice the transgressiveness of him embracing Manafort? Or extending an olive branch to Lewandowski? You don’t think his past pardons registered for them? Please.
Residents of North Carolina began noticing the mysterious billboards days before this month’s Super Tuesday primaries.
Across Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greensboro, and beyond, digital posters displaying the smiling faces of former President Donald Trump and his old friend, the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, greeted drivers as they traveled highways and busy intersections.
Soon after, the Trump-Epstein signs popped up in Georgia…
Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at Harmon Curran, said the billboards don’t fall under the Federal Election Commission’s rules on independent expenditures because they don’t expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.
“We’ve got a clearly identified candidate, but it doesn’t expressly advocate his defeat,” Kappel told The Daily Beast. “It just links him with one of the most loathsome individuals in American history.” …
Public records show that the limited liability company named in the ads, ProtectChildrenQ LLC, was incorporated in Delaware on Feb. 27 using a registered agent service, ensuring the absolute secrecy of the parties involved in the campaign. The state doesn’t require LLCs to file information about their members or managers….
A federal judge in Illinois has found that the Constitution protects the gun rights of noncitizens who enter the United States illegally.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Friday ruled that a federal prohibition on illegal immigrants owning firearms is unconstitutional as applied to defendant Heriberto Carbajal-Flores. The court found that while the federal ban is “facially constitutional,” there is no historical tradition of firearm regulation that permits the government to deprive a noncitizen who has never been convicted of a violent crime from exercising his Second Amendment rights.
“The noncitizen possession statute … violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” the judge wrote. “Thus, the Court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.” …
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #199…
In ref. Reginald @ #196. It’s very common to gives the masses of galaxies–including our own–in solar masses.
Asked GOP Sen. Thom Tillis about Trump defending the Jan. 6 prisoners, and he said: “Folks, I was the last Senate member out of the chamber on January 6th. I saw Capitol police officers bleeding, bruised, and I saw damage to a certain extent as we were exiting. To call those people patriots is not in my lexicon,” he told me
And now?
Tillis called it a “respectful disagreement,” and added: “I’ve made a statement that I think the president’s the presumptive nominee and we need to get behind him and support him.“
Commentary:
[…] “Mr. Trump, you literally attempted to end America when you summoned your mob, pointed them at the Capitol—knowing full well that they were armed and angry—and refused to call them off even after a deadly riot broke out, going so far as to suggest that Mike Pence deserved to be hanged. I respectfully disagree! Also, four more years!”
Sure, it has to be difficult to go against the party that’s succored you lo these many years, but this is our country we’re talking about. […] Maybe I’m naive, but attempting to burn the country you vowed to protect to the ground seems like it should be an automatic DQ. […]
This is nothing new, of course. Plenty of old-guard Republicans have expressed reservations about Trump, and some have even come forward to say they won’t endorse him—or have issued clear rebukes of the GOP’s now-undisputed standard-bearer. But few Republicans not named Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger have actually risen to meet the moment.
Mike Pence, whom Trump essentially tried to murder, recently made news when he refused to endorse Trump for president. But he somehow couldn’t bring himself to endorse President Joe Biden. Because who’s worse, really—the maniac who consistently fawns over murderous dictators and wants to turn our country into a lawless, authoritarian kleptocracy, or the guy who’d like to raise the wealthiest Americans’ tax rate by 2.6%? Psst, assholes. The country will survive slightly higher taxes on rich people. It won’t survive another four years of a rageaholic wannabe dictator who’s singularly focused on blind revenge against his critics.
The Biden campaign recently released a list of former senior Trump staffers who now believe Trump is “too dangerous” to endorse. In addition to Pence and former Trump primary rival Nikki Haley, it includes the following:
– His Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly
– His National security Advisor, John Bolton
– His National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster
– His Defense Secretary, Mark Esper
– His Defense Secretary, Gen. James Mattis
– His Attorney General, Bill Barr
– His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson
Kelly’s name in particular stands out—partly because, as Trump’s former chief of staff, he was in a position to observe him up close, and partly because he’s been searing with respect to Trump’s lack of character, penchant for self-aggrandizement, and piss-poor understanding of venerable American values. […]
House Republicans James Comer and Jim Jordan, who are leading an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, refused to second a motion made by Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, to impeach the president.
Moskowitz tried to put the motion on the table for a vote on Wednesday in an effort to call GOP lawmakers’ bluff in what he called a “fake” probe.
Moskowitz, who sits on the Oversight Committee, addressed Comer at a committee hearing relating to the Biden impeachment probe.
“Let’s just do the impeachment,” he said. “Why continue to waste millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money if we’re going to impeach because you believe you’ve shown he’s committed a high crime or misdemeanor. What are you waiting on?
“By the way, we’ve got Chairman Jordan here also. Why aren’t you guys calling for the vote in your committee? When is it gonna happen?”
Speaking to the American people, Moskowitz said: “They haven’t proven he committed a high crime and misdemeanor. Otherwise, we would call for impeachment.”
Moskowitz then welcomed Jordan to second a motion to impeach Biden.
“I just think we should do it today. Let’s just call for it,” Moskowitz said. “I’ll make the motion, Mr. Chairman. I wanna help you out. You can second it, right? Like, make the motion to impeach President Biden, go ahead.”
Moskowitz was met with silence from Jordan and Comer.
Moskowitz then said to the public: “They’re never gonna impeach Joe Biden. It’s never gonna happen because they don’t have the evidence. This is a show. It’s all fake.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Trump keeps reminding the undecided voters of the vile things he has done. The judge himself used the r word three times.
I cannot take Wonkette’s allegations of genocide in Ukraine seriously when she is a cheerleader for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Interpreted generously, she has a compromised worldview.
I also cannot take Susan Wild and co. seriously for claiming they wish to uphold the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Not when we’re defending our favorite genocider with U.N. Security Council vetos.
John Moralessays
beholder, you can’t take the facts seriously because your attempted logic is feeble and flawed.
See, that someone is guilty of X does not mean they’re not guilty of Y.
That is, that the USA is supporting Israel doesn’t mean their accusation of Russia is somehow false.
Also, it’s not “Wonkette’s allegations of genocide”, is it?
Blaming the messenger is also fucked-up pseudo-logic; it was not Wonkette that made that determination.
Some people put up silly and irrelevant clickbait, but you are effectively defending Russia from well-founded accusations.
Today, Ian Carroll, Lennert Wouters, and a team of other security researchers are revealing a hotel keycard hacking technique they call Unsaflok. The technique is a collection of security vulnerabilities that would allow a hacker to almost instantly open several models of Saflok-brand RFID-based keycard locks sold by the Swiss lock maker Dormakaba. The Saflok systems are installed on 3 million doors worldwide, inside 13,000 properties in 131 countries. By exploiting weaknesses in both Dormakaba’s encryption and the underlying RFID system Dormakaba uses, known as MIFARE Classic, Carroll and Wouters have demonstrated just how easily they can open a Saflok keycard lock…
A team of researchers from the University of Shanghai developed an ultrablack thin-film coating for magnesium alloys—the casting material that’s fabricated for telescopes and optical instruments—which they say absorbs nearly all light while still being durable enough to survive in the harsh environment of space.
As detailed in a recent study published in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, the researchers used a manufacturing technique known as “atomic layer deposition” whereby a target is placed in a vacuum chamber and exposed to specific types of gas.
To create the ultrablack coating, the team used alternating layers of aluminum-doped titanium carbide (TiAlC), which acts as an absorbing layer, and silicon nitride (SiO2), which is used to create an anti-reflection surface. When combined together, the pair prevent nearly all light from reflecting off of the coated surface. During tests, the ultrablack coating absorbed 99.3% of light across a wide range of wavelengths, according to the study…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #219…
Somebody got something wrong in the material you quoted. The alternate layer is either Silicon Nitride OR SiO2 (which is Silicon Oxide)….or, of course, something else entirely.
birgerjohanssonsays
Just in…
Marjorie Taylor Greene has officially filed a motion to vacate Mike Johnson as speaker of the House.
The House voted to approve the $1.2 trillion funding bill, setting off a sprint in the Senate to take up and pass the legislation ahead of a fast-approaching shutdown deadline at the end of the day.
The final vote was 286-134 with 112 Republicans and 22 Democrats voting against the measure. The bill now heads to the Senate.
The tight timeline has sparked fears on Capitol Hill of a potential partial shutdown. Top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they are pushing to prevent that, but the objection of any single senator could delay a swift vote, pushing the chamber right up against, or past, the deadline.
What’s at stake: Lawmakers are confronting a midnight funding deadline for a slate of critical government operations, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, State, and the legislative branch.
If the Senate does not pass the legislation before the deadline, a temporary lapse in funding would occur, triggering a partial shutdown. The impact of a partial shutdown would be limited if funding is approved over the weekend before the start of the work week.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to oust Mike Johnson from the speakership, according to sources familiar with the matter, amid anger about the government funding bill.
Remember: The House would have to consider it within two legislative days after she is recognized. The chamber heads to recess for two weeks this afternoon.
Asked for a reaction by CNN, Johnson didn’t respond, and dismissed it with a wave.
[…] Greene was swarmed by her Republican colleagues after she filed the motion. A source close to the conversations told CNN that a number of Republican lawmakers were trying to convince Greene not to bring this motion against House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Two of those lawmakers: GOP Reps. Barry Loudermilk and Kat Cammack.
CNN observed both Loudermilk and Cammack in an extended conversation with Greene.
Part of the argument to Greene from her Republican colleagues is that if she goes through with this it could lead to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries inadvertently becoming speaker, per a source who witnessed the conversations.
[…]
Donald Trump’s new joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays the former president’s legal bills before the RNC gets a cut, according to a fundraising invitation obtained by The Associated Press.
The unorthodox diversion of funds to the Save America PAC makes it more likely that Republican donors could see their money go to Trump’s lawyers, who have received at least $76 million over the last two years to defend him against four felony indictments and multiple civil cases. […]
Trump has invited high-dollar donors to Palm Beach, Florida, for an April 6 fundraiser that comes as his fundraising is well behind President Joe Biden and national Democrats. The invitation’s fine print says donations to the Trump 47 Committee will first be used to give the maximum amount allowed under federal law to Trump’s campaign. Anything left over from the donation next goes toward a maximum contribution to Save America, and then anything left from there goes to the RNC and then to state political parties.
[…] The new arrangement doesn’t direct RNC funds to lawyers, but it ensures that when checks are written to the new combined Republican campaign, Trump’s campaign and Save America get paid first.
[…] “Trump is in dire need of money to pay his legal fees and he’s draining his PAC and he’s spending huge amounts of money out of his campaign committee,” said Brett Kappel, a longtime campaign finance attorney who has represented both Republicans and Democrats.
[…] The April 6 fundraiser slated to benefit the Trump 47 Committee lists billionaire investor John Paulson as a host [snipped list of co-hosts]
Guests are asked to contribute $814,600 per person as a “chairman” contributor, which comes with seating at Trump’s table, or $250,000 per person as a “host committee’ contributor. Both options come with a photo opportunity and a personalized copy of Trump’s coffee table book featuring photographs from his administration, ”Our Journey Together.”
Three of Trump’s former rivals for the GOP nomination — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — are all slated to appear as “special guests.”
As I write this, Donald Trump has four days to post a $454 million bond if he wants to appeal the civil fraud judgment imposed on him by a New York state judge. Earlier this week, Trump, through his lawyers, dropped a bombshell—he was unable to find anyone willing to back such a massive bond. If Trump can’t come up with the money, New York attorney general Letitia James will have the right to seize his assets in order to satisfy the judgment. Indeed, on Thursday, James filed paperwork that would theoretically allow her to seize two of his crown jewel properties in Westchester County—Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor and the Seven Springs estate in Bedford.
Well, early Friday morning, Trump himself may have sabotaged his own lawyers’ efforts. Former prosecutor and current MSNBC legal analyst Renato Mariotti discovered that Trump took to Truth Social to claim he has $500 million on hand. [Tweet showing Trump’s post is available at the link]
Remember, this came four days after Trump’s own lawyers claimed it would be a “practical impossibility” to come up with $454 million in one go. And yet Trump claims he has that money, plus $46 million to spare? Which is it, Mr. Trump?
We already know that Trump essentially talked himself into coughing up $88 million (so far) to E. Jean Carroll. But Trump may have talked himself into an even bigger hole. If the judge tells Trump to put up or shut up, James will have a green light to essentially dismantle his real estate empire.
Judge Arthur Engoron, in New York, who presided in Trump’s civil fraud trial in recent months, made the announcement on Thursday. The former US president has so far been unable to raise a massive bond of $454m to cover the fine imposed by Engoron for the fraudulent conduct, ABC news reported.
As part of his judgment, he also announced that a monitor would oversee the Trump Organization and Jones will now have the power to crawl all over the family business empire’s books and also suggest changes to how it operates.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that his forces will fight against Hamas in Rafah whether the U.S. supports them or not.
Netanyahu emerged defiant from a Friday meeting with Blinken and his war cabinet in Israel, vowing to press on in the southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering from the war.
[…] “I told him that I hope we would do this with US support but if necessary – we will do it alone,” Netanyahu added.
During the meeting, Blinken reportedly said that Israel is losing its credibility worldwide amid the war in Gaza and that “you might not realize it until it’s too late,” according to Axios.
[…] President Biden called Netanyahu personally to warn against a Rafah operation and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his counterpart to stress the need for alternatives to a ground offensive.
[…] Netanyahu said this week he has approved a plan from his military for a ground offensive in Rafah and that he would soon approve another plan for evacuating civilians from the city, which is a major refugee camp and one of two major points of crossing for humanitarian aid into the territory.
The Israeli leader on Friday also said he was working to ensure civilians can be evacuated and that more humanitarian aid can get into Gaza.
The U.S. says it has not yet seen an evacuation plan for Rafah.
At this point, everyone paying attention to the story of Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York knows that former President Brainworms does not have $500 million in cash with which to pay the civil judgment levied against him.
We know this because, well, for starters he hasn’t paid it in the month since the judgment came down. We know he has spent the last month scrambling desperately to find some surety or other to put up a $500 million bond while he appeals the decision. We know it because of widespread reporting that the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, is practically hopping up and down on one foot with excitement about seizing Trump’s assets to pay the bill. (Indeed, she has already reportedly filed paperwork indicating she will start the process of seizing Seven Springs, his golf course and private estate north of NYC as soon as the deadline passes on Monday.) We know it because just this week his own lawyers filed fucking court papers saying, “Hey, you know that $500 million our client owes? Yeah, he doesn’t have it, think you could cut him some slack and not keep him on the hook for it, Your Honor, sir?”
Then we all woke up Friday morning to a huge surprise: Donald Trump has the $500 million, he would just prefer to spend it on his campaign, thank you very much and good day to you: [screen grab of Truth Social post is available at the link]
Well, hard work, talent, and $413 million from his criminal lunatic Klan dad.
Regardless! We’re not a lawyer, but we think we probably would not make this aggressive and angry statement in public, where the judge in our case can read it, when we just finished pleading poverty as far as paying the judgment is concerned?
And if we were lawyers and had a client pull this move, we might say to our client, “Hey you cotton-candy-haired dipshit, we just got through telling the judge you can’t pay the judgment, now you’re telling him you can while attacking him as a partisan hack out to get you […] Maybe you could not ruin our work by contradicting us five seconds later?”
[…] The Republican National Committee might also be curious about this newfound wealth spilling out of Donald Trump’s pockets. It was not even two weeks ago that Michael Whatley, the new chair of the RNC, was asked on Fox News if he could assure RNC donors that their donations would not go to cover Trump’s legal fees. Whatley responded that “the president’s legal team has made it perfectly clear that they are not going to ask for any of those legal funds to be coming out of the RNC. So, that’s a done deal.”
Not that anyone believed Whatley, not with Trump having installed daughter-in-law and Trump-branded family Roomba Lara Trump as the #2 honcho at the RNC. And on Thursday, everyone who didn’t fall off a turnip truck that morning learned what we all knew was coming, which is that the RNC will cover Trump’s legal fees after all. Oh, we bet Whatley is soooo embarrassed:
Former President Donald J. Trump’s new shared fund-raising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs a portion of donations to the political account he has used to pay his legal bills before any money goes to the party itself.
The order in which entities will receive funds from big donors through what is known as the Trump 47 Committee was disclosed in the fine print of an invitation to a big dinner next month in Palm Beach, Fla., where top donors are asked to contribute up to $814,600 per person to attend.
The Times goes on to note that in the case of someone contributing the max, the first $6,600 goes to the Trump campaign. The next $5,000 goes to Trump’s Save America PAC, the vehicle that has been paying Trump’s monstrous legal bills, for which it ponied up around $50 million in 2023 alone. After that, the RNC gets the next $413,000, followed by Republican state parties. Sure, $413,000 might sound like real money even, but that’s only if somebody contributed $814,600 in the first place.
The problem is that this payment system holds even if someone gives a lot less money. Say you want to donate $15,000 to the RNC while it operates under this deal. Trump and the PAC hoover up the first $11,600, leaving the RNC with a cool $3,400.
As the Times puts it:
In practice, what that means is that even modestly large contributors — anything above $6,600 — will fund the account that Mr. Trump has used to defray legal costs. And the fund-raising agreement came as Save America, which has averaged roughly $5 million a month in legal payments for Mr. Trump and witnesses in his cases, is on course to run low on funds as the spring ends.
This ridiculous arrangement means that there will be less money for down-ballot races that could decide control of Congress. Members of the RNC, or at least those who haven’t attached themselves to Trump like a school of golf-pants-clad remoras, might say to themselves, “Wait, he can pay his own bills? Why the hell are we then agreeing to insane fundraising deals where the money goes to Trump’s legal fees before it goes to literally anything else?”
Not that they are going to challenge Trump or the RNC over it, but the deal certainly is not going to help the Trump campaign’s problem with raising money from small donors, who at the moment seem to have fled the Republican nominee faster than an oligarch hopping a plane to a country without an extradition treaty.
[…]
The AI generated image of Trump being crucified that accompanies Gary Legum’s report for Wonkette is disturbing.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said he will not serve out the remainder of his term in the U.S. House and will instead resign in mid-April, cutting House Republicans’ already narrow margin over Democrats even further…
NBC News on Friday announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair who has repeatedly attacked the network and its journalists, assailed the news media as “fake news” and promoted false claims around the 2020 vote, as an on-air commentator ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics at NBC News, said in a memo to staff.
McDaniel exited the RNC earlier this month after leading the organization since 2016…
The Republican National Committee is appealing to Hispanic voters on former president Donald Trump’s behalf with an ad from the 2020 campaign, drawing Democratic criticism.
“LATINOS FOR TRUMP!” an RNC account said Wednesday night on X, sharing the colorful half-minute spot that dates back to Trump’s unsuccessful reelection bid.
The clip, which appears to have been previously shared Wednesday by Trump adviser Dan Scavino, cuts off the last few seconds of the ad, which include the Trump 2020 campaign logo. [Hey, at least they edited out the 2020 campaign logo. LOL]
[…] Biden’s campaign ridiculed the recycled GOP ad in a statement.
“Whether Donald Trump thinks we are not worth the money or he simply doesn’t have it, this ad is a slap in the face to our community,” said Maca Casado, the Biden campaign’s Hispanic media director. “It’s another reminder that he does not care and does not respect us.” […]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped nearly 200 points, or 0.5% in afternoon trading on Friday.
Investors were hoping that the index would surpass the 40,000 threshold level, a feat it has managed twice in premarket trading. But it has yet to pull it off during regular trading hours — and it may no longer be feasible this week.
Still, the blue-chip index is still tracking towards its best week since December. All three major indexes finished two consecutive sessions at record highs on Wednesday and Thursday…
Several gunmen opened fire at a concert hall in northwest Moscow on the evening of March 22, killing and injuring multiple people, Russian media claimed.
Russian state-controlled media RIA Novosti claimed that at least three men sporting camouflage and automatic weapons shot at people at the Crocus City Hall ahead of a concert.
Several Russian outlets also reported explosions, causing the building’s roof to start collapsing.
According to various estimates, several dozen or hundreds of people may remain in the concert building.
kyivindependent.com/…
From Reuters:
The U.S. embassy in Russia warned that “extremists” had imminent plans for an attack in Moscow, hours after Russian security services said they had foiled a planned shooting at a synagogue by a cell from the Afghan arm of Islamic State.
The embassy, which has repeatedly urged all U.S. citizens to leave Russia immediately, gave no further details about the nature of the threat, but said people should avoid concerts and crowds and be aware of their surroundings.
“The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,” the embassy said on its website. http://www.reuters.com/...
How long will it take until the attacks will be blamed on Ukraine and Putin will start to mobilize 500.000 people against the perceived thread? The first thing that came to my mind when I read that, was the 1999 Russian apartment bombings which ultimately lead to the Second Chechen War. After all, this has worked well for Putin before.
Posted by readers of the article:
Michael McFaul noted that this concert venue is owned by a well-regarded entrepreneur in the outskirts of Moscow. He noted it was the same venue that hosted the Miss Universe pageant that Drumpf was at back in 2013.
—————————
It would be hard to credibly blame this on Ukraine now that they have already admitted foiling an ISIS plot. What’s really going on is that ISIS senses blood in the water, weakness while Russia is distracted in Ukraine. This is probably just the tip of the spear. I suspect much more to come.
———————————–
They can always accuse Ukraine of supporting ISIS with anything, be it money, information or some other far-fetched nonsense.
“William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” the popular royal said.
Video at the link.
Kate, the Princess of Wales, announced Friday that she was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy, breaking her silence after weeks of widespread speculation over her health.
The 42-year-old wife of Prince William, Britain’s future king, was hospitalized for almost two weeks at the private London Clinic after having major abdominal surgery in January.
It was thought that her condition was noncancerous and that the surgery had been successful, Kate said Friday in a rare video message. “However,” she said, “tests after the operation found cancer had been present.”
Kate said that she was now undergoing “a course of preventative chemotherapy” on the advice of her medical team. She did not specify what type of cancer she has or at what stage it was found, and Kensington Palace, the couple’s royal household, has not said why the operation was necessary.
“I am now in the early stages of that treatment,” Kate said in the statement, released by the palace. She thanked the public for their support but also asked for “time, space and privacy” while completing her treatment. […]
Rep. Adam Schiff’s Republican challenger in California’s Senate race, Steve Garvey, owes at least $350,000 – and up to $750,000 – in back taxes, according to his February financial disclosures.
Garvey told Fox News Digital in a statement on Friday: “We have been taking this very seriously and have always filed our taxes on time.”
“We have been working diligently with our accountant and the IRS to resolve this debt by the end of the year,” he said…
“And to her credit, this is not the only case that she has made fundamental errors in,” he (Cobb) added. “To her credit, she could merely be incompetent.”
A lowly hissing cockroach at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Chesterfield is causing a stir in the global scientific community.
Invertebrate Keeper Nicole Pruess found one of the cockroaches in House’s collection was a bit discolored. Upon further examination, Pruess saw the cockroach was split down the middle with one side having a bronze color and the other a darker brown.
The mutant cockroach has since been named Harvey, a reference to the D.C. comics villain Harvey Dent, also known as Two-Face…
The first theory is that Harvey is a chimera, a living being that has two sets of DNA. That’s already rare, but Harvey’s two horns mean the mutation would be two male sets of DNA, which is even rarer…
The second theory is that the cockroach had a single-cell mutation early in its development. Researchers hope to get to the bottom of the mystery with the help of the global research community…
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 17
Yes, I try not to post links when I am too tired to recall how to avoid borking them.
John Moralessays
You’re a good egg, Birger. I may snark somewhat, but I do respect you.
I respect your attitude, and your ability to cope, and your good nature.
(And your English ain’t half bad!)
StevoRsays
Happy Eucalypt Day today folks. Honouring all the remarkable, marvellous, diverse flora and individual trees , shrubs and mallees in the genusés Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Angophora and more :
BDW I am staying home after slipping on ice and have a lot of time scrolling through news items.
I just learned a certain ex-president went on social media and boasted he had 500 million in cash at the same time his lawyers are telling a judge he does not have 460 million in cash.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from InterestingEngineering:
A concept that began as a doodle at a conference years ago is now becoming a reality. RocketStar Inc. has showcased (PDF) its advanced nuclear-based propulsion technology called the FireStar Drive. It is said to be the world’s first electric device for spacecraft propulsion boosted by nuclear fusion. Recently, the company announced the successful initial demonstration of this electric propulsion technology…
Archaeologists working at the site where Intel plans to develop a series of multi-billion dollar chip fabs in Germany have discovered two prehistoric burial mounds. The State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) examined the 300-hectare industrial park area ahead of site development works and unearthed two approximately 6,000-year-old monumental wooden chambers containing multiple human and animal remains. Sometimes, archaeological discoveries have caused significant delays to associated building projects, so Intel management could have concerns. However, the LDA press release doesn’t mention any potential delays, saying that research and excavations started last year and are scheduled to be finished this April.
The LDA investigations suggest a corridor between the mounds was formed for ritual processions during the Globular Amphora Culture (3300 to 2800 BC). In one of the above images, where a human skeleton is in the foreground, it is thought that evidence of a ‘chariot grave’ has been uncovered. This type of Neolithic burial is characterized by a person being buried in front of a cart and the towing animals “creating the image of a cart with a driver or a plow pulled by cattle.” The archaeologists say the human remains are from a 35 to 40-year-old man and that the cattle were 2 to 3 years old at the time of their sacrifice…
Earlier this month, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer found himself explaining to voters how and why the county “can’t just register Mickey Mouse or your dog,” to vote in Arizona.
Richer was responding to a live question from a voter about the early voting process and how it works “if you don’t check identification” during his first ever “Ask Me Anything” session on X Spaces, formerly known as Twitter Spaces, and Facebook Live. Richer explained that Maricopa County has an extensive verification process for sending out early ballots and for confirming that all voters are indeed real people.
[…] It’s part of an ongoing effort for Richer, who is currently pursuing a defamation lawsuit against failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake, to get as much good information out about the upcoming election as possible. […]
“We’re not matching the volume I don’t think, in terms of good election information versus bad election information,” Richer told TPM. […]
But in his county, it’s especially crucial.
Maricopa County has been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories and violence against election workers since the 2020 election. In both 2020 and 2022, Donald Trump and his allies, including Lake, spread false claims about signature verification mismatches, voter tabulators, and voting machines in Maricopa County. And as recently as this month, Lake, along with former Secretary of State candidate and election denier Mark Finchem, filed a petition to the Supreme Court seeking to outlaw electronic voting in the state. The conspiracy theories and relentless belief by some MAGA supporters that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump has led to a barrage of violent death threats aimed at Arizona election officials.
These efforts to educate voters and get ahead of misinformation in 2024 are just one part of a larger plan by election officials in Arizona’s largest county to protect its voters and its officials ahead of November.
[…] “We oftentimes see an increase in threats or actual physical incursions, when the misinformation increases,” Maricopa County supervisor Bill Gates told TPM. “There’s a clear relationship between the two.”
On top of getting out ahead of misinformation, Maricopa’s election administrators have also had to renovate voting infrastructure in response to 2020. The county’s tabulation center, for example, is almost unrecognizable from that of 2020.
The center, with its heightened security measures, now resembles, in Gates’s words, “an encampment.” After experiencing a “Lollapalooza for the Alt-right” when Fox News called Maricopa County for President Biden in 2020, Gates stressed that the center now has permanent fencing, a badge requirement to even enter the parking lot as well as additional badges to enter the building, metal detectors upon entering the building, and netting on the temporary fencing in the parking lot so that voters cannot take pictures of election workers or their license plates.
[…] Security measures look different at polling places, however, as election administrators have to find a balance between security and not unintentionally creating an environment where voters feel intimidated. In Maricopa, there will be a sizable presence of undercover law enforcement, in order to avoid concerns about creating any sort of “militarized feeling,” Gates said.
[…] Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner described planning the security leading up to this year’s election as preparing for the Super Bowl or World Series.
“We get all the law enforcement agencies partnered together,” he said. “We have regular meetings to discuss any intelligence, any social media concerns out here in Arizona.”
[…] And in the meantime, Richer said the best path forward, especially in the face of misinformation, is to continue to put out good information. […]
[…] Trump is now fundraising off threats to “seize Trump Tower.” The New York Post is headlining the same basic idea. But as a friend reminded me yesterday evening, Trump doesn’t own Trump Tower.
[…] It would be deeply unfair if Letitia James seized Trump Tower. But Donald Trump doesn’t own it. Like, how unfair would that be to the people who actually own it who have nothing to do with Donald Trump?
At one level this is entirely obvious if you think about it. Trump Tower is owned by the people who own the apartment units. It’s not just apartment units of course. And … well, a lot of those are owned by foreigners trying to hide money in the U.S. But I digress. What he actually owns at Trump Tower is “the parking garage, the valet booth, room-service kitchens, lobby bathrooms, a restaurant space, and one unit.”
[…] Trump actually owns very few of his buildings. His basic model is that he goes to a city, lines up money to build the building (not infrequently from some utter shade-meister, especially when it’s overseas), essentially licenses his name to the operation, builds it and then gets what amounts to an ongoing residual in the form of some kind of servicing contract tied to the structure. You sell the units to a mix of people who are wowed by the Trump name and others from Russia and Saudi who want to park their money through a blind LLC. And basically everyone’s happy. But a lot of the flashy stuff can’t be seized because it’s not his.
Obviously that’s not fraud. That’s just his being in the licensing business rather than a real estate guy. […] what he does own is by design deeply intertwined with the real stuff that other people own and in a way that is probably at least some level of headache to untangle. […]
One way or another it’s not where the money is. […] James isn’t focused on Trump Tower. She’s filing papers to seize a Trump golf course and one of his private estates in Westchester. […]
The stuff Trump actually owns owns is the stuff James is going after — golf courses, big houses, stuff like that. He has [until Monday] before his 30 day grace period ends and she can start taking stuff. […]
Elon Musk’s X changed its privacy policy this week to ban users from publishing the real names of people behind anonymous accounts after some users appeared to unmask a pseudonymous cartoonist who drew antisemitic images.
The social media platform updated its privacy policy to say people “cannot share … the identity of an anonymous user, such as their name or media depicting them,” without that person’s permission. The company said it was doing so to maintain a safe and secure platform…
robrosays
This is a band that was playing at the Moscow Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow yesterday where the ISIS attack occurred. They are called Пикник (Picnic) and the song and video is titled Королевство кривых (Kingdom of Crooked) (2008). The theme is eerily appropriate. The “See More” section under the YouTube video actually has info about the performance. Some of the comments (in Russian) are about the attack.
robrosays
According to Wikipedia, the band didn’t actually make on stage before the attack. They have reported that they are all safe.
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@233,
Putin will of course try to link the terroist attack near Moscow to Ukraine, but I’ll bet he can’t produce any evidence beyond lies tortured out of the arrested “suspects” – who may well have nothing at all to with the atrocity. An obvious question: did Putin LIHOP? The same question asked of Netanyahu after October 7 provoked howls of “antisemitism!!!!” from much of the media and political world (my answer in Netanyahu’s case is “Probably not, but he’s certainly capable of it.”); I wonder if anyone else has yet raised the possibility concerning Putin (who, like Netanyahu, was warned), and what the response will be if any prominent commentators do so. He I also judge well capable of it (or even of undertaking the atrocity as a full-scale false-flag operation); he has (suspected) form as well, over the 1999 Russian apartment bombings (when he was Yeltsin’s PM) and the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002 (when he was President). However, ISKP, a Daesh franchise based in Afghanistan, appears to have had responsibility claimed for it by Daesh central, and US “intelligence” credits this, and was apparently a source of warnings to Putin.
KGsays
I see Lynna@231 has a link to a DailyKos thread that raises the false-flag possibility and links it to the 1999 bombings.
Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to link the gunmen who attacked and killed at least 130 people in a Moscow concert hall to Ukraine in remarks following the deadliest attack on the capital city in a decade.
Allegations of Ukraine’s involvement surfaced following the attack, and Putin perpetuated the claims in his speech, saying the attackers were moving towards the embattled country and a passage was prepped for them so they could cross state lines.
“All four direct perpetrators of the terrorist attack, all those who shot and killed people, were found and detained,” Putin said in his address Saturday. “They tried to hide and were moving towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a passage was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.”
Russian authorities have detained 11 people related to the incident, including four who were directly involved in the deadliest act of terrorism in Russia’s capital city for over a decade.
Ukraine and U.S. officials have denied any involvement in the Friday attack near Russia’s capital city, Moscow. The gunmen fired at people in the Crocus City complex right before Russian rock band Piknik was set to perform. At least 140 people were also injured.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denied the country’s involvement in the attack.
“Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the shooting/explosions in the Crocus City Hall (Moscow Region, Russia),” Podolyak said on Friday. “It makes no sense whatsoever.”
John Kirby, White House national security adviser, also denied the speculation of Ukraine’s involvement in one of the deadliest incidents Moscow had in the last two decades.
“The images are just horrible. Just hard to watch, and our thoughts obviously are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” Kirby said Friday. “No indication at this time that Ukraine or Ukrainians were involved in the shooting.”
Putin did not address the Islamic State specifically in his speech, despite the group’s claims it was responsible for the attack Friday. The Islamic State has been planning an attack in Russia, one U.S. official told The New York Times. U.S. officials also told their Russian counterparts about the possibility of an attack in the country, the outlet reported.
Ever since Elon Musk, the world’s most brilliant businessman, bought the company formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, the social media platform has been swirling the shitter. Its value has plummeted 72 percent, daily users have dropped by 20 million, and advertisers have been fleeing in droves since CEO Hairplugs opened the digital gates to a sweaty stampede of white supremacist trolls, Russian bots, anti-vaxxers, and crypto scammers. Turns out he’s a bit of a “Great Replacement theorist” himself, and Disney does not want to advertise its family cruises next to some groyper denying the Holocaust, TYVM.
But for Elon the money clearly was never the point. It’s always been about making a litterbox for himself and his fleabitten friends to shitpost their right-wing agenda.
Lest you doubt that, he’s spent the last two days putting his […] energy into defending neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss, who was unmasked last week as a former security guard and IT specialist with Puerto Rican heritage named Hans Kristian Graebener of Spring, Texas, by the Anonymous Comrades Collective blog.
Reported by Wired,
In its telling, the antifascist research group linked the Stonetoss cartoonist to another anonymous racist cartoonist known as Red Panels by comparing their voices from appearances on extremist podcasts. The researchers say they found an email address linked to Graebener that was used to register the Red Panels accounts on the far-right social media platform Gab. Then, the group says, it was able to match up comments made by Stonetoss with events in Graebener’s life. In one case, Graebener took a trip to Japan in 2019 with a Houston IT company he then worked for; at the same time, Stonetoss posted a picture on X of a “welcome to Japan” sign with the comment, “Finally made it to the ethnostate fellas.”
ACC even noted that Graebener, Stonetoss, and Red Panels shared an obsession with circumcision, and that Graebener discussed his penis problems (dry glans). Secure your anonymous accounts, people!
You’ve probably seen his comics, and if not, lucky you. They are more than a little hateful, putting a cartoony face on full-frontal Holocaust denial, “jokes” about trans people committing suicide, and depicting rabbis as bloodsucking vampires. The comics were even referenced in the writings of the Allen, Texas, mall shooter. Here’s a milder one: [Cartoon panels available at the link]
And a very Nazi one: [Cartoon panel at the link]
Can you figure out the secret code?
Elon himself is a fan [of course he is], posting this one with an altered fourth panel: [Cartoon panels available at the link]
Graebener went to extraordinary lengths to keep his name hidden, even having himself removed from a family obituary. Too bad he trusted his security to the dogshit site Gab! Then, instead of denying or embracing his identity, Graebener all but confirmed it was him by taking it up with the manager: [Screen grab of post]
Elon listened, and mass-suspended accounts mentioning his name, including tech journalists and Harvard Law instructor Alajandra Caraballo (who has since been reinstated). He even overnight changed Twitter/X’s terms of service to prohibit posting “the identity of an anonymous user, such as their name or media depicting them.”
That’ll come as a surprise to users such as Chaya Raichik/LibsOfTikTok, another member of the right-wing brain trust who was un-banned in the Musk Takeover. She regularly shares names, workplaces, and identities of people she accuses of pushing a “woke” agenda, including children’s librarians, teachers, and doctors, and has been linked to dozens of bomb threats. Think he’s going to actually enforce it against her?
All the attention has worked out well for Graebener, actually, and he’s on there bragging he’s more popular than ever. [Oh FFS. Chart at the link]
He’s also selling plushies of his character, which he calls a “Flurk,” and runs a Telegram channel from his main site, where neo-Nazis meet to say the N-word together, post anti-Semitic cartoons, and extol the pleasures of rape and murder. So don’t cry for him, Argentina! Hans Kristian Graebener will be just fine.
[…] On Friday, Trump on social media promoted a flier for the nightly vigil outside the Washington jail supporting Jan. 6 defendants housed there, led by the mother of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, said at Wednesday’s vigil that Trump called her that day about “setting these guys free when he gets in.” She added, in remarks that were live-streamed online: “He said to pass that on to the guys inside that they’re on his mind, and when he gets in they’ll get out.”
[…] Since January, Trump has made reference to Jan. 6 “hostages” more frequently at his rallies, mentioning the term so far at every rally this month, the Post analysis showed.
[…] Dating back to November, Trump has sought to portray Biden as a “threat to democracy,” seeking to turn the tables on Democrats’ arguments against him and concerns among some experts that a second term would be more extreme than his first. He used the phrase in most of his speeches in January, and in every speech in February and March, according to the Post analysis. He has also increasingly used the word “criminal” more at each rally — up to eight times a rally on average in March.
[…] At a recent rally in Greensboro, N.C., Trump discussed his legal problems in similar terms to how he has described people charged with or convicted of crimes related to Jan. 6. “I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident and as a public enemy of a rogue regime,” he said.
“The J6 hostages, I call them because they’re hostages,” he added at the same rally. “They’re put in jail for extended periods of time, for very long periods of time. They’re hostages. You heard them singing. You heard the spirit that they have, the spirit is unbelievable. That song became the number one song.” […]
There is some cruel irony in the fact that Russia, which has been the perpetrator of so many terror attacks in recent years from Syria to Ukraine, was itself struck by terrorists on Friday night. Heavily armed marauders attacked Crocus City Hall, a concert venue in Moscow, killing at least 133 people and injuring more than 100.
The Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility, and it soon emerged that U.S. intelligence had warned the Kremlin that Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the ISIS affiliate based in Afghanistan, was planning an attack in Moscow. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow had even told Americans in the capital to avoid concert halls.
Yet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — focused on imaginary threats from supposed Ukrainian Nazis rather than actual threats from Islamist terrorists — blithely dismissed the prescient U.S. messages. Providing insight into his twisted psyche, Putin earlier this week described the American notification as a “provocative” statement that resembled “outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
That Putin ignored the U.S. attempt to help — only to have his own security forces fail to prevent the Moscow attack — tells you all you need to know about the nature of his regime. Putin is not interested in serving the Russian people or protecting them from actual threats, and his regime is more adept at repressing peaceful dissidents than violent terrorists.
Putin’s goal is to attain imperial glory for himself as a latter-day czar, no matter the cost to the long-suffering Russian people. Now, rather than going after his actual enemies, he may well try to find some way to pin the Moscow attack on Ukraine and the United States and use it to justify further assaults on innocent Ukrainians.
The Kremlin’s failure to stop an ISIS-K attack comes only a few months after the U.S. intelligence community had provided a similar warning of an ISIS-K attack to Iran — only to have the mullahs also turn a deaf ear to the words of the “Great Satan.” The Islamic State was able to carry out two bombings in Iran on Jan. 3, killing more than 95 people in the town of Kerman who had gathered to commemorate the death in a U.S. airstrike of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, himself one of the chief organizers of terrorism in the Middle East.
The Iranian regime, like the Russian one, has undoubtedly overdosed on its own propaganda about America as its enemy […] It does not require a psychology degree to detect the projection: Neither Vladimir Putin nor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could imagine informing Washington of a terrorist plot in the United States to save the lives of ordinary Americans, so these tyrants cannot imagine Washington trying to save Russian or Iranian lives. […]
The U.S. intelligence community has a “duty to warn” the victims of impending terrorist attacks […] Just because Russia and Iran are complicit in terrorism of their own doesn’t mean that America should be complicit in terrorism against Russian or Iranian civilians.
[…] it was always improbable that Ukrainians would be involved because Ukraine, like America, is a rule-of-law democracy that does its best to minimize the civilian toll from its military actions. The Ukrainians have targeted Russian infrastructure (such as oil refineries) that is being used to support the invasion of Ukraine, but they are not engaging in terror bombing of Russian cities. By contrast, that is precisely what Russia is doing to Ukrainian cities — as Russia has previously terror-bombed civilians in Chechnya and Syria.
[…] ISIS-K’s English language magazine proclaimed, “America has been a furious enemy of Islam throughout the last century, and Russia has proven no different.”
[…] Based on recent history, however, it seems doubtful that there will be much cooperation between the United States and Russia or Iran, however helpful it would be to those countries. Both regimes are so focused on making America into an enemy to justify their own repressive rule that they cannot afford to be seen working with Washington. They would rather fight imaginary foes than actual terrorists.
The United States, for its part, would have to be careful about exposing intelligence “sources and methods” to such hostile governments. Because the “infidel” regimes are so divided, ISIS-K may find room to expand its international operations — including the chilling possibility that it could target the United States or its allies in the Middle East or Europe.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said in a report that about 4.97 million people out of a population of about 11.5 million were facing crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Almost half of Haiti’s people are struggling to feed themselves as gang violence spreads across the country, with several areas close to famine, international organizations said on Friday.
Inflation and poor harvests have also helped push Haiti to its worst levels of food insecurity on record, they said.
“Rising hunger is fueling the security crisis that is shattering the country. We need urgent action now — waiting to respond at scale is not an option,” Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Programme’s Haiti director, said.
[…] Eight areas were now assessed to be in an emergency phase — the worst level before famine, it said.
These include the Artibonite valley, Haiti’s farming heartland, which has been badly hit by gangs expanding from the capital Port-au-Prince, rural parts of the Grand-Anse peninsula and neighborhoods of the capital such as the poor Cite Soleil district.
[…] Regional leaders are trying to form a transitional council and Prime Minister Ariel Henry has promised to resign once it is set up. But he is currently stranded abroad, shut out of the country after making a visit to Kenya to discuss the deployment of an international security force. This has now been put on hold. […]
Authorities in the neighboring Dominican Republic, who have deported tens of thousands of Haitian migrants, have said they have not agreed to an air bridge announced by the U.N. to supply aid to Haiti, saying its air route is for evacuating foreigners.
Laurent Uwumuremyi, who heads aid group Mercy Corps’ Haiti arm, said gangs now control nearly 90% of the capital with basic errands impossible, key infrastructure closed, shortages in basic supplies and hospitals on the brink of collapse.
“Even in areas like Petion-Ville, an upscale neighborhood that until recently was considered safe, the population has been barricaded indoors,” he said. “If the situation deteriorates without any efforts to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis, Port-au-Prince will soon find itself completely overwhelmed.”
There was a truly excellent caption on a LoLCat today…
Evangelical Christians are just
Radical Islamists with pork and beer.
John Moralessays
kg @250, huh.
“A ‘MIHOP’ is, therefore, someone who believes that the Government Made It Happen On Purpose while a ‘LIHOP’ believes that the Government Let It Happen On Purpose.”
A Wharton professor who studies AI, innovation, and start-ups dramatically claims that “the modern economy rests on a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.” Ethan Mollick explains that this unremarkable road leads to a Sibelco North America Inc. facility where ultra-high-purity quartz is mined. This location is vitally important as it is claimed to be “the sole supplier of the quartz required to make the crucibles needed to refine silicon wafers.”
Geologically speaking, the uniquely pure minerals at Spruce Mine were created about 380 million years ago when Africa collided with North America. This momentous collision, however slow, caused intense friction and heat miles below the Earth’s surface. According to Sibelco, the Spruce Mine minerals were created by a rich mineral-forming liquid that cooled and crystallized over time. A standout feature of these minerals is that they were made in their purest forms due to a lack of water, which caused all the friction…
Classical nova eruptions […] are likely created in a close binary star system […] drawing accreted matter onto the surface of the white dwarf, which creates a dense but shallow atmosphere. This atmosphere, mostly consisting of hydrogen, is thermally heated by the hot white dwarf […] causing ignition of rapid runaway fusion. The sudden increase in energy expels the atmosphere into interstellar space creating the envelope seen as visible light during the nova event.
[…]
the fusion ignition may be repetitive because the companion star can again feed the dense atmosphere of the white dwarf.
StevoRsays
@ ^ CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain & #264 John Morales : Actually, not only do we get recurring novae we even have supernova imposters albeit these are extremely rare – see :
In astronomy news, the northern hemisphere has a comet currently visible in binoculars which may brighten to become visible with unaided eyes although only faint (5th mag) still :
Skywatchers have been treated to a special visitor this month, as the ‘horned’ comet 12P/Pons-Brooks streaks across the night sky. Currently, this celestial vagabond is visible to those with a pair of good binoculars or a telescope but by the end of March, it may brighten to 5th magnitude, making it visible to the naked eye. 12P/Pons-Brooks may even appear during the total solar eclipse on April 8. It will then disappear into the sunset glow through April and will reach perihelion — the point at which it is closest to the sun — on April 21. After that, it will begin fade and become visible to those in the Southern Hemisphere.
I stand corrected. My ignorance has been ameliorated.
Recurrent novae are a thing, classical novae are only one type, not all. Now I know.
John Moralessays
[That’s what happens when so many cries of ‘wolf’ happen… I stop checking and assume they’re not there]
KGsays
What additional evidence has emerged on the Krasnogorsk terrorist attack seems in line with the attack being by Daesh franchise ISKP (aka ISIS-K). Daesh (still Daesh-central not ISKP as far as I can tell) has released a photo supposedly of the four terrorists, but they are masked. Those arrested by the Russians are said to be Tajiks. And Tass has admitted Russia received a warning from the US (couldn’t really deny it, Putin publicly called the warning “provocation”). Interestingly, the warning, issued a couple of weeks ago, was for the next 48 hours, i.e. before the Russian pseudo-election. Perhaps that was the ISKP plan, but something caused a delay (courier delivering the ammunition to the wrong terror group or whatever). I’m increasingly inclined to think that PLIHTS (Putin Let It Happen Through Stupidity); even in Russia, people will ask why their Glorious Leader failed to act on the warning.
Putin fixates on imaginary foes while terrorists attack Moscow, by Max Boot – Washington Post headline quoted by Lynna, OM @152
I haven’t read the article (don’t want to sign up for a Washington Post account), but I had much the same thought: with Putin’s obsessive focus on Ukraine, are he and his system sufficiently flexible to deal with a sustained terror campaign by Daesh, if the latter have the capability for it? That their terrorist team could operate in the outskirts of Moscow indicates that nowhere in Russia is safe – and Putin’s constituency (primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg) expects him to supply basic security if you toe the line. The linked Guardian article points out that Daesh has grievances against Putin from Syria and Africa.
KGsays
152 -> 252
KGsays
The warnings from the US (and other western countries, the Graun says), and the American statement since that they have intelligence confirming Daesh responsibility, surely indicate that they have a source or sources in or close to the Daesh leadership. Which is interesting in itself. (I’m not suggesting the US was behind the attack, nor has Putin gone there as yet.)
Every time this happens – and it’s been happening for decades, I like to think back on all the things that this person was able to accept as a member of the GOP. Iran-Contra, trickle-down, GWB lying hte country into an illegal war, an increasingly conservative Suprme Court eroding women’s rights, etc. etc. etc.
The Kremlin’s cyberspies targeted German political parties in a phishing campaign that used emails disguised as dinner party invitations, according to Mandiant.
Russia’s Cozy Bear, also known as APT29 and Midnight Blizzard, engineered the messages to infect marks’ Windows PCs with a backdoor first observed in January and dubbed WINELOADER. These were intended to provide long-term access to the political parties’ networks and data, the Google-backed security biz asserted on Friday.
This is the first time that the cyberespionage group, which has been linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has targeted political parties, according to the report…
All aboard the space train – DARPA has commissioned defense contractor Northrop Grumman to figure out what would be necessary for a railroad network on the Moon.
Northrop Grumman announced that DARPA selected it yesterday, describing the defense agency’s vision for a Moon train as one that could transport humans, supplies, and resources for future commercial ventures on Earth’s natural satellite.
The lunar rail project is part of DARPA’s 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) project that aims to develop scalable, interoperable standards and systems for a permanent human presence on the Moon. Northrop is one of 14 companies DARPA has commissioned to work on various aspects of the project…
A Russian missile bound for Ukraine crossed through Polish airspace early Sunday, sending NATO F-16 fighter jets scrambling and sparking the Polish government to demand answers.
The Armed Forces Operational Command of Poland said a cruise missile crossed into its airspace at about 4:40 a.m. on Sunday near the village of Oserdów, on the Ukrainian border. The Polish military said it was over the country’s airspace for about 39 seconds before entering Ukraine…
U.S. fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier struck three underground storage facilities in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen late Friday, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a military operation not yet made public, said the ship is in the Red Sea.
Strikes and explosions were seen and heard in Sanaa on Friday night, according to witnesses and videos, some circulating on social media. Footage showed explosions and smoke rising over the Houthi-controlled capital…
Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post notes the rapid increase in the number of “chaplain bills” nationally.
[…] The bills have been introduced this legislative season in 14 states, inspired by Texas, which passed a law last year allowing school districts to hire chaplains or use them as volunteers for whatever role the local school board sees fit, including replacing trained counselors. Chaplain bills were approved by one legislative chamber in three states — Utah, Indiana and Louisiana — but died in Utah and Indiana. Bills are pending in nine states. One passed both houses of Florida’s legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature.
The bills are mushrooming in an era when the U.S. Supreme Court has expanded the rights of religious people and groups in the public square and weakened historic protections meant to keep the government from endorsing religion. In a 2022 case, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch referred to the “so-called separation of church and state.” Former president Donald Trump has edged close to a government-sanctioned religion by asserting in his campaign that immigrants who “don’t like our religion — which a lot of them don’t” would be barred from the country in a second term.
“We are reclaiming religious freedom in this country,” said Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which he founded in 2019 to craft model legislation, according to the group’s site. Its mission is “to bring federal, state and local lawmakers together in support of clear biblical principles … to address major policy concerns from a biblical world view,” the site says.
I think that chaplains do provide needed services within places like hospitals, the armed services, private businesses, and perhaps even schools for people who are inclined to see them for solace or assistance in making personal decisions.
I think that it is disgusting that these states are intertwining their public policy goals with an honorable profession. [not so honorable in my opinion]
It’s eroding public confidence in both the state and the church.
Ex-congressman George Santos says that he will run for his old seat in the House of Representatives again — but not as a Republican.
On Friday, the former representative for northern Nassau County, New York, posted on Twitter that he would “no longer be part of the Republican Party” after the GOP’s “embarrassing showing in the [H]ouse”.
Mr Santos was referring to the GOP majority passing legislation to avert a partial government shutdown without deep spending cuts that conservatives had called for.
He went on: “I am officially suspending my petitioning in #NY01 to access the ballot as a Republican and will be filling to run as an independent…I will take my Ultra MAGA/Trump supporting values to the ballot in November as an Independent.” …
After gunmen on the outskirts of Moscow opened fire at a popular concert hall Friday night, in the deadliest attack that Russia’s capital has seen in more than a decade, claims and counterclaims are now mounting about who is responsible for the violence, and a deepfake video is already adding to the swirl of disinformation.
In the hours after the attack at Crocus City Hall, which killed at least 133 people, the Islamic State claimed responsibility. US security officials blamed the Islamic State in Khorasan, a branch that works in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
But some Russian lawmakers quickly pointed a finger at Ukraine, and Russia’s NTV television channel soon aired a deepfake video that fueled those suspicions. The fake video appeared to show Ukraine’s top security official, Oleksiy Danilov, speaking about the attack. “Is it fun in Moscow today?” he seemed to say, though he never actually did. “I think it’s a lot of fun. I would like to believe that we will arrange such fun for them more often.” The video mashed together AI-generated audio from recent interviews with two Ukrainian officials, including Danilov, according to BBC Verify reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh. […]
In a recent dialogue on “State of the Union,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) engaged with host Jake Tapper in a conversation that illuminated the prevailing narratives surrounding Donald Trump’s legal entanglements and their political ramifications. Tapper, a journalist who generally resists the mainstream media’s inclination to echo right-wing narratives, posed questions to Ocasio-Cortez that seemed to stray from this commendable stance. He inquired whether the potential seizure of Trump’s assets could inadvertently bolster his political support by feeding into the narrative of persecution by the “Deep State” and Democrats. Furthermore, Tapper questioned whether the multitude of charges against Trump might appear as overkill to independent voters, suggesting a bias in the legal scrutiny directed at him.
Ocasio-Cortez’s responses underscored a principled stand on equality before the law and the ethical and legal considerations in Trump’s case. She highlighted the meticulous approach of New York Attorney General Letitia James in handling the fraud investigation that led to a significant penalty against Trump, emphasizing the importance of applying legal standards uniformly, regardless of the individual’s political stature or influence. The congresswoman articulated the broader implications of failing to address the alleged financial improprieties and potential political corruption associated with Trump, pointing out the risks of inaction.
This conversation goes beyond the specifics of legal strategy or political calculus, touching on fundamental questions about the rule of law, accountability, and the role of media in shaping public perception. The narrative that attacking Trump for his legal troubles could somehow benefit him politically—a notion that has been circulated within both mainstream and right-wing media—reflects a troubling normalization of criminal behavior in political figures. It suggests that loyalty to a political figure could outweigh ethical considerations or the law itself, a stance that undermines the principles of justice and democracy.
The questions raised by Tapper, whether intentionally or not, mirror a broader issue within media discourse: the perpetuation of narratives that frame legal accountability as political persecution, especially when directed at figures like Trump. […]
Like any other individual, legal scrutiny of Trump’s actions is not a matter of political overreach but a necessary process to uphold the law. […]
Say what now? Views coming from Canada about New Jersey:
Canada’s most famous psychologist is known for trafficking in pedestrian ideas but typically not in the literal sense.
Dr. Jordan Peterson, an Alberta man the New York Times once described as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world,” [FFS] has a long list of sworn enemies — pronouns, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the College of Psychologists of Ontario, Elmo (the Sesame Street puppet, not the Putin one), women who don’t want to fuck unfuckable men, etc. — but directing his fury at a newswire service reporting on a New Jersey city’s initiatives to reduce traffic fatalities was a twist not many people had on their Bingo cards for 2024.
Jordan took to the other Elmo’s generic social media site to scream about a report by the Associated Press regarding policies enacted in Hoboken, where nobody has been killed or seriously injured by vehicles in seven years.
Nicknamed Mile Square City, Frank Sinatra’s densely populated hometown has the highest per capita public transportation use of any city in the country and recently adopted a policy known as Vision Zero, which may sound like a description of the GOP’s current platform but instead is a bunch of ideas first cooked up in Sweden to help make it easier for cyclists and pedestrians to not get run over on the regular. […]
A key ingredient is something called “daylighting” where cars are no longer allowed to park near intersections to increase visibility for motorists and pedestrians alike. Presumably it’s even more helpful at night. Mayor Ravi Bhalla kicked the policy into gear a few years after an 89-year-old woman was killed by a van while crossing busy Washington Street. [Screen grab of post by Peterson]
You have become pathetic beyond comprehension @AP and the woke death will soon visit you.
[…] Not sure what “the woke death” entails but I’m guessing it involves being crushed by a Prius. […]
Mayor Bhalla responded with the double whammy of a sick burn and a Sikh burn, tweeting: “Being triggered by safe streets and Hoboken’s zero traffic deaths in 7 years is certainly a mood.”
Being cross about crosswalks is an odd take for even such an odd duck as he, and is presumably somehow connected to the lunatic Right’s obsession du jour with so-called 15-minute cities.
The term was coined nearly a decade ago by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo made it a central plank of her successful 2020 re-election campaign.
I assumed, since most reasonable city folk would agree the idea of basic needs being available within a quarter-hour walk, bike, or transit ride from home is a good one, [Peterson and his ilk] were against it simply to “own the libs” as usual. […]
Turns out the conspiracy has more to do with the usual suspects’ fever dreams that the Deep Brother Big State is gunning to track your movements to take away your freedumbs. Probably your guns too.
The urban planning initiative first became “controversial” in the UK when the clogged university town of Oxford brought in a trial where drivers would need a special permit to be on six specific busy roads during workday hours. Traffic cameras would simply scan license plates with subsequent fines sent to scofflaws. Thousands of Brits took to the streets in protest, worried it would lead to punishment for leaving their neighborhoods without permission. […]
Some of Bhalla’s other initiatives rolled out to make the city less deadly were to saddle up with Citi Bike, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to ride to neighboring NYC, and lowering the speed limit to 20 mph. […]
Assault-rifle- and bomb-wielding terrorists killed at least 133 people Friday night in an attack on a crowded concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow. These victims in Russia and their families deserve the world’s sympathy. They are suffering the same kind of pain that we in the United States felt after Sept. 11, 2001, that Israel felt after Oct. 7 and that so many others have known in recent decades as innocent lives have been snuffed out in fanatical violence.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility online. U.S. officials have identified as likely perpetrators the group’s affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province, which is active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. ISIS-K, as it is sometimes known, might be seeking to expand its reach by attacking Russia — having previously committed a massacre of 84 Iranians in January. If so, this new atrocity is a reminder that the transnational threat of violent Islamist extremism is far from over, despite the destruction of the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq and Syria by the United States and its allies.
There is nothing to celebrate in this incident. Still, it’s appropriate to praise both the professional competence and — yes — ethics of U.S. intelligence, which detected the plot in advance and then fulfilled its “duty to warn” even an adversary government by sharing information with Russia, officials told The Post. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow announced publicly on March 7 that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.”
What cannot be explained is the response to this by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Three days before the attack, he brushed off the U.S. warning, publicly denouncing it as “provocative” and claiming it resembles “outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” He made this comment at a meeting of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the all-powerful successor to the Soviet KGB, which has been instrumental in arresting dissidents and anyone who has even slightly criticized Russia’s ruinous war against Ukraine.
Did Mr. Putin’s FSB fall down on the job and fail to detect the gunmen moving through Moscow? To be sure, Russian security agencies claim to have thwarted two previous attempted Islamic State attacks in Russia this month. The slaughter at the Crocus City Hall, however, suggests that Mr. Putin’s much-vaunted spy apparatus, perhaps exhausted and distracted by the war in Ukraine, is not quite what it’s cracked up to be.
Mr. Putin has erected a totalitarian regime on the claim that his unquestioned preeminence means stability and security for Russia. He constantly warns of enemies bent on causing chaos and instability. He cemented his power just this week with a simulacrum of an election in which he supposedly received almost 90 percent of the vote. But after the bloodbath at the concert hall, Russians are entitled to wonder whether Mr. Putin’s authoritarian system is effective at protecting anyone but him. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Idiot Republicans are using the “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” slogan. Democratic election campaign jumps on the opportunity.
Followup to Reginald @228, regarding Ronna McDaniel.
[…] The debate surrounding McDaniel’s role at NBC News highlights the ongoing struggle within the media to balance the need for ideological diversity with the imperative to safeguard against misinformation. While including diverse viewpoints is essential for a healthy democratic discourse, the elevation of figures with a history of misleading the public threatens to undermine the media’s role as a source of truth and accountability. We must remember that McDaniel was ultimately complicit in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and, with that, our government with her unwavering support of and participation in Trump’s criminality.
Chuck Todd’s forthright critique of NBC’s decision is a call to action, urging the network to reevaluate its priorities and reaffirm its commitment to journalistic integrity. It reminds us that the news media’s credibility is a matter of reputation and democratic principles. In a time when the truth is often contested, the responsibility of news organizations to maintain the public’s trust is more critical than ever.
The controversy surrounding McDaniel’s hiring is a microcosm of the news media’s broader challenges today. As networks navigate the pressures of political polarization and the relentless pursuit of ratings, the need for vigilant self-reflection and a steadfast commitment to journalistic ethics has never been greater. In acknowledging the missteps and engaging in a candid discussion about its implications, NBC News has an opportunity to lead by example, demonstrating that integrity and credibility are the cornerstones of a free and vibrant press.
The audience of people who are sincerely interested in what Ronna has to say must be exceedingly small. […] she just got booted from her job by Trump himself.
———————-
I’m not a fan of Chuck Todd, but good on him for speaking out. This trend of NBC of hiring disgraced GOPers is very troubling, but hiring McDaniels was just over the top!
—————————-
Chuck Todd seems to have morphed into an actual journalist a little too late.
—————————-
This woman is on record multiple times calling the 2020 election results rigged. WTAF, NBC?
—————————
True. And not only that. She’s on the record as having attempted to assemble false electors in states her preferred candidate lost in order to overthrow a free and fair election. That makes her an unindicted co-conspirator to a coup attempt.
——————————-
What Rona Romney McDaniels did in joining into the fake elector conspiracy with Trump’s cabal was inarguably criminal. One of the ongoing, most outrageous injustices which has transpired in connection with the entire January 6 insurrection debacle is that neither McDaniels, nor the Republican National Committee as an entity, has been charged with any of those multiple felonies —- and never will be. For NBC, the very media organization whose employees’ lives she seriously jeopardized with her ongoing lies and cynical deceitful attacks, to have hired her as part of its putative “news operation” is, charitably put, simply unspeakably farcical.
After announcing that former Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel would contribute “across all NBC News platforms,” network executives have backed down following backlash and threats of a boycott from viewers and employees, decreeing that McDaniel will not appear on MSNBC.
In a hastily drafted memo, Rashida Jones, the cable network’s president, told employees the cable network has no plans to have McDaniel on the channel, according to people familiar with the conversations, the Wall Street Journal reported. [what does that mean?]
A number of MSNBC anchors and producers have objected to McDaniel’s hiring because of her ties to former President Donald Trump, her reluctance to say the 2020 presidential election results were accurate, and her alleged role in the scheme to nominate fake Electoral College electors and the RNC’s efforts to challenge the results.
Steve Schmidt, former Republican consultant, tweeted: “The journalism disgrace at NBC/MSNBC is historic. Do not doubt that. The hiring of a fascist, Ronna McDaniel, who is an election denier and serial liar who conspired to overthrow democracy in America is as cynical and corrupt as it gets.”
Already McDaniel’s proposed role has been reduced. It wouldn’t be surprising for NBC to announce next week that it has reconsidered her hiring and withdraw the job.
[…] Many Democratic viewers used Twitter to tweet videos of McDaniel making Fox News appearance in which she lied about the election results and insulted Democrats. Some of MSNBC’s most influential viewers and guests and analysts who have appeared on its shows lambasted the hiring on social media.
As many threatened a boycott, it became clear that McDaniel would alienate its liberal audience. MSNBC is currently the No. 2 cable news network, trailing Fox News but ahead of CNN.
In announcing the McDaniel hire to staff, Brown wrote, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team…. As we gear up for the longest general election season in recent memory, she will support our leading coverage by providing an insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party—which she led through some of the most turbulent and challenging moments in political history.”
But viewers and liberal activists called B.S. on NBC and set Twitter ablaze. […]
I could go along with that, so long as he does not involve himself in his father’s campaign. Ivanka and Jared are fair game, having served in Trump’s administration, and Eric and Don Jr. make frequent public political statements.
birgerjohanssonsays
I am posting this just to cheer you up. Foreigners with american flags, and not burning them!
“American Reacts to American Car Cruising Gone Wild In Sweden” .https://youtube.com/watch?v=oVG2uNbU0gY
This is a big sub-culture with 1950s and 1960s American cars. Every year there is a meeting in south Sweden with 10,000 cars or more.
The episode of God Awful Movies coming up in a couple of days will be
“The Gerson Miracle”.
It is about how coffee enemas cure cancer.
AAAAARRGHHH! (runs away screaming)
birgerjohanssonsays
From SaveAFox.
“Red Fox touches dirt for the first time!”
Remember, they have never run, or dug in the earth before.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ocAf-UOvFyI
Fraudsters. Liars. Perjurers. Felons. Grifters. Stooges. Imbeciles. Murderers. When it comes to describing scientists whose peer-reviewed studies suggest the COVID-19 virus made a natural jump from animals to humans, molecular biologist Richard Ebright and microbiologist Bryce Nickels have used some very harsh language. On X (formerly Twitter), where the two scientists from Rutgers University are a constant presence, they have even compared fellow researchers to Nazi war criminals and the genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.
But now, their targets have had enough. A dozen scientists filed a formal complaint with Rutgers yesterday alleging that the two faculty members have violated the university’s policies on free expression by posting “provably false” comments that are often defamatory, and that some of their actions could even threaten scientists’ safety.
“It’s just a very clear daily harassment campaign directed at people that they disagree with. And I don’t think that’s right,” says letter organizer Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research who has co-authored papers in Science that link the origin of the pandemic to wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan, China. He and his colleagues also worry Ebright and Nickels are “engaging with the more extreme right,” including one person who has joked about executing some researchers…
The Nigerian army on Sunday rescued students and staff who were abducted by gunmen from a school in the country’s north earlier this month, the military said, days before a deadline to pay a $927,000 Cdn ransom.
The kidnapping of 287 students on March 7 in Kuriga, a remote town in the northwestern state of Kaduna, was the first mass abduction in Africa’s most populous country since 2021 when more than 150 students were taken from a high school in Kaduna.
Military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Edward Buba said 137 hostages — 76 females and 61 males — were rescued in the early hours of Sunday in neighbouring state of Zamfara…
An archaeological dig in Norfolk could solve the mystery of King John’s treasure which was lost to the tide some 800 years ago and has never been found.
The treasure belonging to the monarch, including the crown jewels, disappeared into Wash Bay in Norfolk in 1216 after the wagons carrying it were submerged in the bay.
Now, a newly-announced excavation in the area could pave the way for the lost treasure to be found…
New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy on Sunday suspended her U.S. Senate campaign to replace Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez as he faces federal corruption charges,
Murphy said in a video posted to social media that winning the Democratic primary would require her to wage “a very divisive and negative campaign.”
“With Donald Trump on the ballot and so much at stake for our nation, I will not in good conscience waste resources tearing down a fellow Democrat,” Murphy said.
Her decision to drop out probably clears the way for U.S. Rep. Andy Kim in the Democratic primary on June 4. Kim is mounting a more formidable challenge than is typical against a well-connected political figure in a state where connections count for a lot…
Reginald Selkirk @ 300
Finally some good news out of Nigeria
birgerjohanssonsays
Smaug the Dragon sleeps on a huge pile of gold in the hall the dwarwes of Ereborn had carved out in the rock. Some enthusiast worked out the gold would today be worth 51,400,000,000 $ .
This would only make him the fifteenth richest american, if he lived in USA. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/VSh2KhWQpYH2YS9j/
KGsays
birgerjohansson@306,
Including or excluding the Arkenstone?
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@302, 1066 and All That has the following comment at the end of a distinctly hostile portrayal of King John:
John finally demonstrated his utter incompetence by losing the Crown and all his clothes in the wash and then dying of a surfeit of peaches and no cyder; thuus his awful reign came to an end.
There’s an accompanying cartoon of John, in his underwear (but oddly, wearing a crown) arguing with a woman standing over a tub or basket of clothes.
Simon Harris has been confirmed as the new leader of Irish political party Fine Gael, paving the way for the 37-year-old to become Ireland’s youngest taoiseach (prime minister).
Mr Harris, an Irish government minister, was the only candidate to seek the party leadership…
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 307
The value of the arkenstone would depend on how far ultra-rich collectors would go in a bidding war. Consider the muskrat vs the bonesaw prince – it would get ugly.
Hope people can access this outside of Oz? Can they? Let me know please. Ontghe local radio (& c25 TV) tonight :
A 270-million-year-old fossil resembling Kermit the Frog has been identified as a new species of prehistoric amphibian. Also, a severe geomagnetic storm, a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, is underway after a coronal mass ejection. Plus, are chocolate producers under more pressure these days to address human rights and environmental issues? Belinda Smith from ABC Science joined Philip Clark on Nightlife to discuss the latest news and issues covering all things science.
Most of the media focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election centered on how dictato Vladimir Putin’s government had regular contact with the Trump campaign. But there were other ways in which Russia provided Trump with an edge, including influential Russian “bots” on social media and hundreds of fake-news outlets, many of which masqueraded as local media sites.
Now it’s happening again. As The New York Times reported on March 7, new outlets like “D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle” are popping up on the internet in 2024. But they’re not the product of local news teams or even a national syndicate.
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.
These purported news sources are often picked up by Russia’s network of social media trolls, giving their posts the illusion of having some factual basis. And a casual reader can easily mistake these sites, or merely posts derived from these sites, as having some support by a real news organization.
Pro-Trump Michigan attorney arrested after hearing in DC over leaking Dominion documents:
An attorney facing criminal charges for illegally accessing Michigan voting machines after the 2020 election was arrested Monday after a hearing in a separate case in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Stefanie Lambert was arrested by U.S. Marshals after a hearing over possible sanctions against her for disseminating confidential emails from Dominion Voting Systems, the target of conspiracy theories over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss. Lambert obtained the Dominion emails by representing Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of election conspiracy theorists who is being sued by Dominion for defamation.
In a statement, the Marshals office said Lambert was arrested on “local charges.” A Michigan judge earlier this month issued a bench warrant for Lambert after she missed a hearing in her case, in which she’s charged with four felonies for accessing voting machines in a search for evidence of a conspiracy theory against Trump. Lambert had earlier, unsuccessfully, sued to overturn Trump’s loss in Michigan.
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a New Mexico judge’s ruling barring a Donald Trump supporter − a former rodeo rider who started Cowboys for Trump − from local public office because of an anti-insurrectionist provision of the Constitution.
The decision came two weeks after the court said Colorado could not use that same provision to remove Trump from the presidential ballot because he’s a federal candidate.
Couy Griffin, a founder of Cowboys for Trump, is the only person who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to be removed from office using the 14th Amendment.
The challenge to Griffin had been a test run for Trump opponents who successfully argued to the Colorado Supreme Court last year that Trump is disqualified from the presidency by that same Civil War-era provision.
But Trump appealed the Colorado court’s ruling and the Supreme Court sided with him. Both liberal and conservative justices voiced concern about allowing one state to decide the eligibility of a presidential candidate, but they disagreed about how exactly the amendment could be used to disqualify a federal candidate. […]
A New York appeals court on Monday agreed to hold off collection of former President Donald Trump’s $454 million civil fraud judgment — if he puts up $175 million within 10 days.
If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals. […]
[…] The order Monday morning was a significant win for Trump, who was otherwise facing a massive cash crunch and the prospect of New York Attorney General Letitia James seizing some of his assets as soon as this week.
However, while the panel eased the financial cloud over Trump, it did not erase it entirely. The panel gave Trump 10 days to come up with the reduced bond of $175 million. Trump’s attorneys had previously sought to post a $100 million bond, rather than the full amount, and have not said whether he can meet the $175 million threshold.
[…] A spokesperson for the attorney general said: “Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud. The court has already found that he engaged in years of fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization. The $464 million judgment — plus interest — against Donald Trump and the other defendants still stands.”
Donald Trump appeared on Seb Gorka’s podcast over the weekend and insisted — without anything even resembling evidence — that Democrats would try to steal the 2024 elections. [Trump] added that if he loses, he believes it’s possible that the United States will cease to exist.
—————-
In California’s 20th congressional district, we now know that Republicans Vince Fong and Mike Boudreaux will compete to fill the vacancy left by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s resignation.
——————
In Florida, Rep. Laurel Lee was the only member of her state’s congressional delegation to support Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign. Now, Trump wants the Republican congresswoman to be punished with a primary campaign.
[…] Today was the day Trump’s 30 day grace period ran out and the State of New York, in the person of NY AG Tish James could start collecting on the $464 million judgment. But now a New York appeals court judge has stepped in and given Trump a significant reprieve. He now has ten days to come up with a significantly reduced bond of $175 million. Remember that the judgment was actually $355 plus almost $100 million in interest. So the logic of the number seems to be cutting the main judgment roughly in half (that’s my speculation) and making that the amount of the bond. The judgment itself stands. This is just about the bond.
Needless to say this is a big big win for Trump, at least for now.
But he’s not necessarily out of the woods.
Reporting to date suggests that very few underwriters will write any bond for over $100 million. So even apart from what liquid assets Trump has to provide as collateral for the bond most underwriters won’t go over $100 million at all. Or at least it’s a big departure for them. It’s also not clear whether Trump has the liquid assets he could use as collateral for the reduced bond. Remember that he already put up a bond for approaching $100 million in the EJ Carroll case.
On paper he now has a couple billion dollars tied to his Truth Social Twitter clone. Literally nobody thinks that valuation makes any sense. I looked it up. Truth Social has total revenue roughly equal to TPM’s about something like $50 million in expenses. The whole thing is a joke. It’s essentially a memestock. But for the moment they’ve found a mix of dumb or corrupt money to float it. It’s very hard to imagine any underwriter would accept that as collateral. At least in theory it’s also locked up for at least six months. We’ve learned never to say never here. And I am writing on a story that is changing as I write. So see everything here at tentative. The point, however, is that that path is at least very complicated.
For now I think we can say big win for Trump, for reasons or rationales that are not yet clear. But we could easily be right back here in ten days. Because $175 million is still a ton of money. And it’s not totally clear Trump can come up with a bond for that amount either.
Interesting photo at the link. Dakota Adams looks like, yes, he is Stewart Rhodes’ son. That face. Younger, thinner, and sporting long hair and black fingernail polish.
[…] meet his 27-year-old estranged son, Dakota Adams, currently running for a ruby-red local seat in the Montana House — as a Democrat!
Here is an uplifting story of how someone who grew up in an incredibly challenging family environment while living under extremely isolating circumstances could still manage to turn their life around and become a useful member of society once given the right opportunities, courtesy of Business Insider today.
[…] He uses his mother’s maiden name and told the AP that he was still “figuring myself out” and has gone to therapy to work through the “long-term effects of living in a toxic or dysfunctional household.” […]
[…] “Regardless of what happens, I’m trying again,” Adams said. “I think this is going to be a lifelong thing.” […]
Last August, notoriously thin-skinned billionaire Elon Musk announced on the Social Media Site Still Known As Twitter To Anyone Who Isn’t A Fascist that he would pay the legal bills of anyone “unfairly treated by [their] employer due to posting or liking something on this platform,” with “no limit.”
This is not because he is any kind of big fan of workers’ rights — in fact, it is the quite the opposite — but rather because he wants to make it more socially acceptable to, say, use racial slurs or get misogynistic or spread harmful conspiracy theories.
[I think that analysis is correct based on Musk’s actions.]
Musk announced on Sunday morning that he will be paying the legal bills of one Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill, a Canadian doctor who said a bunch of very stupid things about COVID and the vaccine on Twitter during the pandemic.
Musk wrote:
X is proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech. Dr. [Kulvinder Kaur Gill] is a practicing physician in Canada, specializing in immunology and pediatrics.
Because she spoke out publicly on Twitter (now X) in opposition to the Canadian and Ontario governments’ COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates, she was harassed by the legacy media, censored by prior Twitter management, and subjected to investigations and disciplinary proceedings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that resulted in “cautions” being placed on her permanent public record.
The legal battles that ensued cost Dr. Gill her life savings, and she now owes $300,000 in a court judgment due Monday. When Elon Musk learned earlier this week about her crowdfunding campaign to pay the judgment […], he pledged to help. X will now fund the rest of Dr. Gill’s campaign so that she can pay her $300,000 judgment and her legal bills.
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms. We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.
But here’s the irony! The money she owes is not from a lawsuit with her employer, but from her own defamation lawsuit in which she sued 23 journalists, news outlets, and other doctors for — wait for iiiiiiiiiiit! — criticizing her on Twitter.
The judge in the case dismissed her lawsuit on anti-SLAPP grounds, ruling she used the legal system to limit public debate around an important issue, and ordered her to pay the court fees of the 23 people whose free speech she tried to curtail. Whose right to speak freely, and accurately, she wanted to quash.
One of the people she sued, Dr. Angus Maciver, criticized Gill for blocking him on Twitter after he had criticized her attacks on the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).
Via LawTimes News:
Gill tweeted that the OMA had a “toxic culture of misogyny, bullying, and intimidation” and called its leadership “vermin,” “corrupt,” and “a threat to patient care.” Maciver tweeted in response that COD was “continuing to fragment the profession in Ontario,” and Gill blocked him. Gill continued to criticize the OMA, and a year later, Maciver tweeted that she and other COD members were “corksoakers” and [snipped gendered slur]. He later publicly apologized for the tweets and was disciplined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
Yes, that definitely seems like the kind of thing to sue someone over! Clearly, this woman is a big fan of free speech.
Her suits against the Globe and Mail’s Andre Picard and Carly Weeks and freelance journalist Alheli Picazo were similarly weak.
The claim against Andre Picard, Weeks, and Picazo originated in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gill tweeted that “we don’t need a vaccine,” those who did not understand this were “not paying attention,” and society could “safely return to normal life now” because of T-cell immunity and hydroxychloroquine. [OMG. Dangerous misinformation.]
Picard tweeted that Gill’s statement, contradicting the prevailing medical consensus, was “quite shocking.” She responded that it was “quite shocking that a journalist with absolutely no medical training is attacking an MD for stating scientific facts.” Gill also said his comment was not surprising because he was a Pierre Trudeau Foundation Mentor and member of a committee whose purpose is to “drive the political [World Health Organization] narrative.” [Propaganda]
So, just to be clear, she said things that were factually incorrect and journalists pointed out that they were factually incorrect, so she sued them, because this supposedly “hurt her reputation.”
The judge, however, found that these criticisms met the criteria for fair comment, as they were on a matter of public interest, factual, recognizable as a comment and not motivated by malice. In an appeal, Gill tried to argue that they were motivated by malice against her, personally, and that a previous judge did not even consider that — but the appeals judge found that they were, in fact, motivated by a concern for public health. Obviously. [Yep.]
Just to be clear, here — Gill sued people for disagreeing with her on Twitter, because she was saying deeply ignorant things about the COVID vaccine and lockdowns, and Musk is paying her legal bills because he believes she should have been allowed to do that. This has nothing to do with “free speech” and everything to do with wanting to promote Gill’s ignorance.
Of course, Gill probably shouldn’t expect that money to come rolling in any time soon, as Musk also promised to pay back a bakery after he ordered $16,000 worth of pies and then canceled after they had already bought everything to make them … and so far they’ve only seen $2000.
[…] The White House, for example, has stood behind Adeel A. Mangi’s nomination to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, though the civil litigator has faced a rather brutal smear campaign from the far-right.
The ugliness of the campaign is indefensible, though in theory it wouldn’t necessarily derail Mangi’s chances. In practice, he’s now unlikely to be confirmed in part because Sen. Joe Manchin said last week that he’s prepared to vote with the nominee’s Republican critics.
But as it turns out, that’s not the only thing the West Virginian said. Politico reported:
Joe Manchin has a new rule when it comes to President Joe Biden’s judicial picks: If they don’t have Republican backing, he won’t vote for them. [WTF?] The retiring West Virginia Democrat has quietly voted against several judicial picks this week, making for some close — though still ultimately successful — votes on the Senate floor. Manchin said there’s a method to his opposition.
Just one Republican. That’s all I’m asking for. Give me something bipartisan. This is my own little filibuster. If they can’t get one Republican, I vote for none,” the conservative Democrat told Politico. “I’ve told [Democrats] that. I said, ‘I’m sick and tired of it, I can’t take it anymore.’”
So, a few things.
First, by Manchin’s own telling, he’s not evaluating judicial nominees solely based on their qualifications. Instead, he’s prepared to reject good nominees, who’ve earned the right to serve on the federal bench, if members of the Senate minority disapprove of them.
It’s a model that effectively says that the Senate minority deserves to have veto power when it comes to the judiciary, which is both deeply strange and wholly at odds with the American tradition.
Second, it’s also at odds with Manchin’s own approach to governance during Donald Trump’s presidency. When Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination came to the floor, every other Senate Democrat opposed the controversial conservative. Manchin didn’t say, “Just one Democrat. That’s all I’m asking for. Give me something bipartisan.” Instead, the West Virginian voted to confirm Kavanaugh anyway.
There were also lower-court Trump judicial nominees who faced Democratic opposition, only to have Manchin shrug with indifference and vote to confirm anyway.
The fact that the senator is making it easier for Republicans to reject qualified judicial nominees is annoying. The fact that Manchin applied a far easier standard to Trump’s judicial nominees makes it worse. (This doesn’t just apply to the judiciary: Manchin has adopted a far more difficult standard for Biden’s nominees in other areas, too.)
[…] Manchin is retiring. He doesn’t have to impress anyone. Given that the senator will turn 77 over the summer, it’s likely that his name will never appear on any ballot again.
All of which suggests he’s launched this “little filibuster,” not as a tactical or electoral move, but because Manchin believes this bizarre approach has merit.
For all of the huffing and puffing and loud attempts to push his Manhattan criminal trial back, Donald Trump only got a few weeks of what he wanted.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan on Monday set jury selection in Trump’s criminal trial to begin on April 15, pushing it back from its initial March 25 start date. Merchan issued his order from the bench, and added that a written ruling would be forthcoming.
Merchan rejected a series of extremely strenuous but rather familiar arguments from Trump and his lead attorney, Todd Blanche: prosecutors had been extremely unfair to him. They did so, Trump argued, by failing to secure evidence from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and by interfering and trying to block supposedly exonerating evidence from making it to Trump’s legal team. The judge expressed a high level of skepticism about all of those arguments. […]
“So you know that the defense has just as much, the same ability as the prosecution to obtain these documents?” Merchan intoned. “You could have very easily in June or July done exactly what you did in January.”
The fate of the abortion pill mifepristone is now before the Supreme Court, after a fifth-circuit appeals panel of three judges ruled against its distribution last summer. According to a new report, the wife of one of those judges—James Ho, a Trump appointee who previously served as the solicitor general of Texas—took at least six payments between 2018 and 2022 from the conservative legal group that brought the case to court.
The Guardian reports that the payments to Allyson Ho don’t technically violate the court’s code of conduct, but experts warned they do not help with public trust in the legal system. “When Americans see a case like this—so clearly concocted and motivated by special interests, and with evident connections between those interests and the judges on the case, it does tremendous damage to the reputation of the courts,” Alex Aronson, the executive director of the nonpartisan group Court Accountability, told the newspaper.
James Ho said he “consulted our court’s ethics advisor prior to sitting in that case, and was advised that there was no basis for recusal. In any event, my wife’s practice is to donate honoraria to charity.”
A US judge has struck down a lawsuit brought by X against a nonprofit group that researched toxic content on the social media platform, finding the Elon Musk-owned company’s case appeared to be an attempt at “punishing” the group for exercising free speech.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate had sought to dismiss the case from X, which alleged the nonprofit unlawfully accessed and scraped X data for its studies. The CCDH found a rise in hate speech and misinformation on the platform. X had also alleged the group “cherry-picked” from posts on the platform to conduct a “scare campaign” to drive away advertisers, costing it tens of millions of dollars.
In a stinging ruling, US judge Charles Breyer in California granted the motion. “Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” he wrote in the decision…
Gosh, Vladikins, yes, who ordered it is</> a puzzle. You don’t think it might have been the leadership of that very same radical Islamist terror group, who have proudly displayed convincing evidence they were responsible, and who Russian forces have been fighting in Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso, do you?
The weird thing is, it’s even possible Putin really does think it was the Ukrainians. And I think his implication that Ukraine will benefit might well be borne out, because whatever he says, Putin must divert resources to the Daesh threat or risk a repetition.
The citizen science program Active Asteroids is looking for volunteers from the public to sift through astronomical photographs of asteroids to look for signs of tails which may indicate the presence of water.
Active asteroids are rare small bodies in our solar system with an asteroid-like orbit and comet-like tail.
Spotting them is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack, with enough of them, they may be able to help scientists answer the question of how much of Earth’s water came from space.
So far, roughly 8,300 volunteers have taken part in this scientific effort by by scrutinizing approximately 430,000 images since it began in 2021.
According to the latest results, published in The Astronomical Journal, 15 new active asteroids have been discovered. Nine of the volunteers are listed as co-authors in the study for their contributions…
A Republican state lawmaker who has been dubbed a “MAGA firebrand” recently introduced legislation to fight a well-documented Enemy of the People: chemtrails?
For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon, “chemtrails” are a very old conspiracy theory that posits that the government (??) or some other dark force is secretly drugging us all via vapors released from airplanes. Why are THEY drugging us? That part is sorta unclear, although there are plenty of theories.
Anyway, Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano, who is a big Donald Trump fan and who has a long history of gesturing at various popular conspiracy theories—including Qanon—recently introduced an amendment to the state’s Cloud Seeding Licensure Law, which regulates the lesser-known practice of cloud seeding. What Mastriano’s legislation would do is effectively ban experimental forms of weather modification from occurring within the state. Mastriano’s legislation was revealed in a memo that he sent to other lawmakers in the hopes of ginning up support for his bill. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star originally reported on Mastriano’s memo…
Few as recently as the end of last week saw much chance that the UN security council would be able to put aside five months of division over Gaza and agree terms for an immediate ceasefire, yet on Monday that is precisely what happened, in no small part due to some British diplomatic persuasion and a significant American change of heart.
As a result the US did not use its veto to block a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
What practical difference it makes on the ground in Rafah and Khan Younis it is too early to say, but judging by the initial furious Israeli reaction, and cries of US betrayal, this is about more than some words in the text of a UN resolution: it marks another moment in the painful, almost anguished US diplomatic distancing from its chief ally in the Middle East.
birgerjohanssonsays
This evening I got a chance to see a beautiful full moon, as the solar eclipse in North America is exactly two weeks away.
I hope you also get to see some northern lights, I saw no activity yet but these things can come and go swiftly.
I have not kept up with information about the comet, you will likely need access to properly dark night skies to see it .
birgerjohanssonsays
“Cries of US betrayal…” the Israeli nationalists are used to get enabled by USA, thanks to the increasingly far-right
Israeli lobby. It is ironic that the last president to really put pressure on Israel was Ronald Reagan.
In the past few months, deep in the forbidding deserts of central Syria, Russian forces have quietly joined the Syrian military in intensifying attacks against Islamic State strongholds, including bombing what local news reports called the dens and caves where the extremist fighters hide.
Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.
My life divides, evenly enough, into three political eras. I was born in 1980, a year after Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street with the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi on her lips: “Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” The Conservative-run Britain of the eighties was not harmonious. Life beyond the North London square where my family lived often seemed to be in the grip of one confrontation or another. The news was always showing police on horseback. There were strikes, protests, the I.R.A., and George Michael on the radio. […]
I was nearly seventeen when the Tories finally lost power, to Tony Blair and “New Labour,” an updated, market-friendly version of the Party. Before he moved to Downing Street, Blair lived in Islington, the gentrifying borough I was from. Boris Johnson, an amusing right-wing columnist, who was getting his start on television, also lived nearby. Our local Member of Parliament was an out-of-touch leftist named Jeremy Corbyn.
New Labour believed in the responsibility of the state to look after its citizens, and in capitalism to make them prosper. Blair was convincing, even when he was wrong. He won three general elections in ten years and walked out of the House of Commons to a standing ovation, undefeated in his eyes. I was turning thirty when Labour eventually ran out of road, undone by the Iraq War, the global financial crisis, and the grim temper of Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor. […]
Since then, it’s been the Conservatives again. In 2010, the Party returned to government in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Since 2015, it has held power alone. Last May, the Tories surpassed the thirteen years and nine days that New Labour had held office. But the third political era of my lifetime has been nothing like the previous two. There has been no dominant figure or overt political project, no Thatcherism, no Blairism. Instead, there has been a quickening, lowering churn: five Prime Ministers, three general elections, two financial emergencies, a once-in-a-century constitutional crisis, and an atmosphere of tired, almost constant drama.
The period is bisected by the United Kingdom’s decision, in 2016, to leave the European Union, a Conservative fantasy, or nightmare, depending on whom you talk to. Brexit catalyzed some of the worst tendencies in British politics—its superficiality, nostalgia, and love of game play—and exhausted the country’s political class, leaving it ill prepared for the pandemic and the twin economic shocks of the war in Ukraine and the forty-nine-day experimental premiership of Liz Truss. […]
Last year, I started interviewing Conservatives to try to make sense of these years. “One always starts with disclaimers now—I didn’t start this car crash,” Julian Glover, a former speechwriter for David Cameron, the longest-serving Prime Minister of the period, told me. I spoke to M.P.s and former Cabinet ministers; political advisers who helped to make major decisions; and civil servants, local-government officials, and frontline workers hundreds of miles from London who had to deal with the consequences.
[…] The only way to think about it is as a psychodrama enacted, for the most part, by a small group of middle-aged men who went to élite private schools, studied at the University of Oxford, and have been climbing and chucking one another off the ladder of British public life […] ever since. The Conservative Party, whose history goes back some three hundred and fifty years, aids this theory by not having anything as vulgar as an ideology. […]
two basic truths about Britain’s experience since 2010. The first is that the country has suffered grievously. These have been years of loss and waste. The U.K. has yet to recover from the financial crisis that began in 2008. According to one estimate, the average worker is now fourteen thousand pounds worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis rates—it is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. […] “This is what failure looks like.”
[…] High levels of employment and immigration, coupled with the enduring dynamism of London, mask a national reality of low pay, precarious jobs, and chronic underinvestment. The trains are late. The traffic is bad. The housing market is a joke. “The core problem is easy to observe, but it’s tough to live with,” Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, told me. “It’s just not that productive an economy anymore.”
[…] “For men and women everywhere the time spent in poor health is increasing,” he wrote. “This is shocking.” According to Marmot, the U.K.’s health performance since 2010, which includes rising infant mortality, slowing growth in children, and the return of rickets, makes it an outlier among comparable European nations. “The damage to the nation’s health need not have happened,” Marmot concluded in 2020. He told me, “It was a political choice.”
[…] In many ways, the two momentous decisions of this period—what came to be known as austerity and Brexit—are now widely accepted as events that happened, rather than as choices that were made […]
If you live in an old country, it can be easy to succumb to a narrative of decline. The state withers. The charlatans take over. You give up on progress, to some extent, and simply pray that this particular chapter of British nonsense will come to an end. It will. Rishi Sunak, the fifth, and presumably final, Conservative Prime Minister of the era, faces an election later this year, which he will almost certainly lose. But Britain cannot move on from the Tories without properly facing up to the harm that they have caused.
[…] “It was devastatingly politically effective,” Osborne told me, of austerity. It’s just that the effects were so horrendous. Between 2010 and 2018, funding for police forces in England fell by up to a quarter. Officers stopped investigating burglaries. Only four per cent now end in prosecution. In 2021, the median time between a rape offense and the completion of a trial reached more than two and a half years. Last fall, hundreds of school buildings had to be closed for emergency repairs, because the country’s school-construction budget had been cut by forty-six per cent between 2009 and 2022. […]
What was less forgivable, in the end, was the cuts’ unthinking nature, their lack of reason. […]
[…] And so stupid things happened. Since 2010, forty-three per cent of the courts in England and Wales have closed. No one thinks that this was a good idea. For years, the Conservatives cut prison funding and staffing while encouraging longer jail times.
[…] British social-security payments are at their lowest levels, relative to wages, in half a century. […] Britain’s richest twenty per cent had largely been spared the effects of the past fourteen years—and that made it genuinely difficult for them to comprehend the damage […]
Almost eight years after the vote, what stays with me is how unimagined Brexit was. Overnight, and against the will of its leaders, the country abandoned its economic model—as the Anglo-Saxon gateway to the world’s largest trading bloc—and replaced it with nothing at all. […]
Boris Johnson’s premiership collapsed under the pressure of the pandemic and of his own proclivities.
[…] The pandemic bore out truths about the British state. There were bright spots: the vaccines and their rollout by the N.H.S.; the intervention of the Treasury, under Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, whose furlough plan protected millions of jobs. More generally, though, the virus revealed tired public services, a population in poor health, and a government that was less competent than it thought it was. “It’s very convenient for everyone to blame Boris,” Cummings said. “But the truth is, in January, February, of 2020, it was the civil service saying‚ We’re the best-prepared country in the world. We’re brilliant at pandemics. The reality is, everything was crumbling.”
[…] The Queen died on Liz Truss’s second full day in office. […] It made sense to pretend that Truss and her Growth Plan had been a rogue mission, inflicted on an unsuspecting nation. Truss was depicted as mad, or ideologically unreliable, or both. […] But the truth is that Truss was neither an outlier nor a secret radical, but a representative spirit of the Conservative Party and its years in power. […]
“I felt with Liz Truss slight affection but above all profound pity,” Stewart said. “Because she’s approaching these big conversations as though she’s sort of performing as an underprepared undergraduate at a seminar.”
[…] It has nothing new to say about Brexit and equivocates about its own tax and spending plans, if it wins power. The Party recently scaled back a plan to invest twenty-eight billion pounds a year in green projects. There is no rescue on the way for Britain’s welfare state. […]
Milk from dairy cows in Texas and Kansas has tested positive for bird flu, U.S. officials said Monday.
Officials with the Texas Animal Health Commission confirmed the flu virus is the Type A H5N1 strain, known for decades to cause outbreaks in birds and to occasionally infect people. The virus is affecting older dairy cows in those states and in New Mexico, causing decreased lactation and low appetite.
It comes a week after officials in Minnesota announced that goats on a farm where there had been an outbreak of bird flu among poultry were diagnosed with the virus. It’s believed to be the first time bird flu — also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza — was found in U.S. livestock.
The commercial milk supply is safe and risk to people is low, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dairies are required to only allow milk from healthy animals to enter the food supply, and milk from the sick animals is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization also kills viruses and other bacteria, and the process is required for milk sold through interstate commerce, the agency said…
Russia lauding torture was unthinkable – now it is proud to do so
Moscow’s proud promotion of the brutal treatment of men accused of Crocus City Hall attack marks watershed moment
Warning: contains descriptions of torture readers may find distressing
Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer
Tue 26 Mar 2024 06.08 AEDT
Last modified on Tue 26 Mar 2024 09.50 AEDT
There was no attempt to hide the evidence of torture. In fact, its perpetrators – serving officers in the Russian military and intelligence services – may have already received state awards for bravery.
By the time the men accused of murdering 137 people at a concert on Friday night appeared in court in Moscow on Sunday, their faces were swollen and disfigured, their eyes vacant.
One, named as Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, arrived with gauze over his ear. A video released online showed one of his captors, who appeared to be Russian military personnel, slicing off his ear and shoving it in his mouth, telling him to eat it. Others beat him with their rifle butts.
After his arrest, Shamsidin Fariduni appeared in a photo lying on the floor of a school gym, his pants pulled down around his knees and with wires connected his genital area. The photograph was published by a Telegram channel connected to the Wagner paramilitary group and suggested Fariduni had been shocked with 80 volts and water had been poured over his body to “intensify the effect”.
Dalerdzhon Barotovich Mirzoyev arrived with new bruises after his interrogation. He also had a plastic bag wrapped around his neck that observers think might have been used to asphyxiate him.
Muhammadsobir Fayzov was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair and appeared to lose consciousness during the hearing. Photographs circulating online appeared to show that one of his eyes was missing, Reuters reported.
[…]
The officer who cut off Rachabalizoda’s ear had military patches including a far-right Totenkopf (dead person’s head) previously worn by Nazi SS units.The knife he used has been auctioned off online as the “ear-cutter”, according to Evgeny Rasskazov, a member of the far-right paramilitary battalion Rusich, who facilitated the sale.“The auction is closed, the lot was sold by the [state] employee privately,” he wrote. “Congratulations to the lucky owner of the ear-cutter. 🔪”
…And here is Stephen Colbert’s take on things.
‘Justice Is Swerwed’
‘Trump Isn’t A Real Rich Guy | MTG Goes After Speaker Johnson | Boeing Ousts CEO’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RnrDAIoVpxI
In these water temperatures you cannot swim for long, even if you manage to get out of the car.
BTW here we see the consequences of years of cost-cutting of infrastructure maintenance. I wonder if the removal of the federal regulations Trump bragged about has played a role? It certainly did for the de-railing accident.
StevoRsays
From another excellent Lucy Hamilton essay :
After the Super Tuesday results signalled Trump would become the Republican presidential candidate in November, a first promise was that “We’re going to drill baby drill.” One of the most important reasons to watch American politics this year is that a Trump victory will push the world faster towards catastrophic climate heating.
Japan’s cabinet has approved the export of new fighter jets it is developing with the UK and Italy, in the latest move away from its pacifist policies.
It eased arms export rules to allow the jets to be sold to countries that Japan has signed defence pacts with, and where there is no ongoing conflict.
Japan has pledged to double military spending by 2027, citing threats posed by China and North Korea.
Each fighter jet sale will require cabinet approval, authorities said.
In December 2022, Japan came on board a UK-Italy collaboration, dubbed the Tempest, to develop this new fighter jet that will use artificial intelligence and advanced sensors to assist pilots.
Utah coach Lynne Roberts said her team experienced a series of “racial hate crimes” after the arriving at its first NCAA Tournament hotel and was forced to change hotels during the event for safety concerns.
Roberts revealed what happened after Utah lost to Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAAs on Monday night. Roberts didn’t go into detail but said there were several incidents that happened last Thursday night after the team arrived in the area for the tournament and were disturbing to the traveling party to the point there were concerns about safety.
Utah was staying about 30 miles away in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and was relocated to a different hotel on Friday…
…
Iowa, the No. 1 seed in the Albany 2 Region, beat No. 8 seed West Virginia 64-54. Clark had 32 points, 8 rebounds and 3 assists in her final home game, and broke yet another record in her historic season. She now has 1,113 points, passing former Washington Huskies star Kelsey Plum for most points in a Division I season.
She already had broken Plum’s NCAA women’s career scoring record, Lynette Woodard’s major-college women’s record and Pete Maravich’s D-I overall record…
Mr. Kennedy, the independent presidential candidate, is expected to announce Ms. Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer, as his vice-presidential pick on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif…
Followup to Reginald @361, Nicole Shanahan is so wealthy that she helped to finance Kennedy’s Super Bowl commercial, (that was a terrible commercial and was widely panned). Neither Shanahan nor Kennedy have ever held an elected office.
Inexperienced rich doofus joins anti-vaccine dunderhead to run a campaign that will boost Trump’s chances.
A new fire safety study by global survival technology solutions provider Survitec has revealed that existing fire-fighting methods used to extinguish machinery space spray and pool fires on conventionally fuelled vessels are inadequate when dealing with methanol-based fires.
This follows extensive comparative fire tests on dual-fuel marine engines using diesel oil (DO) and methanol, carried out amid growing interest in methanol as an alternative marine fuel.
“Our tests confirm that traditional water mist fire suppression mechanisms do not perform as expected on methanol pool fires and methanol spray fires. A completely different approach is required if these ships are to remain safe,” Michał Sadzyński, Survitec’s product manager, water mist systems, said in a statement announcing the findings of the new study…
[…] Democrats are “KILLING SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE by allowing the INVASION OF THE MIGRANTS.” For good measure, the former president said incumbent President Joe Biden is “killing” the social insurance programs “with the INVASION.” […]
Washington Post:
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Trump thinks carefully before wording his social media posts. He wanted to defend his position on Social Security and at the same time knock President Biden for the migrant surge at the border. But 2 + 2 does not equal 5. Undocumented immigrants improve the health of Social Security and Medicare by paying payroll taxes without receiving benefits.
Commentary:
[…] the Republican Study Committee released a budget plan last week, and as NBC News reported, the group — representing more than three-quarters of the House Republican Conference, including the entirety of the GOP leadership team — endorsed going after Social Security and Medicare […]
“When it comes to Social Security and Medicare, Republicans just can’t help themselves. Even after years of attempted cuts have backfired, they continue to attempt to sabotage the popular entitlement programs — and in doing so sabotage themselves.”
[…] If Trump were to implement a mass deportation program, and succeeded in removing millions of undocumented workers, that would weaken Social Security’s and Medicare’s finances.
All of which is to say, the question isn’t just whether Republicans will successfully undermine the programs, the question is also why their presidential nominee still doesn’t understand how the programs work.
Trump bumbling and stumbling even more than usual:
[…] [Trump] learned that his first criminal trial — stemming from the hush-money-to-a-porn-star scandal — is now set to begin on April 15, at which point jury selection will get underway. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin noted, this will be “the first criminal case against a former U.S. president.”
It was against this backdrop that the accused felon decided to hold an odd press conference in his former hometown. It didn’t go especially well.
Trump began by blaming President Joe Biden for his legal crises, which was both wrong and nonsensical. Trump went on to say, “You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season,” before adding, “We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”
What that meant was anyone’s guess.
[…] Biden’s re-election campaign. Spokesperson James Singer issued a written statement that read:
“Donald Trump is weak and desperate — both as a man and a candidate for president. He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have. […]”
The statement concluded, “America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.” […]
The anti-abortion side emerged from Tuesday’s oral arguments considerably worse for wear after even their ideological allies on the bench questioned their standing to bring the case and the sweeping scope of the restrictions they sought.
At times, it became a full Court pile-on, particularly in response to the anti-abortion group’s quest for nationwide restrictions on the drug due to a handful of doctors’ objection to maybe, perhaps, one day, having to complete an abortion for a woman suffering from mifepristone’s side effects.
While the legal underpinnings of the mifepristone challenge are widely considered to be shoddy, we’ve seen the work that judges’ political preferences can do in bridging the gap to the preferred result. In this case, both Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals were willing to make that leap. The Supreme Court, based on what we heard today, seems not to be. […]
On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s latest grift went public—in the stock-market sense of the word. Trump Media & Technology Group, which at this point consists of the cobbled-together fake-Twitter social media site Truth Social and not much else, completed its merger with the gloriously sketchy special-purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp, and will now be traded under the ominous ticker symbol “DJT.”
It’s difficult to explain just how weird this all is. Digital World’s stock price has skyrocketed this year, driven largely by Trump supporters, which has even The Wall Street Journal shaking its head, calling it “reminiscent of the 2021 meme stock craze.” And Business Insider ran down the numbers as of Monday, and the whole scheme sounds ridiculous.
For instance, Truth Social—the only meaningful product here—made just $3.4 million during the first three quarters of 2023—and lost a whopping $49 million during the same period. Those are catastrophic numbers, and there’s no reason to expect them to get better. The social media site has a microscopic reach by industry standards, with only about 5 million members as of February, according to CBS News. The site is most known as the place Trump and his acolytes go to share memes with his right, alt-right, and even-more-alt-right-than-that fans.
The newly merged company, however, “could be worth around $5.7 billion and a timely $3 billion boost for Trump,” reports Business Insider. That’s because Digital World shares closed above $45 on Monday, soaring as Trump fans publicly boosted the stock and bragged to each other about buying it.
The price soared again on Tuesday morning, bringing the company value to an even less plausible $6.8 billion or so. Trump owns nearly 60% of the post-merger company, which doesn’t just mean he suddenly becomes, on paper, over $4 billion richer. It also more than doubles his total net worth, catapulting him for the first time in his sorry life into becoming one of the world’s 500 richest people.
And again, this is because of a flippin’ meme stock. From The Wall Street Journal:
“I bought several times last Monday & Tuesday, little by little to show support of the stock,” said a Truth Social user going by the handle of fantasticblush.
“This is a Truth Movement and no matter what happens tomorrow this merger will happen tomorrow or in the future,” said Truth Social user ajdelval. “We will win this war no matter what.” […]
DWAC shares, which closed Thursday at $42.81, are “not trading on fundamentals, absolutely not,” said Kristi Marvin, chief executive of SPACInsider.com. “Institutions are not trading this.”
Institutions may not want to touch DJT with a 10-foot pole, so it’s been up to Trump’s fans to boost the stock in what appears suspiciously like a pump-and-dump scheme egged on in the usual meme-stock way—but one that may or may not include Donald Trump himself. In theory, Trump is barred from divesting himself of his stock for about six months; in practice, according to Liz Dye at Public Notice, all Donald needs to do to break that prohibition is the approval of the company’s board—and the “board” of this market abomination is so stuffed with Trump’s own personal allies as to make that a nonissue.
So far, Dye has provided the best summary of the Truth Social rise into public trading. She identifies this as less a “meme stock” and more a “cult.” In this case, it’s a cult of people who are absolutely hellbent on handing Donald Trump all their money. [snipped more comments from Dye]
[…] It’s difficult to know how to feel about all of this. On one hand, having the leader of a new worldwide fascist resurgence make off with $4 billion or more in stock is thoroughly enraging. On the other hand, there is so far no evidence of any institutional investing in this new absurdity of a company; we don’t yet have word that it’s Saudi royalty or Russian oligarchs trying to launder their cash through this scam, and so far, it appears that the company’s stock price is being propped up largely by pro-Donald cultists who are handing him their money without even considering the scenario in which Trump dumps his stock and leaves them holding an empty corporate shell.
And if anyone truly deserves to have Trump steal their money and ruin their lives, it’s his fans. You really can’t argue against it. The face-eating leopards have to eat somebody’s faces, after all, and if people are lining up to get their faces eaten, then it’s difficult to muster up the energy to try to talk them out of it. […]
Partial transcripts are also available at the link. Here is an excerpt:
[…] We have a long history in this country of forgettable men telling us that we need a new system of government where everything is under their control and politics is over, and this new strongman way of government is going to make America great again. We have had a lot of these guys. [Rachel actually provided examples and details earlier in that segment.]
But our generation’s version of this guy has gotten a lot farther than all the rest of them. And why is that? He would have been as forgotten as all the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party, and had the leader of that party in his time not decide that she would abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it. […]
We are contending with this now, not from William Dudley Pelley’s brown shirt militias, right, but from the multibillion dollar massive political operation of one of the two governing parties of the United States of America. And that’s new.
And with our country up against something that daunting and that scary and that dangerous for the country, I think bad decisions will inevitably happen. Mistakes will be made. But part of our resilience as a democracy is going to be recognizing, us recognizing when decisions are bad ones. And reversing those bad decisions. Hearing legitimate criticism, responding to it, and correcting course. Not digging in, not blaming others.
Take a minute. Acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call [not the right call to hire Ronna Romney McDaniel]. It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong. It is a sign of strength. And our country needs us to be strong right now.
Lynna, OM @ 363
Let the rich Trump allies burn their money as inefficiently as possibly.
At least when KLF literally burned 1 million dollars they were doing performance art, but the superbowl commercial was apparently Borat-style cringeworthy.
[…] While many of the initial news reports are highlighting the impact this disaster will have on road traffic, particularly commuters in the vicinity of Baltimore, this is actually a relatively minor concern compared to the real problem here — the complete shutdown of all shipping into and out of the port of Baltimore (the 4th busiest on the East Coast) until the wrecked bridge can be cleared away and the sunken ship removed from the shipping channel.
More details from The Guardian:
A portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after a large boat collided with it early Tuesday morning, and multiple vehicles fell into the water. Authorities were trying to rescue at least seven people.
Around 1:30 a.m., a large vessel crashed into the bridge, catching on fire before sinking and causing multiple vehicles to fall into the water below, according to a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.…
Emergency responders were searching for at least seven people believed to be in the water, Kevin Cartwright, director of communications for the Baltimore Fire Department, told the Associated Press around 3 a.m.
He said agencies received 911 calls around 1:30 a.m. reporting a vessel traveling outbound from Baltimore that had struck a column on the bridge, causing it to collapse. Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time, including one the size of a tractor-trailer.
“Our focus right now is trying to rescue and recover these people,” Cartwright said. He said it’s too early to know how many people were affected but called the collapse a “developing mass casualty event.”
Cartwright said it appears there are “some cargo or retainers hanging from the bridge,” creating unsafe and unstable conditions, and that emergency responders are operating cautiously as a result.
Six people are missing and a search-and-rescue operation is underway nearly 12 hours after a cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The cargo ship Dali, which was headed to Sri Lanka, hit a bridge support after losing power around 1:30 a.m., causing the steel structure to fall into the water. The ship had and issued a mayday call.
President Biden spoke on the catastrophe from the White House, saying it was his intention that the federal government would pay to rebuild the Key Bridge.
At a press conference Tuesday morning, Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said eight people were on the bridge at the time, and two have been accounted for.
[…] The bridge, on Interstate 695, carries tens of thousands of vehicles each day. Francis Scott Key Bridge, named for the writer of the national anthem, was opened in 1977. [about 30,000 vehicles per day]
President Biden told reporters at the White House he would visit Baltimore “as soon as I can.”
[…] Biden also said his intention was that the federal government would pay for entire cost of reconstructing the bridge. He said he expects Congress to support that effort. […]
Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said.
A member of the Qatari royal family invested roughly $50 million in Newsmax, according to documents and representatives for the media company and the royal, in a moment of acute Middle East tensions during the Trump administration. The investment bolstered a key conservative media outlet at a time when Qatar was facing intense diplomatic pressure from its neighbors and seeking allies in the United States.
At the time the investment was made, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had established a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorist groups across the Middle East. […]
In 2019 and 2020, Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, Heritage Advisors, invested in Newsmax. The investment has not been previously reported. […]
Newsmax and Heritage Advisors confirmed the investment after being presented with documents detailing the transaction, which show that Sultan subsequently transferred his stake to a Cayman Islands-based corporate structure. The $50 million investment represents a significant minority stake in Newsmax, a privately held media company estimated to be worth between $100 million and $200 million, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The documents came from a trove of roughly 100,000 leaked files from Genesis Trust, a Cayman Islands-based financial services provider, which were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and reviewed by The Washington Post.
[…] Ruddy [founder and CEO of NewsMax, Christopher Ruddy], a longtime media executive with deep ties to Republican politics, has long been a fixture at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club and spent much of Trump’s presidency positioning himself in close proximity to the former president, according to club members and former Trump aides. In the months following Trump’s 2020 defeat, Newsmax amplified Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen from him.
Newsmax’s coverage denying Trump’s loss helped briefly lift ratings, so much so that for one night in December 2020, Newsmax bested cable news giant Fox News among the key demographic of 25- to 54- year-old viewers during its 7 p.m. hour. “We’re here to stay,” Ruddy said at the time. “The ratings are showing that.” But Newsmax’s viewership, as measured by Nielsen, a media analytics company, plateaued and then quickly shrank.
Before and after Sultan’s investment, the outlet’s top editorial brass urged staff to soften on-air coverage of Qatar, including by avoiding discussion of the nation’s human rights record and treatment of migrant labor ahead of it hosting the World Cup in 2022, according to two Newsmax employees at the time who witnessed the exchanges and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the Newsmax CEO.
“We were not allowed to criticize Qatar,” one of these people said. “We were told very clearly from the top down, no touching this.” Ruddy verbally reprimanded a female host in 2018 for her on-air comments about Qatar, according to two other people who saw the exchange. […]
For this Supreme Court to reject abortion restrictions, the argument has to be pretty bad.
“That it?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett cut in tersely as anti-abortion group lawyer Erin Hawley (yes, that Hawley) enumerated the supposed harms to a group of doctors from the Food and Drug Administration lifting restrictions on abortion drug mifepristone.
Hawley on Tuesday was at times buried by a bipartisan dogpile as the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett and even Clarence Thomas joined the liberals in questioning the group’s standing to bring the challenge and the nationwide restrictions it’s seeking.
Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most doggedly devoted members of the bench to reverse engineering even doily-like arguments into his preferred outcome, tried valiantly to put a gloss on the anti-abortion case.
Is the FDA “infallible?” he challenged the government. Isn’t it “obvious” that lifting multiple restrictions at once may have a different effect in combination, he mused, parroting the anti-abortion group’s argument. He sneered that the manufacturer of branded mifepristone’s injury is just monetary — a refreshingly dismissive take on corporate interest from a right-wing judge.
“So your argument is it doesn’t matter if FDA flagrantly violated the law, it didn’t do what it should have done, it endangered the health of women, it’s just too bad, nobody can sue in court?” he asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
But the fight went out of Alito as the arguments went on and it became clear that his peers were, at the least, highly suspect of the legal underpinnings of the challenge.
The other right-wing justices too, initially eager to at least throw a bone to the anti-abortion movement, had largely abandoned that posture by the time Hawley took the stand.
Early on, Barrett and Kavanaugh had repeatedly confirmed that there are and would still be federal conscience exemptions for anti-abortion doctors loath to perform the procedure — seemingly to sure up their bona fides with the movement, even if they came down against it on this case.
Roberts asked whether there was some threshold of adverse reactions to mifepristone, some number of women sent to emergency room care, that would require a government response.
But that was all they could muster. Before long, they too were poking holes in the anti-abortion case. Hawley struggled to prove a concrete injury that gave the doctors grounds to sue beyond speculative harms they may one day have to face. The onslaught came to a head when Gorsuch jumped in to back up Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was questioning how restricting mifepristone for the entire country could possibly be a proportionate reaction to a handful of anti-abortion doctors who are worried about one day potentially having to treat a woman coming to their emergency rooms due to a (very rare) serious complication from the drug.
“We say over and over again, provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintiff’s asserted injuries and go no further,” he said.
“This case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other federal government action,” he added.
This is a direct shot at Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the authors of many rulings comprising the “rash” of nationwide injunctions Gorsuch criticized, both of whom granted such sweeping relief in this case. This dynamic of seeking nationwide relief, usually by right-wing litigants seeking to stop some government action, has become so blatant that the Judicial Conference earlier this month issued a rare policy change to crack down on it.
Hawley barely had a chance to counter Gorsuch before Roberts stepped in to reinforce the question, probing why she wouldn’t be content if the Court ruled in such a way that exempted her specific clients from ever being in this situation. She, of course, could not say the truth, that these kinds of lawsuits are not about the professed qualms of a handful of anti-abortion doctors, but the mission to limit abortion access on the way to making it illegal everywhere.
Thomas, like his colleagues, seemed to recognize that the case is just too weak for the Court to accept. But […] He started laying the groundwork for the next abortion challenge, signaling to mifepristone’s opponents that he’d be amenable to an argument against mailing the drug under the Comstock Act. It’s a 19th century anti-vice law that prohibits the mailing of abortifacients, dormant for decades until the anti-abortion movement’s recent efforts to revive it.
“The government, the solicitor general points out, would not be susceptible to a Comstock Act problem,” he said to the lawyer for the mifepristone manufacturer. “In your case, you would be. So how do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?”
“God Bless The USA” Bible is $59.99 for the KJV + U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance. All public domain. It was originally NIV, scheduled to release on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, until the publisher that owned the rights backed out amid public complaints. They raised the price $10 when they switched to KJV. The product page says it includes lyrics to the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song. They only licensed the chorus.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s upcoming hush money trial in New York hit the former president with a gag order on Tuesday, just one day after Trump peddled a conspiracy theory about a prosecutor—and hours after the tycoon levied attacks against the judge’s daughter.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan forbade Trump from speaking publicly about line prosecutors and court staff—or even their family members. He also subjected Trump to the same sorts of precautionary warnings the former president has faced from other judges in separate cases, ordering him to not even mention any prospective jurors…
Ha! The story about Trump hawking bibles is getting a lot of coverage … and much of that coverage mocks Trump.
On paper, coup-attempting fascist leader and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is about $4 billion richer now.
That’s thanks to some truly bizarre stock market shenanigans that assert his dorky little Twitter clone, Truth Social, to be worth $7 billion despite bringing in only $3.5 million in revenues while losing $45 million to do it. The man could retire in Moscow and be treated like the crooked king he always wanted to be for however many years of life he has left. But no. No, the man cannot stop his obsession with bilking his fans, one nickel or dime or dollar at a time.
So today he’s selling … the Bible. Not just any Bible, but the only Bible endorsed by Himself, Donald Trump. Because Good Friday is coming up and—oh for fuck’s sake, let’s just cut to the tape. [video at the link: "Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible."]
That’s the X-nee-Twitter copy of a Tuesday morning Truth Social post in which Trump prodded his freaky MAGA base to buy the only Bible that declares itself “inspired by Lee Greenwood’s patriotic anthem and hit song, God Bless The USA.”
Does your Bible include a “Handwritten chorus to ‘God Bless The USA’ by Lee Greenwood”? Does your Bible also fill out a few more pages by providing full copies of the notably public domain U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence?
No? It doesn’t? Well, then, you’re probably going straight to hell, because Jesus isn’t going to put up with you carrying around a Bible that doesn’t have those things.
This isn’t the first time the Lee Greenwood-“inspired” Bible has popped into the news. It’s been burbling into fruition since 2021 as a Christian Nationalism-tinged Holy Book with patriotic dangles attached. It’ll set you back $60, and the website includes a special note emphasizing that “GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates.” They’re just using Trump’s “name, likeness and image under paid license.”
That’s still a bit vague, in that it doesn’t explicitly say His Royal Orangeness does not get a cut of the profits as part of his “licensing” agreement, but in the end, we’re probably not talking about any amount of money that anyone as allegedly rich as Trump should give a damn about.
And that’s the thing. You could give this guy all the money in the world, and he’d still be staring into a camera droning out a Krusty the Clown-level endorsement of a Trump-branded steak, or bottled water, or the most gawdawful shoes you’ve ever seen in your life.
In theory, Trump is running for president. You’d be hard-pressed to find him on the campaign trail, mind you, and on days when he doesn’t have to be in a courtroom, he appears to be devoting himself to golf championships and picking the pettiest possible fights.
His aides can’t rouse him into leaving his home to campaign on more than a sporadic basis, but for an unknown licensing fee, he’ll dust himself off, set up a couple of American flags behind him and hold up whatever book you want.
I don’t know what kind of person thinks to themselves, “You know, I really need a Bible, but I don’t like how focused most of them are on Jesus. Is there a version that waters that down a bit with random, unrelated patriotic schlock?” I don’t know what to make of a Bible that needs to include, in its FAQ, an answer to the question, “WHAT IF MY BIBLE HAS STICKY PAGES?” Yeah, I know there’s a perfectly reasonable answer. The question is going to haunt my dreams for a week anyway.
Mere months after taking office in 2015, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton surrendered to authorities on three felony counts related to securities fraud. But after getting his mugshot taken and posting a $35,000 bond, Paxton spent the next nine or so years making sure that the law was a bludgeon to be used against other people. People who are not rich, white, politically empowered Republican men.
On Tuesday, weeks before that 2015 case was finally set to go to trial, the special prosecutors handling Paxton’s case announced a very special deal. Rather than facing a pair of first-degree felonies, each of which could have brought a minimum sentence of five years, and a third-degree felony that might have added at least two more, Paxton will face … zero years. Also zero months, zero days, and zero charges.
Instead, Paxton will agree to pay back the money he allegedly defrauded, attend a class on “legal ethics,” and do 100 hours of community service. He doesn’t have to pay a fine to the state. He doesn’t even have to plead guilty. Instead, all charges are dropped and Paxton can carry on with the vital work of threatening hospitals and protecting Texas’ right to drown children with razor wire. [Yep. That is unfortunately accurate. Sheesh.]
Paxton’s get-out-of-felony-free deal comes six months after the state Senate acquitted him in an impeachment trial where he was clearly guilty. Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached in the Texas House in May 2023, on charges that included bribery, obstruction of justice, dereliction of duty, and misappropriation of public resources. In the middle of those charges was a scheme in which a wealthy donor reportedly provided a job to Paxton’s mistress and seven members of Paxton’s staff resigned.
But immediately following his impeachment, Donald Trump pressured Texas state senators to show their loyalty by acquitting Paxton, and in behind-the-scenes negotiations, none were willing to stand up and provide the critical vote that would have impeached the Texas AG.
Paxton was also allowed to skate by the state bar association, which said it couldn’t discipline Paxton for supporting false claims of election fraud. An almost four-year-old FBI investigation that began in relation to charges leveled by some of those who resigned from Paxton’s office has yet to result in any charges.
While benefiting from the immunity of the wealthy and politically connected, Paxton has continued to use the law as a club against those who aren’t so lucky. That includes his infamous war against Kate Cox, who sought to end a nonviable pregnancy that threatened her health and potentially her life. Cox was ultimately forced to leave the state to seek relief after Paxon appealed a district court decision that would have allowed her to obtain a medical abortion.
Paxton has also been on the forefront of claims about an immigrant invasion. That includes issuing a reply to a Supreme Court ruling in January, claiming that it “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America,” and seeking to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which can protect from deportation children who were brought into the country illegally. Paxton not only sued the federal government for cutting through barriers of razor wire, he also refused to consider removing that wire after a woman and two children drowned.
Like a lot of Republicans, Paxton seems to have a very strict view of the law when it is being used against someone else, and an absolute disdain for it when it’s turned his way.
But considering how many things he’s gotten away with over so many years, Paxton has a right to feel like Texas law is a joke. And he always seems to get the last laugh.
Looking at another issue related to the bridge collapse in Baltimore:
Customers from the East Coast to the Midwest who were expecting goods shipped in via the Port of Baltimore could see significant cost increases as a result of Tuesday’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
In a statement released after the bridge collapsed early Tuesday, the American Trucking Association estimated some 4,900 trucks per day carrying an annual average of $28 billion worth of goods would have to be re-rerouted — at a cost to shippers and ultimately consumers.
[…] It noted the greatest impact is likely to be on shipments of hazardous materials, like diesel fuel, which are not allowed to be brought through tunnels.
The closure, the association said, will “add significant cost in time, fuel and delays for trucks traveling through the region, on top of the disruption that a closure of the Port of Baltimore will inflict on our economy.”
[…] The incident comes as global supply chains are already in brittle shape from pandemic-related stresses and geopolitical changes.
“If this were the only issue, I think we’d be in a much better position,” said Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of the Association for Supply Chain Management. “The unfortunate circumstance is that we’ve been dealing with multiple disruptions that have already stretched a system that is low on capacity.”
Baltimore is the largest entry point in the U.S. for large agriculture and construction equipment like tractors, farming combines, fork lifts, bulldozers and heavy-duty trucks that are bound for the Midwest, according to DAT Freight and Analytics, a freight-exchange service.
Any disruption to agriculture and construction equipment shipments would come at a particularly bad time as Midwest farmers have begun to plant this year’s crops, while construction picks up in colder climates as the ground begins to thaw, said Dean Croke, principal analyst with DAT.
“I think it has a huge economic impact on the farming industry,” said Croke. “This is peak planting season in the Midwest and peak machinery import season. March is the biggest month for machinery shipments into the U.S. via Baltimore.”
Companies may have to reroute their shipments to nearby ports, like those in Georgia or Florida, he said. That will mean higher freight shipping costs as trucks have to travel further and may have to wait longer to pick up their loads if those ports become congested, said Croke.
The complete collapse of the bridge means it could take up to a year for normal logistics patterns to return, said Tinglong Dai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.
“It’s very difficult to estimate the [shipping] cost impact, but it’s fair to say it’s going to be costlier to transport autos and trucks to and from the U.S. in the short term because of the oversize impact on the port of Baltimore,” he said.
Baltimore is also the No. 1 automobile port in the U.S. Other Eastern Seaboard ports are expected to be able to shoulder some Baltimore-bound auto shipments, said Emily Stausbøll, market analyst with the shipping group Xeneta, which could limit the impact on global shipping rates. […]
“The Port of Virginia has a significant amount of experience in handling surges of import and export cargo and is ready to provide whatever assistance we can to the team at the Port of Baltimore,” the spokesperson said. […]
A BMW spokesperson said that its receiving terminal is located at the Baltimore harbor’s entrance in front of the bridge and was still accessible. […]
For decades, people who live, work, or travel in the Fulton River District have enjoyed the delightful chocolate smell generated by the Blommer manufacturing plant just steps from the Chicago River. Soon that smell will just be a memory.
Blommer Chocolate Company announced Friday it is closing the manufacturing plant that has called the Fulton River District home since 1939, citing growing maintenance and operating costs for the building and equipment, which have led to reliability issues at the factory. A specific closing date was not announced…
So-called activist investor Nelson Peltz, who’s aiming to win two Disney board seats, has stirred up some controversy by calling out Disney’s recent era of “woke” strategy through diversifying its slate of films at Marvel Studios.
The 81-year-old businessman, whose experience is with food companies including Wendy’s and H.J. Heinz as well as having once supported the DeSantis presidential campaign, had a lot to say about The Marvels and Black Panther in an interview with the Financial Times. “Why do I have to have a Marvel [movie] that’s all women?” Peltz asked the publication. “Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” Side note: Peltz happens to be the father of Nicola Peltz, who played Katara in 2010’s infamously very white Last Airbender adaptation.
Days after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey blamed an after-school fight on a school district’s diversity programming, a lawyer for the majority Black district in suburban St. Louis said that the state’s chief attorney is showing “obvious racial bias.”
Bailey, who is campaigning to keep his seat, said last week that he is investigating possible violations of the state’s human rights laws by the Hazelwood School District, after a March 8 fight left a girl hospitalized with severe head injuries.
Bailey blamed the school district’s diversity, equity and inclusion programming as a cause for the fight, which St. Louis County police say happened after school hours in a neighborhood about two blocks from Hazelwood East High School. He said were it not for the programs, a school resource officer would have been present at the school.
“I am launching an investigation into Hazelwood School District after a student was senselessly assaulted by another student in broad daylight,” Bailey said in a statement. “The entire community deserves answers on how Hazelwood’s radical DEI programs resulted in such despicable safety failures that has resulted in a student fighting for her life.” …
NBC’s newest contributor has been dropped from the network following public backlash — including from the network’s own talent — according to an internal email sent to staffers by NBC Chairman Cesar Conde and obtained by NPR.
Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, was hired by the news network just two weeks after stepping down from her role at the RNC.
“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal,” Conde said in the email announcing that McDaniel would no longer be a contributor.
“I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down,” Conde added.
“While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I approved it and take full responsibility for it.” ..,.
Well, this is a worry and would be a real loss – alhough a long way from my area of Oz & never been there. Did go tothe cairns Botanic Garden in 2012 tho’. From a while ago so kind aold news sorry but just seen this & haven’t heard any more so.. still :
Being able to see, touch and smell specimens of rare and endemic trees from remote and rugged locations has helped generations of naturalists and been an invaluable resource for research.
CSIRO closed public access to the site in October last year, alarming an Atherton-based botanist, Gemma Horner, who thought it was important the community knew what was going on behind closed doors.
It wasn’t until last month she heard that the national scientific agency was planning to sell the land. CSIRO has confirmed the site has been “vacated in preparation for divestment”, and Guardian Australia understands that as a freehold site there would be no restrictions on its sale. This has prompted Horner to fear it may be sold to a private developer and cleared for residential housing.
Being able to see, touch and smell specimens of rare and endemic trees from remote and rugged locations has helped generations of naturalists and been an invaluable resource for research. CSIRO closed public access to the site in October last year, alarming an Atherton-based botanist, Gemma Horner, who thought it was important the community knew what was going on behind closed doors. It wasn’t until last month she heard that the national scientific agency was planning to sell the land. CSIRO has confirmed the site has been “vacated in preparation for divestment”, and Guardian Australia understands that as a freehold site there would be no restrictions on its sale. This has prompted Horner to fear it may be sold to a private developer and cleared for residential housing.
Two of the world’s largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants.
The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by $30 billion over five years, according to a press release announcing the settlement Tuesday morning.
The settlement, which only applies to US merchants, is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005. However, nothing is considered finalized until it receives approval from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Even then, the case can also be appealed in what could be a lengthy battle.
Typically, swipe fees cost merchants 2% of the total transaction a customer makes — but can be as much as 4% for some premium rewards cards, according to the National Retail Federation. The settlement would lower those fees by at least 0.04 percentage point for a minimum of three years. ..
People bought 43 million vinyl records last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That’s 6 million more than the number of CDs sold in 2023, marking the second time since 1987 that’s happened and reflecting the steady 17-year-running growth of vinyl sales.
Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs. The RIAA’s report shows that CD revenue was up, too, but in terms of physical products sold, people actually bought about 700,000 fewer CDs in 2023 than the year before. (If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.) …
Boffins at the European Space Agency (ESA) are very pleased with themselves following confirmation that the de-icing process they devised for Euclid’s optics has “performed significantly better than hoped.”
Launched in 2023, the optics of the Euclid spacecraft have suffered from an accumulation of water ice. While the thickness of the ice was measured in nanometers, scientists could detect its impact through the drop in light observed from distant galaxies.
Due to the finely calibrated instruments onboard, simply heating up the spacecraft to get rid of the ice wasn’t an option. Instead, engineers devised an approach in which each mirror would be heated in turn, and observations would be made to see what, if any, impact was made on light coming into the spacecraft.
The team wasn’t even sure which of the mirrors was causing the problem but reckoned there was a good chance it was the first mirror they planned to heat…
Last Fall, Google started rolling out a major redesign to its desktop browser. Google calls its changes “Material You,” but I started calling them “ugly” and “annoying” when an update marred my browser’s UI in December. Then I figured out how to get rid of the changes and was happy with the classic interface, until today (March 26, 2024) when my browser updated itself to version 123 and overrode my changes, bringing me back to the hideous look I tried to get rid of. Read on, because there’s a new workaround that, as of this moment, still works…
Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands on Tuesday won a special election for a state House seat in Alabama after she made in vitro fertilization and abortion rights central to her campaign.
Lands, a licensed professional counselor, defeated Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, a Republican who once worked as a Defense Department budget analyst. A Republican had held the Huntsville-area seat in the state’s 10th District…
Mike Lindell’s MyPillow is getting evicted from one of its Minnesota warehouses, the Star Tribune, a local Minnesota newspaper, reported on Tuesday.
“MyPillow has more or less vacated, but we’d like to do this by the book,” the landlord’s attorney, Sara Filo, said during an eviction court hearing on Tuesday, per Star Tribune.
“At this point, there’s a representation that no further payment is going to be made under this lease, so we’d like to go ahead with finding a new tenant,” Filo continued.
MyPillow owes First Industrial more than $217,000 in rent and other charges, per court filings seen by the Star Tribune. It is unclear if MyPillow and its staff have fully vacated the premises, but First Industrial’s representatives say they have sent at least four eviction notices to MyPillow since September…
… If a challenge were to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a little-remembered case from the early 20th century could prove consequential to both sides…
The line of reasoning in Roe actually stemmed from something much older than Griswold — a concept called “substantive due process” that traces back to a line of cases that includes the little-remembered Meyer v. Nebraska…
Interesting, but I see no reason the current court would give any more respect to this precedent than all the others they have bulldozed.
The Republican-controlled Kansas state Legislature passed a bill Tuesday requiring abortion providers to ask patients the reason for their procedure and report the information to the state, a move critics say creates an unnecessary hurdle for patients to receive reproductive care.
The state Senate passed the bill in a 27-13 party-line vote on Tuesday, after the Kansas House voted to advance it earlier this month. Gov. Laura Kelly (D), an abortion rights supporter, is expected to veto the measure, though it appears to have enough support for her veto to be overridden…
I hope “none of your business” is one of the options.
Conditions at the Republican National Committee could be better. The Associated Press reported, for example, that just six months before the first early votes are cast in the 2024 general election, “Trump’s Republican Party has little general election infrastructure to speak of.”
Making matters slight worse, the RNC has partnered with Donald Trump’s campaign for a joint fundraising operation, but as part of the agreement, donations will go toward the former president’s legal bills before funds reach the party.
It’s against this backdrop that the RNC and its newly installed leadership team is apparently conducting interviews with prospective staffers, and as The Washington Post reported, applicants are apparently confronting an unfortunate line of inquiry.
Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
[…] evidently, the past is also the present and the near-future. As the Post’s report summarized, prospective RNC hires have said “agreeing with Trump’s false election claim appears to be a new litmus test for being hired by the party.”
[…] “[…] We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”
That wasn’t exactly a denial.
By all appearances, what the RNC needs is competent and qualified staffers. Limiting the employment search to conspiracy theorists and those easily fooled by absurdities doesn’t do the party any favors.
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has not exactly brought out the best from Republicans, their allies, and their base. Around this time 24 hours ago, for example, a Fox Business host was trying to draw a connection between the disaster and border policies.
In the hours that followed, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Utah blamed the bridge collapse on “diversity” programs. A Republican congressional candidate in Florida made the same argument, as did a variety of far-right media figures.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, meanwhile, raised the prospect of the disaster being the result of an “intentional attack,” while Steve Bannon told his audience the collapse could’ve been the result of terrorism.
As the day progressed, the avalanche of weird theories and offensive finger-pointing intensified, tied together with a common thread: “The official line shouldn’t be believed,” conservatives effectively argued. “There are other nefarious truths out there that will bolster the right’s preconceived ideas.”
It is, of course, discouraging to realize that too much of the GOP base will find this compelling, but just as unsettling was seeing Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt tell Fox News’ Laura Ingraham last night that all of this should probably be blamed on the Biden White House.
“The problem here is, this is the consequence, the sort of distrust of terrible leadership, when you have an administration that has weaponized the Department of Justice, tried to throw in political opponents in jail, tried to throw them off the ballot, conducted a vast censorship enterprise to silence Americans who don’t buy into their narrative — whether it was on efficacy of masks, or transmissibility of Covid after you’ve had the vaccine, or the Hunter Biden laptop.”
Just to clarify, the Missouri senator didn’t suggest the White House was responsible for the bridge collapse. Rather, Schmitt suggested the White House was responsible for the fact that much of the right doesn’t believe officials when they talk about the bridge collapse. […]
the far-right senator appears to have gotten the entire dynamic backwards: It’s not imaginary White House misconduct fueling public distrust; it’s Republican conspiracy theorists peddling nonsense that’s left too many conservatives unsure what to believe about reality.
[…] it’s striking just how frequently Trump goes after his perceived foes’ family members. Late last year, for example, in the Trump Organization’s fraud case, Trump targeted Judge Arthur Engoron’s wife. Before that, the presumptive GOP nominee not only labeled special counsel Jack Smith a “terrorist,” he also lashed out at the prosecutor’s wife and sister-in-law.
Now, Merchan’s [New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan] daughter has apparently joined the target list. The underlying message is hardly subtle: In pursuit of his own interests, Trump will take whatever steps he deems necessary, even if that means going after the family members of those who might hold him accountable for his actions.
As NBC News reported last year, the judge and his family have already been the target of multiple threats, and the former president’s latest offensive is likely to make matters worse.
Merchan issued a gag order but the order did not specifically include his immediate family, so Trump went after his daughter. I think this shows that Trump is paying attention.
Mark yesterday as the day Donald Trump imported the notorious “Stop the Steal” slogan into the 2024 campaign.
[…] the broader context for its use now is Trump’s false and self-serving claims that the four criminal prosecutions of him are a giant “election interference” scheme designed to defeat him in the 2024 election.
“Stop the Steal” is malleable and flexible. It’s the Big Lie of the 2020. It’s the Big Lie of 2024, too, with Trump already seeking to delegitimize any election he doesn’t win. […]
The article includes a screen grab of a Trump post that claims “JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME […]”
The article also includes an example of the deification of Trump: “Trump gives us Faith; Trump gives us Virtue; Trump gives us Dignity; Trump gives us Esteem; Trump gives us Honesty; Trump gives us Decency […]”
Trump has always run for president using the religious language of corruption-purification-rebirth. It was his 2016 hero narrative, he’s been a martyr ever since. This is from Demagogue for President, sorry if when you read it your eyes roll so hard that you get a headache.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) took aim at former President Trump for launching an initiative to sell Bibles on Tuesday and encouraged him to read what the Bible says about adultery.
“Happy Holy Week, Donald. Instead of selling Bibles, you should probably buy one,” Cheney wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in response to a screenshot of Trump’s Bible pitch on Truth Social.
“And read it, including Exodus 20:14,” Cheney added, referring to the verse that commands, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
[…] “It’s my favorite book,” Trump said. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”
“Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country. And I truly believe that we need to bring them back and have to bring them back fast,” Trump said. “I think it’s one of the biggest problems we have. That’s why our country is going haywire. We’ve lost religion in our country.” […]
Once upon a time, one of the easiest forms of “content” one could do was churning out listicles or, hell, even entire books about the all the wacky state laws in this country that no one actually acknowledges or enforces. Like how you can’t let a donkey sleep in your bathtub in Alabama after 7 p.m. or how pi is or was legally 3.2 in Indiana and what have you.
As for wacky national laws? Well, we’ve still got the Comstock Act, named for the former Postmaster General and “anti-vice activist” Anthony Comstock who was, as Emma Goldman put it in her autobiography, the head of the “moral eunuchs of America.”
These laws bar “Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance; and Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use” — which, for Comstock, included pornography, literature, sex toys, sex advice and, of course, birth control. However, it hasn’t been used in decades, as evidenced by the fact that you can go over to Amazon and buy yourself as many dildos and copies of Tropic of Cancer as you like without fearing arrest. [True]
On Tuesday, during arguments for the Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas started questioning why birth control was allowed to be sent through the mail at all, because of said laws.
Via Washington Post:
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas repeatedly invoked the Comstock Act during Tuesday’s oral arguments regarding the abortion drug mifepristone, pressing lawyers about whether the 1873 federal law should apply to abortion drugs sent through the mail today. Alito rejected the Biden administration’s argument that the law is obsolete — it has not been applied in nearly a century — with the conservative justice insisting that Food and Drug Administration officials should have accounted for the law when expanding access to mifepristone by mail in 2021.
The law, to be clear, is deeply, deeply stupid. It bars sending entirely legal things, like birth control or Lady Chatterly’s Lover, through the mail.
“The anti-abortion movement wants to weaponize the Comstock Act as a quick route to a nationwide medication abortion ban,” Rep. Cori Bush tweeted. “Not on our watch.”
[…] Frankly, I would even go so far as to keep any laws written by anyone who has ever seriously referred to masturbation as “self-pollution” off the books altogether. That, itself should be a law.
We should be ashamed of a chapter in our history in which we sent suffragettes to federal prison for mailing “sexually explicit marriage manuals.” […]
No one should have to fear that archaic laws that should not even be on the books to begin with could be used, by their political enemies, to punish them. If Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wish to eat a diet of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to suppress any desire to “self-pollute,” that is their business, but I believe they should be free to walk down the street while eating a raw onion in Northfield, Connecticut, without fearing arrest or fine, and that people ought to be able to send birth control, mifepristone, and any other legal substance through the mail as well.
birgerjohanssonsays
History’s Biggest Solar Storm, The Carrington Event, Was Even Bigger Than We Realized | IFLScience
If we get another one like in 1859, we are well and truly screwed. The politicians are not going to spend money on securing the power net if that money can be used for billionaire tax breaks.
BTW, during years ending with “9”, September 1st seems an unlucky time as evidenced by what happened on the 80th anniversary of the Carrington event.
A Republican state senator in Minnesota will not be cowed into voting for a proposed bill requiring that firearms be stored safely to prevent firearms thefts or accidental shootings. It’s the killer cows, you see. You just never know when sweet, big-eyed Bossy will turn into a homicidal maniac, requiring that you immediately terminate her with extreme prejudice.
The bill, Senate File 4312, would require that when firearms aren’t in use, they be stored in a “secure, tamperproof container designed to hold a firearm” or secured with a trigger lock or other locking device making the gun inoperable. Guns secured with a locking device must be unloaded, while those kept in a secure container could loaded or unloaded. It’s a pretty common-sense safe-storage bill of the sort that the NRA has opposed for decades now.
Not securely storing a gun would be a misdemeanor, or a felony if an unsecured firearm is accessed by a child or person who can’t legally have guns, with stiffer penalties if it’s used in a violent crime.
But according to state Sen. Warren Limmer (R-Maple Grove), SF 4312 could put rural families at mortal risk! That’s because they are under constant threat from bovines with hair-trigger tempers. No, really! You city folk just wouldn’t understand. Here, Limmer limns the deadly world of the barnyard: [video at the link]
Limmer first wondered aloud how homeowners are supposed to even sleep at night if they can’t instantly grab their loaded gun in event of a home invasion.
If you’re “fumbling around for a lockbox key,” Limmer reasoned, you might suffer a “delay in reaction” when seconds count. “I find this bill cumbersome in the face of defending one’s self at home to a deadly threat,” Limmer explained.
How true this is! Many gun nuts are certain they can instantly wake up, accurately assess the tactical situation, and dispatch a murderous slimeball invader via the Mozambique Drill (two shots to center mass and one to the head) in a matter of seconds. You can get it on a T-shirt if you think you need a reminder. (From Amazon, but damned if we’re linking.)
For that matter, if you have to fumble around and unlock your gun, you might even be prevented from blowing away that shadow down the hall you think is a murderous slimeball invader but is your teenager sneaking in hours after curfew.
Limmer didn’t mention that statistically, home invasions — break-ins when residents are at home — are extremely rare, no matter how often they happen in movies and dark fantasies. In real life, burglars far prefer the lower risk of breaking into empty houses.
But Limmer wasn’t finished. He hadn’t gotten to the cows. Farmers, he explained,
also have concerns about their own domestic farm animals. Farm animals at times can be dangerous. Take for example, a cow that has just recently had a calf. You even walk too close to a cow, and it will take you down and trample you into dust.
[…] “Many farmers have a readily available gun just for those emergencies,” Limmer explained. “Fumbling around with a lock while a cow or a bull or any other animal is going after your daughter or your son, you can’t fumble around with a key or try and find the lockbox or put your thumb on a biometric key of some sort in your home, while the danger is outside.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. For one thing, there’s all that fumbling, a surprising amount of fumbling when you consider that your steely-eyed patriot farmer is supposed to be a cool customer, a dead shot with a rifle or pistol. But that’s only if there’s no locking device to drive them to abject panicked fumbling. Rambo never had to scan his thumb.
We also like how Limmer seems to think SF 4312 would force hardy farmers to keep their weapons locked inside their houses, instead of having, say, a locked gun cabinet in the barn or the milking shed. There is no such requirement. We looked.
Also, we have a question: Even if you have a shotgun or Desert Eagle or AR-15 right inside the door of your barn or outhouse, or several scattered around for easy pickin’, how are you supposed to dispatch the berserk cow that’s about to trample your child without also shooting at, you know, your child?
Haha, silly question! With no locks to reduce you to a fumble-fingered boob, you would of course not miss your target. It’s your hero fantasy and you will end that cow, perhaps also using the Moozambique Drill.
Also, those spoilsports at Twin Cities TV station KMSP went and did a journalism on Limmer’s scenario of bucolic terror. They note that yes, agriculture can be a dangerous job, but Death By Cow is pretty rare:
However, data gathered by the University of Nebraska for its Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health […] shows only three trampling deaths between 2012 and 2021 in Minnesota. The incidents include an 85-year-old man trampled by a cow while tagging a calf in 2018, a 41-year-old man trampled near a bull and two cows in 2019, and a 66-year-old man “assaulted” by a cow while trying to deliver a calf in 2020.
The biggest risks for farmers are equipment-related deaths and traffic collisions.
Honestly, if that 85-year-old was going to do a fool thing like spray-painting his gang’s name on a cow, he probably had it coming.
Oh, yes, and while it’s nowhere near as funny as imaginary terror cows bent on mayhem, we should probably mention that, per CDC stats from Everytown for Gun Safety, firearms kill an average of 43 Minnesota children and teens every year. Forty-nine percent of those deaths are suicides, many of which could be prevented if firearms were securely stored.
Among adults, 363 Minnesotans die and 47 are wounded on average every year. Seventy-three percent of gun deaths in Minnesota are suicide by firearm. Again, some percentage of those suicides could be prevented by secure firearms storage, both by preventing access by those other than the gun owner, and by presenting an obstacle to impulsive actions.
Re: Lynna 411
A lot of social conflict does seem to relate to the family feud dynamic. It’s not enough to be political opponents, the very family line becomes the enemy.
From there it turns to group analogs in part.
A new study found that ice loss caused by climate change is redistributing mass on the Earth enough to alter its spin.
Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time.
A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.
The author of the study, Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, said that as ice at the poles melts, it changes where the Earth’s mass is concentrated. The change, in turn, affects the planet’s angular velocity.
Agnew compared the dynamic to a figure skater twirling on ice: “If you have a skater who starts spinning, if she lowers her arms or stretches out her legs, she will slow down,” he said. But if a skater’s arms are drawn inward, the skater will twirl faster.
Less solid ice at the poles, then, means more mass around the equator — Earth’s waist.
“What you’re doing with the ice melt is you’re taking water that’s frozen solid in places like Antarctica and Greenland, and that frozen water is melting, and you move the fluids to other places on the planet,” said Thomas Herring, a professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new study. “The water flows off towards the equator.”
The study suggests, in other words, that human influence has monkeyed with a force that scholars, stargazers and scientists have puzzled over for millennia — something long considered a constant that was out of humanity’s control.
“It’s kind of impressive, even to me, we’ve done something that measurably changes how fast the Earth rotates,” Agnew said. “Things are happening that are unprecedented.”
His study, which was published in the journal Nature, suggests that climate change is playing a significant enough role in the Earth’s rotation to delay the possibility of a “negative leap second.” If polar ice had not melted, clocks worldwide might have required the subtraction of a single second as soon as 2026 to keep universal time in sync with Earth’s rotation, which is influenced by various factors.
Instead, the effect of climate change has pushed that prospect back by an estimated three years. If timekeeping organizations do eventually decide to add a negative leap second, the adjustment could disrupt computer networks. […]
This week, Florida made headlines after passing HB 3, a law banning children under 14 from accessing social media without parental consent.
Much less attention was given to another requirement under the law obligating “pornographic or sexually explicit websites” to “use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children,” as Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained the law in a statement.
But Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, has taken notice, with a spokesperson confirming to Ars that “we are aware of the passage into law of HB 3 in Florida, which unfortunately fails to protect minors online.”
“To be clear, we agree on the goal of keeping minors away from such content,” Aylo’s spokesperson told Ars. “We do not want minors to have access to adult entertainment content designed for adults.”
However, Aylo views Florida requiring adult sites to verify ages by checking users’ IDs as being just as problematic as efforts in states like Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Utah, and Virginia. Aylo argues that these laws don’t stop anyone from accessing porn without ID but instead push the majority of users to seek out non-compliant adult sites that don’t ask for ID. In Louisiana, for example, Pornhub traffic dropped by 80 percent after the site began requiring ID…
Reginald Selkirksays
@414: Trump gives us Honesty; Trump gives us Decency […]”
It’s unfortunate he couldn’t keep a little for himself.
larparsays
@Lynna, OM #418
Maybe the NRA should offer some ‘How to put a key into a lock’ classes.
Brony @419, yes, I think that’s right. And Trump does have a habit of turning entire families (like the family of a judge or prosecutor) into a sort of tribe that he can brand as the enemy. It’s simplistic.
[…] First, Trump’s obviously lying about not wanting to “terminate” the ACA. He’s explicitly said the opposite on countless occasions. What’s more, […] the former president has spent recent months repeatedly targeting 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.
Second, Trump might like the idea of a better, stronger, and cheaper version of the ACA, but he has had nearly a decade to come up with such a plan, and so far, he’s failed spectacularly.
[…] Are families willing to vote for a presidential candidate who’s eager to tear down the nation’s health care system and replace it with an alternative he doesn’t want to talk about?
Third, Democrats are desperate to convince voters that the future of the Affordable Care Act is on the ballot this year. Trump — and several leading congressional Republicans and the Republican Study Committee — keep making their job easier.
[…]Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) joined other far-right conspiracy theorists in questioning whether the disaster was “intentional” on Tuesday afternoon. [Tweets and video at the link]
The congresswoman was elevating to the mainstream what some right-wingers were already spewing online by the time the sun rose on the tragedy Tuesday morning. Some Twitter conspiracy theorists began suggesting something nefarious overnight, with many latching onto the baseless and far-fetched notion that Israel was behind the attack, in retaliation for the passage of a United Nations ceasefire agreement in Gaza. Others argued Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies in the U.S. had something to do with the crash.
The talk from no-namers on Elon Musk’s Twitter was quickly picked up by the usual far-right dudes who often use any tragic event to elevate talk of global war and feverishly declare the need for an uprising against the government: Andrew Tate, Alex Jones and Michael Flynn. Jones, well known for his role in spreading conspiracy theories about the parents of murdered Sandy Hook children, suggested the collapse was likely part of a broader “cyber-attack” and cryptically declared “WW3 has already started..”
Flynn latched onto Tate’s baseless claims that the accident was a precursor to a larger “Black Swan event.” Tate is, of course, the right-wing social media influencer who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania.
“So first of all, Black Swan events are usually from the financial world, right? Well this actually will impact the financial world for sure,” Flynn, the national security adviser during Trump’s first month in the White House, told Jones Tuesday. [FFS] […] “absolutely we cannot” take “the idea that this was a terrorist attack off the table.”
[…]
By mid-day, slightly (slightly) less unhinged people like Conservative Political Action Committee leader Matt Schlapp began blaming everything from COVID-19 mitigation policies to drugs to President Biden’s infrastructure bill for the accident, claiming the legislation was too focused on climate policies.
While it is still early in the the aftermath of the collapse, authorities have already declared that upon preliminary investigation there is not reason to believe there was any foul play surrounding the incident. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced Tuesday that the ship issued a “mayday” call and lost power just before it ran into the bridge.
“There is no specific and credible information to suggest any ties to terrorism at this time,” the FBI’s Baltimore field office posted on Twitter. “The investigation is ongoing.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Sadistic’ Edinburgh teacher found to have assaulted pupils for 20 years | Schools | The Guardian
On Tuesday, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and family embarrassment Robert F. Kennedy Jr. selected Nicole Shanahan as his running mate in his not-at-all-serious campaign for the presidency. Though this sounds like information that might serve as a stumper at a trivia game for the next eight or so months (after which Kennedy’s whole campaign will take on the same role), the selection may have more impact than [that]
While the Associated Press may describe Shanahan as a “California lawyer and philanthropist,” what she really represents is something else. She’s a cash bomb.
Shanahan is the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $120 billion. In divorce proceedings after just under four years of marriage to Brin, Shanahan reportedly sought over $1 billion from her ex-husband. That might seem like a relatively tiny fraction of Brin’s fortune. After all, Mackenzie Scott walked away with an estimated $38.3 billion in her 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
But the $1 billion figure seems generous considering that Brin and Shanahan’s marriage fell apart after Shanahan reportedly slept with Elon Musk.
Shanahan appears to share Kennedy’s disdain for vaccines, falsely linking them to long-term diseases and a widely debunked theory that they cause autism in children. She also expresses beliefs that people are being negatively affected by “electromagnetic pollution” from cell phones. Despite the Associated Press insisting that the 38-year-old Shanahan “brings youth” to RFK Jr’s ticket, what she really brings is her bank account.
This year’s infamous Super Bowl ad, which featured themes and images stolen from the campaign of President John F. Kennedy and resulted in the candidate apologizing to his family for the pain it generated, was largely funded by Shanahan. That 60-second spot cost a reported $7 million, with Shanahan having donated $4 million to the pro-RFK Jr. super PAC that produced it.
As The Washington Post reports, in addition to funding the ad, Shanahan has already maxed out her direct contributions to Kennedy’s campaign. However, the Post writes, “her selection as Kennedy’s running mate will allow her to give as much as she wants.”
How much is that? Maybe not a billion. Some of her wealth might be revealed on a personal final disclosure that’s due on May 15, but Shanahan may seek an extension. Even if it turns out to be more—Shanahan sold her own company, ClearAccessIP, for an unknown amount in 2020—it’s unlikely Shanahan will pour all her assets into this sub-quixotic campaign. And considering that total spending in the 2020 election topped $14 billion, whatever Shanahan takes from her vault isn’t likely to be enough to make Kennedy a serious contender.
But that’s the point. RFK Jr. is not a serious contender for the presidency and never has been. His campaign is a classic spoiler, one that leverages his familiar name to distract low-information voters. A spoiler campaign doesn’t need to worry about winning, and it doesn’t have to spend money on the kind of organization and infrastructure necessary to turn out the vote on Election Day. Instead, Shanahan’s cash can be directed to just the kind of action she helped take place during the Super Bowl—splashy ads aimed at playing on that name association, specially targeted to voters who know nothing about this election other than that they’re tired of seeing a repeat of Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump.
The biggest reason that Kennedy is in this race is because he’s been primarily encouraged and funded by Republicans. As Politico noted last November, Kennedy was pulling checks from former Trump donors at a higher rate than former Biden donors. However, that’s not necessarily an indication that he will get more Republican votes.
Speaking with CNN on Monday, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s sister Rory Kennedy called his campaign “dangerous.”
“I feel strongly that this is the most important election of our lifetime, and there’s so much at stake,” said Rory Kennedy. “I do think it’s going to come down to a handful of votes and a handful of states, and I do worry that Bobby just taking some percentage of votes from Biden could shift the election and lead to Trump’s election.”
Shanahan’s presence on the ticket may seem like another embarrassing factor in an embarrassing campaign. But she represents a pipeline of cash that can fund confusing ads that promote Kennedy and attack Biden in swing states where a few thousand voters can make a difference. [Tweet and video at the link]
I’ve noticed that Shanahan is now trying to tone down the nonsense she has spewed in the past. She is using language like “a discussion should be had […].” I hope she doesn’t get away with that.
Meanwhile, Shanahan bought herself a vice president slot in the campaign.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire said Wednesday that she will not seek reelection to Congress for a seventh term in November, leaving the state’s sprawling 2nd District open to a possible GOP successor…
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Tuesday called on the Biden administration to declassify information on the investigation of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who served federal prison time as a result of Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia — and who’s now reportedly in talks to work with Trump again.
Trump, who pardoned Manafort in 2020, sparing him the remaining years of his sentence, is pulling for the GOP operative to get back into politics, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. Both reported last week that Manafort was in talks to help out with this year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee…
birgerjohanssonsays
A question for physicists: if small, sensitive gravimeters become ubiquitous, would it be possible to detect subtle nuances in the gravity field caused by -for instance- bodies of ore under the surface? I know satellites have been able to map undersea mountains because shifting gravity fields affect satellite orbits, but the effects of ores would be more subtle.
A Massachusetts State Police robot dog was shot during a standoff on Cape Cod this month, officials said, calling it an example of how the technology can make police work safer in dangerous situations.
It’s both the first time a Massachusetts State Police robot dog was shot while working and the first time that one of Boston Dynamics’ well-known Spot robots was shot while working, representatives told NBC10 Boston Wednesday.
The dog, known as Roscoe, was shot as a SWAT team dealt with a man barricaded in a home in the Hyannis section of Barnstable on March 6, police said. That standoff prompted local schools to be evacuated and took hours to resolve; it led to the arrest of 30-year-old Justin Moreira.
Moreira was barricaded inside a home on St. Francis Circle after a 911 call about a person holding someone else at knifepoint, police said at the time. The person escaped, but when officers arrived, at the home, Moreira allegedly opened fire on a SWAT vehicle and periodically shot near the officers who’d circled the home.
State police eventually decided to send in three robots, including Roscoe, to find where in the building Moreira was holed up. Roscoe cleared the top two floors of the building, then discovered him, holding a rifle, in the basement, police said.
He knocked the robot dog down, then started to walk up the stairs, but, when Roscoe righted itself and started following him up the stairs, he knocked the dog over again, then shot it three times. Its pilot lost communication with the dog.
Images shared by police showed the dog shot in its side and “neck.” [photos at the link]
Moreira went on to take aim at another of the robots outside, though he missed, officials said. Police eventually took him into custody after they sent tear gas through the house.
“The incident provided a stark example of the benefits of mobile platforms capable of opening doors and ascending stairs in tactical missions involving armed suspects,” state police said in a statement. “In addition to providing critically important room clearance and situational awareness capabilities, the insertion of Roscoe into the suspect residence prevented the need, at that stage of response, from inserting human operators, and may have prevented a police officer from being involved in an exchange of gunfire.”
Moreira later appeared in court, where authorities said he fired more than 30 rounds during the course of the standoff. […]
The day after Roscoe was shot, police brought it to its manufacturer, Waltham-based Boston Dynamics, to have the bullets removed and assess the damage, police said. The company is hoping to keep the dog for research, and state police are getting a replacement.
[…] The company notes that its robots are not allowed to be weaponized. […]
To the editor: The tragic collapse in Baltimore will take a long time to fix, but the solution is not to rebuild the bridge.
Instead, we should use our technology to build a tunnel under the harbor, big enough for the trucks that need to access the harbor. It should be a national project that bypasses the years of bureaucratic delays. Elon Musk, bring on your Boring Company.
Tony Gitt, Westlake Village
Mr. Gitt, perhaps you could ‘splain why you think digging a tunnel would be faster than building a bridge. The environmental and feasibility studies alone would probably take years. You might also look into the Boring Company’s history with delivering large projects on time. (They don’t have one.) Also, if you think Tech-bro Musk can save us on this one, you might look into the history of his other companies with delivering products on schedule as promised. I suggest starting with the Cybertruck and Tesla Full Self Driving.
The woman who admitted to stealing President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley’s diary and helping sell it to conservative activists could face arrest as soon as Friday after skipping her sentencing, a federal judge said on Wednesday.
Aimee Harris was supposed to be sentenced in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon. Her lawyers had earlier told U.S. District Judge Laura Swain that the Florida resident was “unable” to attend because of “childcare and other issues.”
Harris’ sentencing had been postponed twice this year because of similar issues.
With Harris appearing via video, Swain postponed sentencing until April 9. The judge said she would issue a warrant for Harris’ arrest on Friday afternoon unless she submits additional documents including a financial affidavit by noon that day…
[…] there are important attributes of Biden himself.
It’s certainly not the only one, but the AP highlights a key one. Quite simply, Democrats are far more angry and frightened about a Trump presidency than Republicans are about another Biden one. 6 in 10 Democrats say they’d be “fearful” or “angry” about another Trump presidency whereas only 4 in 10 Republicans say the same about Biden.
The most salient point about this result is how commonsensical it is. Republicans can talk all they want about the “Biden Crime Family” and the “Biden dictatorship” and the “Jan 6 hostages.” But no non-cultists really buy that. And I mean, really buy it. Who do you think is really scared about another Biden term?
This gets to one of the guy’s underlying strengths. He’s just not demonizable in the way Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or a lot of other Democrats have been. Is that because he’s a white man? That’s definitely part of it. But it’s not all of it. One of his advantages is precisely that he is old. He’s been doing this for half a century. People know who he is. Joe Biden is just the apotheosis of Normie-dom. He’s also always been essentially a median Democrat. He’ll be pretty much where the center of gravity of his party is. And the center of gravity of the Democratic party is in a substantially more social-democratic place than it was a generation ago. And because of that so is he.
[…] this is the heart of Biden’s strength. He radiates an underlying decency and normalness, and that makes him hard for the GOP to effectively demonize.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has agreed to reschedule a high-level delegation meant to travel from Israel to Washington to discuss the ally’s plans for an operation in Rafah, the White House confirmed Wednesday.
Days earlier, Netanyahu had canceled the delegation set to visit with top Biden administration officials this week as retribution for the U.S. abstaining from a vote of the U.N. Security Council proposal calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
“The prime minister’s office has agreed to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah, and so we are now working with them to find a convenient date that works for both sides,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, calling the rescheduling “a good thing.”
No date has been finalized, but the meeting could occur as early as next week, an official told The Hill.
The relationship between the United States and Israel has grown tense ahead of a planned Israeli offensive into Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah, a military operation that American officials have warned against because of the dense Palestinian civilian population at risk.
[…] White House officials have said that a ground invasion of the city without an accepted plan would create a humanitarian disaster.
Top administration officials were still able to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the past two days, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director William Burns and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin having “constructive discussions” that included Rafah, a U.S. official told The Hill.
Jean-Pierre told reporters that the officials “discussed how best to ensure Hamas’s lasting defeat in Gaza and the need to protect civilians,” but that it is important for officials to have heard from Netanyahu’s office on Rafah.
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @436: Trucks carrying hazardous materials are not allowed to use tunnels in many places, and I believe that applies in Maryland. So this is a non-solution to the problem.
It’s continually astounding, the lengths MAGA people will go to protect themselves from the fact that all rational people hate them, move out of their airspace when they find themselves downwind, don’t want to be around them, and that this even includes some Republicans. Further, rational people see that MAGA people are losers […] So many of their conspiracy theories start to make sense when you look at them through a psychological lens. What are they trying to shield themselves from? What humiliating deficiency are they trying to cover up?
Charlie Kirk […] spent time on his show today trying to convince himself and others that maybe there is a connection between the recent federal raids of Diddy’s houses and the recent resignations of Republican congressmen Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher. […] It’s not that he literally thinks Buck and Gallagher went to Diddy’s parties. (You can see the electric current short in his brain […])
But WHAT IF? Or maybe it’s something similar but not the same! Why why why why why! (Again, what truth is Charlie protecting himself from?)
Gonna give you the full quote Media Matters transcribed, because it’s hilarious to watch Charlie’s stupid conspiracy brain thinking it’s making connections and discovering things. […] Keep this in mind next time you hear a MAGA conservative say they “do their own research.” [video at the link]
CHARLIE KIRK: So this week, several of Diddy’s homes were raided by the Department of Homeland Security in a trafficking investigation. To me, that’s all whatever. I mean, it’s just some rapper. OK. Not a huge surprise.
Charlie doesn’t usually read news about Black people.
But it’s interesting because Diddy might have the potential to be a new version of Jeffrey Epstein with lots of people implicated in his behavior.
Might it?
So Diddy had these freak out parties, as reported even by Jesse Watters,
Even real journalists like Jesse Watters!
who was attended by high profile celebrities, athletes, politicians, and sponsored by some of the biggest names in the music industry. These parties allegedly had sex workers, drugs, and underage girls. Now, according to the lawsuit — this is where it gets very interesting — he has hundreds of hidden cameras in every room, meaning he would have had footage of every person who attended his parties and what they did there. He has ties to Jennifer Lopez, Prince Harry, 50 Cent. Old videos are starting to go viral of rapper 50 Cent warning people about Diddy for years. There’s pictures and videos of Diddy with Obama, Hillary, LeBron, Bieber, Jay-Z, and Beyonce, and so many others. Is it possible that P. Diddy has the same, let’s say, operation that Jeffrey Epstein had?
There goes that brain of his we were talking about.
We’re trying to find explanations as to why people like Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher are resigning early.
Did Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher do Epsteins at Diddy’s Freak Out Parties with Hillary and 50 Cent? Charlie Kirk is just asking!
Again, remember: The question here is what kind of rejection is Charlie protecting himself and his listeners from?
Now, I’m not saying that Mike Gallagher and Ken Buck went down to P. Diddy’s rapper freak out party.
He’s not crazy.
It’s [doesn’t] exactly fit the mold.
Diddy is Black, Republicans don’t go to Black people’s parties.
But it does connect some dots.
Does it? Which dots, Charlie?
We know that the intel agencies like to use honeypot operations. We know that the intel agencies use people like Jeffrey Epstein as, let’s just say, a compromised individual who can then use all the information as leverage.
Maybe P. Diddy has footage of Barack Obama doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Maybe he has footage of LeBron James, of Justin Bieber, of Jay-Z, of Beyonce, of finance moguls.
But does he have footage of Ken Buck and Jay-Z and Beyoncé?
I guess it goes without saying, P. Diddy didn’t kill himself.
Charlie Kirk writes his own jokes.
The Internet is going crazy with rumors, but the rumor that makes the most sense
Makes the most sense to Charlie Kirk.
with the cameras and with the high level people that have been involved in his operation is that P. Diddy is yet another example that there is a high-society blackmail network where they lure you in to do things that you think are private that actually get captured, gets cataloged, and gets used against you if you ever dare step out of line.
Charlie Kirk lives in the real world.
Why are they going after P. Diddy now? The answer to that is the same — is — the question I would say is why did they go after Jeffrey Epstein when they went after Jeffrey Epstein?
Note that Charlie isn’t answering any of these questions. He’s just asking them.
It seems more and more that this is an influence peddling and blackmail operation that was intended to enrich, empower, and insulate P. Diddy, and potentially give information and leverage back to whoever is managing and handling P. Diddy.
Well dang, Inspector Gadget has solved the case. Or at least he thinks he has.
Regardless, he’s protected himself from the fact that even Ken Buck thinks the Republican Party has turned into an embarrassing toilet bowl full of malignant floaters he never wants to be seen with again.
Reckoning with that truth is probably considerably more painful than fantasizing about what happens at Diddy’s parties.
A federal appeals court early Wednesday extended its hold on a new Texas immigration law, meaning the measure cannot go into effect while litigation continues. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote said in a decision issued overnight that the statute, known as Senate Bill 4, should remain blocked.
Puerto Rico has declared a public health emergency amid an ongoing outbreak of dengue infections, a mosquito-spread viral infection that can cause fever, aches, rash, vomiting, and, in about 5 percent of cases, a severe disease marked by internal bleeding and shock.
The US territory has tallied 549 cases since the start of the year, representing a 140 percent increase compared with cases tallied at this point last year, according to the territory’s health department. The Associated Press reported that more than 340 of the 549 cases have been hospitalized…
Former Democratic vice presidential nominee and Sen. Joe Lieberman has died at 82, according to a statement from his family.
“Former United States Senator Joseph I. Lieberman died this afternoon, March 27, 2024, in New York City due to complications from a fall. He was 82 years old. His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him as he passed. Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest,” the statement said.
Germany’s beloved sausage dog, the dachshund, could be under threat in the country, its national kennel club said Wednesday, citing a new draft law that looks to prohibit the breeding of dogs with “skeletal anomalies.”
The draft bill, published in February and currently being considered by the authorities, was introduced as part of the Animal Protection Act, which seeks to strengthen existing laws on so-called “torture breeding,” the German government said.
The document said it could ban the reproduction of breeds prone to particular problems, such as the frequent spinal issues seen in dogs with short legs and a long back…
If Minnesota’s support for protecting reproductive freedom wasn’t already clear, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz just made it so: His family used IVF, and he’s proud of it.
During Walz’s sixth State of the State address, the former teacher briefly shared his own family’s painful struggle to conceive.
Why hasn’t he shared this before? “Your personal decisions about your family are no one’s business but your own,” he said during the just over 23-minute speech…
Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark made a major slip-up on Wednesday, admitting during a disciplinary hearing to save his law license that he had one client in mind while dodging questions on the basis of attorney-client privilege: former President Donald Trump.
“Mr. Clark, you asserted a number of times attorney-client privilege,” prompted a committeewoman for the D.C. bar, Patricia Matthews. “For whom were you the attorney?”
“For President Trump, the head of the executive branch, the sole head, the unitary head of Article Two, the executive branch of the United States government,” Clark replied.
That was, however, more than Clark’s attorney expected him to share, thereafter urging his client to plead the Fifth in an attempt to avoid incriminating himself further…
Clark stands accused of attempting to engage in dishonest conduct on behalf of Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. That included Clark’s suggestion to send a letter to Georgia officials, underlining a DOJ investigation into the voting process in the state and suggesting that they should void President Joe Biden’s win. Clark also held multiple meetings with Trump that violated proper DOJ procedure, actions that the lead investigator described on Tuesday as “essentially a coup attempt at the Department of Justice.”
Clark is charged alongside Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and more than a dozen others in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. He has also been identified—but not charged—by federal prosecutors in Trump’s D.C. trial as part of a larger scheme to help Trump retain power.
The presidents of France and Brazil on Wednesday launched a submarine built in the South American country with French technology in a program that aims to build Brazil’s first nuclear-powered submarine by the end of the decade.
Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended a ceremony in the Itaguai shipyard near Rio de Janeiro launching the third diesel-powered submarine built in a $10 billion partnership…
birgerjohanssonsays
Trumps (and Epsteins) creepy thing about very young women made me recall this gem from way back
The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled a series of voting reform laws passed by the state Legislature in 2021 violate the fundamental right to vote.
The ruling, issued Wednesday, reaffirms a 2022 lower court ruling that found four voting-related bills from the 2021 Legislature session are unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.
The case combined a challenge against Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen brought by the Montana Democratic Party and various youth organizations with a case from Western Native Voice and other Native American-focused organizations.
The four bills in question included one that eliminated same-day voter registration and closed registration at 12 p.m. the day before an election. Pointing to the lower court’s finding that same-day registration was “wildly popular” and tens of thousands have used it to vote, the state’s high court affirmed the law “interferes with fundamental voting rights.”
One of the laws prevented a 17-year-old individual who would be 18 by election day from receiving and voting with an absentee ballot, which would’ve contradicted current state law accepting new voters’ ballots by mail if they were 18 by election day…
A California judge on Wednesday recommended the disbarment of John Eastman, calling to revoke the law license of one of former President Donald Trump’s top allies in his failed last-ditch gambit to subvert the 2020 election.
Judge Yvette Roland, who presided over months of testimony and argument about the basis of Eastman’s fringe legal theories, ruled that the veteran conservative attorney violated ethics rules — and even potentially criminal law — when he advanced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results based on weak or discredited claims of fraud.
Though Eastman may appeal Roland’s decision, including to the state Supreme Court, the ruling forces his law license into “inactive” status while any review is pending, meaning he can no longer practice law in California…
Just three days after her first on-air appearance, NBCUniversal announced that former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel “will not be an NBC News contributor.”
It’s a rare victory in the fight against disinformation and what may be most charitably described as “bullshit artists” being further integrated into a broadly distrusted news media. It’s also an even rarer victory in the fight between journalists defending their integrity versus management more interested in boosting ratings at a time when the loss of journalism jobs continues at a record pace.
It seems likely that McDaniel, who was awarded a two-year contract, will receive around $30,000 per minute for her single paid appearance on “Face the Nation.” Let’s hope that cutting a $600,000 check to someone who probably spent more time in the makeup chair than in front of the cameras might prompt NBC News’ management to think twice about their next stunt hire.
For the moment, there still seems to be a red line that the owners and managers of news outlets cannot cross. Paid pundits who support the overthrow of our government and an end to democracy will have to go back to their natural home: Fox News.
McDaniel had no reason to think that she shouldn’t cash in on her connection to Trump. After all, she would hardly be the first.
Fox News has, as might be expected, been a regular jobs program for former Trump staffers and officials. That includes former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and former Trump administration economic adviser Larry Kudlow, both of whom were rewarded with their own shows.
In 2022, CBS hired former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney as a pundit, despite confusion and protests from journalists at the network. Mulvaney infamously admitted that Trump held up aid to Ukraine over demands that Ukraine announce investigations into Democrats, then tried to deny he ever said that. He also joined Trump in downplaying the danger of COVID-19 and accused the media of trying to “instill fear” by reporting on the virus.
As an MSNBC columnist wrote at the time, “One can only assume that the CBS newsroom leadership has suffered a mass amnesia event. That is the only reason I can come up with to hire Mulvaney, a partisan hack devoid of any sense of ethics who lacks the authority to offer credible analysis on his own breakfast, let alone fiscal policy.”
None of that kept Mulvaney from keeping his job at CBS. It also didn’t stop “the Tiffany network” from hiring former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster. And despite claims that the network took “heat” over these decisions, CBS stuck to its guns.
The big difference between CBS sticking with Mulvaney and NBC having to swallow their payment to McDaniel is simple: Journalists put themselves on the line to fight the McDaniel hire.
It wasn’t just the long and excellent tirade from skilled commentator Rachel Maddow (though Maddow’s willingness to absolutely go there certainly made any thought of McDaniel making another on-air appearance seem ludicrous). McDaniel can also credit her ticket out of town to others who were willing to publicly condemn an action taken by their bosses. That includes Chuck Todd, whose milquetoast run as host of “Meet the Press” would not put him at the top of anyone’s list of journalistic firebrands, but who set the tone for McDaniel’s chilly reception. [video at the link]
That “don’t hire lying insurrectionists” red line might as well have Todd’s name inscribed on it.
Taking their grievance over McDaniel’s hiring and making public, on-air statements that were 180 degrees opposed to their management was an act of journalistic bravery by Todd, Maddow, and others. That brave act was also largely enabled by the name recognition and status that both Todd and Maddow enjoy. Had either of them sat quietly, it’s not clear how many others would have been able to stand up.
CBS kept Mulvaney because the reported fight there stayed largely behind the scenes. NBC could not afford to keep McDaniel because the on-air talent took their disagreement with management in front of the cameras, causing very public embarrassment. Even for big names, that’s an act of high chutzpah.
When it comes to defining that red line, Chris Hayes did a pretty good job. [video at the link]
TV news programs today:
One had the headline ‘to live comfortably in Phoenix’, az, you must make ~$102,000
Another told of a well-to-do city in Colorado where even doctors’ incomes won’t enable them to buy a house.
And, in Sedona az, they are converting parking lots to let people live in their cars because only millionaires can afford rent, and we won’t even talk about that it takes to be able to buy a house there.
More than half of Americans are using ad blocking software, and among advertising, programming, and security professionals that fraction is more like two-thirds to three-quarters.
According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.
More striking are the figures cited for technically savvy users who have worked at least five years in their respective fields – veteran advertisers, programmers, and cybersecurity experts.
The Censuswide report indicates that 66 percent of experienced advertisers, 72 percent of experienced programmers, and 76 percent of cybersecurity experts use ad blockers…
A recent paper published in Nature demonstrates that hyperfluorescent OLEDs could significantly reduce the energy required to display the color blue – potentially mitigating, but not solving, screen burn-in.
The study was conducted by researchers from several academic institutions, primarily the University of Cambridge. Poetically titled “Suppression of Dexter transfer by covalent encapsulation for efficient matrix-free narrowband deep blue hyperfluorescent OLEDs,” the paper was published earlier this month…
Instead of trying to find the perfect molecule for emitting blue light, Dr Congrave and his colleagues proposed a dual-molecule hyperfluorescence solution. “Rather than expecting a single type of molecule to achieve all of these things, the idea of hyperfluorescence is to share the work between different molecules that individually do a good job at dealing with the piece of the puzzle that they are allocated,” Congrave explained.
The two primary components of hyperfluorescence – a term coined by scientist Chihaya Adachi and trademarked by display materials specialist Kyulux – are the sensitizer molecule and the terminal emitter molecule. The sensitizer is supposed to efficiently transfer energy into the terminal emitter, which then emits a pure color…
According to panpsychism, everything in the world is inherently soulful with an internal mind. Is this a clue to understanding our universe or just metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? …
Definitely mumbo-jumbo.
It’s pay-walled, so I will never know who those “scientists” are.
Health supplement products believed to have caused two deaths and sickened more than 100 people have been ordered to be taken off store shelves in Japan.
The products from Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co., billed as helping to lower cholesterol, contained an ingredient called “benikoji,” a red species of mold.
In addition to the products from Osaka-based Kobayashi, more than 40 products from other companies containing benikoji, including miso paste, crackers and a vinegar dressing, were recalled, starting last week, a government health ministry official said Wednesday.
At least 106 people had been hospitalized, and many more are believed to have been sickened, although it’s unclear if all the illnesses are directly linked to benikoji (pronounced beh-nee-koh-jeeh).
The ministry has put up a list on its official site of all the recalled products, including some that use benikoji for food coloring…
The House Ethics Committee announced Tuesday it is investigating Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas).
The Ethics panel did not disclose the topic of the investigation, but Nehls in a statement said the probe is focused on his campaign’s finances. The Texas Republican said he will assist the panel in its investigation…
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@462,
In today’s podcast we ask: Could Rupert Shedrake be Conscious?
As summarized from an Associated Press article by Steve Benen:
Biden will join Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for a fundraising event at Radio City Music Hall tonight in New York, and organizers have said the gathering has raised a whopping $25 million. This is, in other words, poised to be the single most successful fundraising event in modern American history.
Some highlights from the 128-page ruling by state Judge Yvette Roland:
“Most of his misconduct occurred squarely within the course and scope of Eastman’s representation of President Trump and culminated with a shared plan to obstruct the lawful function of the government.”
“The evidence clearly and convincingly proves that Eastman and President Trump entered into an agreement to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress by unlawfully having Vice President Pence reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.”
In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon.
… But what if you could update the device while it’s still in the box? That’s the latest plan cooked up by Apple, which is close to rolling out a system that will let Apple Stores wirelessly update new iPhones while they’re still in their boxes. The new system is called “Presto.”
French site iGeneration has the first-ever picture of what this setup looks like. It starts with a clearly Apple-designed silver rack that holds iPhones and has a few lights on the front. The site (through translation) calls the device a “toaster,” and yes, it looks like a toaster oven or food heating rack…
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has been writing about whispers of this project for months, saying in one article that the device can “wirelessly turn on the iPhone, update its software and then power it back down—all without the phone’s packaging ever being opened.” In another article, he wrote that the device uses “MagSafe and other wireless technologies.” The iGeneration report also mentions that the device uses NFC, and there are “templates” that help with positioning the various-sized iPhone boxes so the NFC and wireless charging will work. With that wireless charging, downloading, and installing, all while being isolated in a cardboard box, Apple’s “toaster” probably gets pretty hot…
All was going swimmingly for multimillionaire ex-addict Mike Lindell until about about four years ago, when he found a drug that’s far more dangerous than crack. It was around that time when the celebrated Moaning Mustache of Mankato became a Donald Trump superfan, and his ultimate fate was sealed.
The now-infamous pillow magnate […] is 100% desperate as his once-promising life continues to devolve into a cautionary tale. And he has Donald Trump, destroyer of worlds, to thank for it.
Lindell, who by his own admission has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to overturn the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf, is still threatened by billion-dollar-plus lawsuits launched by two voting machine companies he allegedly defamed while attempting to boost Trump’s baseless stolen-election claims. And last October, the attorneys representing him in those suits dropped him over lack of payment.
Now he’s getting evicted. Or his pillows are, anyway.
CBS News:
A judge evicted Minnesota-based MyPillow from a facility in Shakopee after the landlord filed a lawsuit claiming that the company, owned by Mike Lindell, was at least $200,000 behind on rent payments.
In the lawsuit, First Industrial, LP claimed the pillow company had defaulted on four months of rent in the last year, and had also not paid rent in February or March of 2024. In all, the Delaware-based real estate firm said it was owed $217,489.74. […]
Lindell, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, has faced slew of financial problems as he is in the midst of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, saying that he falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic filed a similar defamation lawsuit seeking over $1 billion.
If there’s one lesson every American should have learned by now, it’s don’t get in bed with Trump—either literally or figuratively. It won’t end well.
Of course, Lindell’s comeuppance arrives at an apt time, as hoards of callow Trump fans pump up the new “DJT” stock attached to The Big Liar’s Truth Social platform, which has roughly the earning potential of a nude skinhead busking outside a Bay Area Lululemon.
They’ll learn—as the investors in Trump’s first public company did—that Trump’s grifts are as absurd and empty as his promises. In fact, it would have behooved anyone thinking of investing in Trump’s new stock to research whether he’s ever launched a public company before. And, if he has, to find out what became of it.
And it turns out there’s good reason to believe this stock will eventually tank. Just look at its paltry user base and the grim state of its financials—or the fact that its future is almost entirely dependent on a 77-year-old man who has been down this road before. And Trump’s investors got royally screwed as the shares in his first public company lost 90% of their value in just five years.
CNN:
While Trump Media may be new, its stock ticker is a throwback to Trump’s only other publicly traded company. Trump bestowed the same initials on his Atlantic City casino business, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, back when that company went public in 1995. […]
Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts never turned a profit and ended up in bankruptcy in 2004, wiping out shareholders.
Trump’s company lost money every single year of its existence, putting it more than $600 million in the red — despite owning premier Atlantic City casinos, including the Trump Taj Mahal, a place so opulent Trump called it “the eighth wonder of the world.”
[…]
The Washington Post, June 12, 2016:
In its short life, Trump the company greatly enriched Trump the businessman, paying to have his personal jet piloted and buying heaps of Trump-brand merchandise. Despite losing money every year under Trump’s leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in the year the company’s stock plummeted 70 percent.
Many of those who lost money were Main Street shareholders who believed in the Trump brand, such as Sebastian Pignatello, a retired private investor in Queens. By the time of the 2004 bankruptcy, Pignatello’s 150,000 shares were worth pennies on the dollar.
“He had been pillaging the company all along,” said Pignatello, who joined shareholders in a lawsuit against Trump that has since been settled. “Even his business allies, they were all fair game. He has no qualms about screwing anybody. That’s what he does.”
Noooooooooo! You don’t say.
Of course, Trump’s original public company at least had some tangible assets to fall back on. His new venture is built almost entirely on vulgar non sequiturs and random Catturd posts. That said, it could get a valuable lifeline if Trump ever becomes president again.
As MSNBC columnist Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, notes, the platform would present a serious conflict of interest if the Thousand-Year Trumpian Reich were ever to commence.
Though the new company’s stock opened Tuesday at more than $70 a share, Truth Social alone lost millions a month last year. And the last time a Trump company went public — with the ticker symbol DJT, no less — Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts lost more than $1 billion and went bankrupt. There’s little reason to think that this deal will end well for anyone other than for Trump.
As considerable as investors’ risks are, however, the risk facing the country is even greater. On top of the multiple civil judgments and criminal cases still pending against him, Trump’s third presidential run already threatened to bring back the legion of conflicts of interest surrounding his real estate business. Now, add to that a social media company.
Truth Social is nowhere near as big as X and Facebook, but the 2024 election will surely drive up traffic on the site. And should Trump win, Truth Social will become the principal communication vehicle of the most powerful person in the world. Furthermore, a President Trump would once again control the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates social media. As he reminded us during his past presidency, the federal financial conflict of interest statute does not apply to the president. Truth Social’s larger competitors such as X and Meta will learn to work with Trump — to his advantage of course — or suffer the wrath of a his new administration.
In other words, we could all get screwed by Trump’s new company, even if we’re wise enough to avoid buying what no less an authority than The Wall Street Journal has already dismissed as a meme stock.
Then again, Trump has been fucking over the little guy for decades. To quote the now-far-wiser Pignatello, “That’s what he does.”
And it really is what he does. In June 2016, as the rolling nightmare of the Trump years was just entering its REM cycle, USA Today published a jaw-dropping exposé on Trump’s business practices, which appear to have been singularly focused on ruining the lives of small businesspeople.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
So why do people still throw in with this toxic grifter when it’s become abundantly clear that everything—and everyone—he touches turns to dross? You’ll have to ask the new DJT investors who are currently standing neck-deep in hog shit but have somehow convinced themselves it’s a healing mud bath at an exclusive Manhattan day spa.
After all, if Lindell still can’t see how thoroughly Trump has ruined his life, what chance do these jabronis have?
Lots and lots of video proof, photos, emails and other receipts! Amazing.
Lev Parnas has loads of information on the Trump clown car show. He and Jared Moskowitz were in the House testifying, after all, and they used the Comer impeachment farce to launch zingers and destroy the GOP-led hearing in the most humiliating way possible. […]
Last night, Parnas, seething at Trump and other confederacy members, shared a short video of Rudy Giuliani on Twitter pressuring Victor Shokin, a former prosecutor for Ukraine, to find dirt on President Joe Biden. I like to call this unimpeachable evidence of crimes against the United States of America. […]
Example:
Never before seen video of Rudy Giuliani questioning Viktor Shokin.
Rudy – “Was there ever any specific act that any of these people performed”? “Did they get a kick back”? “Did they get a bribe”?
Shokin – No!
Much more at the link. Most of it is horrifying and entertaining at the same time.
“So, what continues to motivate Donald Trump’s and his MAGA followers hatred of Ukraine?
Simply, they hate that Ukraine was unwilling to illegally meddle in American politics to help-out the Trump campaign.”
Ukraine is using a network of thousands of mobile phones deployed across the country to track incoming drones and missiles.
The project, which Ukrainian sources have said is too secretive to discuss in detail, was disclosed by the US Air Force’s most senior officer in Europe at a recent event.
General James Hecker, head of US Air Forces in Europe, described the most simplistic acoustic sensors as a network of thousands of mobile phones attached to 6ft poles.
Kyiv’s national air defence command and control network, known as “Virazh”, relies on at least 40 separate kinds of sensor networks to detect, track and identify airborne threats.
The acoustic sensors gather uncharacteristic sounds from the environment before artificial intelligence is used to establish whether anomalies are incoming kamikaze drones or missiles…
At the start of a slickly produced 19-minute YouTube video titled “How T.Rex Arms Got Started,” Lucas Botkin, the company’s 30-year-old founder, runs through an obstacle course. A guitar-heavy soundtrack plays as Botkin, decked out in tactical gear and filtered through overwrought video effects, picks off targets with a variety of handguns and rifles. We briefly see the course from his eyes, first-person-shooter style.
When the drums bang to a halt, the video cuts to an interview where Botkin explains his company’s mission. “We try to produce thought-provoking content and educational content that inspires people to understand their obligations to God and country and their responsibilities,” he says, over more shooting footage. “Then we equip them with the equipment necessary so they can fulfill those obligations and those responsibilities with maximum effectiveness.”
T.Rex Arms, a Tennessee-based, family-run, Christian firearms accessory company—think holsters, body armor, and the like—is at the forefront of what extremism researchers call GunTube, an ecosphere of gun influencers whose videos peddle a wide range of conservative content. The company has more than 1.5 million YouTube subscribers; its origin story video has been viewed more than 900,000 times. Botkin, who can cut a nerdy presence when digging into gun minutiae, has nearly half a million Instagram followers and enough right-wing cachet to have been an ambassador for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and have earned an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show the month before he left the network.
[…] In weekly “T.Rex Talks,” Lucas and his brothers sit in a dimly lit studio to discuss America in decay, and how like-minded, God-oriented people can save it. They often reference the end times and urge their viewers to seize control before things get worse. […]
“They were pushing every single one of the narratives that we’ve seen emerge out of the right-wing space,” says Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who reviewed T.Rex Arms’ videos at Mother Jones’ request. By pairing Second Amendment fearmongering with broader culture war issues, he says, the Botkins have identified a “common enemy” for their large, mostly male audience: “It’s laying it out there that tyranny is coming and needs to be resisted with arms.”
[…] The elder Botkin is a preacher and author who adheres to a hardline version of Christianity and is an advocate of the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, which encourages women to live with their parents until marriage, after which they are meant to give birth as much as possible so Christians can rule over society. […] On Instagram, Lucas has called his father, who serves on the company’s board, “the man responsible for much of the backbone and principles behind T.Rex Arms.”
[…] T.Rex Arms content is infused with an ideology that jibes with his father’s beliefs. “Weapons are a part of my religion—not in a ceremonial way,” Isaac says in a video where he claims the Founding Fathers drew on “scriptural tradition” when framing the Second Amendment. “Using tools to fulfill the responsibilities that I believe that I have because of my religion is very important…weapons are sometimes the tools required.”
These sorts of messages fit into a larger Christian nationalist framework, says University of Oklahoma sociologist Samuel Perry. “Along with the support for authoritarian violence is undeniably a view that ‘we have been persecuted, done wrong, that we are hated, that the left is in control of our society and we have to take it back,’” Perry says. “It’s difficult to talk about guns and the celebration of gun culture without talking about the patriarchy, the fascination with high-fertility families, and the fascination with violence and the broader populist movement. It’s all in there.”
The White House has announced the “first government-wide policy to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits.” To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with “significant expertise in AI.”
Some agencies have already appointed chief AI officers, but any agency that has not must appoint a senior official over the next 60 days. If an official already appointed as a chief AI officer does not have the necessary authority to coordinate AI use in the agency, they must be granted additional authority or else a new chief AI officer must be named…
This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that his running mate would not be any of the 87 names he tossed out there in recent weeks but rather Nicole Shanahan, an attorney and “avid surfer” who, so far, has donated lots of money to his campaign, including spending $4 million on that Super Bowl campaign ad that Kennedy had to apologize to his family for. She was also the “creative force” behind that ad.
Like RFK Jr., Shanahan say that she is not an anti-vaxxer, just that she wants to have conversations about vaccines. [That’s a rhetorical dodge. She is obscuring her actual views.]
Via The New York Times:
She said part of her motivation was concern about the environment, vaccines and children’s health, and her belief that Mr. Kennedy was willing to challenge the scientific establishment.
“I do wonder about vaccine injuries,” she said, although she clarified that she is “not an anti-vaxxer,” but wanted more screening of risks for vaccinations. “I think there needs to be a space to have these conversations.”
I don’t know that she actually does want to have these conversations, at least not with anyone who will ask her what it is, specifically, that she “wonders” about vaccine injuries or asks what she knows about how vaccines are screened for risks now versus what she thinks would need to be done to screen them properly. Like we all don’t know how this game is played by now. [correct analysis]
Shanahan, who was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is also a big fan of “alternative medicine” and has also been vocally opposed to IVF, calling it “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.”
Via Politico:
At the same time, she has also been a vocal proponent of and financial backer for unconventional research into the possibility of helping women having children into their 50s and exploring no-cost interventions to help women conceive, such as exposure to sunlight.
“I’m not sure that there has been a really thorough mitochondrial respiration study on the effects of two hours of morning sunlight on reproductive health. I would love to fund something like that,” Shanahan said to a 2023 panel with the National Academy of Medicine, a group to which she had previously donated $100 million.
The statement was met with chuckles, “Yeah, let’s do it,” she added. “I just have an intuition that could be interesting and maybe work.”
There has not been any really thorough research into how putting cotton balls soaked with cod liver oil into one’s ears or starting each day with a ten-minute twirl-a-thon affects one’s reproductive health either, because that would just be silly.
To be fair, it’s not quite that ridiculous. We do know that Vitamin D (which you can also get from milk or supplements or by other means), like many other vitamins, can have a positive effect on fertility and pregnancy in general. There was also one study showing women over the age of 30 have higher levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) in spring and autumn than they do in winter. (AMH is related to egg count.)
Via Medical News Today:
The levels of AMH during months of moderate solar radiation exposure were overall higher than months that had high or low-intensity solar radiation levels.
They also found that participants in the 30–40-year group who had AMH levels collected during the summer months had much higher AMH levels than participants who had AMH levels collected during the winter months.
Researchers further divided participants into 30–35-year and 36-40-year groups. In the 30–35-year group, they did not find a significant correlation between solar radiation intensity or season and AMH levels. In the 36–40 group, they discovered that AMH levels were higher in the months of moderate solar intensity and higher in the summer compared to winter.
That doesn’t exactly translate into “maybe you can be more fertile if you spend two hours in morning sunlight every day.” It certainly does not suggest that it would be better than IVF.
Much like her vaccine takes, Shanahan’s thoughts on IVF, though critical, are astoundingly vague.
Via Politico:
“It became abundantly clear that we just don’t have enough science for the things that we are telling and selling women,” Shanahan told the Australian Financial Review. “It’s one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today,” she said.
And in a personal essay for People Magazine in 2022, in which she detailed her split from her ex-husband and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, she said, “I believe IVF is sold irresponsibly, and in my own experience with natural childbirth has led me to understand that the fertility industry is deeply flawed.”
It seems that her own experience was that a fertility clinic told her that she wasn’t a good candidate for IVF due to her polycystic ovary syndrome, which actually isn’t entirely true. Many people with PCOS have conceived with the help of IVF and one bad experience with one fertility clinic is not exactly a reason to try to replace it with a heavy dose of sunshine.
Admittedly, I am not an expert in these matters, but those who are experts are quite certain that Shanahan is full of it.
“Reasonable people could have concerns with bioethics, or a lot of us have concerns with how a lot of science is marketed and mass produced, right?” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All told Politico. “I’m sure there’s a tiny little kernel and rationale behind all of this. But at the end of the day, IVF has been a long-established reproductive health technology, and Nicole Shanahan, bless her, is not a medical expert.”
It does feel worth mentioning that a lot of anti-vaxxers these days are also very anti-sunscreen. It’s a whole thing where they insist that the Left is trying to keep people out of the sun to make them unhealthy, and an extension of the “if it’s natural it’s good, if it’s unnatural it’s bad” branch of junk science.
Some have even gone so far as to claim that sunglasses are bad for you. [Screen grabs of posts available at the link]
To be clear, for the 47,000th time, you have to wear sunscreen every day, if you are going outside, even when you are not going to burn.
This also seems like it might be somewhat related to Tucker Carlson’s ball-tanning habit, though I couldn’t tell you for sure. It truly doesn’t seem like a fully-formed idea on either end.
Now, we all know that this woman is not going to be vice president, because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not going to be president. But it seems like a good idea, if she’s going to be somewhat in the national spotlight, to cut this nonsense off at the pass before we have a bunch of acolytes out there risking skin cancer in hopes of getting knocked up.
South Carolina to use congressional map deemed unconstitutional.
Washington Post link
The Supreme Court heard arguments on the redistricting case in October but has yet to rule, essentially running out the clock for this year’s election.
A federal court ruled Thursday that time had run out to draw a new congressional district in South Carolina and said the state could use its existing map this year even though it had earlier determined that map was unconstitutional.
The panel of three judges last year concluded that South Carolina’s Republican-led legislature “exiled” 30,000 Black voters from the district to make it safer for a White GOP incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace.
South Carolina appealed, and both sides asked the Supreme Court to expedite the case to ensure a final ruling was in place well ahead of election season. The justices heard arguments in October but have yet to rule.
With no decision and the June 11 primary on the horizon, South Carolina sought permission to use the map this year even though it had been deemed unconstitutional. The panel of judges unanimously agreed Thursday to keep the map in place for this election. […]
In December 2020, astronomers spotted an unusual burst of light in a galaxy roughly 848 million light-years away—a region with a supermassive black hole at the center that had been largely quiet until then. The energy of the burst mysteriously dipped about every 8.5 days before the black hole settled back down, akin to having a case of celestial hiccups.
Now scientists think they’ve figured out the reason for this unusual behavior. The supermassive black hole is orbited by a smaller black hole that periodically punches through the larger object’s accretion disk during its travels, releasing a plume of gas. This suggests that black hole accretion disks might not be as uniform as astronomers thought, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances…
A 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Wednesday that Pennsylvania can disregard mailed ballots that were received in time for the election but that lack a date or list an incorrect date on the outer envelope — despite all parties agreeing that election offices don’t actually use that handwritten date.
The 2-1 majority overturned a lower court which had ruled that “federal law prohibits a state from erecting immaterial roadblocks, such as this, to voting.” [yep, that makes sense]
[…] The Republican National Committee (RNC) and other Republican organizations secured a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just before the 2022 midterms asserting that county boards of elections must disregard ballots in envelopes that are incorrectly dated or that do not include a date. As a result, per Wednesday’s dissent, 10,000 timely received ballots cast in the midterms were not counted. [yikes!]
The state Supreme Court made its unanimous ruling under state law, but was evenly split on whether tossing the ballots violates the federal Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act, meant to prohibit states from using trivial mistakes to disqualify people from voting. States had historically used such mistakes as pretext to bar Black voters from the polls.
[…] Judge Thomas Ambro, a Clinton appointee, wrote for the 3rd Circuit majority that the Materiality Provision only covers whether someone is qualified to vote, and cannot preempt state rules related to casting a ballot. In a myopically textualist reading, Ambro insisted that the Materiality Provision is limited, despite the intent of the law being to sweep away facially neutral bars to voting (indeed, as the dissent cites, disqualification on such bases continues to disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color in Pennsylvania in the present day).
Adding a layer of surrealism to the ruling, Ambro made plain that the majority finds the handwritten date requirement, which is not used at all to determine a ballot’s validity, pointless — but maintains that the thousands of ballots that will inevitably lack or have the wrong date should be thrown out. [WTF?]
[…] The ballots disqualified due to incorrect dates in the 2022 midterm were disproportionately Democratic, and Democrats continue to use mail-in voting more than Republicans in the state (a partisan divide in voting habits intensified by Donald Trump’s persistent and baseless demonizing of mail-in voting as unsafe). The partisan layer explains why the RNC, National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican Party of Pennsylvania intervened to argue for upholding the date requirement.
[…] “In a same-day registration jurisdiction, a voter could make a paperwork mistake on the registration form that the Materiality Provision would forgive,” she [Judge Patty Shwartz, an Obama appointee, wrote in dissent ] provided as an example. “If, however, moments later the voter made the identical mistake on another document requisite to voting, then, under the Majority’s view, the Materiality Provision would not apply and the ballot could be discarded. Such an outcome would be inconsistent with the plain meaning of the Materiality Provision and Congress’s goals in enacting it.”
She also faulted the majority for denying the intent of the provision.
“…it is illogical to conclude that Congress, who was seeking to ensure that Black Americans could vote, intended to enact legislation that only allowed Black Americans to register to vote but gave no regard to whether those same individuals could actually have their votes counted once registered,” she added.
The majority sent the case back down for the plaintiffs to argue under their equal protection challenge, which election law scholar Rick Hasen wrote may be a “tough claim to make.”
The case will likely eventually reach the Supreme Court, and could affect the 2024 election. President Joe Biden won the commonwealth by about 80,000 votes in 2020; Trump won it by about 44,000 votes in 2016. For down-ballot races, those margins are often even tighter.
“One can only hope that election officials do not capitalize on the Majority’s narrow interpretation of the Materiality Provision by enacting unduly technical and immaterial post-registration paperwork requirements that could silence the voices of qualified voters,” Shwartz concluded ominously.
As reports and surveys indicate a creeping nostalgia and collective amnesia about Donald Trump’s presidency, one of his worst ideas is gaining steam again: tariffs.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent the first part of his Wednesday night broadcast breaking down Trump’s campaign promise to add a 10% tariff to all imported goods. He explained how this cost “will just be passed along to consumers in a sales tax on every single good.”
With tax cuts that allowed billionaires to pay less taxes than working-class Americans, a mismanaged pandemic, and the worst jobs record in modern American history, Trump’s economic braintrust was an undebatable disaster. In a bizarre turn, Larry Kudlow, the architect of Trump’s current campaign promise, is the same Larry Kudlow who criticized Trump’s 2018 tariffs on steel and aluminum as “tax hikes” being passed on to the American consumer.
Americans are feeling the brunt of “greedflation,” and Hayes’ segment aimed to warn voters already worried over the rising cost of living in the United States about the “Trump tax.”
“If you’re a single-issue inflation voter, there is only one candidate who wants to put a 10% tax that will be passed along to consumers as a sales tax on every single good that’s imported,” Hayes began. [video at the link]
Here is an excerpt from the transcript, (the full transcript is available at the link):
Chris Hayes: I know it sounds like I’m making this up, but genuinely, and I want to be clear here, his core economic policy proposal right now is an across-the-board consumer sales tax for every single good imported into the United States.
Now, he may call it a tariff, but it will just be passed along to consumers in a sales tax on every single good that is imported. And again, you do not need to take my word for it, just listen to Donald Trump himself.
Donald Trump: Number one, I think we should have a ring around the collar, as they say. I think when companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay automatically—let’s say a 10% tax.
“I’m a big believer in tariffs for two reasons. Number one, I fully believe in them economically when you’re being taken advantage of by other countries. I would say to China, if you’re building a plant on our border to build cars in Mexico and to sell them into the United States, I’m putting a 50% tariff on all those cars.
Maria Bartiromo: You used tariffs and sanctions against China.
Trump: I did, and I did very well with it. As you know, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes through the tariffs, taxes and tariffs. [That is not true. Trump is being ignorant here, he doesn’t know how tariffs really work. And/or he is just lying as usual.]
Bartiromo: Is that what you want to do again?
Trump: We have to do it.
Hayes: Okay. If you’re a single-issue inflation voter, there is only one candidate who wants to put a 10% tax that will be passed along to consumers as a sales tax on every single good that’s imported. And here’s the thing, this is not a hypothetical.
Trump did a miniature version of this last time he was president when he put tariffs on different Chinese goods.
Here’s how that worked out: According to analysis by the New York Fed, the average import tariff rate more than doubled in 2018 alone. It tangibly led to higher domestic consumer prices. Take the first two tariffs on washing machines and steel. Economists found that consumer prices for washing machines, which have been going down steadily since 2012, almost immediately jumped back up after Trump’s tariffs […]
Democratic-aligned Center for American Progress found that Trump’s proposed new tariffs would cost typical households an extra $1,500 dollars per year. […]
Among the many industries suffering is the solar industry, with tariffs on steel and solar panels. But steel commodity prices went up by 25% instantaneously, hitting all manner of goods from cars to appliances. And it made U.S. export cars less competitive internationally, and ironically incentivized U.S. manufacturers of large steel things to take production overseas in order to benefit from lower commodity prices in Europe and Asia.
——————–
GAWD. tRump still doesn’t know how tariffs work…and this is the idiot people think should be running the country again. There’s just no understanding the stupidity. There are no words.
————————
People believed Trump when he said he would/could make China pay for those tariffs.
———————-
Just to be clear, this would be the largest tax increase in the history of the United States. The annual value of imported goods is about $4 trillion. So that’s a $400 billion tax increase. It would also be regressive, hitting the poorest Americans the hardest.
——————–
Tariffs are only useful if you have American made products directly competing with imports, and the US can produce all we need. Then the higher cost of the imports makes the American made a better value.
———————
Even companies that manufacture and assemble products in the U.S. import parts and raw materials
The Social Security Administration has issued a final rule that will prevent food assistance from reducing payments to certain beneficiaries.
The change applies to Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, which provides monthly checks to adults and children who are disabled, blind or age 65 and older, and have little or no income or resources.
Approximately 7.4 million Americans receive support either exclusively from SSI or in combination with Social Security.
Under the new rule, which goes into effect Sept. 30, food will no longer count toward calculations for eligibility for benefits, known as In-Kind Support and Maintenance, or ISM.
Currently, support in the form of food, shelter or both may count as unearned income for SSI beneficiaries, and therefore reduce their payments or affect their eligibility for benefits. […]
The Social Security Administration, in turn, will no longer have to use its limited resources to document every time a beneficiary received free food and then cut their monthly benefit by as much as a third, she said.
“It represents a really meaningful step to address one of the most complex, burdensome and inhumane policies impacting people with disabilities that receive SSI,” Milburn said.
[…] Congress may have the opportunity to enact bigger changes to SSI through a bipartisan bill that would raise the asset limits for beneficiaries to $10,000 for individuals, up from $2,000, and to $20,000 for married couples, up from $3,000.
“Disability affects everybody, so it’s a bipartisan issue,” Foley said.
“Restricting asset limits to the $2,000 level really impacts people’s ability to save and build a better financial future,” he said. […]
A judge ruled on Wednesday that the first vice chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, who’d made public claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, voted illegally nine times.
Brian K. Pritchard, who hosts a conservative talk show, was accused of illegally voting in Georgia while on probation after pleading guilty to felony check forgery in Pennsylvania in 1996…
Several members of the Michigan GOP—including the head of the party—made an incredibly embarrassing mistake about why a group of buses arrived at the Wayne County Airport.
On Wednesday, Michigan state Representative Matt Maddock posted a couple of photos capturing three buses waiting outside a hangar at Detroit Metro accompanied by a police escort. And the Republican didn’t waste any time looking for an answer before catapulting his theory into the social media stratosphere: It was the arrival of an army of undocumented immigrants.
“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Maddock posted on X, tagging the state’s GOP chairman, Pete Hoekstra.
A local radio host, Justin Barclay, also joined in on elevating the lie, quote-tweeting it with a side-eye emoji, which was then reposted by Hoekstra.
But the buses in question were actually arriving to scoop up a group of college-age American boys, better known as the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, who had just arrived by plane for March Madness…
A Russian-backed “propaganda” network has been broken up for spreading anti-Ukraine stories and paying unnamed European politicians, according to authorities in several countries.
Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.
The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European politics.
Voice of Europe did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Czech media, citing intelligence sources, reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary were paid by Voice of Europe in order to influence upcoming elections for the European Parliament.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel said the money was either handed over in cash in covert meetings in Prague or through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk is alleged by the Czech Republic to be behind the network…
Donald Trump is facing criticism after attending the wake of slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller even as he’s pushing for the pardoning of January 6 rioters who battled with US Capitol and Washington DC police officers just over three years ago…
At the age of 42, Aquilino Gonell had to retire from his career as a police officer because of the injuries he sustained on January 6, 2021 during the insurrection.
In a statement to The Independent on Thursday, Mr Gonell said of Mr Trump: “As the opportunistic grifter that he is, he claims to support the police, law and order, the rule of law yet, he has not met with any officers from Capitol Police who were injured and assaulted or the ones that lost their lives because of his actions and inaction in his attempt to cling to power and the mob that he incited and wanted to lead.” …
The White House announced Thursday the theme for its annual Easter Egg Roll.
The Easter tradition, which has been held annually on the White House lawn since the late 19th century, will be hosted by first lady Jill Biden and themed around “EGGucation.” …
Pierce R. Butlersays
The Ballad of Buckley’s Blowhard: a fairly comprehensive and scathing remembrance of Holy Joe Lieberman by “Lawyers, Guns and Money” blogger Erik Loomis.
…
Forever remembered for his career-defining roles in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and the influential television miniseries “Roots,” Gossett died Thursday night in Santa Monica, his nephew told the Associated Press. No cause of death was revealed. He was 87…
Republican Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday broke with West Virginia’s GOP-majority Legislature to veto a bill that would have loosened one of the country’s strictest school vaccination policies.
West Virginia is only one of a handful of states in the U.S. that offers only medical exemptions to vaccine requirements. The bill would have allowed some students who don’t attend traditional public institutions or participate in group extracurriculars like sports to be exempt from vaccinations typically required for children starting day care or school…
Hello, Readers of The Infinite Thread,
Our previous group of comments reached the 500 mark, which is a limit on FreeThought Blogs, so the thread has automatically rolled over to begin a new chapter with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous chapter.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2215031
This Bar Is Closing During the RNC So It Doesn’t Have to Serve Trumpers
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2215030
House GOPers Teamed With Conspiracist Who Called Migrants ‘Apes’ And ‘Congo Cannibals’
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2215009
Chinese Mogul Funneled Millions to Bannon, Fox, Gettr, Docs Show
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2214978
Aspiring Trump veep hits North Korean levels of sucking up
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2214973
Fani Willis’s Trump Georgia RICO Case Back On Despite All The Sex
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2214919
Justice Ginsburg’s Family Decries Bestowing RBG Award on Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch
Oh my, Marjorie Taylor Greene … again.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants To Talk To You About The Black Market Of Baby Organ Harvesting
https://www.wonkette.com/p/happy-day-youre-probably-actually
Amusing videos at the link, including a 1980s Catholic sex education video … and there are some songs.
Pennsylvania gunman who killed three tracked to New Jersey home amid standoff with SWAT
The suspected shooter, Andre Gordon, knew the three people killed, police said.
Developing story.
Climate change … unexpected effects:
Link
U.S. Marines join NATO exercises on freezing Norway tundra, as new battlefield emerges in Arctic
Russia has or is building 30 military or dual-use facilities in the Arctic, including elaborate air bases, ports, nuclear facilities and radio nodes.
Video and details at the link.
Followup to comment 6.
I forgot to mention that Sweden and Finland are also involved in the “Nordic Response” exercise.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #3…
Patrick is the patron saint of Engineers…for inventing the worm drive.
The 4 hours debate between Norman Finkelstein, Benny Morris, Mouin Rabbani and the idiot child Destiny. It’s worth listening except for when Destiny opens his stupid mouth to say stuff he read on wikipedia. I recommend fast forwarding when he talks, he never says anything useful but it’s interesting hear the other three argue.
Pet DNA Testing Company Mistakenly Identifies a Human as a Dog
lotharloo @9, although people do occasionally make the mistake of embedding videos in this thread, it is against the rules.
Please do not embed videos. Provide a link to the video, and other comments, but not the video itself.
Thank you.
Cartoon: Putin’s mailbox
New York Times:
Commentary:
Link
‘Women Of Distinction’ Award Named For Ruth Bader Ginsburg Going To Very Terrible Men
https://www.wonkette.com/p/women-of-distinction-award-named
Da fuq?
Lynna… at @ 5, quoting NBC News: If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.
Wouldn’t such an inbred population have a lot of difficulty surviving and expanding?
@Lynna:
Yeah sorry I know I just don’t remember how not to embed. I guess I need to remove the http thing at the beginning? It was not showing as embedded when I previewed.
[meta]
lotharloo, easiest way is to not post a naked YouTube URL as the first part of a line of text.
Birger now uses (when he remembers) a full stop in front of the URL, but there are other ways.
That’s more like a fig leaf, an anchor tag is more sartorial.
But yes, preview does not show the embedding.
Weird rule, but here we are. Multi-screen text copypastas, no worries. One image, big deal. Naughty.
Anyway. Put something in front, or put the URL in parentheses, or whatever.
Ben G Thomasés latest 7 days of Science news round up here incl Sturtian era snowball earth study, avian flu in Antartcia, Spinosuar debate latest Anthropocene rejection and more. Just over a dozen mins long.
Sex, Lies, and Murder: GOP Candidate’s Former In-Law Goes Scorched Earth on Her
Letters to the Editor: I’m a moderate Republican who wants the party saved from Trumpism
Team Trump blames algorithm after campaign ads on pro-Nazi content
That’s the problem with algorithms: they are too accurate!
Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough
“Legal bills are expensive”: Bob Menendez reportedly considers independent bid so he can raise cash
Trum, Santos, and now Menendez – our democracy is in deep trouble if we are headed to a state where only indicted people run for office.
My calling as a Christian minister: Stand up against evangelical hypocrisy
Good luck with that; it is a never-ending well.
‘Dictator Diaper Don’: Phoenix billboard known for anti-Trump imagery debuts new artwork
Link
More at the link.
I particularly don’t like the efforts to restrict data collection, one of many of the kinds of legislation that Republicans have passed at the state level to ban public spending on climate action.
Biden Budget News:
Link
From the White House:
President Zelenskyy:
The Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) reportedly conducted a series of successful drone strikes against three Russian oil refineries in Samara Oblast on March 16. Understanding War link
Lynna… @ # 26: I particularly don’t like the efforts to restrict data collection, one of many of the kinds of legislation that Republicans have passed at the state level to ban public spending on climate action.
Such efforts go way back before public awareness of the climate crisis. After approving a large cement plant upwind of a near-pristine river, f’rinstance, Florida’s then-Gov Jeb! Bush promptly de-funded air quality monitoring throughout the area. (Though first he had himself photographed canoeing down said river and vowing to defend it, of course.)
Trump talked about immigrants during a rally in Ohio yesterday:
Link
Pierce @29, thanks for that additional information.
So, the Republicans and their donors have a playbook of sorts, and they have used the same one for decades.
News from Mexico … Russian disinformation:
Link
Sabine Hossenfelder:
“Q-Day Is Coming: Quantum Computers Will Decode National Secrets” (No, They Won’t)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ALwrwbnWLjo
Russian voters, answering Navalny’s call, protest Putin’s forever rule.
Washington Post link
Eyeopening and disturbing report from The Washington Post: “The education of a true believer.”
Yes. “True Believers are being “educated,” which I translate to mean radicalized by the far-far rightwing.
Linda Wenhold means well, but she harbors a twisted version of every “fact” she thinks she knows. From the details in the report, it looks like Wenhold exudes an aura of unctuous ass-kissing for all “biblical” priorities, and the result is that she is cloyingly “better than you” while donning a supposedly unassuming mask of humbleness. Really disquieting.
The Post article also tries to end on a happier note by showing Wenhold and other school board members talking to each other in a civil manner. I don’t really see how that is going to stop Christian Nationalists from fighting against diversity programs that level the playing field for high school age girls, as just one example.
How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation
New York Times link
Their claims of censorship have successfully stymied the effort to filter election lies online.
More at the link.
Second aid ship expected to set sail for Gaza as Palestinians await distribution from first delivery
Details at the link.
Cartoon: Empty box
Cartoon: How to fight Russians with Mike Johnson ammunition shortages
In other news:
More at the link.
Link
Coywolves Are Taking Over Eastern North America
Looting is on the rise in Haiti. Among the victims: UNICEF and Guatemala’s consul.
The violence has left Haiti’s government in a state of turmoil and prompted Prime Minister Ariel Henry to pledge that he will resign, a key demand of the gangs.
Fact check: Trump, telling a completely fictional story, falsely claims he released ‘the tape’ of his Zelensky call
Reginald @42, Holy crap. Is Trump just relating the scripts he wrote during his addle-brained dreams?
I don’t know how many layers of lies there are in that story, but it’s a lot.
@43: Yes, it seems much more complex than his usual lies. I am surprised his rotting brain could handle it.
UFO believers flock to quiet French town looking for encounter
Latvia starts criminal proceedings against an EU Parliament lawmaker suspected of spying for Russia
Colorado scientists develop a laser to measure cow burps
Three-Layer Pancakes From the Mari People
Some guy in Russia just won a totally legit election by 88%.
It reminds me of a specifik episode of Black Adder.
Phys.org
“Investigating the many flavors of edible ants.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-flavors-edible-ants.html
I suppose it makes sense to get used, after the biosphere gets f@€&ed.
Racism and tory self-harming.
A Different Bias:
“Reform UK Looking to Take More Tory Votes”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5EDP243uNyg
Nope. Ants (how does one know which are edible?) also rely on a biosphere — part of it, they are.
New video from Perun.
Reginald Selkirk @ # 40: Coywolves today are on average a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.
The Smithsonian article you cite comes from 2015. Betcha the dog percentage has risen since then.
Hrrrm: the wikipfft says
<
blockquote>The domestic dog allele averages 10% of the eastern coyote’s genepool, while 26% is contributed by a cluster of both eastern wolves and western gray wolves. The remaining 64% matched mostly with coyotes. … A 2016 meta-analysis of 25 genetics studies from 1995 to 2013 found that the northeastern coywolf is 60% western coyote, 30% eastern wolf, and 10% domestic dog.
<
blockquote>
so I lose my own bet. Time to go to bed!
John Morales @ 52
Insects of various kinds tend to endure- I recall a Gary Larson cartoon with insects looking at a mushroom cloud and dancing with joy (over being the new bosses).
. .. . .. . ..
Trump Struggles to Answer Simple Question During Interview
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WOfJeLpdk0U
Oh dear. Donald has finally gone ’round the twist’.
“Republican candidate insists at Ohio rally that Biden had beaten ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ in elections that never took place”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/17/trump-verbal-gaffes-ohio-rally-bloodbath
Not if the biosphere gets f@€&ed, as you so coyly put it.
Words mean things, you know.
—
“Trump Struggles to Answer Simple Question During Interview”
I bet he doesn’t. I see a million of those stupid, stupid clickbait thingies all the time. Someone opining.
Never true. Always bait’n switch. Crap, basically.
Bah.
I am bored. The Tories are shooting themselves in the foot again, but it gets monotonous after the first 10,000 times.
After leaning towards a May election, they now seem to want to delay it further. They will be able to cause more damage but will lose even more voters, this time to Nigel Farage’s Xenophobe party.
If the tory-hating majority do ‘tactical voting’ on a large scale the tories can realistically be reduced to the third largest party, which is a definite death blow. Traditional tory voters would give the Lib Dems a chance once they reach second place.
Techxplore:
“New material developed for better supercapacitor applications”
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-material-supercapacitor-applications.html
I lack knowledge of this technology.
Would this allow electric cars to get a temporary power boost- like accelerating for overtaking a car ahead- that would be impractical using ordinary batteries?
An electric drone might also need extra power for take-off and landing, especially one big enough to carry people.
(There is no information about the energy per weight unit, which is a pity)
Gary Larson cartoons are not evidence. One of the things I’m studying is local arthropod declines, and it’s among the scariest things I’ve ever seen.
Lost and stolen watches more than triple, world’s largest database says
Washington Post:
Yes, Manfort is the guy brought up on federal criminal charges seven years ago.
Commentary:
Link
So many criminals in just one political campaign.
Associated Press:
Jokes Biden told at the Annual Gridiron Dinner:
Comments from President Biden that were not jokes:
NBC News:
Trump has been unable to get bond for $464 million judgment, his lawyers say
By Adam Reiss and Dareh Gregorian / March 18, 2024
Huawei’s new magneto-electrical disks promise 90% lower power consumption than HDDs, ability to store tons of archival data
PZ Myers @ 61
I am told there are far less bugs going splat! on the windshields than there used to. Inevitably the consequences will be felt higher up in the chain with fewer birds, insectivores and so on.
WaPo:
Pro-Trump disruptions in Arizona county elevate fears for the 2024 vote
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Adriana Usero / March 18, 2024
I just learned Trump is unable to post a bond for the near-half billion $ needed.
Watch out of an all-caps rant any moment now, not to mention the talking heads on Fox News going ballistic about… actions having consequences.
I just learned Trump is unable to post a bond for the near-half billion $ needed.
Watch out of an all-caps rant any moment now, not to mention the talking heads on Fox News going ballistic about… actions having consequences.
Oops. Normally, the system stops doublets from being posted.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #72…
In this case, the situation warrants the news being posted twice.
Sovereign Citizen Arrested For Fake Diplomatic Plates Claims Diplomatic Immunity And Gets Stopped Again
Lithium-ion batteries.
‘Just Have A Think’:
“Battery prices just fell off a cliff!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5cbm9Cz6OdQ
re Reginald Selkirk @74: Every time I see a video of sovereign citizens trying to bullshit the cops then getting dragged out of their cars and arrested, it makes me smile a little. Not that I am a fan of the cops, but they usually show amazing restraint and patience with the foolish actions of the sovereign citizens, who think that the laws just don’t apply to them. Surprise, surprise!!
Re: #73 “In this case, the situation warrants the news being posted twice.”
Or even three times, see #66. If Trump really can’t post the bond, and the court doesn’t give him a stay, then he can’t appeal the judgement. The case would be over and NY could start confiscating property, or whatever he has that adds up to half a billion dollars.
Followup to comments 66, 70 and 73.
Trump can’t post bond because no one wants to give him the money
Posted by readers of the article:
Cartoon: Endorsement
Trump pushes prosecutions for Cheney, Jan. 6 committee colleagues
The question isn’t whether Liz Cheney and her Jan. 6 committee colleagues did anything wrong; it’s whether Trump will try to prosecute them without cause.
As summarized by Steve Benen from a New York Times article:
Supreme Court Justices Balk At Red States’ Free Speech Absolutism In Social Media Case
I’m mistaken in #77. Trump was not required to pay his penalty or post a bond in order to appeal. However, filing the appeal does not automatically halt enforcement of the judgment. James has said she will enforce it when the 30 days are up next week.
Niger ordered US troops to leave after Biden officials warned about ties to Russia, Iran: Pentagon
birgerjohansson@59,
I think an early election has become more likely with the multiple blows Sunak has suffered just in the last week – I think one more deection to Reform might force him to call the election while he still has a party to lead, for example; but to hold it along with the local elections on 2nd May he would have to declare it by 26th March. If not then, June would be a possibility, either to follow unexpectedly less-than-utter-disaster in the May 2nd local elections, or following disaster in those elections with a desperate throw to prevent a leadership challenge.
New research shows naturally occurring mineral is an ‘unconventional superconductor’ when purified
miassite – An isometric-hexoctahedral gray mineral containing rhodium and sulfur.
Brett Kavanaugh rides to the Biden administration’s defense in a big First Amendment case
Gambia may become first nation to reverse female genital mutilation ban
Techxplore:
“Two artificial intelligences talk to each other”
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-artificial-intelligences.html
“A new framework to collect training data and teach robots new manipulation policies”
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-framework-robots-policies.html
Reginald Selkirk @ 87
The MAGA crowd will be furious with Kavanaugh. While they correctly assume he was appointed to provide a rubber stamp on Republican legislation, they will not like that he interpretes a far-right legislative agenda differently than they do. Kavanaugh will want to have at least a legal fig leaf for any outrageous decision he makes. The MAGAites just don’t care.
“Experimentally modeling the emergence of prebiotically plausible phospholipid vesicles: Chem ”
https://www.cell.com/chem/abstract/S2451-9294(24)00069-X
DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
Trump Sues ABC and Stephanopoulos, Saying They Defamed Him
Republicans Kari Lake, Mark Finchem take rejected Arizona voting lawsuit to US Supreme Court
I predict that SCOTUS will decline to take it up.
Pro-Trump attorney arrested after court hearing about leaked Dominion emails
Mar-a-Lago Judge’s Stark Ruling: Jury Sees Secret Files or Trump Wins
The wolves and coyotes don’t appear to agree with human taxonomists! I’d say it’s obvious wolves, coyotes and dogs (and dingoes) are all one species: they interbreed freely whenever they get the chance, producing viable descendants indefinitely.
“Astronaut Thomas Stafford, commander of Apollo 10, has died at age 93”
😥
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-astronaut-thomas-stafford-apollo-died.html
I remember the Apollo 10 mission. I even recall his name. (It is the post-Apollo 11 astronauts I have forgotten)
“Tropical plants beat drought by interacting with specific microbes, study shows”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-tropical-drought-interacting-specific-microbes.html
Heather Cox Richardson writing for her “Letters of an American” Substack:
Aaron Blake, writing for The Washington Post:
Rep. Paul Gosar had no idea his intern was involved in 2021 Capitol riot? I believe him
Oh dear. Rudy Giuliani … as bad as it ever was.
Link
Kind of horrifying to look at delusion that deep.
Followup to Reginald @93.
Many Republican voters have no idea that Donald Trump was recently held liable for sexual abuse. Trump’s new civil suit [against George Stephanopoulos] might help change that.
Abortions sharply increase in US despite bans in Republican-led states
North Carolina ballot to feature a growing number of GOP radicals
Jimmy Kimmel Jokes the Closer the Election Is, The More Trump ‘Talks Like Thanos’
Link
Maybe more delusional than Rudy Giuliani. Or perhaps it is a tossup?
Reginald @105, Jimmy Kimmel is spot on with that analysis: “the issue is that he’s such a lunatic. we actually have to debate if he meant it literally.”
More Trump weirdness:
Commentary:
Link
MacKenzie Scott donates $640 million — more than double her initial plan — to nonprofit applicants
I think she just wanted to prove that she could have paid Trump’s bond – but didn’t.
Farron Cousins:
“Trump Caught On Hot Mic Talking About How He Wants To Be A Dictator”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MqKt2JEmQkQ
Interesting that Trump should be discussing Jewish people with a literal Nazi.
“Ex-president claims Jewish people who vote for Democrats ‘hate Israel’ and ‘hate their religion’
GOP Lawmaker Inserts Colleague’s Name Into Graphic Rape Story
@112:
SpaceX is building a spy satellite network for US, news agency says. What could possibly go wrong?
‘Red alert’: last year was hottest on record by clear margin, says UN report | Climate crisis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/19/red-alert-last-year-was-hottest-year-ever-by-wide-margin-says-un-report
Sabine Hossenfelder:
“The Butterfly Effect is Much Worse Than We Thought”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=V5R6VLUUHRs
Farron Cousins:
“Broke Trump Forced To Cancel Rallies Because He Can’t Afford Them Anymore”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=CNQht2-IEoI
Biden, lawmakers announce government funding deal that could avert shutdown
God Awful Movies takes on an ‘animated’ version of what was originally a German radio story for children. I don’t get how they emerged from this with their sanity intact.
“GAM448 – Strawinksy and the Mysterious House”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ss2rx9Z7dyw
Donald Trump has left little doubt that he’s pondering how to advance a national abortion ban, not whether to advance a national abortion ban.</a.
Video at the link.
Followup to Reginald @96.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/aileen-cannon-presiential-records-act
The April issue of Scientific American arrived yesterday. It focuses on AI. There’s an article titled, I kid not, “Shortcuts to God”. The email about the new issue says this about the article:
Navarro becomes first Trump White House official to report to prison over Jan. 6
Astrazeneca Suddenly Figured Out They Don’t Have To Charge $640 For Inhalers
https://www.wonkette.com/p/astrazeneca-suddenly-figured-out
Thanks, Bernie Sanders!
A Washington Post exclusive: Drone footage raises questions about Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists
Video at the link.
More at the link, including photos of journalists and biographical details.
Supreme Court allows Texas to enforce immigration law
The Biden administration sued to block the law, saying it tramples on the federal government’s exclusive authority to oversee immigration issues.
More at the link.
Other reports confirm that police have not been given any instruction concerning how to implement SB4. Police are in the dark on this.
Richard Dawkins is on his transphobic bullshit again.
NBC News:
Good news, as reported by the Washington Post:
Carriers installing solar panels to reduce costs, extend battery life
Followup to comment 64.
Link
Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’
The Guardian link
Donald Trump’s son-in-law also says Israel should bulldoze an area of the Negev desert and move Palestinians there.
Paris Olympics
https://www.wonkette.com/p/paris-olympics-a-go-for-insert-french
MAGA media send message to Trump supporters: Be willing to go to jail
This appears mostly to serve the purpose of selling Peter Navarro’s book.
Videos at the link.
PBS Newshour has a good discussion on Trump’s extreme violent rhetoric here :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/tamara-keith-and-amy-walter-on-the-response-to-trumps-escalating-violent-rhetoric
Although they don’t describe it as stochastic terrorism – which it is.
Just heard on the radio news that Trump has attacked our Aussie ambassador and ex-PM Kevin Rudd :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/donald-trump-kevin-rudd-aukus-nigel-farage-interview/103608274
Wow, if Rudd is “nasty” for telling the truth what does that make a guy who literally incited an attempted coup against his own nation and just dehumanised migrants among all the other Trump comments? Oh and Farage is a flippin’ journo now? Seriously?
Also via PBS Newshour, sadly more disappointing news :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-support-for-lgbtq-rights-is-declining-after-decades-of-support-heres-why
“Is it just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?” Liz Cheney tweeted. “Donors better beware.”
Source : https://www.space.com/what-is-emergent-gravity
Echoes of MOND but intriguing cosmological hypothesis there.
Great news! I’ve got an in-person interview at a local generator manufacture. If all goes well, this should be my shortest stint of unemployment.
Source : https://www.space.com/condor-array-telescope-new-star-ancient-china
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-claims-might-be-forced-sell-assets-fire-sale-prices-satisfy-bond-civil-fraud-case/story?id=108273406
Now where did I put that tardigrade sized violin….
Good luck, Akira.
Trump-endorsed Moreno wins Ohio GOP Senate primary, CNN projects
It is possible that the MAGA wing of the GOP has gone so far that “moderate” Republicans will not show up to vote for them. One can hope.
Montana Supreme Court allows abortion ballot initiative to move forward
Decoding Trump: How he engaged, deflected or ducked my questions at Mar-a-Lago
“paging Doctor Dunning and Doctor Kruger – code blue in admittance”
You see Mr. Kurtz, saying reasonable-sounding things isn’t particularly noteworthy nor newsworthy. It is expected.
Scientists say they can cut HIV out of cells
It would be very challenging to make that work in people. You would have to eliminate the HIV from all cells for it to be cured.
You see, Mr. Selkirk, what you quoted was neiither praising nor noting the reasonably-said things, it was noting the elision of those things from slanted coverage. Which I’ve myself noted, which you’ve ignored, in the best tradition of
If you’re gonna try to snark, at least be on point. Bah.
@ 140
Thanks John. I’m actually feeling positive about this for a change. My last job I had to deal with debit/credit card fraud was depressing as hell. People tend to get really emotional when money is involved and those feelings are rarely good. This job is for a technical customer service job to help customers with their generator questions. I think I can handle that a lot better.
Medicalxpress.com:
Root cause of Alzheimer’s may be fat buildup in brain cells, research suggests
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-root-alzheimer-fat-buildup-brain.html
“Frieren Abridged – POV: Racist Elf Cancels You”
What the hell is Team Rocket doing there?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=e3pYt7kLcrk
Physicist Claims Universe Has No Dark Matter And Is 27 Billion Years Old
Appeals court puts controversial Texas immigration law back on hold
Odd. It appears that an appeals court is overruling the Supreme Court.
Akira @146, that does sound like a good job. I’m sending some good luck wishes your way.
In other news: It’s not every day when a committee chair directs coarse language at a colleague from his own party — during a public hearing — but that’s what happened.
Ireland’s prime minister to step down
Update on crime rates in the USA:
Link
Link
Followup to Reginald @141.
Link
Cartoon: What did we learn from Covid?
Supercomputer Hints at the Existence of ‘Super Diamonds’
Good news, as reported by CBC:
The Nine Nazgul* of the GQP
Vietnam’s president resigns, raising questions over stability
Followup to comment 159.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nine-house-republicans-bravely-stand
Nine House Republicans Bravely Stand Up For Putin’s Right To … [Checks Notes] … Steal Ukrainian Babies?
Arizona state Sen. Anthony Kern, who “is currently being investigated by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for his role as a “fake elector” for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, as well as by the FBI for being exactly where you’d think he was on January 6, 2021,” spoke out concerning his twisted version of history:
Courthouse News link
Followup to comment 162.
Commentary from Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/are-the-us-government-and-constitution
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office has confirmed that the Kentucky Republican will not run for re-election to an eighth term in 2026.
Akira: More hopeful vibes aimed your way; good luck!
The Feds Can Film Your Front Porch for 68 Days Without a Warrant, Says Court
An update on the cases in which police officers have filed lawsuits against Trump:
Link
Link
Robots that shoot tequila out of their arms are apparently a New Jersey wedding craze.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Catholic Charities Has To Follow Same Laws As All Other Employers
https://www.wonkette.com/p/wisconsin-supreme-court-says-catholic
Rand Paul vows to hold up $1T ‘minibus’ that must pass by Friday
In other words, because he’s an asshole. He’s not going to stop the bill, he’s just going to slow it down.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/if-we-were-donald-trump-last-nights
India finds rogue officials involved in US murder plot, Bloomberg reports
More good wishes Akira!
As so often Sabine Hossenfelder brings bad news
“We Need To Stop Lying about Plastic — To Ourselves”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XHQJwJgFEeI&
Insulated blue light-emitting diodes could banish OLED burn-in for good
Cartoon: Bloodbath
Marjorie Taylor Greene vows to get rid of law that protects abortion clinics
Link
Parnas calls out GOP rep at hearing for ‘doing the bidding’ of Russia
Followup to comment 180:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/these-james-comer-staples-own-donger
Several video snippets at the link.
From Wonkette:
More at the link, including comments about, and video of Tony Bobulinski, “known liar, one with some very weird Russian ties.”
It Sure Seems Like the Courts Have Placed Christianity Above Other Faiths
You will be shocked to learn Arvi Loeb was wrong
“Major Updates About Avi Loeb’s Spherules – Probably a Truck and Not Aliens”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=w5TQFXU8tic
Freedom Caucus votes to remove Ken Buck
House’s largest conservative caucus calls for increase in retirement age
Yeeha! They sure know how to drum up support in an election year.
Reginald:
Do they? In what sense?
I know you’re trying to be sarcastic and thus are trying to state the opposite of what you ostensibly did, but you offer zero (none) reasoning for your opinion.
I know you shan’t, but: care to lay out the basis upon which you made that claim?
(I suppose it’s possible, in principle, that it’s not a vacuous and stupid claim. But, again, I know you shan’t even try)
Re: John Morales @ #186…
Given the title on the link, Mr. Selkirk’s response and the overall political climate, you comment is uncalled for.
whheydt, did I call for your comment? No. There was no need for it, was there?
Yet, there it is. Like mine was.
This is the endless thread, so… fine.
—
Now, whether or not “uncalled for”, my point remains.
One can spam some bullshit link to some crap, and then make a snide comment without any justification.
With no basis, really. And that’s Reginald, in a nutshell.
Tell ya what: care to lay out the basis upon which Reginald made that claim?
That is, that they [House’s largest conservative caucus] sure know how to drum up support in an election year. That’s the claim, no?
Because Reginald did not care to do so. Nor have you.
Now, I noted that once, but now, thanks to you, I note it again.
(Also, I am not wrong, am I?
Reginald used to try to dispute me, but no more. He’s learned to be silent.
So, no, he won’t even attempt to justify himself or dispute my criticism)
I mean, it’s pretty obvious, no?
They [House’s largest conservative caucus] may or may not know how to drum up support in an election year, yet there they are, imposing their views, holding up legislation, preventing support to Ukraine, barely passing funding bills, controlling the Speaker, etc. In an election year.
Making the news.
So, either they [House’s largest conservative caucus] need no support [in an election year] to do what they actually (demonstrably) do, or they have garnered enough support to to do what they actually (demonstrably) do [in an election year]. Either way, the reality doesn’t gell with the claim, does it?
So.
Why is asking for some justification or basis for some claim “uncalled for”, but making that claim without anyone calling for it not likewise?
Bah.
Perhaps it’s a transitive property; if something is “uncalled for”, then it follows any criticism of that something is perforce “uncalled for”. But then, that would mean that it’s “uncalled for” to claim that a response is “uncalled for” when it relates to a claim that is “uncalled for”.
Anyway.
I shall try not to belabour the point further, though not because it’s “uncalled for”.
Unless, of course, it’s called for.
Newly discovered Australian beetle almost mistaken for bird poo
@95
Pro-Trump lawyer arrested for failure to give fingerprints in Michigan voting case
Reginald @184, well that sounds like a petty response from the Freedom Caucus. They’re going to make sure they kick Ken Buck out of their whacko club before he can retire and leave the whacko club behind. That’ll teach him … or not. Chances are Ken Buck doesn’t care.
Related: The House Freedom Caucus’ newest problem: It’s shrinking
Oh, FFS.
Seven years after Donald Trump started pushing “Spygate” nonsense, he’s still adding weird new details to the tale, and his allies are still playing along.
Nah. It’s not the relevant facts that spur Trump’s continuous rewriting of his fantasy scripts. Maybe Trump does that as a self-soothing routine? Maybe Trump himself has no fucking clue, but he carries on as he always has.
Physicist who worked on room temperature superconductor accused of ‘research misconduct’
Scientists find galaxy supercluster as massive as 26 quadrillion suns
Democrats would love to make the 2024 election cycle a referendum on abortion rights. The Republican Study Committee is making that easier.
Kyle Rittenhouse Flees Stage After Face Off With Booing Protesters
Reginald @196, I find a bit odd to compare the size of a galaxy to the size of our sun.
In other news, and as a followup to comments 180 and 181: A former Rudy Giuliani associate and former Donald Trump ally testified that Sen. Ron Johnson could be counted on to do “the bidding for the Russians.”
Updates on the mob boss’ plans:
Link
That is not a denial.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1770536527883391434
Video at the link.
https://www.threads.net/@allinwithchris/post/C4wZQO5KZAv
Video at the link.
Who’s Behind Those Mysterious Trump-Epstein Billboards?
Judge rules illegal immigrants have gun rights protected by 2nd Amendment
Re: Lynna, OM @ #199…
In ref. Reginald @ #196. It’s very common to gives the masses of galaxies–including our own–in solar masses.
Best of luck Akira@137!
Posted by Manu Raju:
And now?
Commentary:
Link
whheydt @205, thank you. I didn’t realize that.
Cartoon: Russian ballot
Newsweek:
Trump keeps reminding the undecided voters of the vile things he has done. The judge himself used the r word three times.
R*pist Trump Creates Massive Legal Problems For Himself By Suing ABC News
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=emZ7wqidN6Y.
Liam Neeson and Glenn Close Perform Chilling Readings of the Trump Indictments, to Save You the Effort
@161 Lynna
I cannot take Wonkette’s allegations of genocide in Ukraine seriously when she is a cheerleader for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Interpreted generously, she has a compromised worldview.
I also cannot take Susan Wild and co. seriously for claiming they wish to uphold the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Not when we’re defending our favorite genocider with U.N. Security Council vetos.
beholder, you can’t take the facts seriously because your attempted logic is feeble and flawed.
See, that someone is guilty of X does not mean they’re not guilty of Y.
That is, that the USA is supporting Israel doesn’t mean their accusation of Russia is somehow false.
Also, it’s not “Wonkette’s allegations of genocide”, is it?
Blaming the messenger is also fucked-up pseudo-logic; it was not Wonkette that made that determination.
Some people put up silly and irrelevant clickbait, but you are effectively defending Russia from well-founded accusations.
For you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
(Not fabricated by Wonkette, which is not a person, but rather a magazine)
@beholder #213:
Citation?
Evan Hurst was the author (and managing editor) cited in #161. Owners have been women. (Who or what is a Wonkette?)
Even mere days after Oct 7, this article, for example, wasn’t “cheerleading genocide”. It was countering Republicans doing that.
Wonkette – Republicans’ nuanced response to Israel and Hamas
CA7746, that last link is, um, ‘devastating’ I think would be the Wonkettish word.
Anyway. Bloody well done.
“Puberty makes teenagers’ armpits smell of cheese, goat and urine, say scientists” | Young people | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/22/teenagers-armpits-smell-of-cheese-goat-and-urine-say-scientists
“Black babies in England three times more likely to die than white babies” | Children’s health | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/09/black-babies-in-england-three-times-more-likely-to-die-than-white-figures-show
Hackers Found a Way To Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks In Seconds
New Ultrablack Coating on Telescopes Could Reveal More of the Universe
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #219…
Somebody got something wrong in the material you quoted. The alternate layer is either Silicon Nitride OR SiO2 (which is Silicon Oxide)….or, of course, something else entirely.
Just in…
Marjorie Taylor Greene has officially filed a motion to vacate Mike Johnson as speaker of the House.
JUST IN: House approves funding bill ahead of critical shutdown deadline
Trump’s new RNC fundraising deal prioritizes paying his legal bills
Trump demonstrates self-sabotage:
Link
From The Guardian:
Link
Followup to comment 224.
Donald Trump Claims He Can Too Pay Civil Judgment, He Just Doesn’t Wanna
The AI generated image of Trump being crucified that accompanies Gary Legum’s report for Wonkette is disturbing.
Mike Gallagher Of Wisconsin Is Latest GOP Member To Resign Ahead Of Schedule
NBC hires former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who has demonized the press and refused to acknowledge Biden was fairly elected
Washington Post link
It’s been a very good week for your 401(k)
Terrorist attack reported in Moscow. Gunmen open fire in several places.
Posted by readers of the article:
Princess Kate announces she is undergoing treatment for cancer
“William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” the popular royal said.
Video at the link.
@231
Islamic State group claims responsibility for Moscow mass shooting that left dozens dead
GOP Senate candidate Steve Garvey owes hundreds of thousands in unpaid back taxes as he runs against Schiff
“Totally baffling”: Ex-Trump lawyer calls Judge Cannon’s orders “fundamentally unhinged”
Credible chimera cockroach caught in Chesterfield Butterfly House
John Morales @ 17
Yes, I try not to post links when I am too tired to recall how to avoid borking them.
You’re a good egg, Birger. I may snark somewhat, but I do respect you.
I respect your attitude, and your ability to cope, and your good nature.
(And your English ain’t half bad!)
Happy Eucalypt Day today folks. Honouring all the remarkable, marvellous, diverse flora and individual trees , shrubs and mallees in the genusés Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Angophora and more :
https://www.eucalyptaustralia.org.au/national-eucalypt-day/
Plus :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalypt
In addititon to:
https://www.gardeningaustraliamag.com.au/event/national-eucalypt-day-2024/#:~:text=Held%20annually%20on%20March%2023,of%20the%20Year%20public%20vote.
Tasmania’s state election covered here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-23/tas-state-election-results-live-blog/103619024
John Morales @ 238
Thank you.
BDW I am staying home after slipping on ice and have a lot of time scrolling through news items.
I just learned a certain ex-president went on social media and boasted he had 500 million in cash at the same time his lawyers are telling a judge he does not have 460 million in cash.
He is certainly on-brand, a stable genius.
W.i.S.H.: The Indian girl group aiming to take over the world
World’s First Nuclear Fusion-Powered Electric Propulsion Drive Unveiled
Intel’s Germany chip fab site yields discovery of 6,000-year-old burial mounds — no word yet about potential construction delays
Maricopa Transforms Tabulation Center Into ‘Encampment’ To Avoid Another ‘Lollapalooza For The Alt-Right’
“After becoming a hotbed for conspiracy theories and violence against election workers in 2020, officials in Arizona’s largest county have renovated the county’s election infrastructure […]”
We Have Met the Enemy and He Owns the Valet Booth at Trump Tower
Elon Musk’s X bans revealing the names of anonymous users after scrutiny of antisemitic cartoonist
This is a band that was playing at the Moscow Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow yesterday where the ISIS attack occurred. They are called Пикник (Picnic) and the song and video is titled Королевство кривых (Kingdom of Crooked) (2008). The theme is eerily appropriate. The “See More” section under the YouTube video actually has info about the performance. Some of the comments (in Russian) are about the attack.
According to Wikipedia, the band didn’t actually make on stage before the attack. They have reported that they are all safe.
Reginald Selkirk@233,
Putin will of course try to link the terroist attack near Moscow to Ukraine, but I’ll bet he can’t produce any evidence beyond lies tortured out of the arrested “suspects” – who may well have nothing at all to with the atrocity. An obvious question: did Putin LIHOP? The same question asked of Netanyahu after October 7 provoked howls of “antisemitism!!!!” from much of the media and political world (my answer in Netanyahu’s case is “Probably not, but he’s certainly capable of it.”); I wonder if anyone else has yet raised the possibility concerning Putin (who, like Netanyahu, was warned), and what the response will be if any prominent commentators do so. He I also judge well capable of it (or even of undertaking the atrocity as a full-scale false-flag operation); he has (suspected) form as well, over the 1999 Russian apartment bombings (when he was Yeltsin’s PM) and the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002 (when he was President). However, ISKP, a Daesh franchise based in Afghanistan, appears to have had responsibility claimed for it by Daesh central, and US “intelligence” credits this, and was apparently a source of warnings to Putin.
I see Lynna@231 has a link to a DailyKos thread that raises the false-flag possibility and links it to the 1999 bombings.
Followup to KG @250.
Putin attempts to link gunmen in Moscow concert hall attack to Ukraine
Followup to Reginald @247.
Link
A partial record of Trump’s escalation:
Washington Post link
Putin fixates on imaginary foes while terrorists attack Moscow, by Max Boot
Washington Post link
Haiti gang wars push hunger to worst levels on record
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said in a report that about 4.97 million people out of a population of about 11.5 million were facing crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Cartoon: Trumpslators
There was a truly excellent caption on a LoLCat today…
Evangelical Christians are just
Radical Islamists with pork and beer.
kg @250, huh.
“A ‘MIHOP’ is, therefore, someone who believes that the Government Made It Happen On Purpose while a ‘LIHOP’ believes that the Government Let It Happen On Purpose.”
Thanks for expanding my lexicon.
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is one of the worst games ever made. Here’s why it’s being re-released
Meidas Touch at Youtube:
“Trump Screws Over the RNC on Day 1”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EFeasRQ6j4k
He is so predictable…and they are so dumb.
The world’s semiconductor industry hinges on a single quartz factory in North Carolina
Recurrent nova due to explode.
Anton Petrov: “We’re About to Witness a Once in a Lifetime Space Explosion Visible From Everywhere”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=W4z5ovC5kQA
A nova cannot be possibly be recurrent, Birger.
The term refers to something that occurs repeatedly, and a nova is a one-off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova
Wikipedia – Nova
@ ^ CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain & #264 John Morales : Actually, not only do we get recurring novae we even have supernova imposters albeit these are extremely rare – see :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_impostor
&
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_impostor
In astronomy news, the northern hemisphere has a comet currently visible in binoculars which may brighten to become visible with unaided eyes although only faint (5th mag) still :
Source : https://www.space.com/horned-comet-12p-pons-brooks-photos
Wow. OK. Sorry Birger, everyone. :|
I stand corrected. My ignorance has been ameliorated.
Recurrent novae are a thing, classical novae are only one type, not all. Now I know.
[That’s what happens when so many cries of ‘wolf’ happen… I stop checking and assume they’re not there]
What additional evidence has emerged on the Krasnogorsk terrorist attack seems in line with the attack being by Daesh franchise ISKP (aka ISIS-K). Daesh (still Daesh-central not ISKP as far as I can tell) has released a photo supposedly of the four terrorists, but they are masked. Those arrested by the Russians are said to be Tajiks. And Tass has admitted Russia received a warning from the US (couldn’t really deny it, Putin publicly called the warning “provocation”). Interestingly, the warning, issued a couple of weeks ago, was for the next 48 hours, i.e. before the Russian pseudo-election. Perhaps that was the ISKP plan, but something caused a delay (courier delivering the ammunition to the wrong terror group or whatever). I’m increasingly inclined to think that PLIHTS (Putin Let It Happen Through Stupidity); even in Russia, people will ask why their Glorious Leader failed to act on the warning.
I haven’t read the article (don’t want to sign up for a Washington Post account), but I had much the same thought: with Putin’s obsessive focus on Ukraine, are he and his system sufficiently flexible to deal with a sustained terror campaign by Daesh, if the latter have the capability for it? That their terrorist team could operate in the outskirts of Moscow indicates that nowhere in Russia is safe – and Putin’s constituency (primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg) expects him to supply basic security if you toe the line. The linked Guardian article points out that Daesh has grievances against Putin from Syria and Africa.
152 -> 252
The warnings from the US (and other western countries, the Graun says), and the American statement since that they have intelligence confirming Daesh responsibility, surely indicate that they have a source or sources in or close to the Daesh leadership. Which is interesting in itself. (I’m not suggesting the US was behind the attack, nor has Putin gone there as yet.)
Lisa Murkowski, done with Donald Trump, won’t rule out leaving GOP
Every time this happens – and it’s been happening for decades, I like to think back on all the things that this person was able to accept as a member of the GOP. Iran-Contra, trickle-down, GWB lying hte country into an illegal war, an increasingly conservative Suprme Court eroding women’s rights, etc. etc. etc.
New Islamic State videos back claim it carried out Moscow concert hall attack. Won’t stop Putin trying to blame Ukraine, of course (or American/European tankies blaming it on the CIA), but Russians have experience of Islamist terror attacks from before the Ukraine war.
SaveAFox: Life with a Jackal: Episode two
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ddSKMhOAHrY
Russia’s Cozy Bear caught phishing German politicos with phony dinner invites
DARPA tasks Northrop Grumman with drafting lunar train blueprints
SaveAFox: Thirty more foxes rescued!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0ppCH3SMOcQ
John Morales @ 269
There is a bewildering number of classes and subclasses of objects in astronomy.
Russian missile briefly enters Polish airspace during massive missile attack on Ukraine
Two Russian landing ships hit off Crimea, officials say
Letitia James Can Target Any Donald Trump Assets ‘Across the World’: Lawyer
The State of New York presumably does not have any interest in being a landlord, so they should target properties of the appropriate value which can be resold quickly.
US fighter jets strike storage facilities in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen
Cartoon: MTG on TikTok
Yes, it is unfortunately true that during a congressional hearing Marjorie Taylor Greene showed an image of Hunter Biden’s penis.
I like the Putin tattoo that the cartoonist included on MTG’s arm.
Link
George Santos says he will run as independent because he finds GOP ‘too embarrassing’
A Deepfake Is Already Spreading Confusion and Disinformation About the Moscow Terror Attack
Cartoon: Billionaire blues
Link
Video at the link.
Say what now? Views coming from Canada about New Jersey:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jordan-peterson-mad-about-crosswalks
Abolishing liberty did not bring Russia security
Washington Post link
Idiot Republicans are using the “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” slogan. Democratic election campaign jumps on the opportunity.
Jesse Dollemire: “Joe Biden Just Released This Devastating Viral Anti-Trump Ad”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=d0QSG9T8vZo
@289: So Jordan Peterson actually came out in favor of more traffic deaths?
Followup to Reginald @228, regarding Ronna McDaniel.
Link.
More at the link, including video.
Posted by readers of the article:
Update: NBC execs buckle under pressure after seething backlash on ‘corrupt’ hiring of Trump lackey
Chelsea Clinton Says Barron Trump, 18, Has ‘an Unimpeachable Right to Privacy’ Despite Dad’s Presidential Past
I could go along with that, so long as he does not involve himself in his father’s campaign. Ivanka and Jared are fair game, having served in Trump’s administration, and Eric and Don Jr. make frequent public political statements.
I am posting this just to cheer you up. Foreigners with american flags, and not burning them!
“American Reacts to American Car Cruising Gone Wild In Sweden” .https://youtube.com/watch?v=oVG2uNbU0gY
This is a big sub-culture with 1950s and 1960s American cars. Every year there is a meeting in south Sweden with 10,000 cars or more.
Medicalxpress:
“Accumulation of ‘junk proteins’ identified as one cause of aging and possible source of ALS”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-accumulation-junk-proteins-aging-source.html
The episode of God Awful Movies coming up in a couple of days will be
“The Gerson Miracle”.
It is about how coffee enemas cure cancer.
AAAAARRGHHH! (runs away screaming)
From SaveAFox.
“Red Fox touches dirt for the first time!”
Remember, they have never run, or dug in the earth before.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ocAf-UOvFyI
‘Lab-leak’ proponents at Rutgers accused of defaming and intimidating COVID-19 origin researchers
Nigerian army rescues children abducted from school over 2 weeks ago
Ohio State wrestler hits rare spladle move, makes for awkward TV
Excavation looks to solve mystery of King John’s lost treasure after 800 years
New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy suspends her Senate campaign to replace indicted Sen. Menendez
John Michael Godier:
Fermi Paradox: Alien Life and The Phosphorus Conveyor Problem
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kQeZescIrGc
Reginald Selkirk @ 300
Finally some good news out of Nigeria
Smaug the Dragon sleeps on a huge pile of gold in the hall the dwarwes of Ereborn had carved out in the rock. Some enthusiast worked out the gold would today be worth 51,400,000,000 $ .
This would only make him the fifteenth richest american, if he lived in USA.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/VSh2KhWQpYH2YS9j/
birgerjohansson@306,
Including or excluding the Arkenstone?
Reginald Selkirk@302,
1066 and All That has the following comment at the end of a distinctly hostile portrayal of King John:
There’s an accompanying cartoon of John, in his underwear (but oddly, wearing a crown) arguing with a woman standing over a tub or basket of clothes.
Simon Harris on course to be Irish leader after party election
KG @ 307
The value of the arkenstone would depend on how far ultra-rich collectors would go in a bidding war. Consider the muskrat vs the bonesaw prince – it would get ugly.
Neal de Grasse Tyson explains oddities about water towers
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/xU9mC4Gykc8ffenq/
If the average physics teacher was like this, kids would like going to school.
Hope people can access this outside of Oz? Can they? Let me know please. Ontghe local radio (& c25 TV) tonight :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-science-with-belinda-smith/103631092
In distilled essence, look out for possible aurora tonight / tomorrow night.. good sized CME lately.
The Damage Report:
“Nancy Pelosi’s shady stock market practices finally exposed ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bmLhUD_tuvo
Fake news is growing—thanks to Russia
Cartoon: Trump campaign slogans
Associated Press:
Supreme Court lets stand a ban against Cowboys for Trump co-founder using 14th Amendment
Oh, FFS. (sort of)
Court to block collection of Trump’s $454M civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175M
Followup to comment 318.
Washington Post:
Tidbits of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Josh Marshall:
Link
Son of Imprisoned Seditionist Stewart Rhodes Running for a Seat in Montana House as a Democrat!
Interesting photo at the link. Dakota Adams looks like, yes, he is Stewart Rhodes’ son. That face. Younger, thinner, and sporting long hair and black fingernail polish.
Free Speech Hero Elon Musk Pays Court Fees For Anti-Vaxxer Who Tried To Silence Her Critics, For Free Speech
At a minimum, Joe Manchin shouldn’t apply a tougher standard to Joe Biden’s judicial nominees than Donald Trump’s, but that’s precisely what’s happening.
Judge Sets Trump NY Criminal Trial For April 15, Rejecting Bid For More Delay
Israeli Archaeologists Identify ‘Holy Triad’ of Human Evolution: Water, Stone and Elephants – Archaeology – Haaretz.com
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2024-03-25/ty-article/archaeologists-identify-holy-triad-of-human-evolution-water-stone-and-elephants/
Evolutionary Origins of Hair Identified in The Most Unlikely of Animals : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/evolutionary-origins-of-hair-identified-in-the-most-unlikely-of-animals
Trying again.
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2024-03-25/ty-article/archaeologists-identify-holy-triad-of-human-evolution-water-stone-and-elephants/0000018e-75ff-d680-a1cf-ffff632f0000
Cartoon: Impeachment rubble
Wife of Judge on Mifepristone Case Was Paid by Anti-Abortion Group
Lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X against anti-hate speech group dismissed by US judge
Skepticrat 221 – Billion Dollar Maybe Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=goXKYydPH0Y
In remarks made on Monday, Putin conceded that the attacks were committed by Islamic State, but added that officials do not know “who ordered it”.
Gosh, Vladikins, yes, who ordered it is</> a puzzle. You don’t think it might have been the leadership of that very same radical Islamist terror group, who have proudly displayed convincing evidence they were responsible, and who Russian forces have been fighting in Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso, do you?
The weird thing is, it’s even possible Putin really does think it was the Ukrainians. And I think his implication that Ukraine will benefit might well be borne out, because whatever he says, Putin must divert resources to the Daesh threat or risk a repetition.
Citizen scientists discover a treasure trove of active asteroids
MAGA Lawmaker Introduces Legislation to Fight the Scourge of Chemtrails
Apologies for the italicisation mess@332
The US must stop facilitating mass killing in Gaza. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/25/the-security-council-vote-is-a-significant-moment-but-the-us-says-its-gaza-policy-is-unchanged
This evening I got a chance to see a beautiful full moon, as the solar eclipse in North America is exactly two weeks away.
I hope you also get to see some northern lights, I saw no activity yet but these things can come and go swiftly.
I have not kept up with information about the comet, you will likely need access to properly dark night skies to see it .
“Cries of US betrayal…” the Israeli nationalists are used to get enabled by USA, thanks to the increasingly far-right
Israeli lobby. It is ironic that the last president to really put pressure on Israel was Ronald Reagan.
New York Times:
Cartoon: Better off?
What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?
New Yorker link
Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.
More at the link.
Dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas test positive for bird flu
Yet another reason not to consume raw milk.
[Content warning]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/25/russian-officials-lauding-torture-was-unthinkable-now-it-is-proud-to-do-so
Man changes name to Literally Anybody Else and announces US presidential run
Seth Meyers is hilarious as usual.
Desperate Trump Abandoned by Rich Friends, Begs for Money to Pay Fines: A Closer Look
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=imwlaNOV_Go
Also:
‘Jon Stewart Deconstructs Trump’s “Victimless” $450 Million Fraud | The Daily Show ‘
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EDMinX6t1Zk
Research team identifies new treatment target for Alzheimer’s disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-team-treatment-alzheimer-disease.html
Anton Petrov:
“First Ever Animal Whose DNA Hasn’t Changed in 105 Million Years”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=23thr68Xj-c
…And here is Stephen Colbert’s take on things.
‘Justice Is Swerwed’
‘Trump Isn’t A Real Rich Guy | MTG Goes After Speaker Johnson | Boeing Ousts CEO’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RnrDAIoVpxI
NB
😨
Baltimore bridge collapse: cars and people in water after ship collision – latest updates https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/mar/26/baltimore-bridge-collapse-ship-collision-francis-scott-key-updates?CMP=share_btn_url
In these water temperatures you cannot swim for long, even if you manage to get out of the car.
BTW here we see the consequences of years of cost-cutting of infrastructure maintenance. I wonder if the removal of the federal regulations Trump bragged about has played a role? It certainly did for the de-railing accident.
From another excellent Lucy Hamilton essay :
After the Super Tuesday results signalled Trump would become the Republican presidential candidate in November, a first promise was that “We’re going to drill baby drill.” One of the most important reasons to watch American politics this year is that a Trump victory will push the world faster towards catastrophic climate heating.
Source : https://johnmenadue.com/a-republican-victory-in-2024-will-be-a-climate-disaster/
Blockquote fail. Guess y’all can see where..
Announcement on Assange’s extradiction appeal coming up in the next 30 mins or so..
Assange has won – at leats his right / leave to appeal. Just heard on telly (ABC news c24) tho’ no story on ABC website just yet – but AJ has this :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/26/julian-assange-live-news-uk-court-set-to-issue-extradition-ruling
Japan to sell fighter jets in latest break from post-war pacifist ideals
Utah coach says team was shaken after experiencing racial hate at hotel during NCAA Tournament
Caitlin Clark sets another record
Techxplore:
“Research lights up process for turning CO₂ into sustainable fuel”
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-co8322-sustainable-fuel.html
Using sunlight to create methanol.
“Eyes in the sky: why drones are ‘beyond effective’ for animal rights campaigners around the world” | Drones (non-military) | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/26/drones-beyond-effective-for-animal-rights-campaigners-around-the-world
David Squires on … England’s collar and other ‘woke’ things destroying football | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2024/mar/26/david-squires-on-england-flag-furore-kit-collar-woke-things-destroying-football
Oscar Holland, CNN:
Laurent de Brunhoff, ‘Babar the Elephant’ author, dies aged 98
😔
Hmm..not quite a s positive for Assange as I first thought utstillreatively good news for Assange. ABC news article :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-26/juian-assange-handed-legal-lifeline-by-london-high-court/103631990
Also PSA and, of all the things to scam people on with potentially awful ,life-changing consequences :
https://www.space.com/aas-warns-of-fake-solar-glasses-total-eclipse-2024
Whilst in baby star news :
https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-new-star-fs-tau-b
R.F.K. Jr. Is Expected to Name Nicole Shanahan as His Running Mate
Huge crater in India hints at major meteorite impact 4000 years ago | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2423902-huge-crater-in-india-hints-at-major-meteorite-impact-4000-years-ago/
Followup to Reginald @361, Nicole Shanahan is so wealthy that she helped to finance Kennedy’s Super Bowl commercial, (that was a terrible commercial and was widely panned). Neither Shanahan nor Kennedy have ever held an elected office.
Inexperienced rich doofus joins anti-vaccine dunderhead to run a campaign that will boost Trump’s chances.
@357:
New safety rules needed to battle methanol-fuelled vessel fires, study says
What Trump said:
Washington Post:
Commentary:
Link
Trump bumbling and stumbling even more than usual:
Link
Even Right-Wing Justices Don’t Bite On Anti-Abortion Effort To Restrict Mifepristone Nationwide
MAGA cultists bet big on Trump’s latest grift
Watch Maddow’s scathing takedown of NBC News for hiring Ronna McDaniel
Videos at the link. All are well worth watching.
Partial transcripts are also available at the link. Here is an excerpt:
Followup to comment 369.
Video is also up on YouTube
Lynna, OM @ 363
Let the rich Trump allies burn their money as inefficiently as possibly.
At least when KLF literally burned 1 million dollars they were doing performance art, but the superbowl commercial was apparently Borat-style cringeworthy.
Scientists turn to AI to make beer taste even better | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/26/ai-beer-taste-better-belgium-scientists
‘I’ve never seen anything like it’: how a Scottish lesbian lifeguard drama is changing TV | Television | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/mar/26/ive-never-seen-anything-like-it-how-a-scottish-lesbian-lifeguard-drama-is-changing-tv
birger @371, yes! Good points.
In other news: Breaking — Key Bridge in Baltimore Collapses After Ship Strike!
The bridge collapse in Baltimore is also discussed in comment 350.
Baltimore bridge collapses; Biden says feds will help rebuild it: Live updates
Washington Post link to video of the bridge collapsing.
Workers were repairing potholes on the bridge when it collapsed.
Qatari royal invested about $50 million in pro-Trump network Newsmax
Washington Post link
Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said.
NOT independent media.
Right-Wing Justices Toss Scraps To Anti-Abortion Movement While Unable To Embrace Its Shoddy Argument
God Awful Movies found a film with really gross ways to ‘cure’ cancer.
GAM449 – The Gerson Miracle
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWcbTT_ngnM
Ha! ‘Someone’ just got issued a gag order.
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-hit-with-another-gag-order
Trump Is Now Hawking Copies of the Bible
“God Bless The USA” Bible is $59.99 for the KJV + U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance. All public domain. It was originally NIV, scheduled to release on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, until the publisher that owned the rights backed out amid public complaints. They raised the price $10 when they switched to KJV. The product page says it includes lyrics to the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song. They only licensed the chorus.
Trump Gets Hit With Sweeping Gag Order in Hush Money Trial
Trump is selling ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles for $59.99 as he faces mounting legal bills
@382, 384: Imagine having a bible signed by Satan himself.
Followup to comments 382 and 384.
Ha! The story about Trump hawking bibles is getting a lot of coverage … and much of that coverage mocks Trump.
Link
Texas AG Ken Paxton skirts the law—again
Looking at another issue related to the bridge collapse in Baltimore:
Link
Coldplay urged to adopt ‘orange’ at Luton Radio 1 Big Weekend
* No, not that James Taylor. He has no known connection to Luton.
Blommer Chocolate Company closing Chicago manufacturing plant
Whinging old man doesn’t like watching movies with diverse casts and themes wants to buy a seat on Disney’s board.
Missouri attorney general is accused of racial bias for pinning a student fight on diversity program
link
Ronna McDaniel dropped as NBC contributor.
Stephen Colbert:
Oaf Of Wall Street
“Trump’s Wealth Surges As DJT Goes Public”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ddb104fcptM
Medicalxpress:
From autism to Alzheimer’s: A large-scale animal study links brain pH changes to wide-ranging cognitive issues
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-autism-alzheimer-large-scale-animal.html
Well, this is a worry and would be a real loss – alhough a long way from my area of Oz & never been there. Did go tothe cairns Botanic Garden in 2012 tho’. From a while ago so kind aold news sorry but just seen this & haven’t heard any more so.. still :
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/03/locals-alarmed-as-queensland-haven-to-rare-tree-species-to-be-sold-off-by-csiro
Closer to home I’m hearing worrying info about the SA Museum but waiting to get more info onthat here.
Visa and Mastercard agree to $30 billion settlement that will lower merchant fees
Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
The view from FauxNews:
NBC’s ousting of Ronna McDaniel reinforces status as anti-Trump, pro-Biden network
Good luck on your next billion dollar lawsuit.
StevoR @ 396
Getting rid of the villain Prime Minister of Australia has in other words not changed much. Meet the new bosses, same as the old bosses.
re Reginald Selkirk @397:
So instead of a 2% fee on transactions, it would be 1.96%? That doesn’t seem like much relief.
Intricate mission to de-ice a space telescope is go: Euclid’s ‘eye’ is clear
Google keeps trying to force feed me its hideous new Chrome design. Here’s how to revert to the classic one.
Collapse Of Baltimore Bridge Doesn’t Stop Drivers From Trying To Cross It
Democrat wins Alabama special election in early test for IVF as a campaign issue
Mike Lindell’s MyPillow is getting evicted from its Minnesota warehouse after the company failed to cough up over $200,000 in unpaid rent
The Little-Remembered Supreme Court Precedent That Could Protect IVF — and Abortion
Interesting, but I see no reason the current court would give any more respect to this precedent than all the others they have bulldozed.
Kansas Republicans advance bill requiring abortion providers to state reason for patient’s procedure
I hope “none of your business” is one of the options.
Yep, even worse:
Link
The most obvious points have to be made.
Oh JFC:
Link
Link
NBC News:
Merchan issued a gag order but the order did not specifically include his immediate family, so Trump went after his daughter. I think this shows that Trump is paying attention.
Link
Trump thinks he is going to lose.
Cartoon: What can we do about a Supreme Court packed with corrupt extremists?
The Donald ‘misinformates’ – “I’m very highly educated. I know words, I know the best words.”
The article includes a screen grab of a Trump post that claims “JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME […]”
The article also includes an example of the deification of Trump: “Trump gives us Faith; Trump gives us Virtue; Trump gives us Dignity; Trump gives us Esteem; Trump gives us Honesty; Trump gives us Decency […]”
https://twitter.com/jenmercieca/status/1772701689784492124
There’s also a post from Aaron Rupar noting that Trump is complaining about Ronna McDaniel being out of work. Trump got her fired from the RNC.
Link
Yeah, Seems Like We Should Probably Get Rid Of The Comstock Laws!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/yeah-seems-like-we-should-probably
History’s Biggest Solar Storm, The Carrington Event, Was Even Bigger Than We Realized | IFLScience
https://www.iflscience.com/historys-biggest-solar-storm-the-carrington-event-was-even-bigger-than-we-realized-73527
If we get another one like in 1859, we are well and truly screwed. The politicians are not going to spend money on securing the power net if that money can be used for billionaire tax breaks.
BTW, during years ending with “9”, September 1st seems an unlucky time as evidenced by what happened on the 80th anniversary of the Carrington event.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/minnesota-republican-wont-store-guns
Re: Lynna 411
A lot of social conflict does seem to relate to the family feud dynamic. It’s not enough to be political opponents, the very family line becomes the enemy.
From there it turns to group analogs in part.
Threatening, directly or indirectly, family creates strong manipulable feelings.
Melting polar ice is slowing the Earth’s rotation, with possible consequences for timekeeping
A new study found that ice loss caused by climate change is redistributing mass on the Earth enough to alter its spin.
Pornhub prepared to block Florida if child safety law takes effect
It’s unfortunate he couldn’t keep a little for himself.
@Lynna, OM #418
Maybe the NRA should offer some ‘How to put a key into a lock’ classes.
The Pink Fairy Armadillo: A Unique Mammal with Two Layers of Skin
Brony @419, yes, I think that’s right. And Trump does have a habit of turning entire families (like the family of a judge or prosecutor) into a sort of tribe that he can brand as the enemy. It’s simplistic.
Trump and healthcare:
Link
Trump commented on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s national candidacy, saying, “I love that he is running!”
Usual Cast Of Far-Right Characters Declare ‘WW3,’ ‘Black Swan Event’ Over Bridge Collapse
Sadistic’ Edinburgh teacher found to have assaulted pupils for 20 years | Schools | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/27/sadistic-teacher-john-brownlee-in-scottish-school-found-to-have-assaulted-pupils-for-20-years
Link
I’ve noticed that Shanahan is now trying to tone down the nonsense she has spewed in the past. She is using language like “a discussion should be had […].” I hope she doesn’t get away with that.
Meanwhile, Shanahan bought herself a vice president slot in the campaign.
US Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire won’t seek reelection for a seventh term in November
Senate Democrat Asks Feds To Declassify Documents On Paul Manafort And Russia
A question for physicists: if small, sensitive gravimeters become ubiquitous, would it be possible to detect subtle nuances in the gravity field caused by -for instance- bodies of ore under the surface? I know satellites have been able to map undersea mountains because shifting gravity fields affect satellite orbits, but the effects of ores would be more subtle.
“New design for a small, highly sensitive gravimeter that can operate stably at room temperature”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-small-highly-sensitive-gravimeter-stably.html
Well that’s a first. Mass. State Police robot dog shot during Cape Cod standoff
Letters to the Editor: The Baltimore bridge collapse is tragic. This the wrong solution
Mr. Gitt, perhaps you could ‘splain why you think digging a tunnel would be faster than building a bridge. The environmental and feasibility studies alone would probably take years. You might also look into the Boring Company’s history with delivering large projects on time. (They don’t have one.) Also, if you think Tech-bro Musk can save us on this one, you might look into the history of his other companies with delivering products on schedule as promised. I suggest starting with the Cybertruck and Tesla Full Self Driving.
Woman who stole Biden daughter’s diary skips sentencing, threatened with arrest
S.N.A.F.U.
“Tories Crash Their Spring Campaign On Day One”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TJkqBluZCqY
This is a whole party aiming for a Darwin Award.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/big-normie-energy
Israel agrees to reschedule delegation to discuss Rafah operation: White House
re Reginald Selkirk @436: Trucks carrying hazardous materials are not allowed to use tunnels in many places, and I believe that applies in Maryland. So this is a non-solution to the problem.
Sigh.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/did-ken-buck-and-mike-gallagher-do
NBC News:
Puerto Rico declares public health emergency as dengue cases rise
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman dies at 82
Dachshunds under threat as Germany proposes ban on breeding
“Why some types of music make people want to dance more than others”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-music-people.html
Minnesota governor shares personal IVF journey: ‘No one’s business but your own’
Jeffrey Clark Screws Over Donald Trump Big-Time in 2020 Election Case
Macron and Lula launch submarine built in Brazil with French tech
Trumps (and Epsteins) creepy thing about very young women made me recall this gem from way back
Ladytron – Seventeen [Official Music Video]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=s6jaYJx7yeI
Trump’s Georgia case picks back up Thursday with Fani Willis still on the job
Montana’s high court strikes down voting reform laws
John Eastman, architect of Trump’s 2020 election plot, should be disbarred, judge rules
Cartoon: RFK Jr.
Mark Sumner:
Link
TV news programs today:
One had the headline ‘to live comfortably in Phoenix’, az, you must make ~$102,000
Another told of a well-to-do city in Colorado where even doctors’ incomes won’t enable them to buy a house.
And, in Sedona az, they are converting parking lots to let people live in their cars because only millionaires can afford rent, and we won’t even talk about that it takes to be able to buy a house there.
Shady backstory of the bibles.
“Trump stunt blows up in his face as origins revealed”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qZp0zjobSK8
Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
Hyperfluorescent OLEDs promise more efficient displays that won’t make you so blue
Everything in Our Universe—Even the Chair You’re Sitting On—May Be Conscious, Scientists Say
Definitely mumbo-jumbo.
It’s pay-walled, so I will never know who those “scientists” are.
@461:
I found another article. It’s Rupert Sheldrake.
Could The Sun Be Conscious? Enter The Unorthodox World Of Panpsychism
A Japanese supplement pill is recalled after two people died and more than 100 were hospitalized
Texas Republican under investigation by House Ethics Committee
Reginald Selkirk@462,
In today’s podcast we ask: Could Rupert Shedrake be Conscious?
Harvard University removes human skin binding from book
As summarized from an Associated Press article by Steve Benen:
Followup to Reginald @454.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/john-eastman-recommended-for-disbarment
“Here we are with only the bar proceedings having provided anything like a modicum of accountability in a timely fashion.”
https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1773140417422229949
Video at the link. Chris Hayes enjoyed that.
How Apple plans to update new iPhones without opening them
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug says D.E.I. is weakening America, and it’s got to go!
Oh, lawdy, there are tapes.
Lots and lots of video proof, photos, emails and other receipts! Amazing.
Example:
Much more at the link. Most of it is horrifying and entertaining at the same time.
“So, what continues to motivate Donald Trump’s and his MAGA followers hatred of Ukraine?
Simply, they hate that Ukraine was unwilling to illegally meddle in American politics to help-out the Trump campaign.”
How Ukraine is using mobile phones on 6ft poles to stop drones
They Make Viral Gun Videos—With Hardline Christian Values
Biden orders every US agency to appoint a chief AI officer
RFK Jr. Running Mate Thinks Sunlight Is The Best Fertility Treatment
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-running-mate-thinks-sunlight
South Carolina to use congressional map deemed unconstitutional.
Washington Post link
The Supreme Court heard arguments on the redistricting case in October but has yet to rule, essentially running out the clock for this year’s election.
Astronomers have solved the mystery of why this black hole has the hiccups
Bad news, which is, in a way, a followup to comment 478.
RNC Gets Win In Effort To Toss (Disproportionately Democratic) Mailed Ballots In Pennsylvania
Chris Hayes explains ‘the Trump plan to make everything more expensive’
Here is an excerpt from the transcript, (the full transcript is available at the link):
Followup to comment 481.
Posted by readers of the article:
Cartoon: Holy week offer
Link
Georgia GOP Official Who Whined About Stolen Election Voted Illegally Nine Times
@355
Idiot Republicans Confuse Bus of Basketball Players With Migrant Bus
Russian network that ‘paid European politicians’ busted, authorities claim
Jan 6 police officer slams ‘opportunistic grifter’ Trump as former president hails ‘law and order’ at NYPD cop’s wake
Bidens announce theme for Easter Egg Roll on White House lawn
The Ballad of Buckley’s Blowhard: a fairly comprehensive and scathing remembrance of Holy Joe Lieberman by “Lawyers, Guns and Money” blogger Erik Loomis.
Cartoon: Ronna McDaniel’s new gig
Seth Meyers drags Trump for hush-money trial and hawking Bibles
Video and partial transcript at the link.
CROWDER IS IN DEEP SH*T via The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder – nearly 20 mins long.
These Techy Reading Glasses Are Expensive, But May Hold the Key to Future Eyewear
Famous Conjoined Twin Abby Hensel Marries Boyfriend … What About Her Sis???
New antibiotics: “Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria”
And here is the link:
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-generative-ai-potential-drugs-antibiotic.html
Louis Gossett Jr., ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ star who broke barriers in Hollywood, dies
West Virginia Gov. Justice vetoes bill that would have loosened school vaccine policies
Guess who said it
I could think of a few thousand conspiracy theories that turned out to be wrong, just off the top of my head. Idiot.