A Republican candidate for Congress in Washington state has suggested the CIA and Ukraine may be responsible for a terrorist attack last week that killed 143 people in Moscow, echoing a theory pushed, without evidence, by Kremlin propagandists.
Joe Kent, a conservative firebrand in a likely rematch with first-term Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, whom he narrowly lost to in 2022, made the comments in a Tuesday appearance on “Real America” on the right-wing One America News Network…
Members of Cesar Chavez’s family endorsed President Biden’s reelection bid Friday, according to the Biden campaign.
The endorsement comes ahead of a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. event Saturday invoking the famous labor leader. The independent candidate is hosting a campaign event in Los Angeles titled “celebrating the life & legacy of Cesar Chavez.”
But the Biden team has ties to the Chavez family — the campaign manager for the 2024 cycle is Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Chavez.
Fernando and Paul Chavez, the labor leader’s sons, made the endorsement, CBS first reported. Paul Chavez told the outlet: “the bonds of affection and respect for a president who by his character and actions consistently reflects the genuine legacy of my father.” …
Crystal Mason was convicted of illegal voting in Texas and sentenced to five years in prison. This week, an appeals court overturned the sentence.
Good news! This news comes a bit late. Republicans who committed voter fraud on purpose received very light sentences and no jail time. Crystal Mason did not intentionally commit voter fraud, but doofuses sentenced her to five years in prison! Two-tiered justice system indeed.
Brian Pritchard, the first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, has earned a reputation as a prominent election denier. This made it all the more notable when a state judge this week concluded that Pritchard violated state election law after voting unlawfully — nine times.
The Georgia GOP official will not, however, find himself behind bars. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim noted, Pritchard will have to pay a $5,000 fine and will receive a public reprimand from the Georgia election board.
Over the last few years, this has happened with considerable frequency. Quite a few Republicans have been caught casting illegal ballots, and in practically every instance, they’ve received relatively light sentences.
And every time this happens, I’m reminded of Texas’ Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 elections while on supervised release for a federal conviction. She didn’t know she was ineligible to vote, and her ballot was never counted, but Mason — a Black woman — was nevertheless convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to five years in prison.
Mason has been out of prison on an appeal bond, and as NBC News reported, she yesterday received the news she’s been wanting to hear for several years: A Texas appeals court overturned Mason’s five-year prison sentence.
Mason had testified that when she was in prison, she was not informed that she could not vote upon her release, [Second District Appeals Court Justice Wade] Birdwell detailed. She also “emphatically denied” having read the provisional ballot’s affirmations detailing felon voting restrictions, testifying that she did not know she was not allowed to cast a ballot because she was on supervised release from prison, according to Birdwell.
The appeals court judge wasn’t fully satisfied with the defendant’s explanation, but Birdwell wrote that “finding Mason to be not credible — and disbelieving her protestation of actual knowledge — does not suffice as proof of guilt.”
“In the end, the State’s primary evidence was that Mason read the words on the affidavit,” Birdwell said.
“But even if she had read them, they are not sufficient — even in the context of the rest of the evidence in this case — to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she actually knew that being on supervised release after having served her entire federal sentence of incarceration made her ineligible to vote by casting a provisional ballot when she did so,” he added.
Not surprisingly, Mason was thrilled.
“I am overjoyed to see my faith rewarded today,” she said. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no one else has to face what I’ve endured for over six years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack.”
Donald Trump’s latest fundraising gimmick is a flag–emblazoned Bible packed with American “founding” documents, Lee Greenwood song lyrics, and a very tenuous connection to Trump. If you’re a white Christian nationalist looking for justifications to knock down the already shaky wall between the government and religion, this tome that first appeared in 2021 is tailor-made for you. Otherwise, you’ll probably find it offensive.
With Greenwood waxing rhapsodic to The Tennessean about how there’s no “better match than faith and patriotism,” this might as well be the official Bible for the Republic of Gilead. And if the connection to Trump is relegated to some of the profits ending up in his bank account, that’s not unexpected. Putting his name on other people’s stuff is what he does. It’s not like Trump designed those gold sneakers.
But for actual Christians—that is, the kind who think the Golden Rule might just be more important than giving Trump more gold to help him rule—this whole affair is nothing short of disgusting.
The “God Bless the USA” Bible includes the Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance. The first two of these documents make no mention of God at all. The third references the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” which may not mean what purchasers of this Bible think it means. But the Pledge of Allegiance does have plain old “God” in there—added during the Cold War as a middle finger to those pinko commies. Greenwood fans would probably like that part.
However, there are plenty of Christians who seem less than thrilled at Trump laying claim to their sacred text.
[Examples of tweets and videos at the link: “It is a bankrupt Christianity that sees a demagogue co-opting our faith and even our holy scriptures for the sake of his own pursuit of power and praise him for it rather than insist that we refuse to allow our sacred faith and scriptures to become a mouthpiece for an empire.” etc.]
Speaking to MSNBC, the Rev. Al Sharpton said that Trump’s scheme brought to mind the word “blasphemy.”
“I think that people ought to realize how offensive this is to those of us that really believe in the Bible,” said Sharpton. “He’s doing this during Holy Week. Tomorrow is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter. Of all of the times you want to hustle using the Bible, why would you do it during Holy Week, which is really a spit in the face of people that really believe in the Bible from a Christian point of view?”
As U.S, News & World Report notes, Trump’s history with the Bible has been one long line of cringe.
[…] Asked for a favorite Bible verse in 2015, Trump said: “I wouldn’t want to get into it because to me that’s very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it’s very personal, so I don’t want to get into verses. … The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”
A year later, Trump indicated a favorite Bible verse of his involved the concept of “an eye for an eye,” saying the U.S. has “to be firm” and “very strong” in the face of “what’s happening to our country.” Notably, the phrase is rooted in Old Testament passages related to justice, while Jesus Christ in the New Testament contrasts the concept with a command to turn the other cheek when struck.
Also in 2015, Trump said he didn’t think he’d ever outright sought forgiveness from God, but referenced taking Communion: “When I drink my little wine – which is about the only wine I drink – and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said. “I think in terms of, ‘Let’s go on and let’s make it right.’”
This isn’t even the first time Trump has put his name on a Bible. He’s been known to scrawl his giant signature on the Good Book when admirers ask for his autograph.
As awful as all that sounds, it’s a race to see what comes next—an evangelical church making this version the only acceptable text, or some Trumper claiming that the Constitution was written by two Corinthians.
[…] Members of Russia’s Federal Security Service—the country’s intelligence agency, also known as the FSB—detained Gershkovich while he was on a reporting assignment in the city of Yekaterinburg, according to the Journal. Gershkovich had deep familiarity the country: his parents fled the Soviet Union in the 1970s. He had full press credentials from Russia’s foreign ministry and had reported from Moscow for Agence France Press and the Moscow Times before joining the Journal in January 2022. Russia has not publicly presented evidence of its espionage claims against Gershkovich, the Journal reports.
Since his arrest—which marks the first time an American journalist has been held on such charges in Russia since the end of the Cold War—Gershkovich has been in Russia’s notorious Lefortovo prison, where he spends 90 percent of his day in a small cell, according to the paper. Earlier this week, a Russian court extended Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention by three months, until June 30. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the extension, calling it “another cynical affront to press freedom by the Russian authorities.”
In a letter published today, Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker called Gershkovich’s detention “a blatant attack on the rights of the free press,” adding that “given the lessons of history and the arbitrary power of the Russian state, if there is a trial, we would expect a guilty verdict—something we would view as a travesty of justice.” A conviction could carry a sentence of 10 to 20 years, the Journal reports.
Roger Carstens, the Biden administration’s special envoy for hostage affairs, told the New York Times that the US government is involved in “intensive efforts” to secure the releases of Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, who has been in Russian custody since 2018 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges, which American officials also deny.
The Journal dedicated its front page to Gershkovich today, leaving much of it blank under the headline, “His story should be here,” alongside other stories on his detention and the threats authoritarians pose to journalists around the world. (More than 520 journalists are imprisoned worldwide, according to the group Reporters Without Borders.)
[Tweet and striking image of Wall Street Journal front page are available at the link]
The Journal also hosted a public, 24-hour read-a-thon, which streamed live on social media, of Gershkovich’s work, with participants such as NBC’s Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell, ABC’s David Muir, and CNN’s Jake Tapper and Kaitlan Collins.
In a statement released today, President Joe Biden said he will “never give up hope” of freeing Gershkovich.
“We will continue working every day to secure his release,” Biden said. “We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia’s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips. And we will continue to stand strong against all those who seek to attack the press or target journalists—the pillars of free society.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also acknowledged the anniversary of Gershkovich’s arrest, noting that “Russia has provided no evidence of wrongdoing for a simple reason: Evan did nothing wrong. Journalism is not a crime.”
Gershkovich’s parents have said “he’s doing the best he can under the circumstances, and the circumstances are very hard.” […]
Russia this week vetoed the annual renewal of a panel of experts tasked with monitoring the enforcement of U.N. sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Thirteen United Nations Security Council members voted in favor of extending the panel’s mandate for an additional year, while China abstained.
North Korea has been under sanctions for its ballistic missile and nuclear programs since 2006, and the vote does not affect the sanctions themselves.
The panel, made up of independent experts, has been conducting oversight for 15 years, reporting twice a year to the Security Council. […]
South Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Joonkook Hwang slammed the outcome of the vote.
“This is outrageous and makes no sense at all, given the continued and accelerated advancement of the North Korean nuclear and missile programs,” he said. “Pyongyang has been openly denouncing the authority of the Security Council and pursuing an increasingly dangerous and aggressive nuclear policy, in particular targeting the Republic of Korea.” […]
Russian’s U.N. Ambassador tried to excuse the veto by claiming that the monitoring reports were biased information controlled by the West.
[…] At midnight Israel time on April 1, the government will hit a deadline for changing its policy on the military draft. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will then be required to send conscription notices to roughly 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men, who had been previously exempted by a law carving out special privileges for students at religious academies, or yeshivot.
This might sound like an obscure internal Israeli political fight, but it actually has the potential to alter the entire trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The conscription issue splits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart at the seams. Netanyahu depends on ultra-Orthodox parties for his parliamentary majority; if he permits mass conscription of yeshiva students, they’ll abandon him. But if he gives the ultra-Orthodox what they want, he’ll run afoul of key members of his own right-wing Likud party, potentially prompting their defections.
These scenarios both end the same way: with the collapse of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and new elections, which Likud would (per every poll) lose by a wide margin. Netanyahu’s defeat would almost certainly usher his more centrist rival Benny Gantz into power. And while some of Gantz’s policies toward the war and the Palestinians would look the same, they would likely differ on some critical issues — including the all-important questions of Gaza’s political future and a Palestinian state.
Of course, potential change is just that: potential. There are many ways this scenario for real change could go awry.
Netanyahu understands he is facing a major threat, and he is working overtime to come up with a solution that could postpone or even avoid the draft crisis. Even if the draft begins, it would likely be some time before it would trigger elections, creating time for polls to shift. […]
it’s clear that this issue is more of an existential threat to Netanyahu’s continued time in office than anything else since October 7. “Governments in Israel have fallen over this very issue,” says Dahlia Scheindlin, a political scientist and leading Israeli pollster. “I think it’s more serious than any [post-October 7 political] crisis we’ve had.”
Given that Netanyahu’s government is one of the biggest barriers blocking the path to a true solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is no small thing.
[…] In Israel’s fractured multiparty system, no one party ever commands a majority of the seats in the Knesset (legislature). Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party holds a plurality, but it needed support from smaller parties to form its current majority. These smaller parties come in two flavors: the extreme nationalist right and the ultra-Orthodox.
While both types of parties are religious and socially conservative, they differ sharply in their policy priorities. Far-right nationalists’ primary concern is enshrining indefinite Israeli Jewish control over all the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. Ultra-Orthodox parties, by contrast, care primarily about preserving and expanding the special rights and privileges the Israeli state accords to the ultra-Orthodox community.
Of these rights, none is more important than the yeshiva exemption from the military draft. Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the best and most important thing a man can do is study scripture. For this reason, roughly half of all ultra-Orthodox men do no paid work, depending on government support and charity to survive. Military service in particular gets in the way of studying at a yeshiva, disrupting the traditional life of an ultra-Orthodox man.
But exempting yeshiva students from military service has long struck other Israelis as deeply unfair. Why do their children have to serve, putting their lives on the line and future plans on hold, while the ultra-Orthodox sit and study? Why is attending university or entering the workplace less important than attending yeshiva?
[…] After October 7 and in the midst of a full-scale war, Israeli opposition to the ultra-Orthodox exemption has hit historic highs.
[…] Scenario 1: Netanyahu fails to take action before the deadline. The IDF would subsequently be required to send conscription notices to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men, though full enforcement would (per the Jerusalem Post) be delayed till August. […]
Scenario 2: Netanyahu comes up with a policy framework that satisfies the ultra-Orthodox but alienates key members of his own party. Netanyahu has tried to move in that direction but faced public opposition from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said that a proposed legislative framework is unacceptably lenient. […]
Scenario 3: Netanyahu manages to temporarily save his government by securing an extension from the Supreme Court. To get such an exemption, Netanyahu does not need to present a full draft of an ultra-Orthodox exemption. Instead, he merely needs to convince the court that he’s making a good-faith effort to get a law they might eventually approve. […]
If Netanyahu’s government does fall, he will not be kicked out of office immediately. Instead, he will remain in office as a caretaker prime minister until elections can be held —by law, not until three months after a government falls. That means the soonest any elections could be held is early July, and it would most likely be later than that.
In the midst of a horrific war, this timeframe feels like an eternity. The people of Gaza are starving right now.
[…] Unlike Netanyahu, who is beholden to the far right, Gantz’s coalition partners would likely range from the more mainstream right to the left. Gantz is a general by background and remains close with the security establishment; he would probably define a more concrete and limited understanding of “victory” in the Gaza war, which would likely bring it to a swifter close. And while not an ideological dove, he also is not implacably opposed to a Palestinian state. This makes him more susceptible than Netanyahu would be to the heavy pressure from Washington to make moves toward greater Palestinian self-determination.
[…] Many things could prevent such a development, ranging from Netanyahu turning his poll numbers around to a Trump victory lessening international pressure on Israel.
[…] One thing is clear: With Netanyahu in power, peace and justice are unattainable. If the fight over ultra-Orthodox conscription does bring down his government, there’s a chance — however remote — that this could change.
Crystal Mason and Brian Pritchard had some very different outcomes.
Georgia Republican Party official Brian Pritchard has spent the last several years ranting on his talk show that Democrats nefariously stole the 2020 election from poor, sweet, innocent Donald Trump.
He spent this week, however, getting convicted of nine counts of voter fraud.
Pritchard had pleaded guilty in 1996 to felony fraud and theft over $38,000 in forged checks related to his construction business. He didn’t go to prison, but he was required to pay all of that money back in restitution and he was sentenced to probation, which at one point was extended until 2011. In Georgia, felons are not allowed to vote while still on probation, but he voted nine times between 2008 and 2010 anyway.
[…] Aside from 2020 election conspiracies, another thing Pritchard apparently likes to talk about is what a brilliant businessman he is, which the judge cited as a reason for why he surely must have known that he was voting illegally.
The judge found Pritchard’s explanations to be lacking in credibility, noting that “to accept that the Respondent’s grasp of legal proceedings was so unsophisticated that he did not understand the basic terms of his probation in 1996 … this Court would need to disregard (Pritchard’s) self-described experience as a businessman handling complex projects as well as million-dollar contracts and budgets.”
“Based on the above, and upon careful consideration of the evidence in its totality the Court does not find the explanations credible or convincing,” Boggs wrote. “At the very least, even if the Court accepts he did not know about his felony sentences, the record before this Court demonstrates that he should have known.”
Pritchard was ordered to pay $5,000 fine — $500 for each count and $500 for registering to vote illegally — and $375.14 for what it cost the court to have him investigated.
This is a relatively reasonable, if not overly punitive, judgment, even for someone I find personally objectionable. I do not think that a felony should keep anyone from voting in the first place and $5,375.14 could bankrupt a whole lot of people. I certainly don’t think it should ever result in prison time.
But let’s take a look at how this particular story popped up in my Reddit feed this morning, shall we? [screen grabs are available at the link]
By sheer coincidence, the top two stories were this and one about Crystal Mason, a Black woman from Texas who attempted to vote once while still on supervised release for a tax felony. She didn’t even actually vote! She tried to cast a provisional ballot, was rejected, was found guilty of voter fraud in 2018 after a trial that lasted just a few hours, and was then sentenced to five years in a federal prison for the crime. Five years! In prison! For trying and failing to vote!
Via The Guardian:
In 2022, Texas’s highest criminal court told a lower appellate court it had to reconsider a ruling upholding Mason’s conviction. On Thursday, that court said there was not sufficient evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote.
Justice Wade Birdwell wrote for the court in its Thursday ruling: “We conclude that the quantum of the evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting.”
It’s worth noting that out of 4,000 provisional ballots cast in that particular election, 3,990 of them were rejected for one reason or another. But Crystal Mason was the only one of these people charged with a crime.
Thankfully, Mason didn’t serve that ridiculous five-year sentence, as she was held on an appeal bond instead. That doesn’t mean her life hasn’t been upended by the seven-year ordeal. […]
What’s galling here is the disparity between how Mason, a Black woman, was treated and sentenced and how Pritchard, a white conservative man, was treated and sentenced, relative to the actual “crimes” for which they were convicted. Sure, these are two different states, but they’re not all that different.
It’s hard to imagine that Pritchard would get the same sentence as Mason initially did were he in Texas, a state where six out of seven law enforcement agencies freely report stopping and searching people of color more than white people. The same state where, need I remind you, a District Attorney once had an expert testify that simply being Black made a man more deserving of the death penalty.
It also seems unlikely that Mason would have been sentenced as lightly as Pritchard in Georgia, which has certainly had its own problems with racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Again, I do not actually think that what either of these people did should be a crime in the first place, but if something is going to be a crime, it sure as hell shouldn’t be more of one based on what one’s race is.
Everyone prepare yourselves for some shocking news.
It turns out that the aw-shucks, dorky-dad-in-an-REI-fleece persona Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has cultivated has not distracted people from noticing that he’s a standard-issue private equity goblin with a reactionary mean streak. Particularly the Democrats who control both houses of the state Legislature, whose icy contempt for the empty-headed weasel seems to know no bounds.
The Democrats recently helped kill Youngkin’s big, legacy-defining project: a sports and entertainment complex in Northern Virginia that would have included a new home arena for basketball’s Washington Wizards and hockey’s Washington Capitols. Youngkin then vetoed a whole bunch of bills that might have made life marginally easier and more humane for his constituents. […]
First, the arena project, which had the enthusiastic support of Ted Leonsis, the billionaire owner of the Caps and Wizards, and hardly anyone else: […]
Yeah, the people in Alexandria were not thrilled about, among other issues, increasing traffic in an area where the roads are already a parking lot even at the best of times. And no one could avoid noticing that these arena projects often give sweet financial breaks to the billionaire owners of sports teams while never producing the high number of jobs and economic growth that their advocates promise. [correct]
So Leonsis abandoned the project and struck a deal to keep the Wizards and Caps in Washington DC […]
[…] Just once, we’d like it if wealthy dilettantes like Youngkin would recognize that being a successful CEO of something like The Carlyle Group, where you only have to measure yourself against other sociopaths in your industry, is completely different from running a state with a co-equal branch of government. Which means that the ego stroking has to go both ways if you want to get anything accomplished.
Not to worry, though. Youngkin has gotten revenge this week by vetoing a whole bunch of bills for things that people like:
HB 698 and SB 448 aimed to establish a retail market for marijuana starting in May 2025. HB 1 and SB 1 would have increased the state’s minimum wage from $12 per hour to $13.50 at the start of the new year and $15 per hour starting in 2026. Both passed the House and Senate by tight margins.
[…] At least Youngkin is consistent: He also vetoed a bill that would have extended minimum-wage protections to farmworkers, including migrants on temporary visas who often see their labor exploited for poverty wages. […]
Youngkin was also very busy vetoing a whole shitload of gun safety laws, so at least everyone in Virginia will have an easier time shooting each other:
Youngkin vetoed 30 bills, including ones to restrict assault weapons access, impose waiting periods to receive a gun after purchasing one, expand the definition of people convicted of domestic abuse who are prevented from having a gun to include intimate partners, ban guns in more public places and conduct a study on the effects of gun violence. […] also vetoed bills that would have required […] training law enforcement officers on enforcing the state’s red flag law, and outlining certain safe storage requirements for keeping guns in a house where minors are present.
That last one is particularly ironic, since he also signed a bill that “would create a felony charge for parents or guardians who allow a child under 18 to access a firearm despite knowing the child has a history of violent or threatening behavior.” So people don’t have to store their firearms safely, and we’re not going to give them advice on how to do so if they want to, but we’re going to charge them with felonies if a minor in their home gets a gun and shoots someone anyway.
Remember when people read too much into Youngkin’s 2021 election and started whispering that maybe he could challenge Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination? And they did this while he was busy caving to the crazy wing of the GOP — that is to say, the GOP — by rolling back voting rights for convicted felons, pushing for harsh limits on abortion, and kicking transgender students right in the teeth? That was funny. Not like ha-ha funny, but more like “You people are such cruel fucking morons” funny.
Luckily Youngkin is term-limited, so we just have to white-knuckle our way through two more years of his extreme lame duckness, and then maybe we can vote in a new governor […]
Lynna… @ # 7, quoting Vox: Ultra-Orthodox parties… care primarily about preserving and expanding the special rights and privileges the Israeli state accords to the ultra-Orthodox community. … Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the best and most important thing a man can do is study scripture. For this reason, roughly half of all ultra-Orthodox men do no paid work, depending on government support and charity to survive.
This has puzzled me since the issue of conscripting U-Os came to light. Considered strictly on a military basis, adding these functionally ignorant crybabies seems like a net loss for Israel Defense Force capability – so why bother?
This week in single-gender rich person weirdo secret cult news: There is a place called the Garrick in London, and only rich Englishmen can go to there. […] New York Times:
A visitor lucky enough to cadge an invitation from a member might end up in the company of a Supreme Court justice, the master of an Oxford college or the editor of a London newspaper. The odds are that person would be a man. Women are excluded from membership in the Garrick and permitted only as guests, a long-simmering source of tension that has recently erupted into a full-blown furor.
That sounds incredibly boring to me, but it is true that this is a place where important social networking doth occur amongst the elites! […]
After The Guardian, a London newspaper, put a fresh spotlight on the Garrick’s men-only policy, naming and shaming some of its rarefied members from a leaked membership list, two senior British government officials resigned from the club: Richard Moore, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, who oversees nearly half a million public employees.
It is hilariously condescending for the New York Times to qualify that the Guardian is “a London newspaper.” […] Now here is my favorite detail.
The only room off limits to women is the members’ lounge, known as Under the Stairs, where men gather after dinner. Yet, as Ms. Kelly and other women note, the most valuable relationships are often formed in such informal settings.
Yes, I’ve seen this documentary! [video at the link]
Anyway, neither the Guardian nor the Times explains the most important fact: This clerb is indisputably the best place in London Towne to jerk off your best friend, Sir Roger Codger-Dodger of the Hodgepodge Codger-Dodgers, whomst you met at Eton! […]
Personally, I don’t think the current members should have to resign, but they should have to let women and nonbinary folks in, because it is 2024 are you ALL out of your fucking minds?!?! […]
Pierce @12, I don’t know. It’s a situation that I can’t get my head around. It is inexplicable. I will, unfortunately, never get out of my head the stories of Orthodox men spitting on women who broke their rules. I usually just throw up my hands and shout, “Religion!” I guess that is the only explanation.
It is a strange experience to have another person spit on you. To have an ultra-Orthodox teenager look you dead in the eye and mutter “shiksa” or “kalba” — the Hebrew word for [B-Word] — and then decide you deserve a little something more than a slur because he knows you are a liberal Jew.
That this happened several times here Friday morning, on International Women’s Day at the Western Wall, tells you a lot about the state of religious liberty in a country that prides itself on being the Middle East’s only free nation — and about the resilience of activists who refuse to allow fundamentalists to control public Jewish life.
The Women of the Wall are used to getting spit on, not to mention shoved, scratched, kicked […]
For the past 30 years, the feminist prayer group has held a monthly service in the women’s section of the Western Wall, where they wear prayer shawls and read from the Torah. Walk into any Reform or Conservative synagogue in the world and women will be doing exactly that, without fanfare, often in synagogues helmed by female rabbis. But at the Western Wall, which, like other holy sites in Israel, is controlled by the Chief Rabbinate, such egalitarian displays inspire angry protests. Ultra-Orthodox Jews see such behavior at the holy site as sacrilege, and various members of Women of the Wall have been arrested for “disturbing the public order.” […]
President Joe Biden was joined Thursday by two of his Democratic predecessors for a star-studded fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall that his campaign said brought in more than $26 million.
Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton participated in the event in New York with more than 5,000 supporters in attendance — including several protesters who interrupted the program when the three presidents were speaking.
Actor and comedian Mindy Kaling hosted the program, which ended at around 10 p.m., and late night host Stephen Colbert moderated a conversation with Biden, Clinton and Obama. Special guests include celebrities like Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Lea Michele.
During the nearly hourlong moderated conversation, Colbert joked that the moment was historic because “three presidents have come to New York, and not one of them to appear in court,” taking a jab at former President Donald Trump’s criminal indictments and civil trials. […]
[video, a three-minute excerpt, at the link]
[…] Obama sternly addressed a protester when he was interrupted, saying, “You can’t just talk and not listen.”
“That’s part of democracy,” Obama added. “Part of democracy is not just talking. It’s listening. […] it is important for us to understand that it is possible to have moral clarity and have deeply held beliefs but still recognize that the world is complicated and it is hard to solve these problems.”
The crowd erupted in applause.
[…] House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also delivered remarks.
For the three presidents, the fundraiser capped off a day of mobilization efforts that included sitting for an interview with the podcast “SmartLess,” which the White House said would be available at a later, unspecified date.
[…] The show of unity among Biden, Clinton and Obama stands in stark contrast to Trump, who faces opposition from members of his own administration, including former Vice President Mike Pence, as he seeks a return to the White House in November.
Former President George W. Bush — the only other Republican former president — declined to support Trump in 2020. […]
Protestors were demanding less military support for Israel and more humanitarian relief for people in Gaza.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@9,
I wonder if Netanyahu’s rivals actually want him out at this stage. After all, none of the actual contenders for successor, AFAIK, have raised any principled objection to the ongoing genocide. Once it’s done, they can push him out and fasten the blame for it on him.
KGsays
it is important for us to understand that it is possible to have moral clarity and have deeply held beliefs but still recognize that the world is complicated and it is hard to solve these problems. – Barack Obama, quoted by NBC quoted by Lynaa, OM@17
True. OTOH, it is not possible to “have moral clarity” without recognizing that enabling genocide is wrong.
[…] the Democratic administration, slowly but surely, continues to focus on good governance in ways that actually help people. The Associated Press reported:
President Joe Biden on Thursday announced new steps to protect consumers who buy short-term health insurance plans that critics say amount to junk. A new rule finalized by the Democratic president’s administration will limit these plans to just three months. And the plans can only be renewed for a maximum of four months, instead of up to the three years that were allowed under Biden’s predecessor, Republican Donald Trump.
[That three-year extension was Trump siding with his fellow scammers and con-men.]
The same AP report added that the Democratic administration is also “requiring short-term plans to provide consumers with clear explanations of the limits of their benefits.”
Neera Tanden, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, told reporters, “The president really believes the American people do not want to be taken for suckers and junk insurance takes them for suckers.”
For those who don’t follow the ins and outs of federal health care policymaking, this might seem a little obscure, but I’ve long taken an interest in this because it matters to a lot of consumers.
[…] Trump failed spectacularly in his attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but while in office, the former president was able to take a variety of steps — mostly without Congress — designed to undermine the system.
Near the top of the list was the Republican administration’s 2018 decision to expand access to so-called “short-term” health care plans […].
To be sure, the ACA was designed to include such plans, but they were only supposed to serve as stopgap coverage for a few months. The Trump administration changed the rules, opening the door to insurers offering “short-term” plans that would effectively be available for three years.
For some consumers, this might’ve seemed like a good deal. After all, these plans made it possible for people to buy much cheaper insurance. But there were serious flaws in this approach that the Republican White House largely ignored.
First, these plans tended to be pretty awful. We’re talking about skimpy coverage that left many Americans with significant medical bills for one obvious reason: The safeguards and consumer protections at the heart of “Obamacare” didn’t apply to these plans.
Second, those with pre-existing conditions generally couldn’t even purchase these plans.
And third, none of this did any favors to the overall health care system. The more younger and healthier people were encouraged to move toward lower-cost, lower-coverage plans, the greater the cost pressures for everyone else.
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association said the Trump administration’s gambit had “the potential to harm patients.” Trump and his team did it anyway.
Now, Biden and his team are undoing that work, placing new limits on temporary plans, and requiring improved disclosures on the limited benefits available through these plans.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Republican administration — whenever it exists — tries to reverse course on these developments, but for now, it’s good news for consumers, whether it shows up on front pages or not.
Vladimir Putin recently approved a list of development plans for the Kaliningrad region of Russia, and it surprisingly listed creating a Steam-like ecosystem, including a handheld device, among the key goals. Part of a new nine-point plan handed down from Putin to PM Mikhail Mishustin, the new Russian gaming platform should include desktop and portable hardware, an OS, and a cloud system for gaming. The plans, spotted by PCGamer, indicate that PM Mishustin has a “period of execution” until June 15 to assess and organize the production of the gaming machines and ecosystem…
I think the first commenter to this article nailed it:
Flayed
This is obviously for controlling drones on the battlefield not gaming.
Due to insatiable demand for the world’s most advanced microchips, TSMC is on a hiring spree. Successfully surfing wave after wave of tech industry trends, the contract chipmaker aims to swell its ranks from 77,000 to 100,000 over the next few years, according to the company’s SVP of human resources, Laura Ho (via CNN). Ho says this explosive growth means not only a need to change hiring methods but also to adjust the work culture and find a new way of training the rapid inflow of new employees…
It may surprise many people that there is a a concerted effort going on quite literally under their noses—on the screens of their smartphones, tablets, and laptops—to sow distrust, uncertainty, and fear of ordinary birth control among this country’s young people and particularly, young women.
In most instances the folks responsible for fostering this distrust are the same people vehemently opposed to abortion. Their failure to see any dissonance in advocating such contradictory positions might be perplexing—if you didn’t take their motivation into account. It’s the natural fulfillment of what they would consider an ideal society: one where men are in control, and women know their place.
This wouldn’t be a big problem if they and their ilk kept that vision to themselves. But that is not how the right wing operates in the era of social media. They love to assume the role of righteous crusaders […] Many of the purveyors of the disinformation blitz currently underway on social media about the supposed dangers of routine birth control are men, but not all of them. Some of them are simply opportunistic, looking for clicks and attention. […]
Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, they’ve now trained their focus on hormonal birth control, hysterically amplifying its alleged “hazards” to create a narrative of uncertainty ripe for what they see as the conservative-dominated highest court’s next logical step.
As reported by Lauren Weber and Sabrina Malhi for The Washington Post:
Search for “birth control” on TikTok or Instagram and a cascade of misleading videos vilifying hormonal contraception appear: Young women blaming their weight gain on the pill. Right-wing commentators claiming that some birth control can lead to infertility. Testimonials complaining of depression and anxiety. […]
Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the use oral birth control in 1960. Since then, it has been used safely and effectively by literally hundreds of millions to prevent conception. The effects of its widespread use have quite literally transformed human society for the better. As explained by Planned Parenthood:
In the five decades since these events, profound and beneficial social changes occurred, in large part because of women’s relatively new freedom to effectively control their fertility — maternal and infant health have improved dramatically, the infant death rate has plummeted, and women have been able to fulfill increasingly diverse educational, political, professional, and social aspirations.
[…] The first over-the-counter distribution of hormonal oral contraceptives is scheduled to begin late this month or in early April, enabling access without a prescription.
[…] Doctors, including one interviewed for Weber and Malhi’s article, report seeing patients forced to travel outside of their anti-abortion states to terminate unwanted pregnancies resulting from misinformation they’ve heard about the pill on social media sites. Some of this misinformation is generated by medically illiterate “health coaches” who appear primarily motivated by the huge number of clicks they generate, while some of it—such as the Peter Thiel-funded right-wing women’s magazine “Evie”—is plainly ideological in origin.
As Weber and Malhi report:
Brett Cooper, a media commentator for the conservative Daily Wire, argued in a viral TikTok clip that birth control can impact fertility, cause women to gain weight and even alter whom they are attracted to. It racked up over 219,000 “likes” before TikTok removed it following The Post’s inquiry.
In a Daily Wire video, Cooper and political commentator Candace Owens denounce birth-control pills and IUDs as “unnatural,” with Owens saying she’s a “big advocate of getting women to realize this stuff is not normal,” […]
[…] Other purveyors of “concern” surrounding the use of oral contraceptives include right-wing “influencers” such as Ben Shapiro and podcaster Matt Walsh. Walsh, writing recently for the right-wing Daily Wire, took specific exception to the Post’s article, suggesting it selectively portrayed the benefits of oral contraception while ignoring what he, in turn, selectively characterized as the pill’s potentially harmful effects. Walsh, for example, focused on a 2018 Danish study that found an increase of attempted suicide associated with hormonal contraception. What he ignores are the limitations in that study, as described here:
Limitations included a lack of information with regards to the risk factors that may well be influential in the relationship between hormonal contraception and suicidal behaviour. These include important social factors, such as relationship break-down/status, exposure to domestic abuse, and strong family history of mental health diagnoses.
The problem is not the censoring of information. […] The problem is peddling inflammatory [misinformation or information presented out of context] […]
For example, while a tiny number of birth control users may experience blood clots, the risk for blood clots is actually greater for those who are pregnant. And while hormone-based birth control can also show a slight elevation in breast cancer risk (as does the long term use of aspirin or ibuprofen), the risk for other types of cancer—such as ovarian, endometrial and colorectal—is actually decreased.
One might believe that Walsh was actually concerned about women’s’ health. But his article expresses his actual motives quite plainly: He views women’s subservience to men as a desired state of affairs, and he thinks denying birth control will help that goal along.
From his own Daily Wire article:
With fewer women on the pill, more women will become mothers, and some of them will drop out of the workforce and discover fulfillment and happiness as wives and homemakers. This is the real crisis that the Washington Post and the other Left wing rags are worried about. The last thing that the elites want to see is a movement of women fully embracing their own womanhood, and men fully embracing their manhood.
[JFC]
There’s certainly a lot of hallucinatory thinking to unpack there. But in addition to the real harm caused by this tiny minority reinforcing its agenda on social media, it is the nexus between the current Supreme Court’s controlling conservative majority, the anti-abortion lobby, and the behavior of Republican-dominated state legislatures that poses a far greater threat to continued access to birth control. Justice Clarence Thomas has openly called for the reversal of the court’s prior rulings […]
[…] the spigot of misinformation from social media influencers as well as language in state statutes conflating contraception with abortion helps the forced-birth lobby implement legislation restricting the availability of birth control. They point to state efforts restricting the availability of contraception on college campuses and through state-run Medicaid programs […]
Yr Wonkette likes to remind you from time to time that when voters elect Democratic trifectas in state government, a lot of good stuff can happen. Stuff like protections for LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, funding for schools and children and families, you know, your typical socialist madness that makes people’s lives better. So today, let’s return to Minnesota (Motto: “Not Quite Canada, Sorry”), where voters reelected Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in the 2022 midterms, and handed him Dem majorities in both houses of the state Lege to boot.
Wouldn’t you know it, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, as the local Dems, Farms, and Labs are known, just keeps doing neat things, so now, for the first time in a dozen years or so, enrollment at the state’s public colleges and universities is increasing instead of declining — two percent systemwide and almost four percent at two-year colleges. As Inside Higher Ed reports, that’s thanks to “a record year of state funding and investment in a slew of new college-access initiatives.” […]
For years, state funding for higher education remained pretty much flat, Olsen said, but last year the Lege increased funding by $650 million, for a total of $4 billion in higher ed spending.
That was largely made possible by the fact that Minnesota found itself with a $3.7 billion budget surplus for the current fiscal year, so instead of blowing it on tax cuts, Dems in the Lege decided it would be a good idea to invest in higher education, because of that whole “Government can do good things” approach they take.
The legislature also came up with a new financial aid program called “North Star Promise,” […]
[S]udents from families making less than $80,000 a year will receive free tuition to any public college in the state they’re admitted to. The program takes effect in the fall, but students will begin receiving financial aid offers reflecting the waiver over the next few months. About 15,000 students are likely to qualify, according to estimates from the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
[…] Good heavens! It’s as if Minnesota is treating public higher education like some sort of public schools, a good not just for students, but for the state as well. Sure would be great if that caught on, huh? […]
[…] Sexually transmitted disease rates are rising among adults 55 years old and older, according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cases of gonorrhea have grown roughly sevenfold since 2010 among American adults older than 55, per the data.
Meanwhile, the CDC numbers also show cases of chlamydia have more than quadrupled since 2010 among the same age group and syphilis cases in 2022 were nearly eight times higher.
Some researchers think STD rates are climbing in this age group because older adults are having more sex than in years past, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
On top of this, older adults rarely use protection, which increases the odds of spreading disease, according to a 2023 study published in peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.
[…] older adults might be encouraged to participate in “the hook-up culture of casual encounters and condomless sex” by the use of dating apps and the availability of drugs for sexual dysfunction.
Research also shows that a lack of knowledge about STIs among some older adults and some doctors’ embarrassment around asking older patients about sexual habits could also be contributing to the rise.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that there is “no reason” to think the U.S. economy is close to a recession.
“Growth is strong,” Powell said at a conference in San Francisco. “As I mentioned, the economy is in a good place. There is no reason to think the economy is in a recession or is at the edge of one.” […]
Powell said Friday that the latest numbers were “pretty much in line with our expectations,” emphasizing that the Fed still expects inflation to gradually “come down on a sometimes bumpy path.”
Construction cranes were deployed to Baltimore on Friday to remove the wreckage from Francis Scott Key Bridge, which partially collapsed Tuesday when a cargo ship collided with it.
Multiple cranes are placed in the Patapsco River, working on clearing debris and paving the way for the reconstruction and eventual reopening of the Port of Baltimore, a major shipping hub that has been shut down since the incident.
One of the biggest cranes on the East Coast is also expected to assist the recovery efforts […]
The American Conservative, a right-wing blog and Project 2025 partner, published an article advocating to repeal the 22nd Amendment so that Donald Trump would be able to serve a third term.
The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits a president to serving two terms. It was adopted after former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a third and fourth term amid public concerns about a “long-term president.”
An article headlined “Trump 2028” published in The American Conservative advocates for the amendment’s repeal so that Trump could be eligible to serve a third term should he win the 2024 election.
The American Conservative is a partner of Project 2025, the conservative movement’s comprehensive transition plan for the next Republican presidency. Project 2025 — organized and led by The Heritage Foundation, a leading right-wing think tank — is a policy and staffing initiative that threatens to weaken democracy, significantly roll back civil rights, and exacerbate climate change, among other issues. […]
The Conservative Party of B.C. has dropped a controversial Denman Island doctor as a candidate in this fall’s provincial election after his views on COVID-19 and vaccines circulated online on Wednesday.
Within hours of his nomination announcement, Stephen Malthouse was cut as a candidate in the riding of Ladysmith-Oceanside.
Malthouse was suspended from practising by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. two years ago.
According to the college’s website, he remains suspended.
“We are a new party, we have grown at a record pace, but some mistakes are bound to happen. Unfortunately, we nominated a couple of candidates who ultimately weren’t the right fit for our team,” said B.C. Conservative Party president Aisha Estey.
Malthouse repeatedly claimed that COVID-19 is no more deadly than the flu and that vaccines are more dangerous than the novel coronavirus…
The president of U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia said on Friday that its Hong Kong bureau has been closed because of safety concerns under a new national security law, deepening concerns about the city’s media freedoms.
Bay Fang, the president of RFA, said in a statement that it will no longer have full-time staff in Hong Kong, although it would retain its official media registration.
“Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a ‘foreign force,’ raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” Fang said…
Lawyers for Donald Trump made an extraordinary request in his hush-money case on Friday: they want state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to affirm that Tuesday’s gag order lets Trump continue verbally attacking the judge’s progressive daughter.
The two-page letter is essentially Trump asking Merchan this question: Judge, can you tell prosecutors that it’s OK for me to keep bashing your daughter? …
… Because in a quirk of geography and history, Hawaii is not technically covered by the NATO pact.
If a foreign power attacked Hawaii – say the US Navy’s base at Pearl Harbor or the headquarters of the Indo-Pacific Command northwest of Honolulu – the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not be obligated to rise to the Aloha State’s defense…
“The argument for not including Hawaii is simply that it’s not part of North America,” Santoro says.
The exception is spelled out in the Washington Treaty, the document that established NATO in 1949, a decade before Hawaii became a state.
While Article 5 of the treaty provides for collective self-defense in the event of a military attack on any member state, Article 6 limits the geographic scope of that.
“An armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America,” Article 6 says. It also says any island territories must be in the North Atlantic, north of the Tropic of Cancer.
A US State Department spokesperson confirmed that Hawaii is not covered by Article 5, but said Article 4, which says members will consult when “the territorial integrity, political independence or security” of any member is threatened, should cover any situation that could affect the 50th state…
Thanks to Michael Lee at Bellingcat, the Ada County Sheriff in Idaho can seek extradition of dangerous militant Aamon Bundy from the state of Utah.
If you recall, in 2014 the Bundy family led an armed standoff against Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officers who were attempting to seize a herd of cattle that had been grazing for free on public land for nearly 20 years.
In 2016 Ammon Bundy led the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, resulting in the death of one rancher and 27 indictments.
In 2020 Ammon Bundy was convicted of trespassing and sentenced to community service after storming the Idaho State Capitol during a protest against coronavirus-related legislation.
In 2023 Bundy spearheaded a campaign of protests and harassment against the St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center after welfare authorities removed and hospitalized a baby for malnutrition, reportedly the grandson of one of his associates. As a result, in July 2023 an Idaho jury found Ammon Bundy and several associates liable for $52.5 million in punitive damages. Bundy refused to appear in court, leading to contempt charges and an arrest warrant issued in November 2023.
Michael Lee, analyzing imagery and Ammon Bundy’s social media posts, geo-located the fugitive scofflaw to southwest Utah. A member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), Ammon Bundy seeking shelter in a remote area populated with fellow congregants seems logical. [map at the link]
[…] Let us look at some of their creepier responses, shall we?
“Strong men must provide safety & security for women through honorable courtship and eventually marriage Women typically become deradicalized through the security & safety found in the headship of a good man (whether it’s through their father, husband, older brother, etc)”
What women? Who? Where?
“‘date-fluencing’— when a conservative man both dates a woman and becomes the moral leader in the relationship who suavely influences her to be more based than she otherwise would be on her own”
This would first require that there be a single “suave” conservative man out there and … hoo boy, I am just not seeing it. […]
“Right side can allready start anti-revolution here on internet, more people like Jordan Peterson, more YouTube podcasts, also more right sided entertainment, right conservative way of life need to be cool again. More work at the bottom.”
Cool … again? […] unbridled glee about women getting punched in the face is probably not a real winner either.
Yes, there have been several instances of women in NYC getting punched in the face. The attacks appear to be random.
And yes, there has been an upswing in the number of Republican men openly saying that the right to vote should be taken away from women. For example, Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark robinson. There’s also a John Gibbs, a GOP congressional candidate supported by Donald Trump, once railed against women voting.
The Wonkette article mentions that: “The responses to this question [of how can Republicans win over young women] were, unsurprisingly, indicative of exactly why the GOP loses with women. Especially since the most popular solution was ‘Repeal the 19th Amendment.’ “
Many of the billionaires who claimed they were “sorry” they voted for Donald Trump in 2020, supported other Republican primary candidates this past year, and denounced Trump’s attempted insurrection are all being wooed back to the MAGA fold, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
[…] the Trump campaign met with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, down in Palm Beach, Florida, in the hopes of securing some cash. […] other big billionaires Trump met with that day included GOP megadonor Nelson Peltz, who had previously said the Jan. 6. insurrection was a “disgrace.”
In fact, the meeting took place, according to WaPo, at “Peltz’s luxurious Palm Beach oceanfront mansion.” Now Peltz is saying he will “probably” vote for Trump in 2024. This is happening at the same time that Trump is openly campaigning on a promise to release convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Peltz is not alone in seemingly despising Trump while being willing to support him in some fashion in the upcoming election. […]
According to the Post, this is all due to the Biden administration’s very popular stance that the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes—a position he hammered once again during his recent State of the Union address.
Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the Post that “The billionaire class is really threatened by Biden: These guys are about creating a dynasty of wealth for themselves, and hoarding it for their posterity, at the expense of everyone else in society.”
But Peltz isn’t the only billionaire changing his faux-moral tune. Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, who publicly rejected Trump as a primary candidate in 2024 and said the GOP needed “to turn to a new generation of leaders,” is now thinking about getting back on the Trump train, with his advisers holding talks with Trump’s team in the past few weeks.
Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, who seemingly backed every candidate but Donald Trump this past year, is now working on writing a big check to the disgraced former president. Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin—who previously ruled out backing Trump, saying it was “time for America to move on”—recently told CNBC’s Sara Eisen during an interview, “I think for investors, overall, a Trump administration is good for our capital.”
Earlier this year, at the rich people conference known as the World Economic Forum, reports emerged that the world’s richest CEOs were hedging how terrible a person Trump is by pooh-poohing the threat he presents to democracy. JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon said that while he didn’t “like how [Trump] said things about Mexico”, he still thought Trump was “right” about a lot of stuff.
The basic problem seems to be that billionaires do not think that Trump is a threat to democracy. And, they mistakenly think that they will thrive even if Trump destroys the USA.
Posted by readers of the article:
With Germany as Hitler rose to power the German industrialists believed they could control Hitler as he was a just a buffoon, until they couldn’t, and 80 years later Germany is still apologizing.
————————
Absolutely disgusting. Putting their personal fortunes (as if they don’t have enough already) ahead of the good of the country.
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And they are putting concern for their personal fortunes even ahead of their own good. Democratic presidencies do better for everyone, including the rich, because Democratic presidents grow the economy. The stock market is doing well, isn’t it, and so are workers. When workers do well, prosperity trickles up. But trickle down, centered on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, doesn’t work.
But this isn’t just about money and taxes, however much the rich would want you to believe that. There’s something else at work here. The heads of corporations, and billionaires, are dictators in their own realm. Psychological studies have shown that they have what would be considered sociopathic tendencies, that is, not caring about others or society. That aligns them in sympathy with Trump. They are not really that much into democracy if it means crimping their wealth and, especially, their power—and neither is Trump. [Glad someone brought up the “sociopath” angle.]
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Too bad that according to the 6-3 SCOTUS, $ is the same as talking. Like a million people contributing $25 each can touch the message conveyed by one $25-million donor.
——————————-
They only claimed to have been “sorry” they voted for Trump when it looked like Trump would pay a political price for being a traitor to his country. When it became clear that there would be no political price paid among Republican voters, the billionaire CEOs were free to go back to being the sycophantic ass-smooching Trump lovers that they always were.
——————————
A little off topic, but I am sick of these assholes. They are destroying the world.
I would be wary of lumping all rich people into the same “destroyer of the the world” category.
One of the largest thermal power plants in Ukraine’s east has been completely destroyed following Russian shelling, according to Ukrainian energy company Centrenergo.
The announcement came just a day after Moscow carried out a massive barrage of missile and drone strikes across central and western Ukraine, the latest in a series of escalating attacks targeting the already damaged energy infrastructure.
The Zmiiv Thermal Power Plant in Kharkiv region was badly hit on March 22, and the company has been assessing the damage since then…
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have caused so much concern in recent years that even Nasa launched a lengthy probe to find out what they were.
Now some experts believe the hunt should move from the skies to the sea.
The former head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching a probe into unidentified submersible objects (USOs) and, in particular, a strange anomaly seen on the seabed off the coast of California.
Timothy Gallaudet, a former rear admiral in the US Navy, has spent the past 18 months interviewing dozens of sailors, submariners, military personnel and members of the US Coastguard, all who say they have seen unidentified craft in the water.
One incident was filmed by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in southern California in 2019, when a dark-shaped object was seen moving quickly before splashing down into the water…
Reginald Selkirksays
Happy “Empty Tomb” Day to all those apologists out there.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said during a town hall meeting last week that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza “should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” in reference to the United States using atomic bombs on Japan, which happened at the end of World War II.
Walberg said: “Get it over quick.” According to The Detroit News, Walberg’s office said that his comments about nuclear strikes were a metaphor to “support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas.” …
More than a decade after joining the European Union, Romania and Bulgaria joined — at least partially — the rest of the bloc’s members in the visa-free Schengen zone on Sunday.
Travelers are now able to move between the two Eastern European countries and the rest of the EU without the need for passing through visa and passport control when traveling by sea or air.
Due to a veto by Austria, however, land routes are not included due to fears that it would enable non-EU migrants to more easily enter other EU states…
Rep. Derrick Van Orden is done with Rep. Bob Good.
Good, the leader of the House Freedom Caucus and one of eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, has been at the center of internal GOP infighting that has left their party’s agenda in tatters and their conference embroiled in a bitter civil war.
Now Van Orden has joined hands with a band of House Republicans angling to knock Good off in his June primary by propping up his primary opponent, John McGuire – a tactic long viewed as a serious breach of protocol but one that underscores the bad blood within the House GOP…
There are still people who think the Republican Party can be saved.
A Texas woman who was charged with murder over self-managing an abortion and spent two nights in jail has sued prosecutors along the U.S.-Mexico border who put the criminal case in motion before it was later dropped.
The lawsuit filed by Lizelle Gonzalez in federal court Thursday comes a month after the State Bar of Texas fined and disciplined the district attorney in rural Starr County over the case in 2022, when Gonzalez was charged with murder in “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.”
Under the abortion restrictions in Texas and other states, women who seek abortion are exempt from criminal charges…
birgerjohanssonsays
Thanks to a novel by Stephen Booth I was introduced to the Aladdin pantomine -a story with chinese and arab characters co-existing, and very, very far from being politically correct.
Jeez, they play this at Christmas in Britain?
“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. […] Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. […]
Police have not yet identified a suspect in the shooting. One of the children injured is in critical condition.
Seven children were injured in a shooting outside a mall in downtown Indianapolis on Saturday night, police said.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police officers were on patrol when they heard gunshots just after 11:30 p.m. and arrived on a block outside the Circle Centre Mall. According to police, officers saw six people injured with gunshot wounds.
All of the victims were between the ages of 12 and 17, police said.
Emergency medical services arrived to transport the children to hospitals, and a seventh person, also under the age of 18, arrived at a hospital on their own. One victim is in critical condition and the other six are stable.
[…]This is the third shooting in three weekends in Indianapolis, according to NBC affiliate WTHR.
Last Sunday, five people including an officer were killed in a shooting in the east side of the city, the station reported. An officer shot and killed the suspect in that case.
And one person was killed in a shooting at a bar on March 16, leaving five others injured, according to the Indianapolis Star. A suspect was arrested and charged in the shooting after police were able to identify a shooter using surveillance footage inside the bar, the newspaper reported.
The confluence this year of the dates for Easter and for the international Transgender Day of Visibility has resulted in an unusual religious controversy. President Biden issued a Proclamation (full text) designating today as Transgender Day of Visibility, saying in part:
Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation. Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive. They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves. But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families — silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children. These bills attack our most basic American values….
As reported by NBC News, this, along with the terms of a White House Easter Egg design contest for youths from National Guard families has sparked criticism from numerous Republican politicians. The flyer calling for youths to submit their Easter Egg designs includes in the lengthy instructions the following:
The Submission must not contain material that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age….
The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements….
A statement yesterday from the Trump campaign called Biden’s Proclamation “blasphemous” and said in part:
Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden Administration’s years-long assault on the Christian faith. We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“James Carville Absolutely Despises ‘Preachy Females’ In Politics”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SjC26lH8lFw
WTF, Skeletor, what are you doing in USA? This isn’t your narrative universe.
Monday will feature a night of stars in the women’s tournament. Caitlin Clark and Iowa will face Angel Reese and LSU in the Albany Region 2 final, before Paige Bueckers and Connecticut meet JuJu Watkins and USC in the Portland Region 3 final.
[…] The wiring pattern in the cerebellum is precisely organized and compacted to concentrate three-quarters of the brain’s neurons into a 4-inch lobe. The principal type of neuron in the cerebellum, called the Purkinje cell, is widely branching like a fan coral, yet flattened and nearly two-dimensional. The fan’s blades are the neuron’s dendrites, which receive incoming signals. These flat neurons are arranged in parallel, as if millions of fan corals were stacked atop each other in a tight bundle. Thousands of tiny neurons run axons—the brain’s transmission cables for electrical impulses—perpendicularly through the stack of dendrites, like threads in a loom. Each axon connects with the dendrites of tens of thousands of Purkinje cells.
This level of interconnectivity gives the cerebellum’s 50 billion neurons an astonishing capacity for integration. This circuitry, unique to the cerebellum, can crunch enormous amounts of incoming data from the senses to regulate body movement. The fluid movement of a ballerina leaping across the stage requires the cerebellum to rapidly process information from all senses while tracking the changing positions of limbs, maintaining balance, and mapping the space through which the body is moving. The cerebellum uses that dynamic information to control muscles with precise timing, and to do so in the right social context, driven by emotion and motivation.
Fioravante and Rudolph told me that neuroscientists are now realizing that the powerful neural circuitry in the cerebellum that integrates information for body movement also equips it to handle complex mental processes and behaviors. […]
I had not fully appreciated the complexity of the motor control required for speech before. The physicality includes not only the intricate gymnastics of tongue and lips—to produce sound as well as adjust pitch and volume—but also gesticulation. Our words are timed so we don’t talk over the other person, and they are regulated for the social context: infused with the proper emotion and driven by motivation, thought, anticipation and mood.
Coordinating these diverse functions requires tapping into nearly everything the brain does—from regulation of heart rate and blood pressure, performed in deep brain regions, to the processing of sensory and emotional information, performed by the limbic system. It also requires engaging with the highest-level cognitive functions of comprehension, inhibition and decisionmaking in the prefrontal cerebral cortex.
For the cerebellum to do that, it would have to have connections that span the entire brain. Until now, evidence for that was lacking, but new techniques are uncovering these pathways.
Mere decades ago, when neuroanatomists mapped the brain, they couldn’t find any direct connections from the cerebellum to brain regions that control emotion and cognition, such as the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. That led them to believe that the cerebellum was somewhat isolated and uninvolved in these higher cognitive functions. But just as bandits might evade a tracker by changing vehicles, neural signals can leap from one neuron to the next. This undercover action threw neuroanatomists off the cerebellum’s trail.
New methods have enabled neuroanatomists to trace those pathways from the cerebellum across relay points, following them across the entire brain. Researchers can, for example, plant rabies viruses in neurons to see precisely which other neurons they contact. They’ve genetically engineered fluorescent proteins to flash when a neural impulse fires so they can see the flow of traffic in neural circuits. They can also track footprints left behind by neuronal traffic: The appearance of proteins produced when a neuron fires can help identify all the cells communicating in a neural network when a specific behavior is performed.
[…] Yi-Mei Yang of the University of Minnesota showed that when she disrupted certain cerebellar neurons, mice lost interest in engaging with unfamiliar mice introduced into their cage. However, they had no difficulties interacting with and remembering novel inanimate objects. This indicated a deficit in complex social-recognition memory, similar to what autistic people experience.
[…] This new research goes beyond mouse studies. Andreas Thieme from University Hospital Essen in Germany presented a new clinical test used to accurately diagnose the emotional and cognitive impairments caused by cerebellar damage.
These new, groundbreaking studies show that in addition to controlling movement, the cerebellum regulates complex social and emotional behavior. To achieve this global influence, the cerebellum must be a data-crunching hub with connections throughout the brain. No wonder it has so many neurons. To accomplish this high-order command and control on its own, it must be, in fact, a little brain.
A burning trailer full of Bibles was left outside an evangelical church in Tennessee on Easter morning, according to local police, with the church’s far-right pastor denouncing it as a “100 percent” deliberate act.
Around 6 a.m. on Sunday, police and firefighters responded to a trailer fire at an intersection outside the Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, a city around 20 miles east of Nashville, according to the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office. Firefighters “promptly extinguished” the blaze, the sheriff’s office said in a news release…
Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision’s founder and a self-professed “social media firebrand,” took to Facebook and Instagram to share photos of a charred utility trailer holding dozens of burned Bibles. In a caption, he said that the church’s security cameras had caught “a man” parking the trailer “right in front of our church.” …
The pastor said he had wanted to “start passing out” the scorched Bible pages, but that authorities had confiscated them as evidence. He claimed that the incident was being investigated as a hate crime, and that the FBI was involved…
He wanted to start distributing property that wasn’t his? Sounds pretty suspicious.
StevoRsays
Some intresting polling stats & discussion here :
In a new survey released by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of respondents said religion’s role in public life is shrinking in America. That’s the highest proportion in two decades of asking the question. John Yang speaks with Gregory Smith, Pew’s associate director of research who helps coordinate domestic polling on religion, to learn more about what the results say.
Pluto may have lost its status as a full-fledged planet in 2006, but that doesn’t mean it’s a joke of a world this April Fools’ Day and the folks behind Pluto TV want to make that clear. On April 1, the free Pluto TV streaming service will host a “sit-in” to revisit the Pluto planethood debate while also celebrating the 10th anniversary of the live TV streaming service. The event, dubbed “Pluto TV’s Rally for Pluto! Make Pluto A Planet!,” runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific Time at the University of California Los Angeles’ Bruin Plaza. And if you can’t make it in person, you can sign a Change.org petition for Pluto’s planethood to make your voice heard.
One of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics has called on Australia and other Western nations to declare his leadership illegitimate following a Russian presidential election that was widely considered a sham. “He is illegitimate,” Anastasia Shevchenko told the ABC, from Vilnius, in Lithuania, where she now lives in political exile. “We have no free media. His rivals are killed or in jail or in exile. There are so many repressions. “The war in Ukraine is the main reason. He is a criminal. We know it. There is a decision at the Hague court, that he kidnaps people, children. He kills people. How can we call him legitimate?”
Disturbing news and something you’d think they could stop here :
Little penguins are increasingly threatened by human activity, climate change and habitat loss. But in Tasmania, dogs are the biggest killers, threatening to wipe out entire colonies within just a few years. A new study looks at how dog attacks of different frequencies and intensity can impact small, medium and large penguin colonies by using data on penguin mortalities collected since the 1980s. “We found roughly 80 per cent of recorded penguin mortalities from 1980 to 2022 were coming from dog attacks,” CSIRO principal research scientist Toby Patterson said. “We used that information in conjunction with population models and were able to look at hypothetical scenarios around how the intensity and frequency of dog attacks can put these colonies at risk,” Dr Patterson said.
Plus I’d love to know mor eabout that last group noted here :
Of the roughly 162,000 convicts sent here from 1788 to 1868, there were at least 3,600 political prisoners including trade unionists, democracy advocates and Irish revolutionaries. And far from abandoning their politics when they arrived, these people — along with many others — banded together to bring political resistance to the colonies.It’s a part of the convict story that’s been lost, according to historians Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Tony Moore, ..(Snip!)..In all, these political prisoners were “a who’s who of colourful movements”, Dr Moore says. He specifically cites the Daughters of Rebecca, a group of “cross-dressing breakers of tolls and turnpikes” who were angered at the privatisation and tolling of roads in Wales. And while current research puts the total number of political prisoners sent to Australia at around 3,600, Dr Moore says it could be more than 4,000.Some convicts were classified as “rioters or breakers of the peace or things that aren’t political, like theft”, he says. But when they looked into the records, they found they were on strike.
Some relatively good news from Turkey: the centre-left opposition has increased its vote share and number of elected officials in the local elections, retaining key mayoralties with increased majorities. A more detailed look at the results shows an overall shift to the left, but not a huge one, and a majority still voted for parties of the right – which is split along religious/secular lines similarly to Israel. But any defeat of Erdoğan is welcome.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 78
It’s the old “Satanists/Atheists/Communists/Jews-destroying-the-Bibles-we-were-going-to-distribute” scam again. If my memory serves, Peter Popoff pulled that stunt shortly after Randi revealed his faith healing grift (The Faith Healers, 1987).
Popoff pointed […] his voice quavered with emotion and outrage. These Bibles, he said, were going to be sent to the Russian border, but now his ministry had come to a complete “standstill.” Popoff did his best to engender sympathy in his viewer’s hearts […] Their insurance, Popoff said, would never cover what had been destroyed. […] The appeal continued for eight to ten minutes, with Popoff continually stressing his ministry’s need for money.
[…]
There was no break-in. There were no vandals. The tears that flowed so copiously from the eyes of Peter and Elizabeth Popoff were induced by onions. […] [His ministry] was grossing at least $1 million a month. […] as high as $3 million. But its total expenses never exceeded $550,000 a month
[…]
“Peter […] had set up a stack of Bibles. They hired me out to wet ’em. To soak them in water. […] I was paid fifty dollars. They came in the next day to shoot the video. I was then told […] to vandalize the place. I knocked everything out of place inside the print shop.”
[…]
tape contains the portions of the program that were edited out. Popoff is heard talking [incriminatingly] next to an open microphone.
[…]
the glass entry door was broken after the scene of “vandalism” inside the print shop had been taped. […] the glass replacement for the door was ordered several days before the glass was actually broken. […] from the inside.
@84, oh my goodness. Scam artists can’t even run an intelligent scam.
In other news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
In the state of Washington, HuffPost reported that Republican congressional hopeful Joe Kent suggested that the CIA and Ukraine may be responsible for a recent terrorist attack that killed 143 people in Moscow, echoing an evidence-free theory pushed by Kremlin propagandists. Kent was one of the 2022 cycle’s most right-wing candidates, and he ended up narrowly losing to first-term Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
You have to wonder is Putin has found a way to pay guys like Joe Kent.
Sort of Good news:
At this point four years ago, Donald Trump’s political operation had 60 paid staffers in Arizona. Now, four years removed from a narrow defeat in the Grand Canyon State, the Republican’s operation has just six people on the payroll in the state.
“I’m definitely not voting for Trump, but I’m not there yet,” he replied. When [Bill] Maher pressed him, Esper doubled down. “There’s no way I’ll vote for Trump, but every day that Trump does something crazy, the door to voting for Biden opens a little bit more, and that’s where I’m at,” Esper said.
Commentary:
[…] There’s an inherent problem with someone effectively saying, “Trump would undermine U.S. national security and create a threat to democracy, but I’m reluctant to vote for his opponent.”
Esper said on the air, in reference to a possible Biden endorsement, “I’m not there yet.” I’ll be eager to see if his position evolves between now and November.
[…] another unhinged online weekend for Donald Trump.
Over the course of 70+ posts Easter morning, Trump vilified and attacked a wide range of his antagonists in ALL CAPS zeal. At the same time, he reposted articles declaring himself to be “The Chosen One.”
The contrast between the irreligious candidate embracing Christian nationalism and the lifelong Irish Catholic was, shall we say, striking: [Tweet from Sahil Kapur is available at the link]
It’s all so infantile and incredibly ridiculous that you can hardly be blamed for not wanting to be bothered about it over the weekend.
Somehow the NYT can’t bring itself to use the phrase “Christian nationalism” in its story on “The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement.”
The [New York Times] story fails to place Trump’s bible-thumping faux populism in the broader historical context of right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism. It also has the effect of conceding too much. Trump is embracing a certain corrupted brand of Christianity (that many Christians themselves find offensive), and it gives him both too much credit and allows him to co-opt Christian images and motifs.
After days of sustained attacks by Donald Trump on the daughter of the trial judge in the hush money case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked the judge Friday to tighten up the gag order against Trump. Over the weekend, the former president responded by reposting images of the trial judge’s daughter. The judge could rule on Bragg’s request as soon as today. [April Fool’s Day tweet from Andrew Weissmann is available at the link: “Trump lawyers file submission apologizing to NY Judge Merchan and his daughter. And expressing regret at posting Biden effigy photo as unbecoming of a former president of the United States. Happy 4/1”]
I’ve been meaning to flag for you in advance the likely next phase of the Trump delay strategy, when the most ostentatious and obvious “dog ate my homework”-style excuses are likely to come in an effort to gum up the works in his criminal trials. But Joyce Vance has beat me to it with this succinct warning: “There are also the time-honored strategies of the desperate: getting sick or finding a sick or dying family member and firing your lawyers.”
Georgia RICO: Trump and his co-defendants appealed the trial judge’s decision not to disqualify Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis. […]
The share price of Trump Media plunged Monday after the social media app company closely tied to former president Donald Trump reported a net loss of $58.2 million on revenue of just $4.1 million in 2023.
Trump Media & Technology Group shares were trading down by more than 25% around 1:08p.m. ET.
Despite that plunge, the company’s market capitalization was still more than $6.8 billion after its 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed the loss for last year.
Much of the net loss appears to come from $39.4 million in interest expense, according to the filing.
[…] The losses last year by Trump Media — the owner of the Truth Social app routinely used by the former president — could continue for some time, according to the company.
“TMTG expects to incur operating losses for the foreseeable future,” says the filing, which came a week after the company began trading under the ticker DJT on the Nasdaq.
The filing also warns shareholders that Trump’s involvement in the company could put it at greater risk than other social media companies.
TMTG also disclosed to regulators that the company had identified “material weaknesses in its internal control over financial reporting” when it prepared a previous financial statement for the first three quarters of 2023.
As of Monday, Trump Media said these “identified material weaknesses continue to exist.” […]
[…] CHEERS to heavy lifting. The collision with, and collapse of, Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge shocked the country. Now, after assessing the situation and mourning the six bridge workers who died, it’s time to crank up the pulse-pounding action music montage as the all-American cleanup gets underway. USA! USA! Steely-eyed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, chomping on a cigar stub, gave the order (Caution: NSFW): “Clean this motherf*cking mess up with the biggest motherf*cking shit you got.” Moments later, America was introduced to the mightiest motherf*cking metal mess-cleaning machines ‘maginable:
Three cranes from the U.S. Navy have arrived in Baltimore to remove submerged portions of the bridge, and a fourth crane is set to arrive next week, the Navy said.
The Chesapeake has a 1,000-ton lift capacity, the Ferrell has a 200-ton lift capacity and the Oyster Bay has a 150-ton lift capacity, the Navy said. […]
“Work will focus on disassembling and removing the bridge section by section. The disassembled pieces will be lifted onto barges, which will then be transported away,” the Navy said in a statement. “An additional 12 crane and support vessels to include tugs, survey, dive and crew boats, are in the mobilization process and will arrive to Baltimore in the coming days.”
Despite being “the cheapest weapon known to man,” sexual violence in war is “almost always ignored in the history books,” writes journalist Christina Lamb in her 2020 book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women.
In the book, Lamb, the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times in Britian, tried to change that. She investigated the history, and human impact, of rape as a weapon of war—documenting its use by Pakistani soldiers against Bangladeshis in the 1971 war for independence; by Serbian paramilitary soldiers against Bosnian Muslims in 1992; and by ISIS against the Yazidis during and after the 2014 genocide, among many other conflicts throughout history.
After the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, Lamb went to Israel to investigate allegations of sexual violence. She published a report in early December, highlighting Israeli activists’ frustrations with the initial silence on the allegations of widespread rape from the United Nations and other international bodies.
Earlier this month, the office of UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, led by Pramila Patten, released a report that found “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence—including rape and gang rape—occurred during the Oct. 7 attack. It did not establish the prevalence of sexual assault or attribute it to Hamas or other specific individual actors. The report also said there is “clear and convincing information” that sexual violence occurred against Israeli hostages—and likely remains ongoing for those still held in captivity; last week, the New York Times published the account of the first former Israeli hostage to say she was sexually abused while held by Hamas.
But the release of the report hasn’t quelled critiques—including from Lamb, who told me she thought it was “inexcusable” that the UN didn’t respond sooner to Israeli women’s groups who allegedly requested months ago for the body to look into the allegations of sexual violence on and after Oct. 7. American officials also said the UN erred, alleging in December that they were ignoring reports of sexual violence against Israelis in the conflict, the New York Times reported. (Patten’s report recommends a full investigation.)
Still, the investigation and discussions of rape during the war have been fraught. Historically, the abuse of women has been used to justify conflict—including the US’s role in Afghanistan, as my colleague Madison Pauly reported back in 2021. Since the beginning of the war, critics have questioned how reports of sexual violence on Oct. 7 are being used by Israel and its allies to legitimize its campaign in Gaza.
On International Women’s Day earlier this month, Israel released an ad showing women around the world saying that they are “unite[d] in soldiarity with their Israeli sisters, who were kidnapped, raped, and brutally murdered on Oct. 7th. No woman should endure such horrors at the hands of terrorists.”
[…] I’m the last person to be an apologist for the Israeli government and what they’re doing. I was also a bit concerned when I wrote my piece, you know, the last thing you want is for it to be used in any way as a sort of justification for what they are doing and terrible things that they’re doing in Gaza.
But I don’t think we should say, “Well, we’re not going to report this because we’re worried that it could be used as justification.” That would be wrong—people have said, “Why are we not reporting what Israel is doing to the Palestinian women?” I think we should report that too.
[…] My understanding is that there are some survivors but they’re deeply traumatized and in psychiatric care. […]
UPS will become the primary air cargo provider for the United States Postal Service.
The Atlanta shipping company said Monday that it had received an air cargo contract from the U.S. Postal Service that significantly expands an existing partnership between the two.
UPS will move the majority of air cargo in the U.S. for the postal service following a transition period, according to UPS…
So the USPS doesn’t fly their own cargo? Fewer choices seem like a bad thing for the consumer.
The chief judge of the northern district of Texas, home to infamous Trump judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, has informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that the district will not change its case assigning practices, in repudiation of a new anti-judge shopping policy.
“The district judges of the Northern District of Texas met on March 27, 2024, and discussed case assignment,” Chief Judge David Godbey wrote to Schumer in a letter dated March 29. “The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time.”
It’s a brazen rejection of a recent policy change at the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body for the federal courts. Last month, the Conference announced that all cases seeking nationwide relief against a federal or state government action should go through a randomization process — necessary to stop right-wing litigants from planting anti-Biden administration cases with judges like Kacsmaryk, who gets virtually all of the cases filed in his division. His habitual granting of nationwide injunctions means that his rulings are not only nearly always a win for those litigants, but that they also block federal government action for the entire country.
Schumer wrote to the northern Texas chief soon after the Judicial Conference announced its policy change, posing a list of questions, including when the district would adopt the new policy.
In a Monday statement, the Senate majority leader called it “unfortunate” that Godbey wouldn’t end the “odious practice.”
“The Senate will consider legislative options that put an end to this misguided practice,” he added, though such efforts have lost steam before, and would almost certainly die in the Republican House.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), with others on the right, condemned the policy change and urged judges to ignore it. [bad news]
[…] in the process of trying to get an anti-judge shopping measure into the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which would be somewhat more ironclad.
If we do get a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate, Kacsmaryk should be impeached.
Mixed news, some bad, some good: The Florida Supreme Court will allow the 6-week abortion ban to stand, but will also allow a voter referendum on abortion to go forward.
CBD for your chronic pain may turn out to be a dangerous dud, the authors of a large review say. They found little evidence from clinical trials that CBD can be an effective pain reliever. These products also tend to have inaccurate labeling information about the amount of CBD they contain or even other undisclosed ingredients that could be hazardous to users, they add.
CBD is short for cannabidiol, one of the two primary ingredients in cannabis (the other being delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is responsible for the drug’s characteristic high)…
When former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is out campaigning for Florida’s Senate seat, she meets voters of all partisan persuasions who want to protect abortion access in the state.
“It hasn’t been just Democrats. This is not a partisan issue for people living here in the state of Florida,” Mucarsel-Powell told Daily Kos in an exclusive interview.
“I’ve been talking to so many independents and Republicans who have come to me and said, ‘This is an important issue for our family, and I wanted to come and meet you and hear what you had to say. And I want you to know there’s no way my family is doing anything to support Rick Scott,’” Mucarsel-Powell said, referring to the Republican senator she aims to unseat in November.
Senate Democrats view Scott, who has never won a general election by more than 1.2 percentage points, as a uniquely vulnerable candidate, even in a red state like Florida. Now they can add the turbo booster of an abortion-rights ballot measure following a Monday ruling from the state Supreme Court allowing Floridians to vote on the issue in November. At the same time, Florida’s high court allowed a six-week ban on abortion to go into effect, overturning decades of legal precedent regarding privacy protections provided by the state’s constitution.
The successive rulings landed like a one-two electoral punch that could upend the state’s political landscape to Democrats’ benefit.
Floridians strongly support both abortion access and the ballot measure. A 2022 Florida Atlantic University poll found that 67% of Sunshine State residents think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And last November a University of North Florida poll showed 62% of voters said they would vote for a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to an abortion before fetal viability, which is at roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Mucarsel-Powell called the amendment an “incredible opportunity” for abortion-access supporters “to exercise their rights to vote and to choose what is best for our bodies and for our own lives.” […]
“When women organize, when we create a movement, we win,” she said.
“We are the bread-and-butter winners, many of us, in many of our households, and we need to have those protections and also those supports so that we can continue to work and to contribute to the economy,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
“It’s so important,” she added, “because if we have economic empowerment for women—believe me—it will be much more difficult for these extremists, like Rick Scott, to attack women’s rights.” […]
Instead of reducing humanity’s dependence on hydrocarbons — which is impossible or undesirable or both, depending on who you ask — Terraform Industries’ solution is to produce this resource, using electricity and air, via a system it calls the Terraformer. Today, the startup is announcing that it has commissioned a demonstrator Terraformer and produced synthetic natural gas for the first time.
Roughly the size of two shipping containers, the Terraformer consists of three subsystems: an electrolyzer, which converts solar power into hydrogen; a direct air capture system that captures CO2; and a chemical reactor that ingests both these inputs to produce pipeline-grade synthetic natural gas. The entire machine is optimized for a one-megawatt solar array…
The former White House communications director met with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year.
Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is expected to be a witness for the prosecution when the falsifying business records case against Donald Trump goes to trial in New York this month, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told NBC News on Monday.
Hicks met for several hours last year with the Manhattan prosecutors who brought the case. They allege that the former president falsified records relating to a hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.
At that time, Hicks was Trump’s campaign press secretary. Her possible testimony at the criminal trial, which is scheduled to begin April 15, was first reported by The New York Times.
An attorney for Hicks said in 2019 that she’d been unaware of the hush money payment until it became public. But an FBI agent who’d been investigating Cohen said in an affidavit for Cohen’s federal criminal case that he believed Hicks was involved in the negotiations aimed at preventing Daniels from going public with her claim that she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied sleeping with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
The affidavit noted that the negotiations began in earnest after Trump’s campaign was reeling from the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape on Oct. 7, 2016. In that video from 2005, Trump could be heard saying in a hot mic moment that he can grope women without their consent because “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford’s attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit.
“Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,” the affidavit said.
[…] “Ms. Hicks stands by her truthful testimony that she first became aware of this issue in early November 2016, as the result of press inquiries,” the attorney said.
Cohen and Daniels are expected to be key witnesses for the case being brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
President Joe Biden’s administration is aware of reports that Israeli airstrikes targeted an Iranian Consulate [in Syria] and reportedly killed an Iranian commander, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said during her briefing today. “Our team is looking into it so, I’m not going to get ahead of anything just yet,” she said.”‘But obviously, we’re aware of the reports and our team is looking into I’m just not gonna go beyond that.”
NBC News:
Israel’s Knesset passed a law today that would allow senior officials to shut down broadcasts that threatened the country’s security, which Netanyahu said he would use against Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera.
Through the most tense encounters with President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia over the past decade, there has been one project in which Washington and Moscow have claimed common cause: keeping North Korea from expanding its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Now, even that has fallen apart.
The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information. The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse. This is not subjective. We all saw it. … Trust your eyes.
Former president Donald Trump’s digital media company is losing money, and lots of it. But why is that any different from other “startups,” which often struggle to post a profit for years, if they ever do?
There are a couple reasons…
TMTG isn’t growing…
TMTG doesn’t have VC runway…
TMTG is now accountable to its shareholders…
The result is, as the analysts have already pointed out, that $DJT is fundamentally and wildly overvalued. The company is vanishingly unlikely to make a profit any time soon, let alone the kind of profit that would justify the share price and multi-billion-dollar valuation. Even the most optimistic scenarios probably envision solvency as a far-off goal…
Scientists in South Korea have announced a new world record for the length of time they sustained temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius — seven times hotter than the sun’s core — during a nuclear fusion experiment, in what they say is an important step forward for this futuristic energy technology…
High temperature and high density plasmas, in which reactions can occur for long durations, are vital for the future of nuclear fusion reactors, said Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center at the Korean Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), which achieved the new record…
A driver rammed into the front gate of the Atlanta FBI office Monday afternoon and was taken into custody, according to FBI officials.
The car appeared to try to follow an authorized vehicle as it was entering the gate, and the pop-up barrier was deployed to stop the unauthorized car, officials said…
Reginald @107, I hope RFK Jr.’s family speaks out even more than they already have. The family needs to keep telling the public how awful RFK Jr. really is.
World Central Kitchen, a food aid nonprofit started by celebrity chef José Andrés, announced Monday that it was seeking more information following reports that several of its employees in Gaza had been killed in a strike. Andrés described the workers as “angels” in a statement on social media, attributing their deaths to an “IDF air strike.” The Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement that it was aware of the reports and would conduct “a thorough review at the highest levels.” […]
In a press conference held at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Monday, the passports of foreign nationals from Britain, Poland and Australia were shown, apparently corresponding to bodies recovered from the area of the strike. One of those killed was identified as a Palestinian man, described in the press conference as the aid workers’ driver at the time of the strike. Some of the dead appeared to be wearing clothing featuring World Central Kitchen logos.
Speaking at the conference, Ismail Al Thawabta, director of the Gaza Government Media Office, said it was “time for everyone to come out and denounce the massacres that took place today, affecting four foreign nationals working in the Gaza Strip.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was investigating the reports, calling them “very distressing.”
“We have been very clear that we expect humanitarian workers in Gaza to have safe and unimpeded access to do their lifesaving work,” the spokesperson added.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s impending New York criminal trial expanded a partial gag order Monday night following the former president’s online attacks against his daughter.
Judge Juan Merchan said that Trump is barred from attacking his family members and those of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in addition to the witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and their relatives who he was directed to “refrain” from talking about in a previous gag order issued last week.
Trump’s “pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol,” Merchan said on Monday. “It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. ‘I’he threat is very real.”
Lawyers for Trump had argued in a filing Monday that his repeated attacks on the daughter were protected political speech, while Manhattan prosecutors urged the judge to crack down on the former president’s escalating rhetoric.
Bragg’s office contended Trump’s bashing of Merchan’s daughter on social media “fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate witnesses and trial participants alike.”
[…] Bragg’s office contended that Trump’s “claim of a constitutional right to levy personal attacks on family members is as disturbing as it is wrong.”
“This issue is not complicated. Family members of trial participants must be strictly off-limits. Defendant’s insistence to the contrary bespeaks a dangerous sense of entitlement to instigate fear and even physical harm to the loved ones of those he sees in the courtroom,” the DA’s filing said.
The back and forth comes after Merchan slapped Trump with a partial gag order last week barring him from trashing witnesses, court staff and their families. The order did not mention the judge or judge’s family.
Trump has since repeatedly taken shots online at Merchan and his daughter.
[…] “There is no constitutional right to target the family of this Court, let alone on the blatant falsehoods that have served as the flimsiest pretexts for defendant’s attacks. Defendant knows what he is doing, and everyone else does too,” Bragg’s office contended. […]
Former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants have secured a $175 million bond in their New York civil fraud case, according to a court filing.
Trump secured the bond through Knight Specialty Insurance Company.
Last Monday, a panel of judges from New York’s Appellate Division granted the former president, his adult sons, and two former Trump Organization executives a 10-day stay of the $464 million judgment in their civil fraud case and permitted them to post a reduced bond of $175 million.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that the former president lacked the cash to secure a bond for the full judgment after being rejected by more than 30 bond companies…
So? I may try that one on the IRS: “I can’t pay.” I’m sure it would go over great.
Reginald Selkirksays
@74: Iowa defeats LSU, 94-87
Caitlin Clark was dominant with 41 points, 12 assists, 7 rebounds, two steals and a block. For LSU, Angel Reese had a good, but not good enough, night with 17 points and 20 rebounds, but fouled out with over a minute to play. Iowa started the game hot, with 17 points in the first 4 minutes, but LSU shut them down for 4 minutes at the end of the quarter and took the lead by as much as 8 points. Iowa fought back and tied the game by half time. Iowa came out hot again at the start of the second half, and never relenquished the lead again. They were up by 13 with 1:05 to play. A Reese-less LSU managed to close the gap in the last minute, but the lead was too much to overcome. Also, fouling Clark is not a great strategy, since she is an excellent free throw shooter.
The only reason this fake news is getting any attention in Western media is because it’s a convenient charge to level against Israel’s chosen adversary for the purposes of demonization and dehumanization. History is replete with such propaganda.
“Why are we not reporting what Israel is doing to the Palestinian women?” I think we should report that too.
I bet you they won’t report it. Best case, Israel will investigate itself and find that it did no wrong. We all know such inconvenient facts are going to be swept under the rug.
Trump madness revisited:
What the hell is “pomeranz”???
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@108,
We’re getting a series of these so-called “fusion advances”, which turn out on close inspection to be distinctly underwhelming (other claims from the USA and UK are linked to from your link). No-one is within decades of generating useful amounts of electricity from fusion. I don’t think it’s unduly cynical to connect this sequence of stories with the global retreat from serious efforts to mitigate the oncoming climate disruption..
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@107,
Is RFK Jr. angling for a position as Trump’s VP? I’m worried: bringing two such colossal egos into the same room might warp the spacetime continuum beyond recovery!
A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.
In all likelihood, this nearly two-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.
Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.
This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry…
Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek on Monday signed into law a bill that recriminalizes the possession of small amounts of drugs, ending a first-in-the-nation experiment with decriminalization that was hobbled by implementation issues.
The new law rolls back a 2020 voter-approved measure by making so-called personal use possession a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. It also establishes ways for treatment to be offered as an alternative to criminal penalties by encouraging law enforcement agencies to create deflection programs that would divert people to addiction and mental health services instead of the criminal justice system…
“On revenues of just $4 million, Truth Social lost $58 million,” Colbert said. “How could that be? They had such a solid business model: Old rapist yells at Easter.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville recently campaigned for an ally in Utah, where the Alabama Republican made the case that supernatural forces were undermining the United States.
“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.” […]
The New York Post reported a few days ago that religious-themed egg designs had been “banned” from the White House Easter egg art contest. The truth was far more benign: The American Egg Board, a group that supports the White House Egg Roll, has used the same guidance on egg designs for years, including throughout Donald Trump’s term. The idea that President Joe Biden imposed onerous restrictions was, and is, absurd.
Nevertheless, Tuberville seized on the report and insisted that Democrats “are a Satanic cult.” [Tweet and photo at the link]
One day later, the senator saw a message that claimed that Biden had changed Easter to Transgender Day of Visibility. This isn’t even close to what actually happened, but it nevertheless led Tuberville to once again declare that Democrats “are a Satanic cult.”
[…] I’m curious whether the right-wing Alabaman realizes that he’s making it impossible for Democratic senators to see him as someone they can work with.
In September 2016, shortly before Donald Trump was elected, the then-candidate spoke to Michael Cohen — at the time, his lawyer and fixer — about buying the silence of one of his former mistresses. A transcript of their conversation later emerged, and it showed a handful of references to someone named Mark Burns.
For much of the country, Burns’ name was, and is, probably unfamiliar, but in 2016, Team Trump saw him as a key political ally: As a prominent Christian televangelist in South Carolina, Burns positioned himself a leading cheerleader for the [Trump]. Indeed, the Cohen recording suggested that Trump thought he could use the pastor for political cover if voters heard about the candidate’s sex scandals.
Nearly eight years later, Burns is running for Congress — and yesterday, he received the former president’s endorsement. Trump published this message to his social media platform yesterday:
“Pastor Mark Burns just filed to run for Congress in South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. There are many great Conservatives exploring a run for that seat, but Mark Burns has been with me from the very beginning of our Movement to Make America Great Again. … Pastor Mark Burns is an America First Fighter, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement — He is a Good Man, a Hard Worker, and will not let you down!”
It’s an open-seat contest — incumbent Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan isn’t seeking another term — with a crowded GOP field, though Trump’s endorsement is likely to give Burns an advantage over his intraparty rivals.
If this story sounds at all familiar, it might be because Burns ran for Congress in 2018 in a different South Carolina district. The Christian pastor, who was caught padding his resume, struggled badly and finished in eighth place in a GOP primary. He ran and lost again in 2022.
This year, however, Burns is trying once more — in a different district — and with the presumptive Republican nominee in his corner, he’s likely optimistic about his changes.
All of which suggests it’s worth taking a moment to note some of the reasons the televangelist is a unique kind of congressional candidate.
Right Wing Watch, for example, reported in the fall that Burns’ has a “history of using violent rhetoric especially against LGBTQ-supporting parents and teachers,” and “once declared that the LGBTQ agenda represents ‘a national security threat’ and therefore anyone who promotes it is guilty of treason and should be executed.”
This is the same Burns who also suggested that Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell committed “treason.” [Tweet and video at the link: “SC Congress candidate Mark Burns, who was with Trump on the ‘Amer. Freedom Tour,’ wants to reinstitute the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee,’ says that Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell should be tried for treason for supporting gun control, then executed if found guilty.”]
Soon after, Burns spoke at a right-wing event and said, “I’m coming here to declare war on every demonic, demon-possessed Democrat that comes from the gates of Hell!” […]
Just days ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Stephen Miller’s far-right organization, America First Legal, aired offensive television ads accusing Democrats of “racism against white people.” The commercials were filled with claims that quickly fell apart, and they didn’t prevent Democrats from faring surprisingly well in the election cycle. [Of course Stephen Miller is involved.]
[…] Axios reported that in a prospective second term for Donald Trump, his team intends to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.”
[…] For its part, the Trump campaign didn’t exactly deny its interest in rolling back policies designed to address systemic racism. The presumptive Republican nominee, his spokesperson said, “is committed to weeding out discriminatory programs and racist ideology across the federal government.”
As a Washington Post analysis explained, in context, “discriminatory programs” refers to “those that attempt to address systemic racial disadvantages. It is an evolution of the idea that affirmative-action policies meant to eliminate those imbalances are, in effect, racist against White people.”
On the surface, this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. The idea that white people in the United States are the victims of systemic discrimination is ridiculous and offensive, but it’s an element of the MAGA worldview.
What is surprising is the electoral risk that Team Trump apparently feels comfortable taking.
[…] there are plenty of public-opinion analysts who believe that Trump’s support among Black voters in recent polling is largely a mirage and the data should be viewed with great skepticism.
[…] “Trump was sued for systematically turning away Black tenants in the 1970s. He took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the (now-exonerated) suspects in the Central Park Five case. He breathlessly promoted a racist ‘birther‘ conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama, and about now-Vice President Kamala Harris (and most recently about Nikki Haley, for that matter). He called Haiti and African nations ‘s—hole countries.’”
This is, of course, just a sampling from Trump’s lengthy and overtly racist record.
[…] Why in the world would Team Trump effectively tell Black communities in an election year, “We’d appreciate your vote as we shift the federal government’s focus to protecting white people from discrimination […]
This week’s film from God Awful Movies is technically competently made, but this merely means there is nothing to have fun at.
And there is no entertaining lunacy, like in the christian films where the aliens are demons in disguise.
You guys should set up a Gofundme for senator Tommy Tuberville to make a ‘documentary’ about the satanic cult of the Democrats. Maybe invite Alex Jones to play a part. America needs a better class of insane films.
birgerjohanssonsays
Brian Tyler Cohen
“Red state suddenly in play in 2024 for Democrats”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OMhCPm6-ngM
Rick Scott can not be certain of re-election to the senate (also, deSantis has to step down as governor in two years).
[…] Despite the one-day collapse, the stock is still grossly overpriced, and a close examination of TMTG’s 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows just how much of a disaster it is—and how much further the stock could plunge. Let’s take a walk through the document. [TMTG is Trump Media & Technology Group]
Trump holds 57.3% of the company, valued at $8.84 billion as I write this. That means his stake is worth $5 billion. But … that’s just Monopoly money. If he tried to sell, the mass flooding of his shares into a market uninterested in hoovering them up would collapse the price. If he tried to sell, his eventual take would be substantial, but we don’t know what his holdings are really worth. At the moment, he’s forbidden from selling his TMTG shares for six months, though the company’s board (which he controls—more details below) could waive that provision. If they did, it would immediately collapse the share price. If they don’t and Trump has to wait, expect the price to fall in fits and starts over the coming months […] As a fun aside, Trump lost around $1.2 billion in paper value today.
Since Trump owns more than 50%, the filing notes that “a company of which more than 50% of the voting power for the election of directors is held by an individual, group or other company is a ‘controlled company’ and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance standards.” The filing helpfully explains what this means: “Accordingly, investors may not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the Nasdaq corporate governance requirements.” Who wants to invest in a company that has fewer stockholder protections, and is owned by Trump? Oh, and seated on that not-independent board? Donald Trump Jr. and Linda McMahon […]
Conservative former Congressman Devin Nunes is paid $750,000 as CEO, despite having zero experience running a tech or media company, and that will go up to $1 million next year. […] Nunes is also getting a $600,000 “retention bonus”! Keep that number in mind.
The company’s chief financial officer Phillip Juhan and chief operating officer Andrew Northwall are getting $337,500 and $365,000, respectively. And you’ll be happy to learn that both of them are also getting $600,000 retention bonuses.
So just to be clear, TMTG’s top three officers are making $3.252 million this year. Therefore, we can assume that the company’s revenues are commensurate with such compensation, right?
[…] why do you think two of Trump’s top insurrectionist lieutenants are collecting cushy “consulting” fees from the company? [Kash Patel and Devin Nunes]
Upon the IPO’s closing, the company took out a $50 million loan at 8% interest, payable in one year. […] The only reasons I can see for TMTG to take out a loan is that 1) it doesn’t dilute Trump’s equity stake, keeping him above 50% and that magical “we don’t need to follow the rules” level, and 2) they can declare bankruptcy and never pay it back.
Trump Media reported losing $58.2 million on just $4.1 million in revenue in 2023. […] I count 20 loans totaling $41.7 million, which the company is now paying off (again, rather than using proceeds from the IPO to raise money for the company).
Remember, TMTG paid its top three executives $3.252 million for their amazing ability to generate … $4.1 million in revenue. Thank God they granted those generous retention bonuses to keep them around!
[…] This is just delicious: “TMTG’s success depends in part on the popularity of our brand and the reputation and popularity of President Trump. The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Trump were to suffer […] President Trump is involved in numerous lawsuits and other matters that could damage his reputation. Additionally, TMTG’s business plan relies on President Trump bringing his former social media followers to TMTG’s platform. In the event any of these, or other events, cause his followers to lose interest in his messages, the number of users of our platform could decline or not grow as we have assumed.” The company is literally admitting that its entire business revolves around Donald Trump and his “reputation.” Anyone who puts a dime into this dumpster fire deserves to lose all their money.
The filing doesn’t sound all that optimistic: “TMTG expects to continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flows from operating activities for the foreseeable future, as it works to expand its user base, attracting more platform partners and advertisers.” […] There is nothing wrong with losing money in order to grow. Most growing businesses do that at some point. But they also don’t go public with a measly $4.1 million in revenue. The norm for Wall Street IPOs is $100 million in revenue and significant year-over-year growth. […]
This is hilarious: “Since its inception, TMTG has focused on developing Truth Social by enhancing features and user interface rather than relying on traditional performance metrics like average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts, including monthly and daily active users.” They don’t report those numbers because they are laughable. They add, “TMTG believes that focusing on these KPIs [key performance indicators] might not align with the best interests of TMTG or its shareholders.” Exactly! If people knew just how pathetic their metrics were, the company’s shareholders would be wiped out overnight.
Now remember, the bulk of TMTG’s expenses are those loans, and it didn’t sell any extra shares to pay them off. So to close this recap, let me quote one more line that perfectly encapsulates the inevitable fate of this company:
[M]anagement had substantial doubt that TMTG will have sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due.
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” says chef José Andrés.
This week, Israel fired three missiles at an aid convoy for the World Central Kitchen (WCK), killing seven workers delivering food in Gaza. The strike hit labeled vehicles, according to the group, which was founded by chef José Andrés and has become famous for delivering meals to disaster sites across the world.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported a horrific scene: After survivors of the first two strikes switched to other vehicles in the convoy to escape, Israeli forces fired a third missile. The target, “defense sources” told the paper, was a member of Hamas who was not present in the vehicles.
Video shared by a Washington Post reporter shows that the explosives were dropped onto the aid group’s logo on the roof of the car. [photo and video at the link]
[…] World Central Kitchen said it was pausing its relief work in Gaza following the strikes, adding that it will be “making decisions about the future of our work soon.” The group said it has provided more than 43 million meals to Palestinians, the Associated Press reports. The pause on WCK’s work comes as the UN has said famine is “imminent” in Gaza. […]
Some idiot bailed Donald Trump’s deadbeat ass out and posted his $175 million bond for his civil fraud judgment in New York. […]
Donald Trump’s sugar daddy is the Knight Specialty Insurance Group, which is in turn owned by the the Hankey Group, controlled by one “Don Hankey,” who’s known as the “King of Subprime Car Loans.” That sounds like the exact kind of “king” who would extend credit to Donald Trump.
What is Trump’s credit score, by the way? […]
MSNBC contributor Lisa Rubin explains that Hankey, on top of his subprime car loan kinging and slinging, is “believed” to be the “largest shareholder in Axos Bank.” She explains:
“If Axos sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the financial institution that refinanced Trump’s loans on Trump Tower and Doral in 2022. Specifically, Axos has loaned Trump $100 million in his refinancing of Trump Tower and another $125 million for Doral.”
Okey-doke, well, it’s their money, and if they think Donald Trump is a good financial bet […]
Here is a Forbes article on who Axos is, and why it is still willing to lend to this stupid decomposing loser, long after everybody else has stopped. And here’s another one about the internet bank, which appears to be extremely in bed with the Trumps, Kushners, and shady Republicans in general.
Here’s another one about the extremely weird financing of the sale of the Trump Hotel in DC, which Axos was a big part of, and which refers to Axos as a “suck up bank,” with a chairman who came to Axos in 2007 from IndyMac, which became one of the main characters of the great mortgage crash of 2008, because of how it gave all these “Alt-A” loans to people who couldn’t prove they could pay for them.
Also that last article mentions that Axos bailed Trump out and refinanced the mortgage on Trump Tower in 2022 literally right after his accounting firm Mazars [said] Trump’s financial statements are, in financial terms, dogshit.
We are sensing a possible theme here!
Here is one more paragraph about Axos, from NBC News:
Axos has teamed up with nonbank lenders on loans to small businesses that carried cripplingly high double- and triple-digit effective annual interest rates, loan documents show. The bank has also specialized in loans to foreign nationals, internal documents and its website state, and has offered a type of loan that allows borrowers who paid cash for a property to turn around and instantly take money out. Such loans may pose money laundering risks, banking analysts say.
[“may” pose money laundering risks?]
[…] But back to Mr. Hankey!
He says this is a “business decision, but I happen to be a supporter also.” Yes, sir, we see that. He says Trump put up all the collateral, in cash:
Hankey could not recall if Trump also used bonds as collateral for the finalized bond, noting that his company reviewed some of the former president’s bonds, which he said were as “grade-A bonds, investment grade quality securities.”
“We’re confident that we have very good collateral,” Hankey said.
[…] None of it was Truth Social stock, was it? Because if so, Don, we have bad news.
[…] As ABC News reminds us, over 30 bond companies originally told Trump to fuck off when the number was $464 million. But we sure bet Mr. Hankey is a very good business man like Trump, who knows exactly what he’s doing.
And if he isn’t, then he can learn the hard way that his MAGA king is a conman who isn’t as rich as he says he is, something that’s been self-evident to non-MAGA non-idiots since before Trump waddled down that elevator in 2015 […]
This past January, a group of Republican Party officals in Hood County, Texas, met with a group called Abolish Abortion Texas to discuss how they would like to put women to death — including minors, including victims of rape and incest — for having abortions or IVF, along with the doctors who perform them.
Oh! And they did it at an official meeting of a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated extremist group, True Texas Project, with ties to white supremacist Nick Fuentes and a habit of retweeting other white supremacists, like Identity Evropa founder and neo-Nazi Patrick Casey.
Video of the event was recently obtained by Hood County Democrats Chair Adrienne Quinn Martin after it was originally streamed on the Facebook account of host Monica Brown. Brown is a prolific book banner who also disowned her own son for being gay.
So, just a really nice crowd of people for Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers, and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell to be hanging around with.
Via Texas Democrats:
Paul Brown, who is the Director of Policy for Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX) said that IVF is a form of abortion and that when a fertilized egg is destroyed it should be considered murder, saying “Their lives [women] don’t matter any more than the babies’ they are killing.”
Brown also said how the group is against basic contraception pointing to the emergency contraception pill Plan B, saying that it “terminates or kills a baby prior to implantation – which is an abortion”
Brown went on to say that they will “never be okay with abortions in the instance of incest or rape” with several audience members suggesting that pregnant woman and doctors who perform abortions should be “held accountable” to the highest extent of the law.
It’s not clear if they want to put women to death for going on the pill or getting an IUD (many of which also work by preventing implantation), but I think we can fairly assume that it is a possibility. They just love life so, so much!
These are not just a bunch of internet trolls or random sociopaths with no power — both of these groups are hugely influential in Texas politics and have met with people a whole lot higher up than some random county GOP officials. People like Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz. [Tweets at the link include Ken Paxton praising True Texas Project]
[…] as much as Republicans may be scrambling to look less extreme on abortion, as much as they have been trying to claim that they have no intention of going after IVF, this is the end goal of many anti-abortion groups and that is who they are beholden to.
They plan to appeal to evangelical denominations and their leaders to take a firm stance that IVF as practiced in the U.S. destroys human life. That, they hope, will reshape how conservative Christians — and in turn, the officials they elect — view the issue, just as it did on abortion. Ultimately, it could lead to laws that create a patchwork of IVF access in the United States, where the procedure is more accessible in liberal states and more limited in conservative ones.
This is how it begins. One moment they’d never take it away, the next they’re plotting out how to put people to death for it. The more they bring it up, the more they hint at it, the more their people get used to the idea.
When people tell you who they are, believe them. When they tell you who they want to kill, believe them and then run for your life.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had “unintentionally” struck innocent people after an aid convoy run by World Central Kitchen took fire in Gaza and seven aid workers were killed.
The killings of the aid workers, who were traveling in clearly marked cars, drew condemnation from aid organizations and several governments whose citizens were among the dead. Its workers included citizens of the United States, Poland, Australia and three from Britain.
“Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “It happens in war; we are fully examining this. We are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again.”
The Israeli military has concluded it was responsible for the strike on the convoy, according to an army official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal investigation. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, is expected to review findings of an initial inquiry into the incident on Tuesday evening, the official said.
World Central Kitchen, which has become an important player in delivering supplies to a territory in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, said on Tuesday it was suspending its operations in the region.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the U.S. government had spoken to the Israeli authorities about the strike and urged a swift and impartial investigation.
“These people are heroes,” Mr. Blinken said, referring to the aid workers. “They run into the fire not away from it. They show the best of what humanity really has to offer when the going gets tough. They have to be protected.
The war in the Gaza Strip has proved exceptionally dangerous for aid workers. At least 196 have been killed there since the fighting began on Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, citing a figure from March 20. A second aid agency, American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera, said it too was suspending its operations in Gaza, given the rising threats to aid workers and the attack on World Central Kitchen.
World Central Kitchen said in a statement that its team had been hit after unloading food at a warehouse in central Gaza and leaving in two armored cars and another vehicle. The group said the convoy was hit despite having coordinated its movements with the Israeli military. […]
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.
Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren’t Amazon members…
A group of House Republicans has introduced legislation to rename Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia after former President Donald Trump.
The bill, filed Friday, is sponsored by Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., the chief deputy majority whip, and is co-sponsored by six other Republicans: Reps. Michael Waltz, of Florida; Andrew Ogles, of Tennessee; Chuck Fleischmann, of Tennessee; Paul Gosar, of Arizona; Barry Moore, of Alabama; and Troy Nehls, of Texas.
The measure says it would “designate the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia as the ‘Donald J. Trump International Airport.'” …
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 138
They only understand power and retribution . Once you get the majority back, rename it ‘Angela Davis International Airport’.
(yes, I am.old enough to remember her. She is still alive, BTW)
And rename the Ronald Reagan after Malcolm X.
A federal judge in Boston has ruled that migrants flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022 can proceed with a lawsuit against the Florida company that took them there.
The judge also dismissed claims against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials named in the suit.
Three migrants from Venezuela, along with an immigrant rights group, filed the lawsuit. They say that Florida’s governor, others in his administration and an air transport company conspired to mislead them and deprive them of their civil rights when they recruited and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.
In their lawsuit, the migrants, identified as Yanet, Pablo and Jesus say they were told they were going to Massachusetts, but didn’t know their final destination was Martha’s Vineyard until shortly before landing.
The plaintiffs say a videographer hired by the DeSantis administration recorded them arriving and boarding vans. But apart from the videographer and van drivers, the plaintiffs say no one else in Martha’s Vineyard had any advance notice of their arrival.
[…] In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs says the case can proceed against the air transport company, Vertol. Judge Burroughs dismissed claims against Gov. DeSantis and other members of his administration out of jurisdictional concerns, but did so “without prejudice.” That means the legal team representing the migrants can seek to bring DeSantis and others back into the case as it goes forward.
In the 77-page filing, Judge Burroughs had harsh words for those involved in the scheme. “Vertol and the other Defendants here were not legitimately enforcing any immigration laws,” she wrote, adding, “the Court sees no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them into a divisive national debate.”
Lawyers for Civil Rights, which represents the migrants, called the ruling “a major victory in the Martha’s Vineyard case, and it sends a crucial message: private companies can — and will — be held accountable for helping rogue state actors violate the rights of vulnerable immigrants through illegal and fraudulent schemes.” […]
he White House expressed appreciation for The Daily Caller on Tuesday after the conservative outlet retracted a post that implied the Biden administration had instituted a new ban on religious symbols on Easter eggs during its annual holiday celebration.
“It’s important to acknowledge when a mistake has been made and take responsibility for it. So I want to recognize The Daily Caller for having the integrity to retract their story about the false claims that circulated this week about the Easter Egg Roll,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
“We hope others learn from their good example. So, leave that there,” she added.
The Daily Caller published an article last week that said the Biden White House had “banned children from submitting Easter eggs with religious themes” for its Easter art contest. Conservatives, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), had chastised the White House over reports that religious symbols had been banned.
But White House officials pointed out that the ban of religious symbols on eggs as part of the art contest has been in place for decades, including during the Trump administration.
“With that additional context included, the news value of the article was significantly diminished, leading the senior leadership at the Caller to the decision to retract,” the Caller wrote in its retraction.
Conservatives had also blasted Biden for proclaiming Transgender Day of Visibility on the same day as Easter.
Transgender Day of Visibility always falls on March 31, since it was first recognized 15 years ago. Easter, which can fall on any Sunday from late-March to mid-April, happened to fall on the same day this year.
[…] Let’s look at this new meltdown from the website of the Family Research Council, one of the most influential Christian hate groups in DC.
It reads:
Late last week, the Biden administration prohibited children from expressing their Christian faith while redesignating Easter Sunday as the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Biden literally banished Christianity from a children’s contest celebrating its most joyful holiday while exalting a radical and harmful ideology in its place.
Oh so dramatic! Biden banned children from expressing their Christian faith! (No.) He “redesignated” Easter as the Trans Day of Visibility! (No.) He “literally banished Christianity from a children’s contest”! (No.)
Nothing these people believe is true. Their lives are built around lies. Period.
The whiny writer, Ben Johnson, moans for many lines about the rules for the Easter Egg decorating contest, without bothering to check — or admit — and see that Biden didn’t institute the rules at all, that they weren’t new.
The Biden administration banned religious imagery alongside “bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.”
[…] Note the fundamentalist Christian deceit, where they pretend the majority of Americans’ belief in God means the majority of Americans are vile bigots like them.
The instructions ask children to depict “a favorite activity, scenery in your state, your military family, a day-in-your life, etc.” But what if the child’s “favorite activity” is exclaiming, “Christ is risen!” in church Easter morning?
Straw man argument, that child is imaginary and a dork. But mostly imaginary.
What if a day in this child’s life does not go by without thinking about the empty tomb that gives them eternal life?
Children of Easter egg-decorating age? Goodness. This guy hasn’t met many kids, we don’t think.
The Family Research Council dude whines about Biden did this, Biden did that. Again, he either knows he’s lying, or he’s unquestioningly regurgitating words from someone else who knows they are.
He whines that “Christian children are second-class citizens in Biden’s America.”
He lists a bunch of “scientific” facts — all the links go back to the Family Research Council hate group website, strangely — attacking transgender people.
He cites statistics on poor mental health outcomes for trans people, but goes ahead and absolves Christian nationalist abusers for their role in creating the societal stigma that leads to those poor mental health outcomes.
He gets in a few digs at gay people, because of course.
He makes flaccid attempts to debunk the debunkings, to prove that this really was the evil plan of Biden and Big Trans all along, to replace Easter and kill the risen Christ. (The RNC tried something similar, saying White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s thorough debunking of all of their ridiculous complaining was, itself, a lie.)
And again, throughout, if you read between the lines, the FRC dude DEMANDS that we clap for his religious beliefs. That we put them back up on a pedestal. That we agree that they are more important than any other beliefs or people. That the rest of us step aside.
There is, unsurprisingly, nothing to suggest any right-wing Christian was denied their right to show up at church bright and early on Sunday morning, wearing their finest, loudly singing “Christ the Lord is risen today!” (Much less that Joe Biden or transgender people took away that right. Catholic Joe Biden did similarly! As did many transgender Americans who are practicing Christians, we are sure!)
There is nothing to suggest anyone was censored from posting “He is risen!” on social media, or that their friends were forbidden from replying “He is risen indeed!” (Though if any one of them failed to get enough likes or retweets for that, we are sure we’ll hear about shadowbanning.)
Similar pieces exist all over the right-wing armpits of the internet. The Federalist is screaming, “Biden’s Defiling Of Easter Sunday With An Imaginary Transgender Holiday Was A Punitive Decision!” The Federalist is also screaming, “Nobody Believes Biden’s Transgender Celebration On Easter Was A Coincidence!”
We saw one particularly sniveling MAGA [person] trying out that old canard, “Does anyone seriously think there is any chance in hell Biden would proclaim (another) transgender day on a Muslim holiday?” Well, it’s currently Ramadan, so …
This week, the Tennessee Legislature passed a bill mandating that if and when scientists figure out how to put vaccines in lettuce, the leafy greens will be clearly labeled as a drug.
“As introduced,” the bill reads, “defines food that contains a vaccine or vaccine material as a drug for purposes of the Tennessee Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.”
I don’t really know where to begin with this one. Like, I’m rolling it over and over in my mind and all I keep going back to is that these people clearly do not have enough actual problems in their lives if they have to go around fearing the advent of lettuce vaccines.
[snipped description of House Bill 1894]
[…] Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, who I am pretty sure is legally a Simpsons character, shared his concerns that they might just put vaccines in all of the lettuce […]
“Actually I’ve been reading about data for a couple of years now and evidently with this new technology, they can raise this lettuce is what they’re talking about first,” he said. “They can raise this stuff so cheap, and I’ve been reading about it talking about putting it in and lettuce and mass medicate everybody, like they do with fluoride in the water. […] It changes your DNA, mRNA changes your DNA when if you have your DNA tested now, and you eat a bunch of this, lettuce take a bunch of these MRNA vaccines, and you go back and get your DNA tested again, it’s gonna be a little different. It’s not going to be the same as it was that you were born with that you got from your parents. This is dangerous stuff. We need to study it, probably need to outlaw it. I mean, I can’t imagine. When I first read about this, I thought this can not be true. But you keep reading about it. And it is true.”
[…] This man, I am going to need to point out, also once used Hitler’s life story as a way to inspire the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. […]
[…] Scientists are, in fact, studying whether or not it would be possible to grow lettuce and other foods to produce mRNA vaccines, not because anyone wants to surreptitiously slip a vaccine into anyone’s chicken Caesar wrap, but because it could be a particular effective (and cost effective) delivery system. […]
Eliminating the need for a cold chain would greatly facilitate the administration of vaccines in rural areas and expedite vaccination efforts in developing countries around the world.
[…] No one is planning to stick unlabeled vaccine lettuce in the grocery store next to regular, non-vaccinated lettuce. That would be ridiculous. What they want is for people in the future to perhaps be able to grow their own vaccines, so that they and their families and their neighbors can have easy access to them.
There is a very, very long way to go before this kind of innovation would even be remotely viable, and if it ever does become viable, the idea that it would be used to victimize poor innocent Republicans who don’t know how a vaccine works instead of to save the lives of people who do and would like access to them, is completely absurd.
The former employee, who alleges discrimination and retaliation, says in his suit that the artist formerly known as Kanye West compared himself to Hitler — “minus the gas chambers.”
The artist Ye is accused of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories in front of the staff and children at his troubled private Christian school during a meeting in which he also allegedly expressed wanting to shave students’ heads and lock them in cages, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a former employee.
In a text message to the former employee, Trevor Phillips, Ye compared himself to Hitler — “minus the gas chambers” — and appeared to simulate masturbation during a one-on-one meeting in a Southern California hotel room where the musician watched “The Batman” on mute, according to the 47-page suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The suit accuses Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, of calling out Black people in a discriminatory manner and praising the Nazi leader, pushing employees to do renovations without permits and telling employees they could be fired for being “fat,” the suit says. He temporarily stiffed workers after Adidas cut ties with the rapper over his antisemitic comments, when bank accounts at the rapper’s clothing brand, Yeezy, had been frozen, the suit says.
Ye “gloated” to staff at Yeezy, his fashion brand, and Donda Academy, the rapper’s Los Angeles-area school, about using $2 million of the school’s budget for a trip to Paris, according to the suit.
[…] Phillips’ allegations add to a troubled and bizarre portrait of Donda, where former employees have said that students were allowed to eat only sushi for lunch, windows were empty because Ye didn’t like glass, and chairs, artwork and outside books were banned.
The accusations are included in previous lawsuits from three former teachers and an ex-assistant principal who allege discrimination and wrongful termination.
One of the lawsuits has also named Donda’s predecessor, Yeezy Christian Academy. A trial in one of the suits is scheduled to begin in April 2025.
A lawyer for the rapper has previously dismissed claims about Donda, saying the former employees’ descriptions of the school as a “dystopian institution designed to satisfy Ye’s idiosyncrasies” were false. […]
Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching […] The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
Donald Trump has sued two co-founders of his newly public Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., claiming they set the company up improperly and shouldn’t get any stock in it.
In the latest legal skirmish over who gets how much of the hot but flailing meme stock, Trump alleges that Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss violated an agreement about the setup and don’t deserve their 8.6% stake, currently valued at $606 million.
The lawsuit, which was filed on March 24 in Florida state court and hasn’t previously been reported, comes after the pair brought their own suit against the former president in Delaware Chancery Court over their promised stake in the the social media company…
So many people eager for their turn under the bus.
The origin of the cobra maneuver for air-to-air combat. Consider that this was a 1950s aircraft!
Cobra Maneuver #shorts #documentary
.https://youtube.com/shorts/dXriUBe4kk8
A famous atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explained he identifies as a “cultural Christian” in an interview after learning Ramadan lights were hung on a street in the UK as opposed to hanging lights to celebrate Easter.
Dawkins was referring to Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, turning on 30,000 lights for Ramadan – the Muslim holy month – on the cusp of Easter weekend on Oxford Street.
“I must say I’m slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead,” Dawkins said in an interview with Rachel S. Johnson of LBC Sunday. “I feel that we are a Christian country.” …
microraptorsays
Turns out, before he transported a gun across state lines and killed some unarmed protestors because he “felt threatened,” Kyle Rittenhouse did so badly on the ASVAB that he not only failed it, the Marine Corp forbid him from reapplying.
Tennessee passes ‘chemtrail’ bill banning airborne chemicals
Tennessee lawmakers have passed a bill banning the release of airborne chemicals that critics say is inspired by “chemtrails” conspiracy theories.
The bill forbids “intentional injection, release, or dispersion” of chemicals into the air.
It doesn’t explicitly mention chemtrails, which conspiracy theorists believe are poisons spread by planes.
Instead it broadly prohibits “affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight”.
The Republican-sponsored bill passed along party lines on Monday. If it is signed by Tennessee’s governor, Republican Bill Lee, it will go into effect on 1 July.
The bill’s backers were spurred on by a government report released last year on solar geoengineering, which is the idea of cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. The White House, though, has said that there are no plans “to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”
Several witnesses who testified before the Tennessee legislature cited debunked conspiracy theories or speculated about secret government geoengineering programmes, according to Scott Banbury, conservation director of the state’s branch of the Sierra Club, an environmental organisation.
Their claims were troubling, he said.
“As a serious environmental organisation, if what was in the bill was actually going on we would be calling for a stop to it,” he said. “It’s not happening.”
More at the link. If the bill is actually written as described, it would ban crop spraying and crop dusting and I seriously doubt the proponents have thought it through.
Jackson County, Missouri, has declared a state of emergency and closed key offices indefinitely as it responds to what officials believe is a ransomware attack that has made some of its IT systems inoperable.
“Jackson County has identified significant disruptions within its IT systems, potentially attributable to a ransomware attack,” officials wrote Tuesday. “Early indications suggest operational inconsistencies across its digital infrastructure and certain systems have been rendered inoperative while others continue to function as normal.”
The systems confirmed inoperable include tax and online property payments, issuance of marriage licenses, and inmate searches. In response, the Assessment, Collection and Recorder of Deeds offices at all county locations are closed until further notice.
The closure occurred the same day that the county was holding a special election to vote on a proposed sales tax to fund a stadium for MLB’s Kansas City Royals and the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Neither the Jackson County Board of Elections nor the Kansas City Board of Elections have been affected by the attack; both remain open…
The official US president Threads account, currently helmed by President Joe Biden, has begun using Meta’s ActivityPub integration, making Biden the first sitting US president to post on the decentralized networking protocol. If you want to follow the President’s posts, but don’t want to leave Mastodon, you can follow @[email protected]…
A powerful earthquake rocked Taiwan during the morning rush Wednesday, damaging buildings and creating a tsunami that washed ashore on southern Japanese islands…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@whheydt 153:
If the bill is actually written as described
Yep. One sentence.
Tennessee’s HB2063/SB2691 as rewritten by Amendment 1.
With a note calling it a fineable Class C misdemeanor and
It is assumed that the action prohibited by this legislation is not currently occurring in this state, nor will it in the future; therefore, this legislation will result in no significant fiscal impact on state government.
The sister of murder victim Ruby Garcia said she and her family were home watching live, in disbelief, as former President Donald Trump told an audience in Grand Rapids that he had spoken with “some of her family.”
“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Ruby Garcia’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told Target 8.
Mavi Garcia, the family spokesperson, said neither Trump nor anybody from his campaign has contacted her or anybody in her immediate family. She said her family is close and she would know if that had happened…
The first three F-16 Fighting Falcons that will be loaded with self-flying technology have arrived at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the Air Force said Tuesday.
The arrival of the F-16s marks the service’s biggest step forward yet in standing up the program known as Venom, which stands for Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model-Autonomy Flying Testbed and aims to speed up the testing of autonomous technology on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.
The Air Force hopes the autonomous technology tested under Venom could help it more quickly shape plans to create a fleet of self-flying drones that team up with crewed fighters in battle, known as collaborative combat aircraft…
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry posted a tweet the morning after LSU’s 94-87 loss to Iowa calling for the Louisiana Board of Regents to create a policy mandating that student-athletes be present for a pregame national anthem or risk losing their scholarships.
Several conservative commentators had spent the previous several hours criticizing LSU’s players and coaches for not being on the court when the national anthem was played ahead of the Elite Eight in Albany, New York…
The largest producer of fresh eggs in the U.S. said Tuesday it had temporarily halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was found in chickens, and officials said the virus had also been detected at a poultry facility in Michigan.
In Texas, Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. said in a statement that approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets, about 3.6% of its total flock, were destroyed after the infection, avian influenza, was found at the facility in Parmer County, Texas…
The U.S. House of Representatives has been in session just 43 days this year—less than half the year so far and 20 fewer days than the average American full-time worker has logged to date. What’s more, the House is scheduled to work just 81 more days for the rest of the year.
That’s right: They’re only going to be on the House floor for just 124. If you’re counting, that’s 106 fewer days than the rest of us will be spending on the job between now and the end of December.
That’s a generous accounting of their session days, because it includes pro forma sessions, those days when they gavel the House in and right back out again, usually during a recess. It also gives them the benefit of the doubt on what constitutes a legislative day, because two days of their usual work week are at best half days, with the first day of every work week generally not starting until late afternoon and the last day usually ending early afternoon.
If you’re thinking 124 (generous) days of legislative work is kind of a joke, you’re right! Even the last session—the one which has been deemed the least productive session since the Great Depression—saw them on the floor for 180 days […]
What did they manage to get done in the first session of this year? They lifted the debt ceiling and kept the government’s doors open, though that took half a dozen or so temporary funding bills, and was finally accomplished five months late. Their other accomplishments? They renamed some Veterans Affairs clinics and authorized a coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. […]
The previous Congress, led by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, started with nearly the same tiny Democratic majority—221 votes—that McCarthy had coming into power. But Pelosi’s Congress passed landmark legislation in 2021-22, including sweeping programs to boost the economy and protect Americans’ livelihoods during and after the pandemic.
The Democratic Congress passed unprecedented investments in infrastructure, along with the largest climate package yet. They lowered prescription drug costs, passed election reform, a new gun law, critical investment in tech, and federal guarantees for marriage equality—working with the same margin of votes the GOP had at the beginning of this session. […]
Judd Blevins, who marched alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, lost his fight to remain on Enid’s City Council.
Voters in Enid decided by a nearly 20-point margin Tuesday to remove a City Council member over his ties to white nationalist groups.
Judd Blevins lost his seat on Enid’s six-member City Council by 268 votes, according to unofficial results from the Oklahoma State Election Board. Nearly 1,400 people turned out, about a quarter of Ward 1’s registered voters and hundreds more than voted when Blevins was first elected last year.
Blevins will be replaced by Cheryl Patterson, a former teacher and longtime Republican who campaigned on a return to “normalcy” for this small city nearly 100 miles north of Oklahoma City, which was divided by the furor over Blevins. […]
Blevins faced the recall vote after local activists learned that he had marched alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and led an Oklahoma chapter of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa.
Blevins has denied that he has ever been a white supremacist, but at a candidate forum last week he defended marching in Charlottesville and said his activism was motivated by “the same issues that got Donald Trump elected in 2016.”
[…] The reporting, verified by NBC News, was sound. From 2017 to 2019, Blevins was an active leader in Identity Evropa, a group that privately advocated for the superiority of the white race but sanitized its messaging to break into conservative politics, adopting descriptors like “identitarians” with a mission to preserve “Western culture.” Blevins had flyered cities and universities with Identity Evropa stickers, banners and pamphlets and helped the group grow, recruiting new members and planning activities. He marched in Charlottesville and remained a member for at least a year after. Identity Evropa dissolved in 2019; its leadership splintered to other white nationalist groups.
Using a pseudonym, Blevins posted in 2019 that fellow white nationalists — “our guys” — should be supported as they ran for local elected offices “such as city council.”
“Basically positions where one can fly under the radar yet still be effective,” he posted. […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
March 9: Virginia codified same-sex marriage, sort of.
House Bill 174, which requires that such lawful marriages are recognized […] also provides that religious organizations or members of the clergy, acting in their religious capacity, “shall have the right to refuse to perform any marriage.”
[…]
In 2006, Virginia enacted a state constitutional amendment that barred same-sex marriage […] That provision is technically moot because a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling granted rights to same-sex marriage nationwide. [Bostic v. Schaefer]
[This] bill, as well as Democrats’ planned effort next year to strip the prohibition from the state constitution, are meant to provide additional protections for same-sex marriage should the Supreme Court reverse its 2015 decision.
* A SCOTUS reversal would unmoot the state constitution’s ban, which would supersede this recognizing law. So a new amendment is needed to remove the ban…
Approving a constitutional amendment in Virginia requires a multiyear process. The measure would need to pass the General Assembly two years in a row, with an election in for the House of Delegates in between, before appearing on ballots for statewide approval in a referendum as early as 2026.
While the lawmakers have introduced such measures before, they could have a better chance now that Democrats will control the House and Senate—pending the House elections in 2025. A proposed constitutional amendment does not require a governor’s signature.
Previously, the state had passed a statute prohibiting same-sex marriage in 1975 […] The Virginia General Assembly repealed the statute ban on same-sex marriages in 2020. In 2022, the Republican-controlled House of Delegates rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to repeal the constitutional ban
whheydtsays
Re: CA7746, Sky Captain @ #166…
Sounds like the Democrats in Virginia want to prevent any echoes of Loving v. Virginia. Now if California would just set up a ballot proposition to repeal Prop. 8 in case of the same potential SCOTUS action…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Correcting myself in #166:
2014 Bostic v. Schaefer found VA’s ban, in particular, unconstitutional. Several other cases successfully challenged other states’ bans. One case went the other way.
2015 Obergefell v. Hodges resolved that, guaranteeing marriage rights everywhere.
Whheydt @ 153
Of course they did not think it through. Thinking is for RINOs and libruls…
The very concept of a contrail conspiracy requires a ‘specific’ kind of believer.
The Dubya-age republicans were regressive but I do not recall there were as many half-baked legislation attempts. Behold the generation of the tea party.
The FCC appears to finally be stepping up efforts to secure decades-old flaws in American telephone networks that are allegedly being used by foreign governments and surveillance outfits to remotely spy on and monitor wireless devices.
At issue are the Signaling System Number 7 (SS7) and Diameter protocols, which are used by fixed and mobile network operators to enable interconnection between networks. They are part of the glue that holds today’s telecommunications together.
According to the US watchdog and some lawmakers, both protocols include security weaknesses that leave folks vulnerable to unwanted snooping. SS7’s problems have been known about for years and years, as far back as at least 2008, and we wrote about them in 2010 and 2014, for instance. Little has been done to address these exploitable shortcomings.
SS7, which was developed in the mid-1970s, can be potentially abused to track people’s phones’ locations; redirect calls and text messages so that info can be intercepted; and spy on users.
The Diameter protocol was developed in the late-1990s and includes support for network access and IP mobility in local and roaming calls and messages. It does not, however, encrypt originating IP addresses during transport, which makes it easier for miscreants to carry out network spoofing attacks…
Bitcoin fell for a second day to start the new month and quarter amid rising Treasury yields and strength in the U.S. dollar.
The flagship cryptocurrency fell more than 4.76% on Tuesday to $66,134.00, bringing its two-day loss to 7%, according to Coin Metrics. At one point it fell as low as $64,572.00…
Still not? That’s annoying and no idea why that’s not working, sorry folks. Guess there’s enoyugh info there to find it or see the incident and facts noted. Clip (youtube shorts) with failed link is by Oceanliner designs and its title is as hyperlinked – though not working – in #177. Other lnks given in #177 tell the story anyhow.
In a new filing that bluntly confronts U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, Special Counsel Jack Smith takes a new tone of incredulousness and disdain for her mishandling of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
The issue at hand is her failure to have yet ruled on Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his inane, unprecedented, and counterfactual reading of the Presidential Records Act. Instead of rejecting the argument out of hand, Cannon not only is entertaining it but ordered the two sides to propose jury instructions based on two different deeply flawed interpretations of the PRA.
That set up an nearly impossible challenge for Smith: How do you draft jury instructions that are so wrong on the law without looking like an idiot, undermining your own case, and pissing of the judge?
The answer: You can’t.
So Smith went all in, no longer trying to placate, educate, or hand-hold Cannon.
Smith ripped her interpretations of the PRA [Presidential Records Act]: “both of the Court’s scenarios are fundamentally flawed and any jury instructions that reflect those scenarios would be error.” He said her “legal premise is wrong” and her requested jury instructions “would distort the trial.”
Smith all but threatened to take Cannon up on appeal, urging her to rule promptly and not wait until a jury has been seated and thereby deprive the government of the opportunity to appeal. At this point, Smith would prefer an adverse ruling to no ruling at all: <b.“Whatever the Court decides, it must resolve these crucial threshold legal questions promptly. The failure to do so would improperly jeopardize the Government’s right to a fair trial.”
Smith came as close as you can to mocking Cannon’s request for proposed jury instructions under her two scenarios, prefacing the insane exercise with language like:
Any jury instructions premised on the erroneous legal suppositions set forth in Scenario (a) would necessarily be deeply flawed.
and:
Like Scenario (a), proposed Scenario (b) rests on [an] erroneous and unsupported legal proposition … But Scenario (b) also incorporates additional layers of erroneous legal propositions at the core of Trump’s legally flawed and factually unsupported PRA defense.
For devotees of the Mar-a-Lago case, Smith also walked Cannon through the origin story of Trump’s PRA defense, which close followers know involves Tom Fitton, the non-lawyer head of the right-wing Judicial Watch.
Judge Aileen Cannon is in Donald Trump’s back pocket, but removing a judge by claiming bias is almost impossible to do, but Jack Smith is not claiming bias. he is claiming incompetence, which has a much lower threshold. In his latest filing, Smith accused Cannon of not knowing what she is doing, in regard to her ordering both him and Trump attorneys to submit proposed jury instructions that would be favorable to Donald Trump. Those instructions she wants would ask jurors if they thought that classified materials were the personal property of Trump, thus injecting her own bias toward Trump into this case.
If Cannon disregards Smith’s filing, he is going to not only appeal her order to the 11th Circuit, but will have all the ammo he needs to remove her from the case. There is a lemon law that applies to judges too. Since Cannon is hard-headed, she will disregard Smith’s filing, and Smith will appeal. During that appeal, he will argue for Cannon to be removed. My prediction is that, sooner than you think, this case will no longer be delayed, but will go forward under the jurisdiction of another judge.
@Reginald and Brony:
Dawkins has been saying he’s “culturally Christian” since 2007 amid “war on Christmas” rhetoric, blaming other religions, not atheists like him, for threatening the holiday—when there never was a war.
@StevoR #179:
no idea why that’s not working
You had an extra right quote around the url.
Incidentally, https: was missing but implied (bare // means ‘same as here’).
NASA, which isn’t known for timeliness, has been tasked by the White House with implementing a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) zone for the Moon traceable to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Until now, most missions have operated on UTC, the successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), as the reference time to work from. However, with lunar activity set to ramp in the coming decades, the US feels the need for time reference in cislunar space.
Part of the issue is that time runs differently as spacecraft venture away from Earth. The White House cited [PDF] the example of an Earth-based clock observed by someone on the Moon that would appear to lose an average of 58.7 milliseconds per Earth day. This is not disastrous for talking on the radio, but it could be catastrophic for accurate navigation.
The Global Positioning System (GPS), for exanmple, relies on highly accurate and synchronized clocks. Synchronizing a lunar asset with an Earth-based time standard is, therefore, difficult.
There is little detail on how the standard might be implemented. One suggestion is to set up atomic clocks on the Moon, similar to those used on Earth…
[…] Not only has Trump been falsely suggesting — without evidence — that he did designate these documents personal records. He couldn’t have done so, because he didn’t know of this theory until over a year after he stole the documents.
But Cannon is such a chump that she has been chasing a theory spun up by [Tom] Fitton, someone who has only an English BA.
Cannon may well respond poorly to Smith’s use of 20-some pages to lay all this out. It’s the kind of thing that routinely elicits miffed responses from her.
At this point, though, it seems Smith is simply laying a record for a challenge at the 11th Circuit
The post provides records showing that Trump did not know about, and did not espouse the “personal records” theory until after he was told about it in February 2022. The theory came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda. Tom Fitton is President of Judicial Watch. He is a pro-Trump doofus who also rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, supports Breitbart News, and spreads the lie that voter fraud is widespread.
Wall Street analysts expected Tesla to report weak numbers, but the company’s reported numbers Tuesday, after the close of the bell, were far worse than anyone envisioned.
Don’t expect Tesla CEO Elon Musk to take the obvious blame.
Analysts were expecting deliveries of 457,000 vehicles in the first three months of 2024. Tesla came in significantly lower, at 386,810—a 15% miss. […] No matter how you slice it, it was a disaster for Tesla and Musk, and the stock has been hammered accordingly. Having shed around a third of its price, Tesla is the second-worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 Index this year.
Tesla had plenty of reasons for the underperformance. “Decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin,” the company said in a statement. At its earnings call, Tesla further added to the gloom by announcing that sales growth would be “notably lower” the rest of this year despite aggressive price cuts.
[…] Tesla’s ridiculous Cybertruck looks like a catastrophic dud.
Other news outlets blamed the expanding electric vehicle market for some of Tesla’s woes, and that undoubtedly plays a part. But Tesla’s first-mover advantage hasn’t been dulled as its technology and far-superior charging network makes it the best electric car on the market. In a neutral world, with an invisible CEO, Tesla would still be growing.
But it’s not a neutral world, and Musk is anything but invisible. Indeed, he has saddled Tesla with baggage that goes from the political to the practical.
Did you know that Tesla got rid of driving stalks? You know, the stalks that make it easy to turn on lights, control windshield wipers, activate turn signals, and select which direction the car will drive. Those controls now live either on the steering wheel itself, or on the touch screen.
[…] You literally have to look down at the steering controls to find the button. […] requiring the touchscreen to put the car in drive, reverse, park, and neutral.
[…] It’s difficult to see Musk as CEO of Tesla when he spends the day cavorting with Nazis on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
[…] Musk’s love affair with Texas—a state that doesn’t even allow Tesla to sell directly to buyers because of dealer protectionism—doesn’t seem to be paying off in commensurate sales growth. Teslas made in Texas have to be shipped out of the state and then reimported across state lines to any buyers in Texas who purchase them online, one of many ridiculous workarounds born of dealer-protection laws […]
It’s inevitable: To continue growing and thriving, Tesla will have to ditch Musk. He is toxic, destructive, and distracted. His decisions—like the steering yoke, lack of stalks, and even the Cybertruck—have proven disastrous to the company. And his reputation and bizarre focus on Twitter/X compounds his damage to Tesla.
Musk thinks he is unaccountable to anyone, but Wall Street and car buyers are all clearly telling him otherwise. He won’t care. The only question is whether Tesla’s board and its shareholders do.
A collection of stars 30,000 light-years away is the faintest and lowest-mass Milky Way satellite ever found, according to the group of scientists who recently observed it. Oh, and it may be dominated by dark matter, the unknown stuff that makes up about 27% of the universe.
It’s a big surprise that this system, sitting on the edge of our galaxy and subject to the gravitational force of its disk, has managed to persist. A team of researchers that studied the stellar grouping concluded that the stars have stayed together because they are either a dwarf galaxy or a star cluster, gravitationally bound together.
The team published its analysis earlier this year in The Astrophysical Journal, and a paper discussing the implications for the system as it pertains to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model, a leading model hypothesizing the origins of the cosmos, is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv…
… A fish tanker filled with more than 100,000 young chinook salmon crashed in Oregon last week, reports local news outlet the Baker City Herald. In the crash, the 53-foot truck rolled onto the passenger side, skidded across the pavement and flipped onto its roof after hitting a rocky embankment.
After colliding with the side of the road, the tanker split open, leaking its contents onto a riverbank next to the road. This spilled an estimated 77,000 salmon smolts, the technical term for a fish that’s around two-years-old, into the Lookingglass Creek, which runs alongside the road.
The remaining 25,000 chinook salmon smolts were found dead, either stranded on the river bank or inside the stricken tanker, said the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) in a statement. According to the agency:…
The fish were being transported from the Lookingglass Hatchery in northeast Oregon to the Imnaha River, where they were set to be released to try and bolster fish stocks in the area. The salmon population in the Imnaha is listed as “threatened” by ODFW…
Independent presidential candidate, Kennedy family reject, and bona fide wackjob Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hates getting called on his delusional, deranged, bugfuck shit. His sideways face and unnaturally dead eyes scrunch up and seethe and rage. He gets so mad. It is hilarious.
Here’s a clip that’s getting a lot of attention, via Democratic strategist Keith Edwards. [video at the link]
In that clip, NewsNation host Chris Cuomo confronts Kennedy on his history of batshit 9/11 trutherism, his “just asking questions” about what really happened. Kennedy never knows what you’re talking about when you refer to his past craziness. He lies to Cuomo, saying he’s never voiced a conspiracy theory about 9/11. The clip ends with the receipts, the audio of Kennedy in the exact interview Cuomo was referencing, babbling his “just asking questions” about why Building Seven fell.
This is how he is. He’s a liar, a jackass, and a shame to his name. (Lord, nobody would even know who he was if he wasn’t nepo-baby-ing off that name. […])
In the same interview with Cuomo, Kennedy got pissy because he supposedly got unfairly misquoted/taken out of context for something he said to CNN’s Erin Burnett about Joe Biden being a worse threat to democracy than Donald Trump. Here are his words to Burnett, as quoted by Joan Walsh in The Nation:
“Listen, I make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy.” […]
“President Biden is the first candidate and the first president in history has used the federal agencies to censor political speech or censor his opponents. You know, I can say that because … 37 hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me.” He continued: “The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns.”
How, praytell, did Kennedy get taken out of context there? […]
(Walsh explains just what exactly Kennedy is whining about when he says Biden “censored” him: “[A] couple of his public health officials e-mailed Twitter and Facebook to complain he was spreading falsehoods” about COVID vaccines.)
Here’s Kennedy clarifying to Cuomo what he really meant, if everybody wasn’t so busy misquoting what he said to Erin Burnett:
“I think we’re all being told each one is a threat, because it’s a way of using fear, to force us into a binary choice, where we have to vote for the lesser of two evils.” Kennedy said on “Cuomo.” “It keeps the public from considering people like me.”
Yeah, buddy, there’s a lot keeping the public from considering people like Kennedy. […]
He further whined to Cuomo, “They cut my quote. So it looked like I was making this definitive statement that Biden was more of a threat to democracy than Trump. I never said that.”
[…] It’s well-documented that Kennedy believes literally insane shit. He gets pissy when you call him anti-vax, but he’s one of the most consistently anti-vax freaks in the country. Here’s a clip of him saying Bill Gates is putting the 5G in our brains so he can control our bank accounts and our lives and saying “vaccine passports” will make you “a slave.” About vaccine mandates, he once said they were worse than the Holocaust, because “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
But when he’s confronted on these things, he just never seems to remember them, which is why it’s incumbent on every person who talks to the clownfucking freak to be armed with audio and video clips and quotes that debunk his denials.
Burnett did this, as Joan Walsh points out, by citing Kennedy’s words to NBC News in 2000, about how Ralph Nader was just a spoiler. “There’s a political reality here, which is that his candidacy could draw enough votes in certain key states from Al Gore to give the entire election to George W Bush,” said Kennedy, whose brain was apparently in better shape 24 years ago.
Kennedy had further written in a New York Times op-ed that year that “Mr. Nader’s candidacy could siphon votes from Al Gore, the environment’s most visible champion since Theodore Roosevelt, and lead to the election of George W. Bush,” and that “his suggestion that there is no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush is irresponsible.”
That’s how Burnett got that fucking insane quote from Kennedy about Joe Biden being a greater threat to democracy, the one he is now complaining that people are misunderstanding. She confronted him on his past words, and in this case said hey wait, isn’t that what you’re doing right now?
That’s how you do it. It makes him so very angry, but that’s just part of the fun.
birgerjohanssonsays
Novel fabrication technique takes transition metal telluride nanosheets from lab to mass production
The law is supported by many in the East African country but widely condemned by rights activists and others abroad.
Uganda’s constitutional court on Wednesday upheld an anti-gay law that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”
President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law in May last year. […]
Activists had contested the law in court, but the judges declined to overturn it in their ruling.
The law defines “aggravated homosexuality” as cases of homosexual relations involving a minor and other categories of vulnerable people, or when the perpetrator is infected with HIV. A suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be imprisoned for up to 14 years, and the offense of “attempted homosexuality” is punishable by up to 10 years.
Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law criminalizing sexual activity “against the order of nature.” The punishment for that offense is life imprisonment.
The United Nations expressed deep concern when the new law was passed, with the U.N. Human Rights Office calling it ”a recipe for systematic violations of the rights” of LGBTQ+ people and others.
President Joe Biden called the law “a tragic violation of universal human rights — one that is not worthy of the Ugandan people, and one that jeopardizes the prospects of critical economic growth for the entire country.” […]
[…] In the Republican primary [in New York], Mr. Trump had above 80 percent of the vote, while Ms. Haley had 13 percent and Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, scored 4 percent of the vote. […]
Mr. Trump took at least 75 percent of the vote in every state as of 8 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. But Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race early last month, still took at least 10 percent of the vote in all four states, a sign of lingering discontent in the Republican Party with Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Connecticut was Mr. Trump’s weakest performance, taking under 78 percent of the vote, while Ms. Haley took about 14 percent. […]
Biden got more than 90 percent of the tallied votes in New York.
… Australia’s National Roads and Motorist’s Association estimated that over 12,000 of its insurance claims from 2018 were from kangaroo and wallaby collisions, accidents which cost upward of $5,000 AUD on average.
Over the past 20 years, car companies have pivoted from the old strategies of structurally reinforcing cars to designing prevention technologies that avoid crashes altogether. Car companies and researchers have spent years trying to create systems to detect or deter the animals. But so far, marsupials have presented a nearly impossible tech challenge, leaving communities to come up with alternative solutions to keep roos away from busy roads…
Trump told a Wisconsin audience yesterday that evidence “came out” that he won the state in 2020. That remains delusional: Biden narrowly prevailed in Wisconsin four years ago.
The No Labels operation originally said it would finalize its plans for a third-party presidential ticket by mid-March. The group then said it would field candidates by the end of March. It’s now early April, and No Labels still doesn’t have a ticket.
Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation. […]
Guardian link to: “Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation”
[…] Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.
Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.
The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.
The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.
Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.
Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.
[…] After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”
But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges. […]
More details at the link. For example:
[…] The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023.
The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.
Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. […]
Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media. […]
President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined together Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to lower health care costs along with the senator’s recent wins in pressuring drug companies to lower the prices of some commonly used inhalers.
Gathered at the White House with health care advocates and experts, Sanders lamented that despite working to address high health care costs for the past 20 years, “not much has happened” in that time.
[…] the senator joined Biden Wednesday in celebrating the progress that has been made, highlighting the cost-cutting provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act like the $35 cap on insulin, Medicare negotiations as well as the administration’s recently issued guidance on “march-in rights” for drugs developed with taxpayer funds.
He noted how three of the top four inhaler manufacturers have recently capped the cost of some of their most popular inhaler products to $35 a month, calling out Teva Pharmaceuticals for being the only remaining company not to follow suit.
[…] Biden signaled a desire to go harder on health care costs in his remarks, saying, “I think we should be more aggressive. It’s time to negotiate lower prices for at least 50 drugs a year. We only have — the law only required 10 now and then 15 and moves up.”
He reiterated his and Sanders’s shared goal of capping health care costs at $2,000 annually for all Americans, not just those on Medicare. […]
Reginald Selkirksays
@193: Going by percentage of the vote does not count those who didn’t bother to vote, which may be an important component in the general election.
Fox News hosts create misleading segments about the EV market:
[video at the link]
ROBERTS [Fox News reporter John Roberts]: Tesla sales fell 8.5 percent the first quarter of this year. […] EV sales are nowhere near what this president wanted or expected, yet the administration continues to shove them down consumers’ throats. Why?
BUTTIGIEG [Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg]: Well, let’s be clear. Consumers have wanted and purchased more EVs every single year than the year before. And you know, Tesla is facing more competition as GM and Ford and Stellantis and other competitive players start to make sure they get a piece of the EV market.
Let’s be clear that the automotive sector is moving toward EVs, and we can’t pretend otherwise. Sometimes when these debates happen, I feel like it’s the early 2000s and I’m talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever. The reality is that the automotive sector is moving toward EVs, and the US can either fall behind China or we can claim the lead.
Buttigieg went on to point out that Joe Biden wants EVs to be built in the US, by US workers, and that even if you don’t care about the environment (shame on you!), investments in building the US EV market are simply smart business unless you want all the jobs to be in China, do you, John, do you? Why do you love China so much, John? (We are very loosely paraphrasing here.)
And then idiots on Twitter said the government never forced anyone to buy a cell phone, which kind of ignores the fact that most of the stuff that makes smartphones smart, like GPS and TOUCH SCREENS and oh, the GODDAMNED INTERNET ITSELF were all developed by the Defense Department, so shut up, nobody’s ramming an EV down your throat, the END.
Last Tuesday, the day of Truth Social’s I.P.O., under the ticker symbol DJT, the social-media company co-founded by Donald Trump reached a short-lived market capitalization of more than six billion dollars. To put things in perspective, that figure puts the platform on par with such unglamorous mid-range technology businesses as Chewy, an online pet-food purveyor, and Klaviyo, an e-mail-marketing company. But even those companies have been around for more than a decade and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Truth Social, in contrast, is notable for the gaping incongruity between its spiking valuation and the paltry reality of its product. […]
Trump immediately began using it as his personal megaphone. But, in the time since, according to some estimates, the app has accumulated only about a million active users. […] Truth Social lost fifty-eight million dollars last year, after generating only $4.1 million in revenue. What I found when I recently joined the site was a bit like a Republican-themed carnival, of the kind that alights in a town field and attempts to hide its shoddiness for long enough to make money without entirely falling apart.
[…] When I clicked the button to add an avatar image, nothing happened. I settled instead for the placeholder illustration of an eagle. To kick-start my feed, the app offered me a list of recommended accounts to follow, beginning with Trump’s. But the Follow button did not actually appear where it was supposed to next to his name, so I had to search for his account later by hand. Other suggested accounts included the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and the conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Only after twenty-eight recommendations did the app offer a woman, Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaiian congresswoman and ex-Democrat. The button for posting messages on the platform is labelled “Truth”; the sharing function, equivalent to a retweet, is a “ReTruth.” Ads are tagged with the Orwellian label “Sponsored Truth,” which might be a contradiction in terms. The majority of the ads I saw were for Trump’s Presidential campaign. A few were for MyPillow […]
Its main For You feed offered me conspiracy theories about immigrants at the U.S. border […]
All social-media feeds can feel like a monotonous stream of outrage, but, befitting its founder, Truth Social has elevated the art of petty grievance to extravagant heights.
[…] Even on the right, Truth Social has failed to become a mainstream community. Trump himself has fewer than seven million followers there. On his Twitter account, which Musk restored to him in late 2022, he has eighty-seven million, though he has posted there only once in recent years, to share his mug shot. The illogical behavior of Truth Social’s stock reminds me of cryptocurrency […]
On Monday, after Axios surfaced the S.E.C. filings, the descent accelerated, and the stock plunged more than twenty per cent. An election result can be disputed, and Sponsored Truths can be peddled, but in the long run financial markets don’t lie.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #198…
They’ve got a ways to go to get annual health care costs down to $2K, even for those on Medicare. I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see it…
New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought
…
But near-death studies was already splitting into several schools of belief, whose tensions continue to this day. One influential camp was made up of spiritualists, some of them evangelical Christians, who were convinced that near-death experiences were genuine sojourns in the land of the dead and divine. As researchers, the spiritualists’ aim was to collect as many reports of near-death experience as possible, and to proselytise society about the reality of life after death. Moody was their most important spokesman; he eventually claimed to have had multiple past lives and built a “psychomanteum” in rural Alabama where people could attempt to summon the spirits of the dead by gazing into a dimly lit mirror.
The second, and largest, faction of near-death researchers were the parapsychologists, those interested in phenomena that seemed to undermine the scientific orthodoxy that the mind could not exist independently of the brain. These researchers, who were by and large trained scientists following well established research methods, tended to believe that near-death experiences offered evidence that consciousness could persist after the death of the individual. Many of them were physicians and psychiatrists who had been deeply affected after hearing the near-death stories of patients they had treated in the ICU. Their aim was to find ways to test their theories of consciousness empirically, and to turn near-death studies into a legitimate scientific endeavour.
Finally, there emerged the smallest contingent of near-death researchers, who could be labelled the physicalists. These were scientists, many of whom studied the brain, who were committed to a strictly biological account of near-death experiences. Like dreams, the physicalists argued, near-death experiences might reveal psychological truths, but they did so through hallucinatory fictions that emerged from the workings of the body and the brain. (Indeed, many of the states reported by near-death experiencers can apparently be achieved by taking a hero’s dose of ketamine.) Their basic premise was: no functioning brain means no consciousness, and certainly no life after death. Their task, which Borjigin took up in 2015, was to discover what was happening during near-death experiences on a fundamentally physical level…
The parapsychologists tend to push back by arguing that even if each of the cases of veridical near-death experiences leaves room for scientific doubt, surely the accumulation of dozens of these reports must count for something. But that argument can be turned on its head: if there are so many genuine instances of consciousness surviving death, then why should it have so far proven impossible to catch one empirically? …
Perhaps the story to be written about near-death experiences is not that they prove consciousness is radically different from what we thought it was. Instead, it is that the process of dying is far stranger than scientists ever suspected. The spiritualists and parapsychologists are right to insist that something deeply weird is happening to people when they die, but they are wrong to assume it is happening in the next life rather than this one. At least, that is the implication of what Jimo Borjigin found when she investigated the case of Patient One.
In the moments after Patient One was taken off oxygen, there was a surge of activity in her dying brain. Areas that had been nearly silent while she was on life support suddenly thrummed with high-frequency electrical signals called gamma waves. In particular, the parts of the brain that scientists consider a “hot zone” for consciousness became dramatically alive. In one section, the signals remained detectable for more than six minutes. In another, they were 11 to 12 times higher than they had been before Patient One’s ventilator was removed.
“As she died, Patient One’s brain was functioning in a kind of hyperdrive,” Borjigin told me. For about two minutes after her oxygen was cut off, there was an intense synchronisation of her brain waves, a state associated with many cognitive functions, including heightened attention and memory. The synchronisation dampened for about 18 seconds, then intensified again for more than four minutes. It faded for a minute, then came back for a third time…
At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death. “The brain, contrary to everybody’s belief, is actually super active during cardiac arrest,” Borjigin said. Death may be far more alive than we ever thought possible…
Borjigin hopes that understanding the neurophysiology of death can help us to reverse it. She already has brain activity data from dozens of deceased patients that she is waiting to analyse. But because of the paranormal stigma associated with near-death studies, she says, few research agencies want to grant her funding. “Consciousness is almost a dirty word amongst funders,” she added. “Hardcore scientists think research into it should belong to maybe theology, philosophy, but not in hardcore science. Other people ask, ‘What’s the use? The patients are gonna die anyway, so why study that process? There’s nothing you can do about it.’” …
This article does a decent job of explaining the various viewpoints without credulously accepting them.
Another is on the evolutionary biology of near-death experiences. Why, evolutionarily speaking, should we have such experiences at all? Martial and her colleagues speculate that it may be a form of the phenomenon known as thanatosis, in which creatures throughout the animal kingdom feign death to escape mortal dangers…
I think this viewpoint is seriously misguided. Before assuming that a phenomenon is an evolutionary adaptation, I would like to see some serious evidence that it affects reproductive fitness.
Meanwhile, in parts of the culture where enthusiasm is reserved not for scientific discovery in this world, but for absolution or benediction in the next, the spiritualists, along with sundry other kooks and grifters, are busily peddling their tales of the afterlife. Forget the proverbial tunnel of light: in America in particular, a pipeline of money has been discovered from death’s door, through Christian media, to the New York Times bestseller list and thence to the fawning, gullible armchairs of the nation’s daytime talk shows. First stop, paradise; next stop, Dr Oz…
Finally, the gloves come off!
Reginald Selkirksays
@200: I think a major problem with the transition to EVs is that the current product does not live up to the promise. I personally would be happy to buy an EV if
1) on long trips it could be recharged in a decent amount of time (say 20 minutes or less). Right now the companies are all promising that capability in the near future with solid-state batteries, but no product lives up to it today.
2) The price was more competitive. I would pay maybe $20K – 30K for an EV. Most of the current products are in the $50K – 60K range. I want something priced like a Chevy Bolt, but with higher quality and fewer fires.
ardipithecussays
Trump’s $175m bond has been “returned for correction” as it does not have the required financial statements from the bond holder, and also needs to show power of attorney. I guess the New York courts don’t just accept someone’s word that they are ‘good for it’.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) lashed out at a reporter this week after she pressed him on the massive amount of money that iHeartMedia, the radio network that distributes his podcast, has poured into a super PAC supporting his re-election campaign.
‘It really is sad what’s happened to the media,” Cruz sneered when ABC 13 reporter Shannon Ryan asked him about a bombshell report by the Houston Chronicle.
Last week, the Chronicle revealed that iHeartMedia had sent over $630,000 in payments to the Truth and Courage PAC since March 2023, accounting for roughly one-third of the committee’s total contributions in that timeframe. Experts told the Chronicle that the payments “appear to be a novel arrangement that blur the lines between what is allowed” under Senate ethics rules and campaign finance laws.
After launching his “Verdict” podcast in 2020 and quickly gaining a devoted MAGA audience, Cruz announced in October 2022 that iHeartMedia had picked up the show, calling it a “big damn deal” as the program would be carried on 850 radio stations. A watchdog group soon filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee, alleging that Cruz violated rules barring lawmakers from receiving gifts from registered lobbyists, which iHeartMedia is. Cruz, at the time, argued that he received no financial benefit from the arrangement, and the committee eventually tossed the complaint.
The iHeartMedia payments, which the company says are associated with Verdict’s advertising revenue, would seem to contradict the senator’s claims that he is not paid to host the thrice-weekly podcast. In fact, the PAC reports the payments as “other receipts” and not as political contributions…
A south Alabama hospital announced today that it will end IVF treatment at the end of the year, following a state Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children.
Infirmary Health in Mobile, which faced several lawsuits over the destruction of frozen embryos, said it will temporarily resume IVF treatment for the rest of 2024 and then end the treatment. The Center for Reproductive Medicine will move its office from the medical center at the end of the year to another location, according to a spokesperson…
Nine years and 3.2 billion pixels later, it is complete: the LSST Camera stands as the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy and will serve as the centerpiece of the Vera Rubin Observatory, poised to begin its exploration of the southern skies.
The Rubin Observatory’s key goal is the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a sweeping, near-constant observation of space. This endeavor will yield 60 petabytes of data on the composition of the universe, the nature and distribution of dark matter, dark energy and the expansion of the universe, the formation of our galaxy, our intimate little solar system, and more.
The camera will use its 5.1-foot-wide optical lens to take a 15-second exposure of the sky every 20 seconds, automatically changing filters to view light in every wavelength from near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared. Its constant monitoring of the skies will eventually amount to a timelapse of the heavens; it will highlight fleeting events for other scientists to train their telescopes on, and monitor changes in the southern sky…
Google has introduced Jpegli, a JPEG library for image encoding. The new library is intended to be faster, more visually pleasing, and more efficient than traditional JPEGs. Proponents of the technology said it has the potential to make the Internet faster and more beautiful.
Announced April 3 and accessible from GitHub, Jpegli maintains high backward compatibility while offering enhanced capabilities and a 35% compression ratio at high-quality compression settings, Google said. Jpegli works by using new techniques to reduce noise and improve image quality. New or improved features include adaptive quantization heuristics from the JPEG XL reference implementation, improved quantization matrix selection, calculation of intermediate results, and the possibility to use more advanced colorspace…
Silentbobsays
Hey does anyone know what’s happened to Intransitive?
She hasn’t blogged for months, which is fine obviously, but she’s also shut off commenting on her blog.
She’s one of the best ever FTB bloggers and I’d just like to know she’s okay if anyone has any information.
Silentbobsays
If she reads this –
Rhiannon, we love you and miss you. Please post now and then so we know you’re okay. :-)
Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA organization first took over the Arizona Republican Party and now is a dominant force in GOP circles across the nation, says the scourge of birth control has made women “angry and bitter.” …
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 213
We should encourage all Republicans to emulate Charlie Kirk. In fact, we should tell Trump that Kirk’s approach is very successful- he will never double-check.
BTW Emmylou Harris had her 77th birthday yesterday.
Nebraska legislators on Wednesday night blocked a late effort to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes, despite public pressure from former President Donald Trump to shift to a winner-take-all system that would likely benefit him in the fall.
The measure fell short, 8-36, in a procedural vote. While it’s possible supporters could take another stab at advancing the proposal, there remain serious hurdles as the legislative session draws to a close, and it’s unclear whether the proposal has enough support to get across the finish line and become law.
Nebraska currently doles out three of its five electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins each of its three congressional districts. In practice, that puts the competitive 2nd District in the Omaha area in play, even though Republicans typically win the statewide vote easily…
[…] When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman imprisoned other members of the royal family, Trump announced his support for the move. When the Saudis imposed a blockade on U.S. allies in Qatar, Trump endorsed this, too.
A few years later, Trump boasted to Bob Woodward about “saving” MBC from scrutiny after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. “I saved his ass,” the then-president said. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone.”
After leaving office, Trump cultivated the connections — partnering with the Saudis on a golf project — as did his son-in-law: Jared Kushner created a private equity firm that received $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Evidently, those connections remain strong. The New York Times reported overnight that a Trump-owned property is seeing a “surge in business” thanks to a deal “to host tournaments for LIV Golf, the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.”
And as it turns out, that wasn’t the only notable Times report in today’s edition.
Former President Donald J. Trump spoke recently with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, their first publicly disclosed conversation since Mr. Trump left office in January 2021, according to two people briefed on the discussion who were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
[…] the Trump/MBS conversation “comes at a time when the Biden administration is engaged in delicate negotiations with the Saudis aimed at establishing a lasting peace in the Middle East.”
It’s difficult to say with confidence whether the former president was subverting his own country’s foreign policy agenda, though it’s worth emphasizing that Trump appears to have a foreign policy agenda of his own — despite the fact that he’s a private citizen with no official authority.
Just last month, for example, the former president welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Mar-a-Lago, and according to Orbán, the two held private discussions about U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Soon after, The Washington Post reported that Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official in Trump’s administration, has recently met with a variety of far-right leaders around the world.
The former president has taken to calling Grenell his “envoy,” despite the fact that it can get a little tricky when presidential candidates have their own envoys — whose goals, messages, and priorities might differ from that of the current U.S. administration.
[…] In 2019, Trump — who routinely tried to get the Justice Department to prosecute political figures he disliked — insisted that John Kerry “should be prosecuted” for violating the Logan Act, adding, “He’s talking to Iran and has had many meetings and many phone calls and he’s telling them what to do. That is total violation of the Logan Act.”
Trump had no idea what he was talking about, but he appeared convinced that a former U.S. official interacting with foreign governments was both scandalous and criminal.
Oh FFS. Worse and worse. Update on Trump’s anti-immigrant messaging.
[…] Trump is running on a platform of militarized mass deportations and detention camps. As a rhetorical matter, he’s complaining about migrants “poisoning the blood of our country” — echoing Adolph Hitler in the process — and publicly declaring that migrants are “not humans.”
All the while, the presumptive GOP nominee is doing his best to exploit crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants — even if that means deceiving the public about the relevant details.
[…] The New Republic’s Greg Sargent had a report this week on the ways in which the party is expanding the scope of its message.
The Republican National Committee now has an official website devoted to chronicling “migrant crime” and “illegal alien crime,” listed out by state (in some states no “illegal alien crimes” have yet been documented). The casual use of such terms to smear large classes of immigrants is the official party position. All this is straight from the authoritarian playbook.
The RNC’s website, unveiled this week, is called BidenBloodbath.com, and as the conservative Washington Times noted, the online project allows visitors to sign up to be messaged when undocumented immigrants are accused of committing crimes.
The election-season website dovetails with Trump’s latest rhetoric: The former president told supporters this week that “migrant crime” is his “favorite new term,” adding, “It’s a new category of crime.”
At this point, I could spend several paragraphs explaining that immigrants, on average, commit fewer crimes than those born in the United States. I could also remind readers, not only of the role immigrants have played in the American tradition, but of the ongoing benefits to increased immigration.
But for now, I’m instead inclined to focus on Trump’s claim that this is “a new category of crime.”
It really isn’t.
In fact, not long after taking office seven years ago, the Republican and his team created a Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office, which included a hotline Americans could call if they were a victim of a specific kind of crime: those perpetrated by undocumented immigrants (or as Trump called them at the time, “criminal aliens”).
A year later, the Trump White House distributed to reporters a “round-up” of “immigration crime stories,” purporting to show — in some cases, falsely — evidence of immigrants breaking the law. Soon after, the then-president hosted a special event for the victims of crimes committed by immigrants, complete with a special name: “Angel Families.”
The event was filled was brazen falsehoods […], though Trump didn’t appear to care.
The point, of course, is that there’s nothing especially “new” about any of this. On the contrary, related efforts — including some with genuinely scary antecedents — have been around for far too long. Team Trump, in particular, has long embraced the idea that crimes can and should be divided based on the immigration status of alleged perpetrators.
As for the merits, I’m reminded of a USA Today editorial published after Trump’s VOICE initiative was launched.
[T]here are good reasons this country doesn’t create separate programs for victims of crimes by Jews or Catholics or African Americans or Asians or juveniles or short people. Categorizing criminals in this way is not going to provide any special comfort to victims. And, by underscoring and overpublicizing the acts of some members, such efforts are the first step toward assigning guilt to a group. This runs contrary to the core American value that people deserve to be judged as individuals, based on their own behavior. To do otherwise is the very definition of prejudice.
The piece added, “Blaming an already unpopular minority group for the actions of a few has no place in America.”
It was true when the editorial ran seven years ago, and it’s a point that remains true now.
Elon Musk helped publicize a claim that “illegals” are registering to vote in several U.S. states on Tuesday. But, like so many of Musk’s tweets on X recently, the billionaire’s fearmongering crumbles under the smallest amount of scrutiny. And in this case, the state of Texas is calling bullshit.
“The number of voters registering without a photo ID is SKYROCKETING in 3 key swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania,” the account End Wokeness tweeted on Tuesday.
The account claimed that Texas added 1,250,710 new voters through the program, Pennsylvania added 580,513, and Arizona added 220,731. But that simply isn’t true, at least according to Texas state officials…
A scientific journal published by Elsevier has reportedly posted a stunning 101 expressions of concern on studies connected to Didier Raoult, a disgraced French microbiologist who gained international prominence amid the pandemic by promoting, with little evidence, that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID-19—a claim that has now been firmly debunked.
According to Retraction Watch, the journal New Microbes and New Infections posted 101 expressions of concern on Raoult’s works recently, including a 2023 study that drew sharp criticism. The study involved giving hydroxychloroquine to tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients after data indicated that it wasn’t effective and the French government rescinded permission for its use against COVID-19. An op-ed in the major French newspaper Le Monde described the study as “the largest ‘wild’ therapeutic trial known to date.” …
A Georgia judge on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s bid to dismiss criminal charges in the state’s 2020 election interference case against him, which the Republican former U.S. president argued violate his free speech rights.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found that the indictment alleges statements by Trump and 14 others charged in the case were made “in furtherance of criminal activity” and are not protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…
In other news: I don’t give polls conducted this early in the presidential race much weight, but for what it is worth here is a summary from Steve Benen.
The latest national poll from Marquette Law School found President Joe Biden leading Donald Trump among likely voters, 52% to 48%. It’s the second major poll this week showing the Democratic incumbent with a small national lead over the former Republican president.
[…] Trump thought when he became President that he had managed a hostile takeover of a rival company. The country was his. So he could do whatever he wanted. But it didn’t turn out to be that way. […] In other words, the kernel of Trump’s dictatorial, strongman ambitions were there from the start. But it was only the shock and ego injury of being faced with the difference between owning and governing that set him on the track, for entirely personal and self-protective reasons, of transforming [all forms of government] to make them serve him in the way he wanted.
Along the way he found a community of activists, ideologues and political disappointed degenerates who were already thinking along the same lines and realized he was the vehicle to make all of it happen. Just as Trump’s mixture of insecurity, anger and grievance bonded him with small-town, white, declining America, his hunger for power and the punishment of enemies bonded him with America’s rising authoritarian movement.
The final piece of the puzzle is the way his presidency ramped up the polarization of American political and culture, all building to the epochal culture war meltdowns of COVID and the George Floyd protests in 2020. Each of these developments brings you from the half-baked and embryonic clown show autocracy of Trump’s first term to what he’s running on now.
[…] let’s stipulate for starters that this is a campaign that appears yet to have set up any field offices around the country, is significantly behind Biden in fundraising, despite having the support of most of the country’s billionaires and, relatedly, is spending a very big proportion of its funds paying Trump’s legal bills […] This is definitely a very different operation from the 2016 three-campaign-managers, out-of-control, car-going-the-wrong-way-down-the-highway operation. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita should not be underestimated. […]
But we also need to maintain some perspective. […] to remind us of the very real danger Trump poses to the whole American republic. In any case, the real thing to me, and where a lot of able-but-malevolent people have put a lot of time into devising a comprehensive plan, is not the campaign but what starts in January 2025.
President Biden on Thursday urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward a cease-fire deal that would release the remaining hostages in Gaza while suggesting that U.S. policy on the war will depend on Israel’s ability to better protect civilians and humanitarian workers after a deadly attack that killed a contingent of international aid workers this week.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu days after an Israeli strike killed several humanitarian aid workers with World Central Kitchen, a charity group that was distributing food to Palestinians in Gaza. The president told Netanyahu the incident was “unacceptable.”
“He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a readout of the call. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.” […]
When so much of the world is backsliding on democratic norms, Senegal’s election reveals a trend toward democracy in Africa.
2024 is the biggest global election year in history and the future of democracy is on every ballot. But amid an international backsliding in democratic norms, including in countries with a longer history of democracy like India, Senegal’s election last week was a major win for democracy. It’s also an indication that a new political class is coming of age in Africa, exemplified by Senegal’s new 44-year-old president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.
The West African nation managed to pull off a free and fair election on March 24 despite significant obstacles, including efforts by former President Macky Sall to delay the elections and imprison or disqualify opposition candidates. Add those challenges to the fact that many neighboring countries in West Africa — most prominently Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, but other nations across the region too — have been repeatedly undermined by military coups since 2020.
Sall had been in power since 2012, serving two terms. He declined to seek a third term following years of speculation that he would do so despite a constitutional two-term limit. But he attempted to extend his term, announcing in February that elections (originally to be held that month) would be pushed off until the end of the year in defiance of the electoral schedule.
Sall’s allies in the National Assembly approved the measure, but only after security forces removed opposition politicians, who vociferously protested the delay. Senegalese society came out in droves to protest Sall’s attempted self-coup, and the Constitutional Council ruled in late February that Sall’s attempt to stay in power could not stand.
That itself was a win for democracy. Still, opposition candidates, including Faye, though legally able to run, remained imprisoned until just days before the election — while others were barred from running at all. The future of Senegal’s democracy seemed uncertain at best.
Cut to Tuesday, when Sall stepped down and handed power to Faye, a former tax examiner who won on a campaign of combating corruption, as well as greater sovereignty and economic opportunity for the Senegalese. And it was young voters who carried Faye to victory. […]
Fox News repeatedly touted Donald Trump’s mention of Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old allegedly killed by her undocumented immigrant boyfriend, while covering his Tuesday speech about “Biden’s Border Bloodbath.” But the pro-Trump propaganda network isn’t mentioning that the former president said he had spoken to Garcia’s family — a claim the family’s spokesperson subsequently denied.
Fox has been tying together individual horrific cases of alleged crime by migrants to concoct a fraudulent narrative of a “migrant crime crisis” that the network baselessly attributes to President Joe Biden’s border policies in an effort to bolster Trump’s campaign.
Trump has echoed Fox’s attacks on the stump, and at a Tuesday event he highlighted the killing of Garcia, a Michigan woman whom law enforcement officials say was killed by her boyfriend, a Mexican national who had been deported and reentered the country without vetting by immigration officials. Trump mentioned Garcia while attacking Biden’s border policies, which he alleged had caused a “bloodbath,” promising to “deliver justice for Ruby.”
Trump also offered a detailed anecdote about Garcia, claiming that he had spoken with members of her family.
“Ruby’s loved ones and community are left grieving for this incredible young woman,” Trump said. “They said she had just this most contagious laughter and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room — and I’ve heard that from so many people. I spoke to some of her family.”
But later that afternoon, the local Fox affiliate reported that when it tried to confirm Trump’s story by reaching out to Garcia’s sister Mavi, who is acting as spokesperson for the family, she said the former president had not spoken to any member of the family.
Mavi Garcia spoke in more detail to NBC’s affiliate, telling Target 8 that neither Trump nor any representative of his campaign had contacted anyone from the family.
“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” she said. “It was shocking. I kind of stopped watching it. I’d only seen up to that, after I heard a couple of misinformations he said, I just stopped watching it.”
Trump is a notorious liar who is known for fabricating anecdotes, but the 77-year-old has also regularly confused facts during campaign events as he seeks the presidency for a second time. The description of Garcia he attributed to her relatives closely tracks with the language in her obituary, which also appeared in a Monday article about Trump’s desire for members of her family to attend the Michigan event.
National news outlets have picked up the story of Trump’s claim and Mavi Garcia’s denial but have been stymied in their efforts to get the Trump campaign to explain the discrepancy.
Fox, meanwhile, has barreled ahead in the hours since local outlets began raising questions on Tuesday afternoon. The network repeatedly highlighted Trump’s discussion of Garcia on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning — and ignored his subsequently disputed claims that he spoke with members of her family.
On Tuesday night, Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters aired a clip of Trump talking about Garcia to make the case that “Donald Trump is turning disinformation into information” about “Biden’s border bloodbath.”
“The former president clearly calling this ‘Biden’s border bloodbath,’ but he is using points like this to drive the point home,” Fox anchor Trace Gallagher said later that evening on Fox News @ Night. He then aired a clip in which Trump said that Garcia had been “savagely murdered by an illegal alien criminal” after “we threw him out of the country and crooked Joe Biden took him back and let him back in.”
Gallagher then asked The Washington Examiner’s Kaylee McGhee White if the former president had offered a “compelling narrative.” White replied that Trump had, claiming that “every single crime committed by an illegal immigrant is entirely preventable and is being enabled by the Biden administration.”
Fox continued promoting Trump’s remarks about Garcia the following morning.
“Yesterday Donald Trump went to Grand Rapids, Michigan,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt said on Fox & Friends. “He talked a lot about illegal immigration. And he said ‘under crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state’ and he also mentioned Ruby Garcia. She’s that 25-year-old woman that was allegedly killed by an illegal in Grand Rapids who had been deported. The guy who allegedly killed her had been deported to Mexico in 2020 under Donald Trump but then returned to the U.S., and her body was found alongside the road.” […]
[…] No Labels won’t put forward a third-party presidential ticket after failing to find a candidate, multiple outlets have reported.
No Labels will reportedly announce Monday that it hasn’t been able to recruit the right White House contender and won’t be moving forward with its 2024 “unity” bid, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
“No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” Nancy Jacobson, the group’s CEO, said in a statement shared by The Associated Press. “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.” […]
Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government. As reported on the homepage of the Minister-President: “Independent, sustainable, secure: Schleswig-Holstein will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration. With a cabinet decision to introduce the open-source software LibreOffice as the standard office solution across the board, the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow.”
The No Labels group said Thursday it will not field a presidential candidate in November after strategists for the bipartisan organization failed to attract a high-profile centrist willing to seize on the widespread dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump…
GPS is being blocked across swathes of Israel in order to disrupt missiles and drones, as tensions rise with Iran.
Iran has vowed to respond after a strike on its consulate building in Syria on Monday – which Israel was widely believed to be behind – killed 13 people, including a senior general.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also announced it was halting all leave for soldiers serving with combat units…
A federal judge on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s argument that the case accusing the former U.S. president of illegally holding onto classified documents should be tossed out because he viewed the material as his personal records.
Trump, the Republican challenger to President Joe Biden in the November election, argued that his retention of highly sensitive documents at his Florida estate was authorized under a U.S. law that allows former presidents to keep personal records unrelated to their official responsibilities.
Donald Trump showed off an empty lectern erected for Joe Biden, at a rally in Wisconsin, once again challenging the president to debate him “any time, any place.” …
Not even original.
birgerjohanssonsays
Israel’s ‘reckless’ Black Snake drone unit ‘used precise Spike missiles to kill three Brits’ says expert.
What that means now for Hoosiers whose religious beliefs conflict with the abortion ban is a little unclear. [Contact the ACLU.]
[…]
A group of anonymous women and the organization Hoosier Jews For Choice sued the state in 2022. They argued the abortion ban violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA.
[…The state’s arguments were all rejected…]
The ruling will likely be appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court.
The channel entering the Port of Baltimore may be partially open for vessel traffic by the end of the month.
[…] The Port of Baltimore on Thursday announced the Army Corps expects to first open a channel that is 280-feet wide and 35-feet deep [by the end of April], and a more permanent 700-foot wide, 50-foot deep channel by the end of May. […]
Many investors are lining up to bet on the collapse of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which made its stock market debut last week under the ticker “DJT.” The stock has been called the “mother of all meme stocks” since it is highly volatile and there are no fundamental underpinnings. It’s being valued at roughly 1,600 times its annual revenue, at Wednesday’s closing price. “By comparison, the stock of Facebook’s owner trades at about eight times revenues, and Google’s owner trades at six times,” notes Fast Company. The New York Times reports:
Trump Media is the most “shorted” special purpose acquisition vehicle in the country, according to the financial data company S3 Partners. Short-sellers bet that the price of a stock will fall. They do that by borrowing shares of a company and selling them into the market, hoping to buy them back later at a lower price, before returning the shares to the lender and pocketing the difference as profit. The demand to short Trump Media, the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, is so great that stock lenders can charge enormous fees, making it hard for short-sellers to turn a profit unless the shares fall significantly. Still, there is a lot of interest in taking the bet. “They are looking for this stock to crater and crater very quickly,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3. Last month, traders lost $126 million betting against Trump Media, according to S3.
…
Mars has a history of liquid water on its surface, including lakes like the one that used to occupy Jezero Crater, which have long since dried up. Ancient water that carried debris—and melted water ice that presently does the same—were also thought to be the only thing driving the formation of gullies spread throughout the Martian landscape. That view may now change thanks to new results that suggest dry ice can also shape the landscape…
The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operators gear up ahead of November’s presidential election.
Pink slime sites mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.
NewsGuard, which rates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, has identified 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the US as of April 1—about as many as the estimated 1,200 real news sites operated by daily local newspapers…
A doctor who performs abortions became the first Democratic candidate in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District on Thursday, entering the race for the seat opened up by the surprise retirement of Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an obstetrician and gynecologist, launched her candidacy two weeks before Gallagher’s expected departure date. Because of the timing of his resignation, there will be no special election.
For now, Lyerly is unopposed in the Democratic primary to be decided Aug. 13. Democrats fielded no candidate in the 2022 election…
Attorney General Kris Mayes again said her investigation of the Republican electors who falsely claimed Donald Trump won Arizona in 2020 would wrap up “very soon” as new details came to light about the broadening reach of the probe.
“As I’ve said all along, we are engaged in a very serious, very professional investigation into what happened with the fake electors,” Mayes told reporters on Thursday following a news conference on a different topic. “I’m not ready to stand before you here today and announce anything, but we will have something for you on that front very soon.”
The same day, news organization Politico reported that Mayes’ investigation included two subpoenas to U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both Arizona Republicans. The subpoenas sought their testimony before a grand jury, and do not indicate Mayes might bring charges against them, according to Politico…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s presidential campaign on Thursday terminated a contract with a vendor it blamed for sending a fundraising email that referred to people facing charges for the Jan. 6 insurrection as “activists” who were “stripped of their constitutional liberties.”
The language in the email echoed former President Donald Trump, who has worked to rewrite the history of the effort to disrupt the violent attack on the Capitol as lawmakers prepared to certify President Joe Biden ‘s 2020 victory. Trump has vowed to pardon the rioters and made the attack a cornerstone of his campaign.
“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views,” Kennedy spokesperson Stefanie Spear said in a statement. “It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process. The campaign has terminated its contract with this vendor.” …
Ukraine has carried out a drone attack against targets in southern Russia, and claims to have destroyed six Russian planes at an airbase in Rostov region.
Security sources told BBC Ukrainian eight more aircraft were badly damaged, and 20 service personnel could have been killed or injured.
The Morozovsk base houses Su-27 and Su-34 aircraft used on the front line in Ukraine, the sources said…
…
Mr Swallow says that, even during the past 10 years or so, the availability of higher grade magnets made with the rare earth element neodymium has improved. For such magnets designed to cope with temperatures up to 200C, a grade of N35 used to be the maximum. But now N52 grade versions are commercially available.
“You can literally make the magnet 60% less massive and get the same level of performance,” explains Mr Swallow.
… US firm Niron Magnetics says it has managed to make good quality magnets without rare earths. Instead, they use iron and nitrogen to make iron nitride magnets. This relies on getting the iron nitride to take on a specific crystalline structure, which generates magnetic fields…
Alternatively, recycling magnets would also be much better for the environment compared with making new rare earth magnets from scratch…
Niron’s targeting of the audio speakers market is interesting, says Nicola Morley at the University of Sheffield. “It means they think they can produce them cheaply – that market has other cheap permanent magnets in it,” she explains. Within the last decade, the development of magnet technology has really begun to accelerate, adds Prof Morley…
As the race to the bottom among Donald Trump’s prospective running mates continues, it’s apparently House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik’s turn to try to impress the former president and his political operation. The conservative Washington Times reported this week:
Rep. Elise Stefanik called on New York Judge Juan Merchan to recuse himself from Donald Trump’s hush money case for having a “clear judicial bias” against the former president.
In a written statement issued Wednesday, the GOP congresswoman took aim at “Democrat Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan,” made a provocative reference to the jurist’s daughter, and made a baseless claim that Merchan’s daughter “has financially benefited” from a trial that hasn’t even begun. [This strikes me as not just stupid, but also childish.]
Stefanik, who almost certainly knows better, also insisted that Merchan’s gag order against Trump is “unconstitutional” — it’s really not — before concluding, “We cannot allow a biased, far-left activist judge to strip the American people of our constitutional right to select [our] own leaders.” [Oh FFS]
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, much of the House Republican’s statement was entirely baseless and needlessly conspiratorial. For that matter, the idea that the judge — who was randomly assigned to a criminal case brought by local prosecutors — is trying to stop voters from choosing their own leaders is absurd.
[…] this comes on the heels of the GOP lawmaker filing a formal complaint against New York Attorney General Letitia James over her fraud case against the former president.
Which came on the heels of Stefanik’s incoherent criticisms of a judge who’d just granted Team Trump’s request for a postponement in a civil case.
Which came on the heels of Stefanik claiming with a straight face that Trump hadn’t confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, even after everyone saw him do exactly that.
Which came on the heels of Stefanik echoing Trump’s rhetoric about Jan. 6 rioters being “hostages” — a claim that even some in her party were not comfortable with.
Which came on the heels of Stefanik responding to Trump’s classified documents scandal by criticizing the National Archives, helping launch an effort to “expunge“ Trump’s impeachments, and joining a partisan crusade against federal law enforcement.
Which came on the heels of Stefanik filing an ethics complaint against the judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York and pressing the Justice Department to prosecute Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer who has since become a fierce critic of the former president.
I continue to believe that no one should want to be vice president this badly.
When taking stock of the troubled lawyers from Donald Trump’s orbit, it’s genuinely difficult to know where to start. Certainly, Rudy Giuliani belongs near the top of the list, given his suspended law license and ruinous defamation case, but he has plenty of company.
Indeed, the names of the Trump-affiliated attorneys who’ve run into serious trouble in recent months are likely familiar. Several have even faced criminal charges, including Ken Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Stefanie Lambert.
Meanwhile, just last week, a judge formally recommended that John Eastman lose his law license, and this week, as NBC News reported, Jeffrey Clark took a step in the same direction.
The disciplinary panel of the D.C. Bar reached a preliminary conclusion that former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark committed an ethical violation when he pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, including the allegation that the election was stolen via smart thermostats.
The developments come a week after the controversial lawyer repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment rights during a disbarment hearing.
[…] which one is Jeffrey Clark? […]
Shortly after Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the then-outgoing president considered a ridiculous plan in which he’d fire acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with Clark, a relatively low-profile environmental lawyer within the administration. The motivation for the change was obvious: Clark, unlike Rosen, was telling Trump what he wanted to hear about keeping him in power, despite his defeat.
In fact, Clark sketched out a map for Republican legislators to follow as part of a partisan plot, even as he quietly pressed Trump to put him in charge of the Justice Department.
[…] The then-president ultimately backed away from the plan to make Clark the acting A.G., not because the plan was stark raving mad — though it certainly was — but because the Justice Department’s senior leadership team threatened to resign en masse if Rosen was ousted.
[snipped details of Clark seemingly approving use of the Insurrection Act to quell protests against Trump]
[…] even after Clark’s indictment in Fulton County, Georgia — and when Trump headlined a fundraiser for Jan. 6 criminal defendants, Clark appeared alongside the former president.
The attorney is also directly involved in the Project 2025 initiative, and recently attended a Mar-a-Lago screening of a conspiratorial movie about the “persecution” of Jan. 6 rioters.
[…] a disciplinary panel in D.C. concluded that Clark did, in fact, violate professional ethics rules, and the findings might soon lead to his disbarment. […]
Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 200,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in March. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do much better than that. CNBC reported:
The U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in March in a sign of continued acceleration for what has been a bustling and resilient labor market. Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 for the month, well above expectations for an increase of 200,000. … The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%, as expected.
In addition to the top-line data, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation. As the unemployment rate inched lower again, the jobless rate has now been below 4% for 26 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s. […]
The U.S. Economy created almost 16 million jobs since January of 2021. About 829,000 of those were created in the first three months of 2024.
-A question: when did HIV patients get a better treatment option than AZT?
The father of the author died in 1994, and I seem to recall that Freddy Mercury died about the same time.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon confounded [I would say “flabbergasted” instead of “confounded”] legal experts with her latest ruling, denying Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago indictment on a crackpot theory based on the Presidential Records Act.
In so doing, Cannon didn’t put the issue to bed, the way you would expect most judges to. Instead she very narrowly ruled against Trump in a skimpy ruling of barely three pages while leaving the door open for him to raise the issue later at trial in a way that could doom the prosecution.
Here’s what I found most concerning:
Cannon called the Mar-a-Lago case a “complex case of first impression.” It is neither. It is historically significant because it involves a former president. But legally, the case is not particularly remarkable. Trump’s nonsensical defenses don’t magically turn a relatively straightforward legal matter into a complex or unprecedented puzzle for her to solve. But her treating it as complex and without legal precedent provides an intellectually dishonest framework for all kinds of potential mischief that goes well beyond this one argument over the Presidential Records Act. Cannon can mess this case up in dozens of different ways with that kind of justification.
Cannon was defensive. It’s never good when a judge is in a defensive crouch over their judicial skills, the law, or their handling of a case. Cannon’s terse and lightly reasoned ruling came one day after Special Counsel Jack Smith raked her over the coals about her handling of Trump’s attempted use of the Presidential Records Act as a defense. In her ruling, she lashed back at him, mischaracterizing his position on the issue and then deriding it as “unprecedented and unjust.”
Cannon didn’t bury Trump’s Presidential Records Act argument for good. Trump’s argument is the kind we often see judges dispense with categorically before trial in order to streamline arguments, eliminate distractions, and keep the case focused and on track. Cannon was not decisive here, giving Trump the chance to raise the PRA defense later, perhaps after a jury has been seated and jeopardy has attached, meaning Smith would have no avenue for appeal.
Despite all the commentary you may be seeing, there is no obvious or surefire way for Smith to get around her on this. Risks abound, as does uncertainty.
After every Aileen Cannon post I write, I get lots of questions about why Jack Smith isn’t moving to have her recused, taking her up on appeal already, or doing something else to dislodge her. I can assure you this is highly unusual conduct by a judge in a criminal case, and there are no easy answers here, either legally or practically.
It looks to me like Aileen Cannon is looking for ways, for any way, to sneak Trump’s claim that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take records belonging to the people of the USA out of the White House and store them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. She wants to let Trump’s bogus interpretation of the PRA stand. It shouldn’t even be a question. It should not be presented to the jury as a legitimate interpretation of the law.
More commentary:
[…] Cannon has taken months to rule on matters in the Trump classified records case which other judges would typically dispense with in weeks. Throughout, and in the Thursday filing, Cannon has lent a level of credence to Trump’s arguments, which go far beyond what experts and practitioners in the law around classified documents allow.
That’s become particularly stark in Trump’s arguments around the Presidential Records Act. There, he takes the unprecedented position that the classified records belonged to him, and not to the federal government. He argued that Cannon should disregard the Espionage Act and instead hold that the Presidential Records Act takes precedence. Cannon, in turn, has entertained his argument to a degree which continues to shock observers — most recently by ordering the two sides to prepare alternate jury instructions, both options based on bogus readings of the law.
Even in ruling against Trump, Cannon limited her order to a finding that the Presidential Records Act “does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss,” leaving the door open to dismissal attempts during or after trial.
Smith’s office had asked Cannon for a ruling on the competing jury instructions — essentially asking her to reveal whether she believed Trump’s Presidential Records Act argument.
But in the Thursday order, Cannon declined to do that, sniping back at Smith that his request for a prompt ruling was “unprecedented and unjust.”
Cannon added that her jury instruction order was simply an attempt “to better understand the parties’ competing positions” in what is a “complex case of first impression.”
Smith could always appeal if he didn’t like it, Cannon concluded:
“As always, any party remains free to avail itself of whatever appellate options it sees fit to invoke, as permitted by law.”
An interesting article from today’s Guardian. It focuses on the inadvertent self-doxing of top Israeli intelligence chief Yossi Sariel (name previously unkown). Sariel heads (for now) the elite “Unit 8200”, and is also the proponent of: “a “human-machine teaming” concept that seeks to achieve synergy between humans and AI, rather than constructing fully autonomous systems”, in security and military operations – his identity became public via a book he has published on this. Unit 8200 is the outfit that completely failed to predict Hamas’s attack of 2023/10/07, a failure some blame on the unit becoming obsessed with its hi-tech toys at the expense of more traditional intelligence methods. This same individual and unit are responsible for the so-called “AI targetting” systems” Lavender and The Gospel used to identify some 36,000 (IIRC) Gazan targets for bombing – most of them the homes of alleged low-level Hamas operatives. One wonders whether the hunting and slaughter of six western aid workers (oh, and their Palestinian driver, I think he’s being allowed honorary western status) was also AI-authorised – the current Israeli explanation, blaming it on two relatively low-level officers, strains credulity.
KGsays
birgerjohansson@247, 1996. A close friend of mine died of AIDS that year. If he’d lived another year, he might still be alive.
Judge Cannon just rejected Trump’s bogus Presidential Records Act defense, but only for now. She has (weirdly and pointedly) refused to actually decide the issue, despite Jack Smith’s warning that double jeopardy would then apply. I think Smith has no choice but to go to the 11th Circuit on mandamus. It’s a tough standard, but it is met here.
Posted by readers of the text excerpted in comment 248:
The PRA “does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss,”?? It does not provide any basis for dismissal, but then, IANAL.
It could, in theory. If trump really were indicted for possessing records that the PRA deems personal, he could move to dismiss on that basis. But what he’s been indicted for here is possessing documents that contain “National Defense Information,” which means they are necessarily not personal records. They couldn’t be personal records even if he did magically declassify them with his mind.
———————–
I agree with Solicitor General Katyal. This is just confirmation that Judge Traitor Cannon is simply planning to dismiss the entire case AFTER the jury is sworn in to prevent the Government from appealing her dismissal and charging Trump on these charges ever again. SC Smith needs to head these unlawful notions off at the pass by arguing the Judge Traitor Cannon is not dealing in good faith with the Government, is conflicted by her appointment by the defendant AFTER his defeat in 2020, and by Obstructing Justice. In my view, she has become a co-conspirator with Trump, Nauta and the other moron.
SC Smith should also look at charging Trump for dissemination of classified information at his Bedminister, NJ Country Club in a new indictment, to cover his bets. No one, but especially not a POTUS, should be allowed to play this fast and loose with National Security information.
————————–
I don’t think she wants to be seen as pulling the trigger herself. She wants to instruct the jury in a manner that will direct them to get to not guilty.
————————-
Refusing to rule is one of the cleaner and well-established grounds for obtaining mandamus review. That’s where she messed up. If she had just outright denied the motion to dismiss, there would have been nothing for Team Jack to take up with the 11th Circuit. Affirmatively stating that she’s keeping a dispositive (or near-dispositive) issue open until after the jury is seated basically invites the appellate court to order her to decide, or even to decide the question for her.
——————————-
Let’s wait to see what Smith does next. He’s obviously up against a massive wall of delay games, but also much worse, since Cannon could be maneuvering to dismiss the charges when double jeopardy has attached or charge the jury in a way that will make acquittal inevitable. I find it hard to believe that Cannon is proceeding as she has done because of her inexperience. She is corrupt and is working for Trump. But she’s been pretty shrewd in the way she’s gone about it (so shrewd that I suspect she needs an experienced hand(s) guiding her – to that extent her inexperience is relevant). So, Smith has to counter her moves shrewdly. Getting her removed from the case is a high hurdle. If anyone is up to the task, I am confident that Smith and his team are. Whether they’ll succeed is another question.
Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car that investors have been counting on to drive its growth into a mass-market automaker, according to three sources familiar with the matter and company messages seen by Reuters.
The automaker will continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform, the sources said…
A bipartisan group of rank-and-file lawmakers in Kansas scuttled a plan for cutting taxes Thursday, with Republicans defying GOP leaders and Democrats ignoring a personal appeal from the state’s Democratic governor.
The state House rejected a plan to cut taxes by about $1.4 billion over the next three years. It resulted from a deal between Gov. Laura Kelly and top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature, but the House decided on a voice vote to have House and Senate negotiators draft a different plan. The vote was overwhelming enough that House members didn’t ask for a count or roll call vote.
Some critics, particularly Republicans, saw the plan as too small. Others, mostly Democrats, argued that it was weighted too heavily toward wealthy taxpayers because it would have dropped the state’s top personal income tax rate to 5.5% from 5.7%. Lawmakers in both parties thought it cut property taxes too little…
I view No Labels as fake bipartisanship. I am glad to see them gone.
Consider this: they were trying to recruit Manchin, a supposed Democrat who, along with Sinema, thwarted some of the Biden administration’s best plans. I think their concept all along was to pull votes from Biden and make it more likely that Trump would win.
Christians in Texas, sneaky politics, white supremacists … and prejudice:
Former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus said on Thursday that Midland oil magnate Tim Dunn, one of the state’s most powerful and influential GOP megadonors, once told him that only Christians should hold leadership positions in the lower chamber.
[…] Dunn reportedly demanded that Straus replace “a significant number” of his committee chairs with tea party-aligned lawmakers backed by Dunn’s political advocacy group […]
Straus’ confirmation of the comments comes as Dunn’s political empire continues to face scrutiny for its ties to avowed white supremacists and antisemites. In October, The Texas Tribune reported that Jonathan Stickland, the then-leader of Dunn’s most powerful political action committee, hosted prominent white supremacist and Adolf Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes at his office for nearly seven hours. The Tribune subsequently uncovered close ties between numerous other Fuentes associates and Defend Texas Liberty, the PAC that Stickland led until he was quietly replaced last year.
[…] Dunn’s influence on state politics has steadily grown. He and another West Texas billionaire, Farris Wilks, have poured tens of millions of dollars into far-right candidates and movements who have incrementally pulled the Texas GOP and legislature toward their hardline, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-immigration stances. Dunn’s allies have meanwhile pushed back against claims that he is antisemitic or adheres to Christian nationalism, which argues that America’s founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should thus favor their brand of ultraconservative Christianity.
[…] paved the way for the likely passage of legislation that would allow taxpayer money to fund private and religious schools—a key policy goal for a movement that seeks to infuse more Christianity into public life.
[…] the legislature has passed laws barring transgender minors from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapies and restricting which sports teams transgender student athletes can join. […]
The House Freedom Caucus is demanding that any federal funds allocated to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge be offset by cuts elsewhere and that those dollars be narrowly aimed at just structural repairs. The ultra-conservative Republican group is staking out an official position as federal officials work with the Maryland government to assess the damage done by both the destroyed bridge and the impact on activity at the Port of Baltimore.
In a written statement, the right-wing faction went on to demand that federal funds for the bridge project — if they exist — should be “fully offset,” meaning that the Freedom Caucus expects Congress to cut comparable funds from other priorities. Members added that they also want Democrats to agree to waive “burdensome” regulations and safeguards.
Perhaps most notably, the contingent’s Republican members concluded that as part of a possible agreement, the House Freedom Caucus also wants the Biden administration to reverse course on approvals for liquified natural gas export projects.
What do LNG exports have to do with the collapse of the Key Bridge? Not much, but apparently it’s a far-right priority — which the Freedom Caucus expects to be addressed before Congress addresses the deadly disaster in Baltimore.
[…] today’s statement is nevertheless a timely reminder, not only of the kind of tactics embraced by many GOP lawmakers, but also of the fact that we’re no longer looking at a Congress that responds to domestic disasters with one voice.
For his part, Biden is traveling to Baltimore today to visit the site of the bridge collapse. He and his administration are not making extraneous demands as part of the federal response.
In a phone call between defense ministers, Russia threatened France, and then Russia lied about the contents of the phone call:
The Daily Mail and AFP are reporting on a “bizarre and threatening” phone call between the French and Russian Defence Ministers that took place on Wednesday. There had been no such communications since Russia’s February, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but in the wake of the ISIS terror attack on the Moscow suburb concert hall two weeks ago, Macron authorized the call as a way to help express sympathy for the victims and to indicate that France stood ready to help collaborate in a mutual battle against “terrorism” — going so far as to say that French intelligence had “useful information” they could share on the “origin and organization” of the attack.
Instead of taking the French up on their offer, the Russians doubled down on their accusations that Kyiv had a hand in the attack, and darkly warned they “hoped that the French secret services had not been involved” as well! Even more audaciously, the Russians characterized the phone call as a “readiness for dialogue on Ukraine” by the French, which was immediately torpedoed by the French — “France neither accepted nor proposed anything of the sort” on the conflict, a source close to [French Defence Minister] Lecornu told AFP. [The Russian’s lied.]
Some in France also criticized Macron for this latest attempt to communicate with Moscow:
‘You have seen how Russia exploits this kind of discussion,’ former president Francois Hollande told broadcaster France Inter. ‘My recommendation is no contact with Russia.’
Macron defended his stance, saying there will be ‘joint work with all those affected by terrorism’.
When asked on Thursday whether he was concerned that Russia could disrupt the Paris Olympics, Macron stated that he believes the Kremlin will target the games, ‘including in the informational [news] space’. […]
Tatiana Stanovaya, head of political analysis firm R. Politik, said Moscow was ‘flattered’ to have received the call but sought to use it to its advantage to feed its anti-Ukrainian narrative and did not worry about any potential blowback.
‘There is no positive agenda at all, no interest in resuming cooperation with France, either,’ said Stanovaya.
No Labels, the “centrist” group that kept threatening to run a nice “moderate” third-party ticket as an alternative to the radical extremism of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, announced yesterday that it will not in fact be fielding a presidential candidate for 2024 after all.
Turns out No Labels couldn’t find anyone willing to play the role of spoiler to get Donald Trump elected, although if the group had a shred of integrity it would have packed it in after fifteen seconds of thinking about whether the two major party candidates really were equally bad, because Jesus Tapdancing Christ Riding a Roomba Around the Kitchen Like a Kittycat In a Little Shark Outfit that’s a ridiculous false equivalence.
In a statement, No Labels said that Americans really really want a third party candidate to jump in and help Trump win, but nobody was willing to step up and be remembered lovingly for decades in the same breath as Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. Only the statement wasn’t that honest:
“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before. […] But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
And lo, there was rejoicing.
Politico notes that after prominent national figures like Chris Christie, Joe Manchin, Dean Phillips, and possibly the Yip-Yip Muppets noped out, the group kept looking for potential candidates, “including former lieutenant governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan. But he too declined.”
[…] But while No Labels is out of the 2024 spoiler business, the group also made clear it will never not do what Americans really want and just go the fuck away. In its statement, No Labels pledged to remain a persistent herpes sore that will never fade from the genitals of America’s body politic.
“Big ideas are not new for us,” the group said in its statement. “We have been working since 2010 to organize citizens across America and members of Congress through the Problem Solvers Caucus, which we created to push back on the extremes in our politics and push forward solutions to America’s biggest problems. That work is more important now than ever.”
“For now, suffice it to say that this movement is not done,” the group went on to say. “In fact, it is just beginning.”
Just like the closing credits of every third terrible monster movie.
The Republicans behind the Lincoln Oroject sure know how to do negative campaigning. But then again, they have 40 years of experience.
“Better Off”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MGnkkrLzglE
[…] “Hey Earl Roe [???], how are you doing?” she asked. “I’m here at Mar-a-lago supporting Kari Lake and it was a fantastic evening and our Trump is here, being the DJ and I’ve just danced and everyone’s amazed.”
I’m certain they were!
“So I’m just going to say to you, please drop out of college, because it’s going to ruin your lllllliiives,” Barr slurred, holding up a glass of white wine to go with her white whine. “Do me a favor, drop out, they don’t teach you nothing good, uh, email me or Twitter me or whatever you call me, and I’ll help you with your life, but you gotta get out of college, because it isn’t nothing but a bunch of devil-worshipping, baby blood-drinking, Democrat donors. Love ya!”
So … not my personal college experience, but okay!
Now, Barr has actually been on the “People are drinking baby blood!” train for far longer that most of her QAnon cohorts, which is why I kind of laugh a little when people say “Roseanne gone’s full QAnon!” Like, she was hanging around with Cathy O’Brien — this one lady who claims to have been part of a secret CIA experiment to create brainwashed sex slaves (Project Monarch!), and I guess she was the sex slave of Hologram Lizard George H.W. Bush or something? — way, way back in the day […]
[…] Frankly, I would have to imagine that this accusation operates on the “she who smelt it, dealt it” principle, because only someone who wants to drink baby blood would accuse others of wanting to drink baby blood.[…]
If the idiot president of 1981-1989 had taken HIV seriously, so many could have been saved.
Imagine if the spread could have been suppressed in a well-informed way. Never, ever forgive.
Once again, Steve Kirsch has incompetently “analyzed” an Excel spreadsheet containing epidemiological data to claim that COVID-19 vaccines increase the chances of getting COVID. He desperately needs to take an Epidemiology 101 course…
Israel committed to opening additional aid routes to allow for increased assistance to flow into Gaza after a call with President Joe Biden warning of a potential shift in U.S. policy after a strike this week killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers.
Related news, also as reported by NBC:
The Israeli military said that a [investigation] found serious errors and violations of protocol led its forces to repeatedly hit a World Central Kitchen convoy and kill seven aid workers that it says were believed to be Hamas gunmen. … The IDF said two senior officers had been dismissed as a result of the WCK probe, but refused to comment further when asked if the officers were fired or still retained positions in the military.
Ukrainian soldiers “are reaching for some of the last ammunition for some types of weapons. … The shortfall comes as Ukraine is on the defensive along the 600-mile front line in eastern Ukraine and is building additional fortifications, such as bunkers, trenches and minefields. Artillery ammunition is needed to hold the line until the defensive fortifications are completed and an expected Russian offensive gets underway this summer.”
Heavily armed gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, the United Nations has estimated, where they rape, kidnap and kill with impunity. Haiti doesn’t manufacture firearms, and the U.N. prohibits importing them, but that’s no problem for the criminals. When they go shopping, the United States is their gun store.
Summary from Steve Benen, based on Twitter posts from Marjorie Taylor Greene:
After an earthquake briefly shook parts of the East coast this morning, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia argued that the quake and next week’s eclipse are divine messages calling in Americans “to repent.” Noted without comment.
[…] “With a straight face, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,” Mary Beth Cahill, a senior adviser for the Democratic National Committee, told The Times. “There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on Day 1.”
Later, when NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo challenged Kennedy over the comparison, Kennedy walked it back in one of the most chickenshit displays of political flip-floppery you’ll ever see.
“What I said was that I could make this argument,” he said. “I didn’t say definitively whether I believed one or the other was more dangerous to democracy. I did say that I don’t believe either of them are going to destroy democracy.” […]
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign told supporters Wednesday that those facing charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot are “activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”
Kennedy’s campaign used the language in an email urging his followers to sign a petition calling for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In the email, titled “We Must Free Assange!,” the campaign compared those jailed for their actions on Jan. 6 to Assange and Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs and is now living in Moscow.
Commentary:
[…] Ah, but Kennedy eventually walked this nonsense back. Because he never quite has a handle on what he’s saying, apparently.
The campaign claimed Thursday that Kennedy did not approve of the wording in the email, blaming the “error” on a contractor who the campaign later said has since been terminated. But Kennedy himself has previously downplayed the Jan. 6 attack and said he is open to pardoning convicted rioters.
Good God, that’s weak. […] Does he ever actually mean anything he says? […]
Of course, shortly after throwing his “contractor” under the bus, Kennedy released an absurdly both-sides statement wherein he claimed he’s listening to diverse viewpoints in an attempt to “make sense of” Jan. 6 and the events that followed.
“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection,” he says.
As CNN notes, Kennedy references the “long-debunked claim” that the Jan. 6 rioters were unarmed and other blatant falsehoods, while still questioning the prosecution of the people people who violently attacked the Capitol.
“Like many reasonable Americans, I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment,” Kennedy’s statement says. “That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies — the DoJ, the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, etc. — against political opponents.”
Dude! The rest of us interpreted it correctly the first time. What exactly is it about deadly, POTUS-precipitated coups you don’t understand? If there’s one outrage in all this, it’s that Trump wasn’t prosecuted for his actions far sooner.
Does this guy have any core convictions at all, aside from “me a Kennedy” and “vaccines bad”? [I think he is just making shit up as he goes. Also, he is uninformed … and not interested in learning.]
Well, you know what they say: If it acts like a Trump and talks like a Trump, it might just be an RFK Jr.
House Democrats filed a bill Friday that would put Donald J. Trump’s name on a building. Congratulations!
Introduced by Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, and John Garamendi of California, the legislation would “designate the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida as the Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution.”
The Democrats’ bill is a direct response to the ludicrous bill filed this week by House Republicans who want to rename Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia after the twice-impeached, multi-indicted, one-term president.
“Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges,” Connolly, whose district includes part of the airport, said in a statement Tuesday. “If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.“
On Friday, Connolly elaborated on his legislative proposal in a statement:
I see no reason to wait. Donald Trump faces nearly 100 felony charges. He has been found liable of sexual abuse and, subsequently, for defaming the victim of that abuse. He has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil fraud case. It is only right that the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago should bear his name. I hope our Republican friends will join us in bestowing upon Donald J. Trump the only honor he truly deserves.
Moskowitz, whose South Florida district is just an hour’s drive from the prison, offered his own generous take.
“Everyone knows President Trump loves to write his name in gold letters on all his buildings,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “But he’s never had his name on a federal building before and as a public servant I just want to help the former president. Help us make that dream a reality. […]
This is very good … a dismantling of religious belief by a former evangelical megachurch pastor. A quick look indicates that his whole Facebook feed is full of excellent takedowns of religion.
NCAA women’s basketball semifinal results:
South Carolina 78, North Carolina State 59
The expected result, but the wolf pack kept it surprisingly close until halftime.
Iowa 71, UConn 69
UConn actually led until late in the 3rd quarter, Iowa took a lead in the 4th as Clark had a hot streak, but UConn closed the gap at the end where it came down to the last seconds. UConn was down by one and had the ball with 10 seconds to go, but committed an offensive foul, and Clark sank one of two free throws, to finish out the scoring.
Paige Bueckers: 17 points, 3 assists, 4 rebounds.
Caitlin Clark: 21 points, 7 assists, 9 rebounds.
The high scorers were actually forward Hannah Stuelke with 23 points for Iowa while Bueckers tied with Aaliyah Edwards with 17 for UConn.
The final between South Carolina and Iowa will be Sunday, 7 April, at 3:00 PM EDT.
Reginald Selkirksays
@271: I will comment as well. An eclipse is an event whose time and location can be predicted centuries in advance. And many people consider it to be a good thing. Many people are preparing and traveling to participate in it. MTG is dumb AF.
Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine is facing new questions about his impartiality after a clip went viral this week in which he implied that Democrats plan to cheat against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Do you really think the Democrats are going to roll over and let Trump be president again?” Devine asked in a keynote speech at the Texas Tea Party Republican Women’s 2023 Christmas event. “You think they’re just going to go away, all of a sudden find Jesus and [there will] be an honest election? I don’t think so.”
Devine is a former anti-abortion activist who claims that church-state separation is a myth and, as a state district judge in Harris County in the 1990s, fought to have a copy of the Ten Commandments posted in his courtroom. In his successful 2012 campaign for the Texas Supreme Court, he claimed to have been arrested 37 times at anti-abortion protests in the 1980s, and has since been a reliable ally of conservative, Christian voters in the state. Devine narrowly survived a GOP primary challenge last month that centered around his ethics, and now faces state district court Judge Christine Vinh Weems, a Democrat, in the November general election…
Engineers have determined why NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has been transmitting gibberish for nearly five months, raising hopes of recovering humanity’s most distant spacecraft…
Confirming their hypothesis, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California confirmed a small portion of corrupted memory caused the problem. The faulty memory bank is located in Voyager 1’s Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. The FDS operates alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.
The FDS duties include packaging Voyager 1’s science and engineering data for relay to Earth through the craft’s Telemetry Modulation Unit and radio transmitter. According to NASA, about 3 percent of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations…
Amylyx, the maker of a new drug to treat ALS, is pulling that drug from the market and laying off 70 percent of its workers after a large clinical trial found that the drug did not help patients, according to an announcement from the company Thursday.
The drug, Relyvrio, won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in September 2022 to slow the progression of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). However, the data behind the controversial decision was shaky at best; it was based on a study of just 137 patients that had several weaknesses and questionable statistical significance, and FDA advisors initially voted against approval. Still, given the severity of the neurogenerative disease and lack of effective treatments, the FDA ultimately granted approval under the condition that the company was working on a Phase III clinical trial to solidify its claimed benefits…
birgerjohanssonsays
Drunk Lauren Boebert was cut off from drinking more at GOP event.
[…] poor, dumb Jimmy Comer keeps shuffling about, mumbling, “Hey, Mister, stake a fellow American to an impeachment inquiry?” to anybody who doesn’t yet know to cross the street when they see him coming. Comer has managed to brand himself Too Incompetent For MAGA, which is staggering when you consider the legion of fuckups who haven’t.
If that’s not enough to flabber your gasts, somehow Lauren Boebert has become Too TACKY For MAGA, a state of white trash transcendence too vast and incomprehensible for our limited, human consciousness to process. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t serve you any more alcohol, you’re making the rest of the hate mob uncomfortable.” […]
[…] Steve and Tracy Slepcevic hosted a fundraiser for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the San Diego area. Tickets started at $575, and those who paid $2,750 were to be treated to a “private sunset reception” before RFK Jr. would chat with the assembled and pose for photos. It was hardly surprising that the Slepcevics were supporting Kennedy, given that Tracy is a long-time anti-vaxxer prominent within the autism community. But the personal politics of the Slepcevics illuminate the weird currents propelling Kennedy’s White House bid, for the pair have hobnobbed with QAnoners, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and other pro-Trump extremists. Steve, who has a checkered past as a businessmen that includes an arrest (but not a conviction) for allegedly defrauding victims of Hurricane Katrina, was in the crowd of Trump devotees outside the Capitol on January 6.
Last year, Tracy Slepcevic published a book called Warrior Mom about her years raising a son with autism that she blames on routine childhood vaccines. The book was endorsed by Kennedy and championed by Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser for President Donald Trump who has become a QAnon-friendly Christian nationalist and a leader within the far-right patriots movement. The Kennedy campaign sells signed copies of the book for $150 a pop.
Tracy has been an ally of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax nonprofit that Kennedy ran before entering the 2024 contest. In November, she spoke at CHD’s annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, where she hawked her book and palled around with Kennedy, a longtime peddler of Covid and vaccine misinformation. On Facebook, she declared, “Had a great time at the CHD conference in Savannah with some amazing people…I’m so blessed to be on this journey with each and every one of them.” In promoting her book and activism, she has shared platforms with Stew Peters, a far-right anti-vaxxer who has been tied to QAnon advocacy and has spread (according to the ADL) antisemitic tropes, and with Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced scientist who wrote a discredited paper linking autism to vaccines.
Tracy is a regular on the far-right conspiracy circuit. In November 2022, she joined the ReAwaken America tour as a speaker. This was a traveling road show that fused Christian nationalism, QAnonism, and MAGAism. It was a feast of election denialism and assorted conspiracy theories that featured as headliners Flynn, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, conspiracy-theory-monger Alex Jones, and Lara and Eric Trump. At these events, there was much talk of demons. (At one stop, Stone proclaimed “there is a Satanic portal above the White House” that appeared after Joe Biden became president.) [snipped text about Plandemic 3 and other conspiracy movies]
In February, the Slepcevics hosted what they called the “Autism Health Summit” in San Antonio. The speakers included numerous anti-vaxxers, including Willis, Judy Mikovits, another Covid conspiracy theorist, and Del Bigtree, a notorious anti-vaxxer who is now the communications director for the Kennedy campaign. Tracy has endorsed election denialism by promoting on her Facebook page 2000 Mules, the much-debunked documentary made by Dinesh D’Souza (a felon pardoned by Trump) that falsely claimed that during the 2020 election thousands of Democratic operatives were paid to illegally gather ballots and stuff them into drop boxes.
Steve Slepcevic, too, has traveled within the Trumpish far-right. Photos and videos taken on January 6 in Washington, DC, provided to Mother Jones by Capitol Terrorists Exposers—an anonymous group that has researched extremists involved in January 6—show he attended the rally on the Ellipse where Trump spoke that preceded the attack on the Capitol. One photo that Steve apparently posted on Facebook indicates he was in the crowd outside Capitol during the assault. […] [photos at the link]
Another photo he apparently posted captures him in the company of several members of the Three Percenters militia, including two of the four Three Percenters who were subsequently convicted of charges including conspiracy and obstruction for their involvement in the January 6 riot. [photo at the link]
[…] Political commentators have had a tough time characterizing Kennedy’s campaign. Is it a project of the left or the right? (Kennedy recently told CNN that he considers President Joe Biden a “much worse threat to democracy” than Trump.) The campaign defies easy categorization. But the participation of the Slepcevics shows how RFK Jr.’s presidential bid can coexist with advocates tied to far-right extremists and Trump superfans. […]
Wow, all of those people deeply committed to rightwing whacky asshatery are also helping Kennedy run his campaign as a Democratic candidate for president? Almost makes you wonder if the asshatery includes funding Kennedy in the hope that he will pull enough Biden votes to allow Trump to win.
The article includes a lot of other details that I snipped: including connections with Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Turning Point USA, Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne [the former CEO of Overstock … sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading false claims that it rigged the 2020 election], Alex Jones, various other QAnoners and Christian nationalists, etc.
There is also a detailed accounting of Steve and Tracy Slepcevic’s organization Strategic Response Partners. Here are just two of many telling details:
Steve was arrested by the Louisiana State Police for allegedly participating in a “scheme that stole insurance proceeds from individuals and businesses after Hurricane Katrina.” […] Slepcevic was ‘actively concealing’ a $200,000 fine by the California Department of Insurance and six related criminal charges for allegedly misrepresenting himself to victims of California wildfires.
The Slepcevic’s previously ran Paramount Disaster Recovery, described as part of “the world of ‘storm chasers,’ traveling contractors and insurance adjusters who descend on natural catastrophes, offering to help victims […].
Yep, heaps and mounds of scam artists and QAnon-level doofuses … and all of them are a source of money and organizational power for Kennedy.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is putting his legacy behind a final push to shore up international support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
The secretary-general, who will step down later this year after a decade leading the alliance, is pitching to the 32-NATO member countries a plan to establish a five-year, 100 billion euro fund for Ukraine, and for NATO to assume leadership of the U.S.-led Ramstein group, the monthly gathering of more than 50 countries coordinating weapons deliveries for Kyiv.
The ideas, putting Europe in more of a leading role over its security, are borne out of anxiety that the U.S. may be less reliable as a future partner.
“This is not just Trump-proofing, but U.S.-proofing in some ways,” said Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a former senior Pentagon official focused on NATO.
“This is Europe coming to grips with the idea that — whether it’s Trump, or whether it’s Republicans in the House of Representatives, overstretch by the U.S. military, or whatever it might be, that Europe has got to step up.”
Stoltenberg’s mission is to have consensus among alliance members and a July announcement in Washington at NATO’s annual summit and marking its 75th anniversary.
“We will hopefully move forward towards consensus and then we will have an agreement in place by the summit,” Stoltenberg said Wednesday in Brussels, ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers of NATO countries.
It is expected to be Stoltenberg’s last summit as secretary-general, with Danish Prime Minster Mark Rutte viewed as his likely successor.
[…] following through on a 100 billion euro fund, coordinating weapons donations and institutionalizing a NATO training program for Ukrainian forces, will put NATO more directly in confrontation with Russia and a mark a major shift from what has been a somewhat cautious role for the alliance.
The U.S. and other Western allies, fearful of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin, had for two years sought to achieve a certain distance between the alliance and Ukraine so as not to trigger a reaction from Moscow.
But this has caused tension with Baltic, Polish and Ukrainian officials who say Kyiv joining NATO is the only guarantee against Putin re-invading Ukraine if a truce, cease-fire or peace deal is ever achieved.
[…] Stoltenberg will be challenged with getting all alliance members on board.
Hungary is viewed as the biggest obstacle, with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó rejecting the NATO proposals.
Slovakia could also prove a wild card. Parliamentary elections in September saw the victory of a far-right government that has shifted Bratislava’s position as more friendly to Moscow.
[…] the Biden administration is raising concern about moving the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, known as the Ramstein group, under the leadership of NATO.
[…] “What brought them together was American leadership, what’s keeping them together is American leadership,” Kirby said in a Wednesday call with reporters.
But Stoltenberg is leaning into the proposals and is likely to rely on his reputation as NATO’s longtime leader to help reach consensus by the July summit.
[…] “It is true that Stoltenberg is an international civil servant and has to be careful. He has played a leading role in these efforts to support Ukraine. He’s like a chairman of a board, he has to know what the rest of the board members will support, but he has the power of persuasion.”
A fire that occurred at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) office in Burlington is being investigated as arson, according to authorities.
[…] “Investigation revealed that an unknown male subject entered the vestibule of the Office of United States Senator Bernard Sanders,” the press release reads. “The male sprayed an apparent accelerant on the entrance door to Senator Sanders’s offices. He then lit the accelerant and fled. A significant fire engulfed the door and part of the vestibule, impeding the egress of staff members who were working in the office and endangering their lives.”
According to a separate release from the BFD, crews “arrived to find the sprinkler system and fire alarms activated and a fire in the vestibule between the elevator and the entrance door” to Sanders’ office. The fire was then “extinguished” and Sanders’ office, along with nearby offices “were searched and cleared of occupants.”
“No injuries were reported,” the BFD release reads. “The door to the Senator’s office sustained moderate fire damage, and the third floor and floors below sustained significant water damage. Fire crews deployed salvage covers on the floors below to protect items from water.” […]
At least six people have died and eleven are injured after two Russian strikes hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Saturday, local officials said online.
According to a post from Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, Russian rockets hit the city “at midnight, while the people of Kharkiv were sleeping peacefully.”
“Six people died. Another eleven civilians are currently in hospitals in the city,” Terekhov said on Telegram, translated to English.
Terekhov said at least nine apartment buildings, three dormitories, two kindergartens, two other schools, a gas station and other shops were all damaged in the strike. More than 3,600 windows “were broken at once,” he said.
[…] “Russia is a killer state! And sooner or later she will answer for every life she destroyed,” Terekhov’s translated post said.
[…] The strikes, first reported by Reuters, were partially intercepted by Ukraine’s military. The Ukrainian military posted on Facebook that its air defenses destroyed 28 of 32 drones and three of the six missiles launched their way.
According to NASA, the total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over Mexico and then into the southwestern part of the U.S., before making its way across the Midwest and finally toward the northeast before passing over Canada.
It will travel from Texas and pass through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
[…] Around 1:30 p.m. local time Monday, the path will enter the U.S. near San Antonio, Texas. It will travel northeast and reach Arkansas at 1:50 p.m. local time.
[…] It will reach Indianapolis around 3:10 p.m. local time before continuing north over Lake Erie. Northern New York will experience totality around 3:25 p.m. local time.
The eclipse will reach parts of New Hampshire and Maine around 3:30 p.m. local time and continue over Canada.
[…] Mexico will experience the longest eclipse at 4 minutes and 28 seconds, NASA predicts. In Syracuse, N.Y., the eclipse will last 1 minute and 30 seconds. […]
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has been “hijacked by MAGA” Friday. […]
“Maybe not ‘hijacked,’ maybe voluntarily. And so, you’re gonna start seeing more and more of this kind of Donald Trump conspiracies, and he’s either going along with it, because that’s gonna help him raise money and get notoriety, or he truly believes it. Regardless, he’s absolutely wrong, and this is a frightening thing,” Kinzinger added.
[…] “The Brits want to make sure our government doesn’t kill Assange. This is the reality that every American Citizen faces – from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties,” Kennedy’s email said.
A spokesperson for Kennedy’s campaign, Stephanie Spear, later said in a statement obtained by The Hill that the email’s language was an error.
[…] Kinzinger also responded Friday to comments Kennedy recently made on CNN, in which he claimed President Biden was a larger threat to democracy than former President Trump.
“You can dislike Joe Biden, like, but you can’t with a straight face — this isn’t even… I mean, it’s not even subjective, this is like fact,” Kinzinger said.
“You can’t with a straight face say that Joe Biden’s a bigger danger to democracy. […] He’s not trying to overthrow any election results,” Kinzinger continued.
Today is the whatevereth anniversary of the Church of Latter Day Saints, which honestly I have always thought was a pretty smug thing to call your church — but it’s none of my business, I guess.
As such, I thought I would bring you some of my favorite Mormon media!
I am especially fond of this Mormon parody of “Hello” — the Adele song, not the one from The Book of Mormon — at least in part because the guy singing it actually has a legitimately awesome voice. [video at the link]
Unfortunately, you just don’t see a lot of the Mormon parody videos anymore. And they used to be so plentiful! Honestly I think they all probably stopped trying after this guy. […]
Katzir’s sister criticized the Israeli government in a social media post Saturday, saying that her brother “could have been saved if a deal was reached in time.”
The Israeli military said Saturday that it had recovered the body of an Israeli hostage during an overnight raid in the Gaza Strip.
The body of Elad Katzir was returned to Israel after an operation in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the Israel Defense Forces said.
According to Israeli military intelligence, Katzir died while being held in captivity by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group that took part in the Oct. 7 attacks alongside Hamas, and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
[…] “He could have been saved if a deal was reached in time,” Carmit worte, noting that he was photographed alive twice while in captivity. “Our leadership is cowardly and driven by political considerations and that is why it did not happen.”
Katzir was taken hostage at age 47 by PIJ on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community near the Gaza border that was among the hardest hit by the Hamas-led attacks.
In December, Katzir appeared in a video released by Al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of PIJ. Katzir pleaded for his release alongside another hostage who identified himself as Gadi Moses.
His mother, Hanna, was also taken hostage and subsequently released on Nov. 24 during the 7-day truce and hostage-prisoner exchange. Katzir’s father, Avraham-Rami Katzir, was killed during the attack on the kibbutz.
Katzir was born and raised in Nir Oz, where he worked on agricultural irrigation, and was the liaison between the kibbutz and the military.
[…] The operation to recover Katzir’s body comes as Hamas said it would send a delegation to join renewed talks for a hostage deal in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. President Joe Biden this week urged Israel to reach an immediate cease-fire agreement.
Every time there’s an eclipse, Bonnie Tyler’s phone rings off the hook.
“My emails are coming in like Fast and Furious every time there’s an eclipse,” she told Day 6 host Brent Bambury.
That’s because the Welsh singer might just have the best tune to listen to in the run up to celestial adventures, and especially during the totality of Monday’s solar eclipse.
As people across the country gear up for the solar eclipse, Tyler’s 1983 hit single Total Eclipse of the Heart could well be running through their heads…
BTW The Carrington event of 1859 was recently determined to having been more powerful than previously believed. So finding traces of these events give us important data of how frequent they are.
TV Series 2021
LUCA” (Last Universal Common Ancestor) is based on Charles Darwin’s proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors.
Action – Fantasy – Sci-Fi
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency on Friday ahead of the solar eclipse, according to a news release.
Sanders said in the release that she released funds from the Response and Recovery Fund to help commercial carriers transport essentials to customers in the state during the eclipse.
The essential items listed in the order include groceries, pharmacy items, medical equipment, goods, commodities, fuel, poultry, livestock and feed.
The release said the decision was made out of caution due to the expected increase of visitors to Arkansas “potentially causing hardships.”
“We want to make sure Arkansans and all visitors have an enjoyable experience and come back again and again,” Sanders said in a statement.
The order will allocate $100,000 from the fund to address program and administrative costs and will be managed by the director of the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management..
The state emergency will remain in effect until April 10.
House GOP Candidate Suggests CIA, Ukraine May Be To Blame For Moscow Terrorist Attack
Cesar Chavez’s family endorses Biden ahead of ‘Viva Kennedy 2024’ event
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2216548
West Virginia Gov. Justice vetoes bill that would have loosened school vaccine policies
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2216489
Jan 6 police officer slams ‘opportunistic grifter’ Trump as former president hails ‘law and order’ at NYPD cop’s wake
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2216486
Russian network that ‘paid European politicians’ busted, authorities claim
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2216468
The Social Security Administration has issued a final rule that will prevent food assistance from reducing payments to certain beneficiaries.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-7/#comment-2216460
Chris Hayes explains ‘the Trump plan to make everything more expensive’
Crystal Mason’s five-year prison sentence is overturned in Texas
Crystal Mason was convicted of illegal voting in Texas and sentenced to five years in prison. This week, an appeals court overturned the sentence.
Good news! This news comes a bit late. Republicans who committed voter fraud on purpose received very light sentences and no jail time. Crystal Mason did not intentionally commit voter fraud, but doofuses sentenced her to five years in prison! Two-tiered justice system indeed.
Link
Cartoon: On blocks
“The GOP is being stripped down by its Presidential candidate Donald Trump. One day we will find it in the street on blocks.”
Wall Street Journal Marks One Year Since Evan Gershkovich’s Arrest in Russia
Russian veto halts UN monitoring of North Korea nuclear sanctions
Russian’s U.N. Ambassador tried to excuse the veto by claiming that the monitoring reports were biased information controlled by the West.
Netanyahu has till Sunday evening to present a fix to Israel’s controversial conscription law.
Followup to comment 4.
A Tale Of Two Voter Frauds
https://www.wonkette.com/p/a-tale-of-two-voter-frauds
Crystal Mason and Brian Pritchard had some very different outcomes.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/life-under-glenn-youngkin-no-weed
Lynna… @ # 7, quoting Vox: Ultra-Orthodox parties… care primarily about preserving and expanding the special rights and privileges the Israeli state accords to the ultra-Orthodox community. … Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the best and most important thing a man can do is study scripture. For this reason, roughly half of all ultra-Orthodox men do no paid work, depending on government support and charity to survive.
This has puzzled me since the issue of conscripting U-Os came to light. Considered strictly on a military basis, adding these functionally ignorant crybabies seems like a net loss for Israel Defense Force capability – so why bother?
Oops – my # 12 addresses Lynna… @ # 9!
Pierce @12, I don’t know. It’s a situation that I can’t get my head around. It is inexplicable. I will, unfortunately, never get out of my head the stories of Orthodox men spitting on women who broke their rules. I usually just throw up my hands and shout, “Religion!” I guess that is the only explanation.
New York Times link
Excerpt:
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the “Democratic” Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (the main Protestant reactionary party) has resigned after being “charged with rape and multiple other sexual offences”. Donaldson is often described as “socially conservative”, i.e opposed to equal marriage, women’s bodily autonomy, etc. – but allegedly not to rape.
Link
Protestors were demanding less military support for Israel and more humanitarian relief for people in Gaza.
Lynna, OM@9,
I wonder if Netanyahu’s rivals actually want him out at this stage. After all, none of the actual contenders for successor, AFAIK, have raised any principled objection to the ongoing genocide. Once it’s done, they can push him out and fasten the blame for it on him.
True. OTOH, it is not possible to “have moral clarity” without recognizing that enabling genocide is wrong.
Why it matters that Biden is taking aim at ‘junk’ health care plans
Putin orders development of homegrown Steam Deck-like gaming machines — 100% self-sufficiency goal apparently applies to gaming, too
I think the first commenter to this article nailed it:
TSMC is on a hiring spree to recruit 23,000 employees — comes amid explosive multi-continent expansion
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/minnesota-nice-time-just-free-college
40 years of Republican cost-cutting of mental health infrastructure. Behold:
Man Killed By Chainsaw-Wielding Neighbor In ‘Scream’ Costume: HuffPost Latest News
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pennsylvania-chainsaw-wielding-neighbor-murder-costume-scream_n_6605aa9ce4b068637426ecd8
Link
Link
Cranes to start removing wreckage from Baltimore bridge collapse
Project 2025 partner floats repealing the 22nd Amendment and allowing Trump to serve a third term
Brexit Drives Jobs Growth … for Migrant Workers
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wUChRlbpmrI
B.C. Conservatives drop candidate amid misinformation claims
Nature enthusiast, 10, makes rare find: A pink grasshopper
US-funded Radio Free Asia closes its Hong Kong bureau over safety concerns under new security law
Leslie Jones:
“Let’s not do this again” | The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jRgqRYPTis8
SciShow: The 3 Species That “Break” Genetics
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zda-T6wrEhs
Defense asks hush-money judge to let Trump continue verbally attacking the judge’s daughter
Regulatory proteins
Researchers reveal evolutionary path of important proteins
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-reveal-evolutionary-path-important-proteins.html
Model suggests how ancient RNA may have gained self-cutting ability essential for life
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-ancient-rna-gained-ability-essential.html
This US state is not covered by the NATO treaty. Some experts say that needs to change
NB
Scathing Atheist 580 – Miracu-Less Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=L2GTacrvaEI
Mike Johnson names Marjorie Taylor Greene as Mayorkas impeachment manager
The GOP is a totally serious political party.
Cartoon: Fighting fascism
Link
So Bundy is hiding among his fellow Mormons. Typical. “Populated” might be an overstatement for that part of Utah. Actual people are scarce.
Right-Wing Men Reveal Their Super Secret Plans To Seduce Us All Into Voting For Republicans.
It’s either that or take away our right to vote. Or punch us in the face.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/right-wing-men-reveal-their-super
Excerpt from a longer article:
Yes, there have been several instances of women in NYC getting punched in the face. The attacks appear to be random.
And yes, there has been an upswing in the number of Republican men openly saying that the right to vote should be taken away from women. For example, Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark robinson. There’s also a John Gibbs, a GOP congressional candidate supported by Donald Trump, once railed against women voting.
The Wonkette article mentions that: “The responses to this question [of how can Republicans win over young women] were, unsurprisingly, indicative of exactly why the GOP loses with women. Especially since the most popular solution was ‘Repeal the 19th Amendment.’ “
Link
The basic problem seems to be that billionaires do not think that Trump is a threat to democracy. And, they mistakenly think that they will thrive even if Trump destroys the USA.
Posted by readers of the article:
I would be wary of lumping all rich people into the same “destroyer of the the world” category.
Cartoon: Trump-endorsed Bibles going for $60
Farron Cousins:
“Democrats Shouldn’t Save Republican Speaker From Majorie Taylor Greene”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=F5djJQ5ftJg
Vernor Vinge obituary | Science fiction books | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/29/vernor-vinge-obituary
#lovedeathandrobots
Did any of the humans survive?
“Just the Really Really Rich Ones”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/gkAj4sYZPP0?si=o4VEekww7tULFCk1
Amazing. There are are a lot of them.
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1774042604864237887
Video at the link.
Trump posts video with an image of a hog-tied Biden, drawing a rebuke from Democrat’s campaign
This person is unwell and desperate. If his entire political party was not also unwell and desperate, they would be rebuking him themselves.
Reginald @51, Trump encourages violence. He does that constantly. He is nurturing a social structure based on violence.
One of Ukraine’s biggest power plants destroyed by Russia
Former US Navy admiral leads search for underwater alien USOs
Happy “Empty Tomb” Day to all those apologists out there.
Michigan GOP Congressman Suggests Using Nuclear Strikes Like ‘Hiroshima’ in Gaza
Romania and Bulgaria join Schengen area by air and sea
Boat Race: Oxford rowers criticise sewage levels in River Thames
NB
Thanks to Stderr and the comment thread, I stumbled upon this fascinating insight:
🌟
“There’s a straight line from US racial segregation to the anti-abortion movement” | Randall Balmer | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/08/abortion-us-religious-right-racial-segregation
Copycats:
Bridge in Oklahoma reopened after being struck by barge
Embittered Republicans plot to knock off House GOP’s hard-right leader in Virginia primary feud
There are still people who think the Republican Party can be saved.
A Texas woman sues prosecutors who charged her with murder after she self-managed an abortion
Thanks to a novel by Stephen Booth I was introduced to the Aladdin pantomine -a story with chinese and arab characters co-existing, and very, very far from being politically correct.
Jeez, they play this at Christmas in Britain?
Paul Beckwith goes through James Hansen & pals Crucial Update on Global Warming Acceleration paper – 46 mins long.
Weirdness, by way of Sabine Hossenfelder
“Quantum Gravity Breaks Causality — And You Can Compute With It”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=hEHVffCtM9Q
Cartoon: Speaker ‘Moses’ Johnson
https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html
Another mass shooting. More children injured.
At least 7 shot, all under the age of 17, in mass shooting near Indianapolis mall
Police have not yet identified a suspect in the shooting. One of the children injured is in critical condition.
White House Statements Trigger Partisan Religious Controversy
ReligionClause
Saturday Night Live cold open
Easter, Trump selling bibles, and so forth.
Archaeologists Make Remarkable 1,500-Year-Old Discovery at Bottom of the Black Sea – Men’s Journal
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/black-sea-kerpe-archaeological-dive
Germany’s legal weed sparks calls to protect young people
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-germany-legal-weed-young-people.html
The Damage Report:
“James Carville Absolutely Despises ‘Preachy Females’ In Politics”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SjC26lH8lFw
WTF, Skeletor, what are you doing in USA? This isn’t your narrative universe.
Basketball update, women:
Excerpts from a longer article posted by WIRED:
WIRED link
Anton Petrov:
‘You Won’t Believe How Some Animals May React to 2024 Solar Eclipse’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-fkgb4yBUuk
Birger, every time someone believes that, he is proven wrong.
You, yourself, presumably have proven him wrong.
(Among the click-baitiest, is Anton)
MAGA Pastor Says ‘200 Bibles’ Set Ablaze Outside His Church on Easter Morning
He wanted to start distributing property that wasn’t his? Sounds pretty suspicious.
Some intresting polling stats & discussion here :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-more-americans-are-saying-religion-is-losing-influence-in-public-life
I’m definitely on the Pluto side here!
Source : https://www.space.com/pluto-planet-status-rally-pluto-tv
Good question asked & request made here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/push-for-vladimir-putin-to-be-declared-illegitimate-after-vote/103631810
Disturbing news and something you’d think they could stop here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/dogs-wiping-out-tasmanian-little-penguin-populations/103646040
Plus I’d love to know mor eabout that last group noted here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-30/forgotten-political-history-of-australia-convicts/103621728
Some relatively good news from Turkey: the centre-left opposition has increased its vote share and number of elected officials in the local elections, retaining key mayoralties with increased majorities. A more detailed look at the results shows an overall shift to the left, but not a huge one, and a majority still voted for parties of the right – which is split along religious/secular lines similarly to Israel. But any defeat of Erdoğan is welcome.
@ 78
It’s the old “Satanists/Atheists/Communists/Jews-destroying-the-Bibles-we-were-going-to-distribute” scam again. If my memory serves, Peter Popoff pulled that stunt shortly after Randi revealed his faith healing grift (The Faith Healers, 1987).
@Akira MacKenzie #83:
CFI – Peter Popoff’s Broken Window (pdf)
@ 84
Thank you!
@84, oh my goodness. Scam artists can’t even run an intelligent scam.
In other news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
You have to wonder is Putin has found a way to pay guys like Joe Kent.
Sort of Good news:
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said:
Commentary:
Link
Cartoon: Lieberman’s legacy
The Easter Madness Of Donald J. Trump
CNBC:
May the downward plunge continue.
Link
Text above is an excerpt from a longer post.
“Stingray sand ‘sculpture’ in South Africa may be oldest example of humans creating an image of another creature”
(age at least 130,000 years)
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-stingray-sand-sculpture-south-africa.html
New antibiotic class effective against multidrug-resistant bacteria discovered
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-antibiotic-class-effective-multidrug-resistant.html
Link
Researchers demonstrate technique for identifying single cancer cells in blood for the first time
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-technique-cancer-cells-blood.html
UPS to become the primary air cargo provider for the United States Postal Service
So the USPS doesn’t fly their own cargo? Fewer choices seem like a bad thing for the consumer.
Russia ends efforts to rescue gold miners trapped for two weeks
Chief Judge Of Kacsmaryk’s District Will Ignore New Anti-Judge Shopping Policy
If we do get a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate, Kacsmaryk should be impeached.
Mixed news, some bad, some good: The Florida Supreme Court will allow the 6-week abortion ban to stand, but will also allow a voter referendum on abortion to go forward.
CBD for Chronic Pain Doesn’t Work, Large Review Finds
Followup to comment 98: ‘Incredible opportunity’: Florida Senate hopeful cheers abortion ballot measure
Terraform Industries converts electricity and air into synthetic natural gas for the first time
Ex-Trump aide Hope Hicks expected to testify in former president’s New York criminal trial
The former White House communications director met with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year.
NBC News:
NBC News:
New York Times:
Cleveland Plain Dealer:
TechCrunch: Why Trump’s digital media company is different from other money-losing startups
RFK Jr. tells CNN Biden could be bigger threat to democracy than Trump
FFS
‘Artificial sun’ sets record for time at 100 million degrees in latest advance for nuclear fusion
Driver rams into front gate of Atlanta FBI office, taken into custody
Reginald @107, I hope RFK Jr.’s family speaks out even more than they already have. The family needs to keep telling the public how awful RFK Jr. really is.
IDF launches inquiry into deaths of World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza strike.
Washington Post link
Judge expands partial gag order after Trump’s attacks on his daughter in hush money case
Trump secures $175 million bond in New York civil fraud case
So? I may try that one on the IRS: “I can’t pay.” I’m sure it would go over great.
@74:
Iowa defeats LSU, 94-87
Caitlin Clark was dominant with 41 points, 12 assists, 7 rebounds, two steals and a block. For LSU, Angel Reese had a good, but not good enough, night with 17 points and 20 rebounds, but fouled out with over a minute to play. Iowa started the game hot, with 17 points in the first 4 minutes, but LSU shut them down for 4 minutes at the end of the quarter and took the lead by as much as 8 points. Iowa fought back and tied the game by half time. Iowa came out hot again at the start of the second half, and never relenquished the lead again. They were up by 13 with 1:05 to play. A Reese-less LSU managed to close the gap in the last minute, but the lead was too much to overcome. Also, fouling Clark is not a great strategy, since she is an excellent free throw shooter.
Last year, Clark had two 41 point games during the 2023 tournament.
@93 Lynna
The only reason this fake news is getting any attention in Western media is because it’s a convenient charge to level against Israel’s chosen adversary for the purposes of demonization and dehumanization. History is replete with such propaganda.
I bet you they won’t report it. Best case, Israel will investigate itself and find that it did no wrong. We all know such inconvenient facts are going to be swept under the rug.
Easter Dummy!
“Three Presidents And One Colbert | Trump’s Easter Message | Stealing From Air Force One”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eYK7CxcaZw4
Trump madness revisited:
What the hell is “pomeranz”???
Reginald Selkirk@108,
We’re getting a series of these so-called “fusion advances”, which turn out on close inspection to be distinctly underwhelming (other claims from the USA and UK are linked to from your link). No-one is within decades of generating useful amounts of electricity from fusion. I don’t think it’s unduly cynical to connect this sequence of stories with the global retreat from serious efforts to mitigate the oncoming climate disruption..
Reginald Selkirk@107,
Is RFK Jr. angling for a position as Trump’s VP? I’m worried: bringing two such colossal egos into the same room might warp the spacetime continuum beyond recovery!
Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida
Oregon governor signs a bill recriminalizing drug possession into law
Stephen Colbert
Deepest Ukraine drone attack into Russian territory injures 12
‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has now declared, more than once, his belief that Democrats are “a Satanic cult.” This isn’t normal.
Donald Trump has endorsed plenty of Republican congressional candidates, but South Carolina televangelist Mark Burns is … different.
In a prospective second term, Donald Trump’s team is eyeing a focus on addressing “anti-white racism” rather than discrimination against people of color.
Cartoon: The wrong cop
“GAM450 – Church People”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cLryeJmWUOc
This week’s film from God Awful Movies is technically competently made, but this merely means there is nothing to have fun at.
And there is no entertaining lunacy, like in the christian films where the aliens are demons in disguise.
You guys should set up a Gofundme for senator Tommy Tuberville to make a ‘documentary’ about the satanic cult of the Democrats. Maybe invite Alex Jones to play a part. America needs a better class of insane films.
Brian Tyler Cohen
“Red state suddenly in play in 2024 for Democrats”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OMhCPm6-ngM
Rick Scott can not be certain of re-election to the senate (also, deSantis has to step down as governor in two years).
Link
With Famine “Imminent,” Israeli Military Kills Seven Aid Workers Delivering Food to Gazans
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” says chef José Andrés.
‘Bad Credit? No Credit? No Problem!’ Guy Posts $175M Bond For Trump, America Great Again
https://www.wonkette.com/p/bad-credit-no-credit-no-problem-guy
https://www.wonkette.com/p/texas-republicans-share-perfectly
Followup to comments 111 and 132.
Netanyahu Calls Strike That Killed Aid Workers ‘Tragic’ but Unintentional
The Russians Sent A Platoon Of Grenade-Hurling Robotic Mini-Tanks Into Battle. The Ukrainians Blew Up The ‘Bots In The Usual Way: With Drones.
Welcome to the future.
Amazon Ditches ‘Just Walk Out’ Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
House GOP lawmakers introduce bill to rename Dulles Airport after Donald Trump
Reginald Selkirk @ 138
They only understand power and retribution . Once you get the majority back, rename it ‘Angela Davis International Airport’.
(yes, I am.old enough to remember her. She is still alive, BTW)
And rename the Ronald Reagan after Malcolm X.
Reginald @138, well that’s even more offensive than naming stuff after Confederate generals in the Civil War.
In other news: A federal judge says migrants can sue the company that flew them to Martha’s Vineyard
White House thanks Daily Caller for retracting story on religious Easter egg ban
Followup to comment 141.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/christian-fascist-lunatics-will-never
Taylor Swift among 141 new billionaires in ‘amazing year for rich people’ | Rich lists | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/02/world-gains-141-new-billionaires-in-amazing-year-for-rich-people
I don’t mind Taylor Swift. The rest can bugger off to the Australian outback. Or Mars.
Say what now?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tn-lege-hopes-to-protect-states-precious
Ye wanted to shave Donda Academy students’ heads and lock kids in cages, ex-employee says in lawsuit
The former employee, who alleges discrimination and retaliation, says in his suit that the artist formerly known as Kanye West compared himself to Hitler — “minus the gas chambers.”
Achieving Quantum Limits of Exoplanet Detection and Localization
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17988
.
Hidden chunk of Earth’s crust that seeded birth of ‘Scandinavia’ discovered through ancient river crystals | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/hidden-chunk-of-earths-crust-that-seeded-birth-of-scandinavia-discovered-through-ancient-river-crystals
@Reginald Selkirk #137:
SNL – Amazon Go (“It’s a trap!”)
Trump Sues Truth Social Company Co-Founders to Zero Them Out
So many people eager for their turn under the bus.
(A must-watch video)
Jon Stewart On The False Promises of AI | The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY
The origin of the cobra maneuver for air-to-air combat. Consider that this was a 1950s aircraft!
Cobra Maneuver #shorts #documentary
.https://youtube.com/shorts/dXriUBe4kk8
Famous atheist says he identifies as a ‘cultural Christian’ and is ‘horrified’ by promotion of Islamic holiday
Turns out, before he transported a gun across state lines and killed some unarmed protestors because he “felt threatened,” Kyle Rittenhouse did so badly on the ASVAB that he not only failed it, the Marine Corp forbid him from reapplying.
https://www.politicalflare.com/2024/04/kyle-rittenhouse-did-so-poorly-on-usmc-entrance-exam-that-hes-permanently-banned-from-applying-again/?fbclid=IwAR3BpakumASqw9lDaiDWrFQCEeEw5FxQ3sPFTWkkfYgFNzc40w1NHLfy1wc
Content warning: article includes Twitter links to posts with ableist slurs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68716894
More at the link. If the bill is actually written as described, it would ban crop spraying and crop dusting and I seriously doubt the proponents have thought it through.
Missouri county declares state of emergency amid suspected ransomware attack
President Biden is now posting into the fediverse
A strong earthquake shakes Taiwan, damaging buildings and causing a small tsunami
@whheydt 153:
Yep. One sentence.
Tennessee’s HB2063/SB2691 as rewritten by Amendment 1.
With a note calling it a fineable Class C misdemeanor and
Family of woman found dead on highway angered by Trump’s speech
F-16s arrive at Eglin to be modified with self-flying tech
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry threatens scholarships after LSU players miss national anthem before Iowa loss
Of course he’s a Republican.
Iowa’s win over LSU shatters record for most-watched women’s college basketball game
No point in getting into the details, I suspect that record will not survive the weekend.
Largest fresh egg producer in U.S. finds bird flu in chickens at Texas and Michigan plants
Vatican to publish document on gender, surrogacy and human dignity next week
House Republicans have spent literally half the year not working
Good news: Oklahoma official with white nationalist ties is ousted in recall vote
Judd Blevins, who marched alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, lost his fight to remain on Enid’s City Council.
March 9: Virginia codified same-sex marriage, sort of.
Youngkin signs 64 bills—including one on marriage equality
* A SCOTUS reversal would unmoot the state constitution’s ban, which would supersede this recognizing law. So a new amendment is needed to remove the ban…
Dem lawmakers want to put same-sex marriage in Virginia’s constitution
Wikipedia – Same-sex marriage in Virginia
Re: CA7746, Sky Captain @ #166…
Sounds like the Democrats in Virginia want to prevent any echoes of Loving v. Virginia. Now if California would just set up a ballot proposition to repeal Prop. 8 in case of the same potential SCOTUS action…
Correcting myself in #166:
2014 Bostic v. Schaefer found VA’s ban, in particular, unconstitutional. Several other cases successfully challenged other states’ bans. One case went the other way.
2015 Obergefell v. Hodges resolved that, guaranteeing marriage rights everywhere.
A promising fusion reactor design.
“A return to roots: Lab builds its first stellarator in 50 years and opens the door for research into new plasma physics”
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-roots-lab-stellarator-years-door.html
Whheydt @ 153
Of course they did not think it through. Thinking is for RINOs and libruls…
The very concept of a contrail conspiracy requires a ‘specific’ kind of believer.
The Dubya-age republicans were regressive but I do not recall there were as many half-baked legislation attempts. Behold the generation of the tea party.
Bond Villain
“Hankey Posts Trump’s Bond | Truth Social Stock Woes | Lara Trump vs. Beyonce / Cicadas are coming ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kjfp1kUDWDc
Thermal Modeling of a Pulsed Plasma Rocket Shows It Should Be Possible To Create One – Universe Today
https://www.universetoday.com/166395/thermal-modeling-of-a-pulsed-plasma-rocket-shows-it-should-be-possible-to-create-one/
Some cool deep seafloor footage of a Rattail Fish (Grenadier) with comical commentary here running for 6 minutes.
Techxplore:
“Sunrise to sunset, a new window coating blocks heat, not view”
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-sunrise-sunset-window-coating-blocks.html
Feds finally decide to do something about years-old SS7 spy holes in phone networks
Bitcoin tumbles $5,000 in 24 hours as interest rates jump
A rather nasty bit of history learnt today Titanic’s Second Officer May Have Committed a War Crime (short) see also :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lightoller#Sinking_of_UB-110
Plus #15 here : https://historycollection.com/charles-lightoller-second-officer-of-rms-titanic-was-also-a-hero-on-the-beaches-of-dunkirk/15/
Huh. Link shoulda worked take II :
Lightoller from Titanic may have committed war crime
Still not? That’s annoying and no idea why that’s not working, sorry folks. Guess there’s enoyugh info there to find it or see the incident and facts noted. Clip (youtube shorts) with failed link is by Oceanliner designs and its title is as hyperlinked – though not working – in #177. Other lnks given in #177 tell the story anyhow.
Re: Reginald Selkirk 151
Dawkins a “cultural Christian”? I seem to remember he claimed raising children as religious was child abuse.
@180: I am reminded of Anthony Flew, who was clearly losing his faculties near the end.
Special Counsel Jack Smith Is Done With Judge Aileen Cannon And Lets It Show
Followup to comment 182.
Link
@Reginald and Brony:
Dawkins has been saying he’s “culturally Christian” since 2007 amid “war on Christmas” rhetoric, blaming other religions, not atheists like him, for threatening the holiday—when there never was a war.
@StevoR #179:
You had an extra right quote around the url.
Incidentally, https: was missing but implied (bare // means ‘same as here’).
US reckons it’s about time the Moon had its own time zone
Followup to comments 182 and 183.
Link
The post provides records showing that Trump did not know about, and did not espouse the “personal records” theory until after he was told about it in February 2022. The theory came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda. Tom Fitton is President of Judicial Watch. He is a pro-Trump doofus who also rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, supports Breitbart News, and spreads the lie that voter fraud is widespread.
Tesla sales collapse, Musk blames everyone but himself
Astronomers Uncover Micro ‘Galaxy’ Orbiting the Milky Way
Tanker Crash Accidentally Releases 70,000 Salmon Into Wrong Oregon River
RFK Jr. Gets VERY ANGRY! When You Remind Him Of Every Wackjob Thing He’s Ever Said
Novel fabrication technique takes transition metal telluride nanosheets from lab to mass production
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-fabrication-technique-transition-metal-telluride.html
Ugandan court rejects bid to nullify anti-gay law that provides for the death penalty in some cases
The law is supported by many in the East African country but widely condemned by rights activists and others abroad.
Nikki Haley drew a notable slice of Republican voters in four states, while protest votes against the president over his support for Israel continued.
New York Times link
Biden got more than 90 percent of the tallied votes in New York.
Carmakers give up on software that avoids kangaroos
Trump told a Wisconsin audience yesterday that evidence “came out” that he won the state in 2020. That remains delusional: Biden narrowly prevailed in Wisconsin four years ago.
Campaign news as summarized by Steve Benen:
GUARDIAN exclusive: TRUMP MEDIA kept afloat by loans from Russian money launderer
Guardian link to: “Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation”
More details at the link. For example:
Biden touts lower drug prices with Bernie’s help
@193: Going by percentage of the vote does not count those who didn’t bother to vote, which may be an important component in the general election.
Followup to comment 187.
Fox News hosts create misleading segments about the EV market:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/why-wont-pete-buttigieg-do-something
Trump’s Social-Media Potemkin Village, by Kyle Chayka
Excerpts from a longer article posted by The New Yorker.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #198…
They’ve got a ways to go to get annual health care costs down to $2K, even for those on Medicare. I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see it…
I recommend a full reading of this:
The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’
This article does a decent job of explaining the various viewpoints without credulously accepting them.
I think this viewpoint is seriously misguided. Before assuming that a phenomenon is an evolutionary adaptation, I would like to see some serious evidence that it affects reproductive fitness.
Finally, the gloves come off!
@200: I think a major problem with the transition to EVs is that the current product does not live up to the promise. I personally would be happy to buy an EV if
1) on long trips it could be recharged in a decent amount of time (say 20 minutes or less). Right now the companies are all promising that capability in the near future with solid-state batteries, but no product lives up to it today.
2) The price was more competitive. I would pay maybe $20K – 30K for an EV. Most of the current products are in the $50K – 60K range. I want something priced like a Chevy Bolt, but with higher quality and fewer fires.
Trump’s $175m bond has been “returned for correction” as it does not have the required financial statements from the bond holder, and also needs to show power of attorney. I guess the New York courts don’t just accept someone’s word that they are ‘good for it’.
Ted Cruz Flips Out When Confronted Over Sketchy Podcast Deal
In rare call, Russian defense minister warns French counterpart against sending troops to Ukraine
To which he should have responded, “Likewise, I’m sure.”
Say ‘Cheese,’ Universe: Scientists Complete Construction of the Biggest Digital Camera Ever
Google rolls out a new JPEG coding library
Hey does anyone know what’s happened to Intransitive?
She hasn’t blogged for months, which is fine obviously, but she’s also shut off commenting on her blog.
She’s one of the best ever FTB bloggers and I’d just like to know she’s okay if anyone has any information.
If she reads this –
Rhiannon, we love you and miss you. Please post now and then so we know you’re okay. :-)
Charlie Kirk’s genius plan to court women voters: Call them bitter and blame birth control
Reginald Selkirk @ 213
We should encourage all Republicans to emulate Charlie Kirk. In fact, we should tell Trump that Kirk’s approach is very successful- he will never double-check.
BTW Emmylou Harris had her 77th birthday yesterday.
Nebraska legislators buck Trump by blocking Electoral College vote change — for now
Why Trump’s recent interactions with Saudi’s crown prince matter
Oh FFS. Worse and worse. Update on Trump’s anti-immigrant messaging.
Link
Texas Debunks ‘Totally Inaccurate’ Claims of Voting Fraud Being Spread by Elon Musk
101 studies flagged as bogus COVID cure pusher sees career unravel
Judge rejects Trump free speech challenge to Georgia 2020 election case
Reginald @220, that’s good news.
In other news: I don’t give polls conducted this early in the presidential race much weight, but for what it is worth here is a summary from Steve Benen.
More information here: Link to Marquette poll.
Josh Marshall:
Link
Link
Lots of talk. We will have to see if any “concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm” are taken.
Good news: Democracy won in Senegal. Here’s why it matters.
When so much of the world is backsliding on democratic norms, Senegal’s election reveals a trend toward democracy in Africa.
Well that figures … still disappointing: Fox highlighted Trump’s comments about a slain woman without noting the family says he lied about talking with them
No Labels abandons 2024 presidential effort
German State Moving Tens of Thousands of PCs To Linux and LibreOffice
No Labels won’t run a third-party campaign after trying to recruit a centrist presidential candidate
Israel: GPS disabled and IDF leave cancelled over Iran threat
@182, 183, 186
Judge rejects Donald Trump’s bid to have classified documents prosecution tossed
Trump shows off empty lectern ‘for crooked Joe Biden’ at Wisconsin rally
Not even original.
Israel’s ‘reckless’ Black Snake drone unit ‘used precise Spike missiles to kill three Brits’ says expert.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-7eC-YulB4o
Indiana appeals court rules abortion ban likely violates religious freedom protections
Port of Baltimore to partially open, officials say
The channel entering the Port of Baltimore may be partially open for vessel traffic by the end of the month.
Traders Are Betting Millions That Trump Media ‘Meme Stock’ Will Tumble
Mars may not have had liquid water long enough for life to form
“Pink slime” local news outlets erupt all over US as election nears
Wisconsin doctor who sued to protect abortion access joins congressional race
Biggs, Gosar subpoenaed in Arizona Attorney General inquiry of fake electors, report says
“The intern did it”
Kennedy campaign blames vendor for email sympathetic to Jan. 6 insurrectionists
New York buildings rattled by rare East Coast earthquake
Six Russian planes destroyed by drones, says Kyiv
The rise of magnets – from surgery to outer space
Republicans behaving badly: Donald Trump isn’t the only one to make provocative claims about Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter: House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik did it, too.
Accountability for Trump’s lawyers:
Link
The unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 26 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
The U.S. Economy created almost 16 million jobs since January of 2021. About 829,000 of those were created in the first three months of 2024.
HIV as a family secret
Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/family-secret-dad-hiv-aids_n_65f22a13e4b09953f2f8aa6a
-A question: when did HIV patients get a better treatment option than AZT?
The father of the author died in 1994, and I seem to recall that Freddy Mercury died about the same time.
The 3 Worst Aspects Of Aileen Cannon’s Latest Shenanigan
It looks to me like Aileen Cannon is looking for ways, for any way, to sneak Trump’s claim that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take records belonging to the people of the USA out of the White House and store them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. She wants to let Trump’s bogus interpretation of the PRA stand. It shouldn’t even be a question. It should not be presented to the jury as a legitimate interpretation of the law.
More commentary:
Link
An interesting article from today’s Guardian. It focuses on the inadvertent self-doxing of top Israeli intelligence chief Yossi Sariel (name previously unkown). Sariel heads (for now) the elite “Unit 8200”, and is also the proponent of: “a “human-machine teaming” concept that seeks to achieve synergy between humans and AI, rather than constructing fully autonomous systems”, in security and military operations – his identity became public via a book he has published on this. Unit 8200 is the outfit that completely failed to predict Hamas’s attack of 2023/10/07, a failure some blame on the unit becoming obsessed with its hi-tech toys at the expense of more traditional intelligence methods. This same individual and unit are responsible for the so-called “AI targetting” systems” Lavender and The Gospel used to identify some 36,000 (IIRC) Gazan targets for bombing – most of them the homes of alleged low-level Hamas operatives. One wonders whether the hunting and slaughter of six western aid workers (oh, and their Palestinian driver, I think he’s being allowed honorary western status) was also AI-authorised – the current Israeli explanation, blaming it on two relatively low-level officers, strains credulity.
birgerjohansson@247,
1996. A close friend of mine died of AIDS that year. If he’d lived another year, he might still be alive.
It’s a case study in harassment. So much takes the form of gossip. We need to describe the gossip more so people who can’t go beyond it stand out.
https://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2024/03/anti-woke-anti-lgbtq-ohio-school-board.html
https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2023/04/24/darbi-boddy-petulant-2-year-old/
Via
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/04/03/they-needed-someone-who-was-good-for-hatin/
Followup to comment 248.
Neal Katyal:
https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1775961349111140523
Posted by readers of the text excerpted in comment 248:
South African footballer and Olympian Luke Fleurs killed in hijacking
Exclusive-Tesla scraps low-cost car plans amid fierce Chinese EV competition
@254:
Tesla Stock Tanks on Report There’s No Model 2. Elon Musk Says It Isn’t True.
Kansas lawmakers scuttle a plan for cutting taxes, defying the governor and GOP leaders
Followup to comments 196, 226 and 228.
I view No Labels as fake bipartisanship. I am glad to see them gone.
Consider this: they were trying to recruit Manchin, a supposed Democrat who, along with Sinema, thwarted some of the Biden administration’s best plans. I think their concept all along was to pull votes from Biden and make it more likely that Trump would win.
Christians in Texas, sneaky politics, white supremacists … and prejudice:
Link. Based on reporting by the Texas Tribune.
Cartoon: Blowout sale
Link
In a phone call between defense ministers, Russia threatened France, and then Russia lied about the contents of the phone call:
Link
Follow up to comment 257.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/no-labels-no-mas
The Republicans behind the Lincoln Oroject sure know how to do negative campaigning. But then again, they have 40 years of experience.
“Better Off”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MGnkkrLzglE
Roseanne Barr at Mar-a-Lago:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/roseannes-audition-for-sunset-boulevard
KG @ 250
If the idiot president of 1981-1989 had taken HIV seriously, so many could have been saved.
Imagine if the spread could have been suppressed in a well-informed way. Never, ever forgive.
Fun with Excel, or: Steve Kirsch is an antivax fool
Least surprising news ever.
“Donald Trump’s Massive $175 Million Bond MAY BE FAKE!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7wGIAl8ZnME
NBC News:
Related news, also as reported by NBC:
New York Times:
Washington Post:
Summary from Steve Benen, based on Twitter posts from Marjorie Taylor Greene:
I’ll comment: JFC.
Link
Washington Post:
Commentary:
Link
Link
Video of Statue of Liberty shaking during the earthquake.
This is very good … a dismantling of religious belief by a former evangelical megachurch pastor. A quick look indicates that his whole Facebook feed is full of excellent takedowns of religion.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159537013190592&set=a.10150198788140592
NCAA women’s basketball semifinal results:
South Carolina 78, North Carolina State 59
The expected result, but the wolf pack kept it surprisingly close until halftime.
Iowa 71, UConn 69
UConn actually led until late in the 3rd quarter, Iowa took a lead in the 4th as Clark had a hot streak, but UConn closed the gap at the end where it came down to the last seconds. UConn was down by one and had the ball with 10 seconds to go, but committed an offensive foul, and Clark sank one of two free throws, to finish out the scoring.
Paige Bueckers: 17 points, 3 assists, 4 rebounds.
Caitlin Clark: 21 points, 7 assists, 9 rebounds.
The high scorers were actually forward Hannah Stuelke with 23 points for Iowa while Bueckers tied with Aaliyah Edwards with 17 for UConn.
The final between South Carolina and Iowa will be Sunday, 7 April, at 3:00 PM EDT.
@271: I will comment as well. An eclipse is an event whose time and location can be predicted centuries in advance. And many people consider it to be a good thing. Many people are preparing and traveling to participate in it. MTG is dumb AF.
@274
‘She’s electric’: Watch lightning strike the Statue of Liberty, emerge from her torch
Texas Supreme Court justice implies Democrats will cheat in 2024 election
NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix
$158,000 ALS drug pulled from market after failing in large clinical trial
Drunk Lauren Boebert was cut off from drinking more at GOP event.
From Let’s Talk Elections
A 15-minute video.
“New 2024 Election Polls Trend Big Towards Biden”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_a5zRhv086k&si=0YXfaTz_zSpUtG1a
Farron Cousins:
“Republicans Suddenly Realize Trump’s Insanity Will Kill Them In Down Ballot Races”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sv-X1mUiMyw
Cody’s Elon Musk’s “Hitler Problem” – Some More News – one hour and thirty-five minutes long.
Followup to Birger @282.
Link
RFK Jr. Fundraisers Tied to J6ers, QAnoners, Christian Nationalists, and Far-Right Extremists
Wow, all of those people deeply committed to rightwing whacky asshatery are also helping Kennedy run his campaign as a Democratic candidate for president? Almost makes you wonder if the asshatery includes funding Kennedy in the hope that he will pull enough Biden votes to allow Trump to win.
The article includes a lot of other details that I snipped: including connections with Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Turning Point USA, Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne [the former CEO of Overstock … sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading false claims that it rigged the 2020 election], Alex Jones, various other QAnoners and Christian nationalists, etc.
There is also a detailed accounting of Steve and Tracy Slepcevic’s organization Strategic Response Partners. Here are just two of many telling details:
The Slepcevic’s previously ran Paramount Disaster Recovery, described as part of “the world of ‘storm chasers,’ traveling contractors and insurance adjusters who descend on natural catastrophes, offering to help victims […].
Yep, heaps and mounds of scam artists and QAnon-level doofuses … and all of them are a source of money and organizational power for Kennedy.
NATO chief’s final battle: Protecting Ukraine from Trump
Link
Link
Solar Eclipse path, and timing:
Link
Followup to comment 287.
Link
Oh Boy, Today Is The Anniversary Of Mormonism
The Church of Latter Day Saints was founded on this day in 1830. The Osmonds came much later.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-boy-today-is-the-anniversary-of
More at the link.
Israeli military recovers body of hostage Elad Katzir from Gaza
Katzir’s sister criticized the Israeli government in a social media post Saturday, saying that her brother “could have been saved if a deal was reached in time.”
Let’s talk elections:
:Republican Grasp at Power in Nebraska FAILS Miserably”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IuCCGBisylQ
Britain.
A Different Bias:
“What If Reform UK Get As May Votes as Lib Dems?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bV-QZlEF2EE
@291
Decades later, Bonnie Tyler still finds new fans for her hit song every total eclipse
Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart on Vevo
Tracing the largest solar storm in modern times from tree rings in Lapland
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-largest-solar-storm-modern-tree.html
BTW The Carrington event of 1859 was recently determined to having been more powerful than previously believed. So finding traces of these events give us important data of how frequent they are.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Earthquake Tweet Shakes Up Internet | HuffPost Latest News
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marjorie-taylor-greene-earthquake-tweet-mockery_n_6610370be4b04fa3961491b4
It was pointed out the epicenter is at one of Trump’s golf clubs.
L.U.C.A.: The Beginning
It appears to be a Korean production
Gov. Sanders declares state of emergency ahead of eclipse
Trump Says He’ll Become ‘Modern Day Nelson Mandela’ Over Right to Attack Judge’s Daughter