Post by mhbruin on Nov 25, 2021 9:57:51 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 454 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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A One-Month Surge in Vaccinations Seems to Have Ended
I guess most of the folks who wanted boosters have got them. Vaccinating kids seems to be continuing.
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Do the English Really Want Their Sons to Grow Up to Be Time Lords?
A Tory MP has linked young men turning to crime to women playing traditionally male roles in TV and film.
Nick Fletcher said "female replacements" in shows like Doctor Who were robbing boys of good role models.
The only characters they had to look up to were gangsters the Krays and Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders, he said.
"Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?," he told MPs taking part in a debate on International Men's Day.
His comments were met with surprise by Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds, who said she thought she had "misheard" him.
The reason boys turned to a life of crime was "far more complex" than "who should be the next 007", she added.
Tommy Shelby is Cool. He is Brilliant and a Good Leader. Of Course, There is That Violence and Crime Thing.
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I Just Don't See This
A hospital patient will become the first person in the world to have a 3D-printed prosthetic eye.
Steve Verze, from Hackney, east London, will receive the eye on Thursday at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
It is hoped the eye will be more realistic than a traditional acrylic prosthetic eye.
It will also cut the time it takes for patients to be fitted with their prosthetics in half, from six weeks to three.
"I've needed a prosthetic since I was 20, and I've always felt self-conscious about it," said Mr Verze, who is in his 40s.
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WTF Was This Judge Thinking? Or Drinking?
Just days after India's Supreme Court struck down a controversial order that cleared a man of sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl because "there was no skin-to-skin contact" with the victim, another judgement that reduced the jail term of a man convicted of forcing a 10-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him has caused outrage.
The order, which preceded the landmark Supreme Court ruling by a day but has only now been reported, was pronounced by the Allahabad high court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The crime dates back to 2016 when the man had visited the child's home and taken him to a local temple where he had sexually abused him. He had given the child 20 rupees (27 cents; 20 pence) to keep quiet about the assault and threatened him with consequences if he reported it.
A trial court in August 2018 found the man guilty of "aggravated penetrative sexual assault" under the stringent Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act and handed him a 10-year jail sentence.
The man appealed and last week, the high court judge reduced his jail term to seven years, saying that under the law, the assault was not "aggravated" - implying that the crime was less serious than the trial court had deemed it to be.
Legal experts have questioned the judgment, saying there are several factors in Pocso Act that make an assault "aggravated", one of which is if the victim is under 12.
You Don't Need To Be a Legal Expert to Question the Judgement
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He's Going to Need It To Adjust to Life Outside.
Thousands of people are raising money online for a Missouri man who served 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Kevin Strickland, 62, was exonerated Tuesday morning after serving decades at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Strickland was convicted in 1979 of one count of capital murder and two counts of second-degree murder in a triple homicide. He received a 50-year life sentence without the possibility for parole for a crime that, over the years, he maintained he had not been involved in.
Senior Judge James Welsh dismissed all criminal counts against Strickland. His release makes his confinement the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history and one of the longest in the nation, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.
The Midwest Innocence Project created a GoFundMe account to help Strickland restart his life, since he doesn't qualify for help from the state of Missouri.
In Missouri, only those exonerated through DNA testing are eligible for a $50 per day of post-conviction confinement, according to the Innocence Project. That was not the case for Strickland.
As of Thursday morning, over $800,000 have been raised for Strickland.
The fund was created over the summer with a goal of raising $7,500, which the fund says would amount to approximately $175 dollars for every year Strickland spent wrongfully convicted.
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All We Can Come Up With Are Some Big Balloons?
As Americans feast their eyes on a full-blown Thanksgiving Day parade after a two-year Covid absence, nearly 6,000 miles away Egypt is set to revive a very different cultural tradition that has not been seen for several thousand years.
The country is set to open the 3,000-year-old Avenue of Sphinxes to the public Thursday in an elaborate ceremony in the southern city of Luxor that follows decades of excavation efforts.
The ancient walkway, nearly two miles long and about 250 feet wide, was once named “The Path of God.” It connects the Temple of Luxor with the Temple of Karnak, just up the Nile river to the north.
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When You Were 13, Could You Spell "Gerrymander"? Can You Today?
At 13 years old, DJ Horton can’t vote or even drive a car, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming a prominent voice in Georgia’s redistricting process.
The middle school student and aspiring politician from Gwinnett County testified at two redistricting hearings hosted by the state Legislature this year. This month, Rep. Derrick Jackson, a Democrat from Tyrone, Georgia, quoted him during floor remarks about the maps; Horton was also invited by his state senator earlier this month to speak at a committee hearing about proposed state Legislature maps.
“On behalf of future young Georgia voters across this state, I am asking you — in fact, I am begging you — to reconsider the redistricting maps that have been drawn,” he said at that hearing. “This is not a right or left issue; this is a right or wrong issue.”
Horton is one of the dozens of teenagers mobilizing and testifying in Georgia’s redistricting process this year, juggling finals and extracurriculars with special legislative sessions and injecting an unusual level of youth engagement into a typically wonky, insiders' political routine.
In the last few years, a surge of interest in redistricting has raised awareness about the effects of gerrymandering and propelled many states to revamp their map-drawing processes, prompting more young people to get involved around the country. Middle school students in New York created an algorithm for drawing maps, while North Carolina college students lobbied against the gerrymandering that split their campuses into multiple districts.
Youth voting also surged in the 2020 election and carried into the critical January runoffs in Georgia, where Democrats — fueled in part by young voters of color — were able to help flip two Senate seats in Georgia.
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This Firing is VILE!
An academic in Virginia whose research on “minor-attracted people” sparked threats and a petition calling for their removal announced their resignation Wednesday, university officials and the scholar said in a joint statement.
Allyn Walker will remain on leave until they step down as an assistant professor of criminal justice and sociology at Old Dominion University in May.
"We have concluded that this outcome is the best way to move forward," university President Brian Hemphill said in the statement.
He added that he hoped the move will help bring "closure" as the school continues efforts "toward healing and civil discourse."
Walker, who said in Wednesday’s statement that their research was intended to prevent child sexual abuse, attributed the backlash to their trans identity and mischaracterizations promoted online and by some media outlets.
The petition, signed by nearly 15,000 people, was started after Walker gave an interview about their book, "A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity," published by University of California Press in June.
The publisher described the book, which studies people who are attracted to minors and don't act on the attraction, as "challenging widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors — often referred to as ‘pedophiles’ — are necessarily also predators and sex offenders.”
We Need To Know the Facts. Getting Angry About Them Won't Protect Us.
Should We Have Arrested This Pedophile?
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Mater Dumb
A teenager suffered brain damage and other injuries from a brutal high school football hazing ritual, according to a lawsuit against a prominent Southern California school and the Catholic diocese.
The anonymous plaintiff, a player for Mater Dei High School born in 2004, filed the civil action Tuesday through his anonymous guardian in Orange County Superior Court. Mater Dei, of Santa Ana, southeast of Los Angeles, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange are named as defendants in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News.
While he was preparing for the football team’s Covid-delayed spring season, the youngster on Feb. 4 engaged with his teammates in a game of “Bodies,” a Mater Dei ritual in which one student punches another as many times as possible before the person surrenders, according to the complaint filed by Costa Mesa-based lawyer Brian L. Williams.
The plaintiff was struck multiple times in the face and the head during the hazing, leading to permanent scars and a “traumatic brain injury” marked by “pain, slurred speech and cognitive dysfunction,” Williams wrote.
The lawsuit alleges that during the beating, the victim, who is white, was called the N-word several times by his attacker and another teammate.
The complaint said Monarchs coach Bruce Rollinson is well aware of the hazing rituals. He is not named as a defendant.
Why Not? Rollinson IS Responsible.
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It May Not Be Justice, But It Is Better Than What Happened With Rittenhouse.
I Like the Idea That the Celebration was Led By Black Ministers. No Reports on How Clean Their Toenails Were.
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Give a Prayer for This Turkey on Thanksgiving
Erdoğan had promised that this new form of government would be more efficient in addressing the country’s problems and that it would bring about greater prosperity for the country. In 2018, he was re-elected as president for a five-year term with a comfortable majority and proceeded single handedly to execute the transition to the new system.
However, as the regime evolved to one-man rule, Erdoğan’s promises never materialized. The economy markedly deteriorated. The value of the Turkish currency weakened from 2.18 Turkish Lira (TL) to the U.S. dollar (USD) in August 2014, when he was first elected president, to more than 11 TL by mid-November, losing 70 percent of its value against the dollar since Erdoğan in 2015 warned that those who invest in the U.S. currency would lose money. Such a precipitous drop has also been reflected in the decline of Turkish GDP per capita from more than $12,000 in 2014 to $8,500 in 2020. The Turkish public has had to content itself with ever-falling living standards aggravated by inflation, high unemployment, and poor management of the COVID pandemic.
The political scene is marked by diminished media freedoms, severely weakened judicial independence, and a repressive environment that have placed Turkey at the very top of the list of countries, after Mali, experiencing the sharpest declines in freedoms in the last 10 years. An aggressive Turkish foreign policy based on confrontation rather than diplomacy has left the country isolated regionally – it has no ambassadorial representation in a string of key countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Israel. His most recent move to have 10 ambassadors from the United States, several European countries, Canada, and New Zealand declared “persona non grata” has been described by former diplomats and experts of international relations as “irrational” and “unprecedented,” severely damaging Turkey’s national interests. (The action apparently was prompted by their joint letter calling for the release of a prominent civil society leader.) Finally, his decision to deepen relations with Russia and purchase its S-400 ballistic defense missile system has profoundly damaged relations with Turkey’s traditional allies in NATO, including the United States, developments considered by many analysts as seriously weakening the country’s national security.
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Keep Those Masks Handy
The new variant, called B.1.1.529, has 32 mutations in the part of the virus that attaches to human cells, called the spike protein — the target for existing vaccines and antibody treatments. A higher number of mutations in the spike protein may change its shape and means there is a greater risk that those vaccines and treatments won't be effective against it.
Now we have heard this before, and in the past with Delta it has been true. This is not to say, however that the variant will do that, but the concern is high.
Dr. Tom Peacock, virologist at Imperial College London who posted about the variant on Github Tuesday, said that the high numbers of mutations could be of "real concern" and there were combinations of mutations that he hadn't seen before in a single variant of the virus that causes COVID-19.
If You Want to Know More
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When Will They Ever Learn? When Will They Ever Learn?
Former President Donald Trump could pay $156,000 in legal expenses for every person arrested thus far in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol using the $105 million he has collected by spreading the same lies he used to incite the attack, but so far has not helped a single one of the nearly 700 rioters.
“Many people who went there that day are disappointed by his lack of support,” said one defense lawyer on the condition of anonymity so as not to hurt his Jan. 6 client’s case. “If President Trump was ever going to step up and step in, the time to do it is right now.”
Albert Watkins, the lawyer for the self-described “QAnon Shaman” who last week was sentenced to three and half years in federal prison for his role in the attack, was far more blunt speaking to reporters afterward about what Trump should do.
“I’d tell him, ’You know what? You’ve got a few fucking things to do. Including clearing this fucking mess up and taking care of a lot of the jackasses that you fucked up because of January 6,’” he said.
In all, 670 of Trump’s Jan. 6 mob face permanent criminal records and five- and six-figure legal bills for believing Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him, and acting on his requests that they do something about it.
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This Man Was a General?
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Burner Phones Bought With Cash? They Must Have Watched The Wire.
Organizers of the Jan. 6 rally near the White House where then-President Donald Trump spoke before the Capitol riot allegedly used burner phones to communicate with top Trump officials, including his son Eric Trump, Rolling Stone reported Tuesday.
Kylie Kremer, a leader of the March for Trump group that helped organized the rally at the Ellipse, reportedly told an aide to buy three burner phones during the planning of the event and said it was of “utmost importance” that they were paid for with cash.
So-called burner phones are cheap, prepaid mobile phones typically purchased for temporary use to protect the user’s anonymity.
Kremer used one of the phones to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials, including Eric Trump and wife Lara Trump, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokesperson, three sources involved with the event told Rolling Stone.
A second phone was given to Kremer’s mother, Amy Kremer, another key rally organizer, a member of the March for Trump team told the magazine. The source said they didn’t know who the third phone was for.
The phones were reportedly used for any conversations between Kylie Kremer and the White House or Trump family, with many crucial planning discussions taking place on them.
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When Harry Met Santa
Created By the Norwegian Post Office
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It Cost Them More to Replace the Street Signs.
Alabama's capital city last month removed the Confederate president's name from an avenue and renamed it after a lawyer known for his work during the civil rights movement.
Now the state attorney general says the city must pay a fine or face a lawsuit for violating a state law protecting Confederate monuments and other longstanding memorials.
Montgomery last month changed the name of Jeff Davis Avenue to Fred D. Gray Avenue. Gray, who grew up on that same street, represented Rosa Parks and others in cases that fought Deep South segregation practices and was dubbed by Martin Luther King Jr. as “the chief counsel for the protest movement."
The Alabama attorney general’s office sent a Nov. 5 letter to Montgomery officials saying the city must pay a $25,000 fine by Dec. 8, “otherwise, the attorney general will file suit on behalf of the state.”
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If You Have a Lot to Be Thankful For, Remember ...
As Giving Tuesday nears, more than 26 million people in America work for companies with charitable-donation matching programs, yet as much as $7 billion in donations from those companies go unused every year.
One of the biggest reasons for this is simple: People don't know their employer has one of these programs.
Countless companies have donation-matching programs. The idea reportedly dates to 1954, when General Electric created the first matching donations program. Today, these programs are common.
According to DoubleTheDonation, which works with companies to help maximize their programs, 65% of Fortune 500 companies offer matching-donation programs – from Disney to Apple to American Express — and more than 26 million people work for companies of all sizes that have these programs.
Companies such as DoubleTheDonation or BrightFunds offer tools to help companies streamline the donation process for employees, whether you're looking to create your own fundraiser, set up a recurring donation or request a match for a recent donation you've made.
However, many employees never take advantage of these programs. According to DoubleTheDonation, while $2 billion to $3 billion is donated through matching programs annually, anywhere from $4 billion to $7 billion in matching donation funds goes unclaimed every year.
That is a staggering amount of money being left on the table. An additional $7 billion in the hands of charities around the country could have a seismic impact. It could change the world for the better in incalculable ways.
Beautiful Coal...Not Really
A fire at a coal mine in Russia's Siberia killed 11 people and injured more than 40 on Thursday, with dozens of others remaining trapped, authorities said.
Efforts to rescue those trapped in the mine were halted on Thursday afternoon because of an explosion threat, and rescuers were rushed out of the mine, administrators of the mine told the Interfax news agency.
The blaze broke out in the Kemerovo region in southwestern Siberia. Russia's state Tass news agency reported, citing an unnamed emergency official, that coal dust caught fire, and smoke quickly filled the Listvyazhnaya mine through the ventilation system.
Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Coal Miner?
A Mind That's Weak and a Back That's Strong
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The Manhattan DA Won't Be Serving Calamari This Thanksgiving
The Manhattan district attorney is not planning to charge Trump Organization Chief Operating Officer Matthew Calamari in a fraud case in which the former U.S. president's firm and its chief financial officer have been charged, Calamari's lawyer said.
"Mr. Calamari is pleased that the District Attorney's office has indicated that it has no present intention to bring charges against him. That is the fair and appropriate decision. He has committed no crimes and led an exemplary life", Calamari's lawyer Nicholas Gravante said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to comment.
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Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People Fully Vaccinated | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Nov 24 | 898,833 | 231,367,686 | 196,168,756 | ||
| Nov 23 | 1,126,545 | 230,669,289 | 195,973,992 | 94,266 | 982 |
| Nov 22 | 1,521,815 | 230,732,565 | 196,398,948 | 93,668 | 1,009 |
| Nov 21 | 1,774,196 | 230,298,744 | 196,284,442 | 91,021 | 985 |
| Nov 20 | 2,136,513 | 229,837,421 | 196,128,496 | 90,823 | 996 |
| Nov 19 | 1,952,717 | 229,291,004 | 195,920,566 | 92,852 | 1,047 |
| Nov 18 | 1,870,564 | 228,570,531 | 195,713,107 | 94,260 | 1,069 |
| Nov 17 | 1,811,047 | 228,175,638 | 195,612,365 | 88,482 | 1,032 |
| Nov 16 | 1,608,906 | 227,691,941 | 195,435,688 | 85,944 | 1,028 |
| Nov 15 | 1,582,519 | 227,133,617 | 195,275,904 | 83,671 | 1,029 |
| Nov 14 | 1,375,998 | 226,607,653 | 195,120,470 | 80,823 | 1,043 |
| Nov 13 | 1,370,279 | 226,157,226 | 194,951,106 | 80,590 | 1,049 |
| Nov 12 | 1,335,066 | 225,606,197 | 194,747,839 | 78,552 | 1,038 |
| Nov 11 | No Data | 73,218 | 999 | ||
| Nov 10 | 1,316,294 | 224,660,453 | 194,382,921 | 76,458 | 1,051 |
| Nov 9 | 1,316,228 | 224,257,467 | 194,168,611 | 74,584 | 1,078 |
| Nov 8 | 1,300,925 | 223,944,369 | 194,001,108 | 73,312 | 1,078 |
| Nov 7 | 1,265,361 | 223,629,671 | 193,832,584 | 71,867 | 1,068 |
| Nov 6 | 1,254,975 | 223,245,121 | 193,627,929 | 71,327 | 1,079 |
| Nov 5 | 1,283,684 | 222,902,939 | 193,425,862 | 71,517 | 1,071 |
| Nov 4 | 1,188,564 | 222,591,394 | 193,227,813 | 71,241 | 1,102 |
| Nov 3 | 1,068,184 | 222,268,786 | 192,931,486 | 70,431 | 1,109 |
| Nov 2 | 1,112,624 | 221,961,370 | 192,726,406 | 71,029 | 1,130 |
| Nov 1 | 1,243,313 | 221,760,691 | 192,586,927 | 74,798 | 1,190 |
| Oct 31 | 1,203,517 | 221,520,153 | 192,453,500 | 71,207 | 1,151 |
| Oct 30 | 1,114,502 | 221,221,467 | 192,244,927 | 71,690 | 1,156 |
| Oct 29 | 1,008,247 | 220,860,887* | 191,997,869 | 69,197 | 1,104 |
| Oct 28 | 1,086,543 | 221,348,530 | 191,242,432 | 68,177 | 1,086 |
| Oct 27 | 959,348 | 220,936,118 | 190,990,750 | 68,792 | 1,129 |
| Oct 26 | 796,148 | 220,648,845 | 190,793,100 | 68,151 | 1,098 |
| Oct 25 | 786,321 | 220,519,217 | 190,699,790 | 65,953 | 1,159 |
| Oct 24 | 768,503 | 220,351,217 | 190,578,704 | 59,129 | 1,122 |
| Feb 16 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | |
| % of Total Population | 69.7% | 59.1% |
| % of Population 12+ | 80.3% | 69.1% |
| % of Population 18+ | 82.2% | 71.0% |
| % of Population 65+ | 99.9% | 86.1% |
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A One-Month Surge in Vaccinations Seems to Have Ended
I guess most of the folks who wanted boosters have got them. Vaccinating kids seems to be continuing.
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Do the English Really Want Their Sons to Grow Up to Be Time Lords?
A Tory MP has linked young men turning to crime to women playing traditionally male roles in TV and film.
Nick Fletcher said "female replacements" in shows like Doctor Who were robbing boys of good role models.
The only characters they had to look up to were gangsters the Krays and Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders, he said.
"Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?," he told MPs taking part in a debate on International Men's Day.
His comments were met with surprise by Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds, who said she thought she had "misheard" him.
The reason boys turned to a life of crime was "far more complex" than "who should be the next 007", she added.
Tommy Shelby is Cool. He is Brilliant and a Good Leader. Of Course, There is That Violence and Crime Thing.
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I Just Don't See This
A hospital patient will become the first person in the world to have a 3D-printed prosthetic eye.
Steve Verze, from Hackney, east London, will receive the eye on Thursday at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
It is hoped the eye will be more realistic than a traditional acrylic prosthetic eye.
It will also cut the time it takes for patients to be fitted with their prosthetics in half, from six weeks to three.
"I've needed a prosthetic since I was 20, and I've always felt self-conscious about it," said Mr Verze, who is in his 40s.
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WTF Was This Judge Thinking? Or Drinking?
Just days after India's Supreme Court struck down a controversial order that cleared a man of sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl because "there was no skin-to-skin contact" with the victim, another judgement that reduced the jail term of a man convicted of forcing a 10-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him has caused outrage.
The order, which preceded the landmark Supreme Court ruling by a day but has only now been reported, was pronounced by the Allahabad high court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The crime dates back to 2016 when the man had visited the child's home and taken him to a local temple where he had sexually abused him. He had given the child 20 rupees (27 cents; 20 pence) to keep quiet about the assault and threatened him with consequences if he reported it.
A trial court in August 2018 found the man guilty of "aggravated penetrative sexual assault" under the stringent Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act and handed him a 10-year jail sentence.
The man appealed and last week, the high court judge reduced his jail term to seven years, saying that under the law, the assault was not "aggravated" - implying that the crime was less serious than the trial court had deemed it to be.
Legal experts have questioned the judgment, saying there are several factors in Pocso Act that make an assault "aggravated", one of which is if the victim is under 12.
You Don't Need To Be a Legal Expert to Question the Judgement
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He's Going to Need It To Adjust to Life Outside.
Thousands of people are raising money online for a Missouri man who served 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Kevin Strickland, 62, was exonerated Tuesday morning after serving decades at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Strickland was convicted in 1979 of one count of capital murder and two counts of second-degree murder in a triple homicide. He received a 50-year life sentence without the possibility for parole for a crime that, over the years, he maintained he had not been involved in.
Senior Judge James Welsh dismissed all criminal counts against Strickland. His release makes his confinement the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history and one of the longest in the nation, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.
The Midwest Innocence Project created a GoFundMe account to help Strickland restart his life, since he doesn't qualify for help from the state of Missouri.
In Missouri, only those exonerated through DNA testing are eligible for a $50 per day of post-conviction confinement, according to the Innocence Project. That was not the case for Strickland.
As of Thursday morning, over $800,000 have been raised for Strickland.
The fund was created over the summer with a goal of raising $7,500, which the fund says would amount to approximately $175 dollars for every year Strickland spent wrongfully convicted.
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All We Can Come Up With Are Some Big Balloons?
As Americans feast their eyes on a full-blown Thanksgiving Day parade after a two-year Covid absence, nearly 6,000 miles away Egypt is set to revive a very different cultural tradition that has not been seen for several thousand years.
The country is set to open the 3,000-year-old Avenue of Sphinxes to the public Thursday in an elaborate ceremony in the southern city of Luxor that follows decades of excavation efforts.
The ancient walkway, nearly two miles long and about 250 feet wide, was once named “The Path of God.” It connects the Temple of Luxor with the Temple of Karnak, just up the Nile river to the north.
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When You Were 13, Could You Spell "Gerrymander"? Can You Today?
At 13 years old, DJ Horton can’t vote or even drive a car, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming a prominent voice in Georgia’s redistricting process.
The middle school student and aspiring politician from Gwinnett County testified at two redistricting hearings hosted by the state Legislature this year. This month, Rep. Derrick Jackson, a Democrat from Tyrone, Georgia, quoted him during floor remarks about the maps; Horton was also invited by his state senator earlier this month to speak at a committee hearing about proposed state Legislature maps.
“On behalf of future young Georgia voters across this state, I am asking you — in fact, I am begging you — to reconsider the redistricting maps that have been drawn,” he said at that hearing. “This is not a right or left issue; this is a right or wrong issue.”
Horton is one of the dozens of teenagers mobilizing and testifying in Georgia’s redistricting process this year, juggling finals and extracurriculars with special legislative sessions and injecting an unusual level of youth engagement into a typically wonky, insiders' political routine.
In the last few years, a surge of interest in redistricting has raised awareness about the effects of gerrymandering and propelled many states to revamp their map-drawing processes, prompting more young people to get involved around the country. Middle school students in New York created an algorithm for drawing maps, while North Carolina college students lobbied against the gerrymandering that split their campuses into multiple districts.
Youth voting also surged in the 2020 election and carried into the critical January runoffs in Georgia, where Democrats — fueled in part by young voters of color — were able to help flip two Senate seats in Georgia.
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This Firing is VILE!
An academic in Virginia whose research on “minor-attracted people” sparked threats and a petition calling for their removal announced their resignation Wednesday, university officials and the scholar said in a joint statement.
Allyn Walker will remain on leave until they step down as an assistant professor of criminal justice and sociology at Old Dominion University in May.
"We have concluded that this outcome is the best way to move forward," university President Brian Hemphill said in the statement.
He added that he hoped the move will help bring "closure" as the school continues efforts "toward healing and civil discourse."
Walker, who said in Wednesday’s statement that their research was intended to prevent child sexual abuse, attributed the backlash to their trans identity and mischaracterizations promoted online and by some media outlets.
The petition, signed by nearly 15,000 people, was started after Walker gave an interview about their book, "A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity," published by University of California Press in June.
The publisher described the book, which studies people who are attracted to minors and don't act on the attraction, as "challenging widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors — often referred to as ‘pedophiles’ — are necessarily also predators and sex offenders.”
We Need To Know the Facts. Getting Angry About Them Won't Protect Us.
Should We Have Arrested This Pedophile?
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Mater Dumb
A teenager suffered brain damage and other injuries from a brutal high school football hazing ritual, according to a lawsuit against a prominent Southern California school and the Catholic diocese.
The anonymous plaintiff, a player for Mater Dei High School born in 2004, filed the civil action Tuesday through his anonymous guardian in Orange County Superior Court. Mater Dei, of Santa Ana, southeast of Los Angeles, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange are named as defendants in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News.
While he was preparing for the football team’s Covid-delayed spring season, the youngster on Feb. 4 engaged with his teammates in a game of “Bodies,” a Mater Dei ritual in which one student punches another as many times as possible before the person surrenders, according to the complaint filed by Costa Mesa-based lawyer Brian L. Williams.
The plaintiff was struck multiple times in the face and the head during the hazing, leading to permanent scars and a “traumatic brain injury” marked by “pain, slurred speech and cognitive dysfunction,” Williams wrote.
The lawsuit alleges that during the beating, the victim, who is white, was called the N-word several times by his attacker and another teammate.
The complaint said Monarchs coach Bruce Rollinson is well aware of the hazing rituals. He is not named as a defendant.
Why Not? Rollinson IS Responsible.
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It May Not Be Justice, But It Is Better Than What Happened With Rittenhouse.
I Like the Idea That the Celebration was Led By Black Ministers. No Reports on How Clean Their Toenails Were.
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Give a Prayer for This Turkey on Thanksgiving
Erdoğan had promised that this new form of government would be more efficient in addressing the country’s problems and that it would bring about greater prosperity for the country. In 2018, he was re-elected as president for a five-year term with a comfortable majority and proceeded single handedly to execute the transition to the new system.
However, as the regime evolved to one-man rule, Erdoğan’s promises never materialized. The economy markedly deteriorated. The value of the Turkish currency weakened from 2.18 Turkish Lira (TL) to the U.S. dollar (USD) in August 2014, when he was first elected president, to more than 11 TL by mid-November, losing 70 percent of its value against the dollar since Erdoğan in 2015 warned that those who invest in the U.S. currency would lose money. Such a precipitous drop has also been reflected in the decline of Turkish GDP per capita from more than $12,000 in 2014 to $8,500 in 2020. The Turkish public has had to content itself with ever-falling living standards aggravated by inflation, high unemployment, and poor management of the COVID pandemic.
The political scene is marked by diminished media freedoms, severely weakened judicial independence, and a repressive environment that have placed Turkey at the very top of the list of countries, after Mali, experiencing the sharpest declines in freedoms in the last 10 years. An aggressive Turkish foreign policy based on confrontation rather than diplomacy has left the country isolated regionally – it has no ambassadorial representation in a string of key countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Israel. His most recent move to have 10 ambassadors from the United States, several European countries, Canada, and New Zealand declared “persona non grata” has been described by former diplomats and experts of international relations as “irrational” and “unprecedented,” severely damaging Turkey’s national interests. (The action apparently was prompted by their joint letter calling for the release of a prominent civil society leader.) Finally, his decision to deepen relations with Russia and purchase its S-400 ballistic defense missile system has profoundly damaged relations with Turkey’s traditional allies in NATO, including the United States, developments considered by many analysts as seriously weakening the country’s national security.
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Keep Those Masks Handy
The new variant, called B.1.1.529, has 32 mutations in the part of the virus that attaches to human cells, called the spike protein — the target for existing vaccines and antibody treatments. A higher number of mutations in the spike protein may change its shape and means there is a greater risk that those vaccines and treatments won't be effective against it.
Now we have heard this before, and in the past with Delta it has been true. This is not to say, however that the variant will do that, but the concern is high.
Dr. Tom Peacock, virologist at Imperial College London who posted about the variant on Github Tuesday, said that the high numbers of mutations could be of "real concern" and there were combinations of mutations that he hadn't seen before in a single variant of the virus that causes COVID-19.
If You Want to Know More
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When Will They Ever Learn? When Will They Ever Learn?
Former President Donald Trump could pay $156,000 in legal expenses for every person arrested thus far in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol using the $105 million he has collected by spreading the same lies he used to incite the attack, but so far has not helped a single one of the nearly 700 rioters.
“Many people who went there that day are disappointed by his lack of support,” said one defense lawyer on the condition of anonymity so as not to hurt his Jan. 6 client’s case. “If President Trump was ever going to step up and step in, the time to do it is right now.”
Albert Watkins, the lawyer for the self-described “QAnon Shaman” who last week was sentenced to three and half years in federal prison for his role in the attack, was far more blunt speaking to reporters afterward about what Trump should do.
“I’d tell him, ’You know what? You’ve got a few fucking things to do. Including clearing this fucking mess up and taking care of a lot of the jackasses that you fucked up because of January 6,’” he said.
In all, 670 of Trump’s Jan. 6 mob face permanent criminal records and five- and six-figure legal bills for believing Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him, and acting on his requests that they do something about it.
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This Man Was a General?
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Burner Phones Bought With Cash? They Must Have Watched The Wire.
Organizers of the Jan. 6 rally near the White House where then-President Donald Trump spoke before the Capitol riot allegedly used burner phones to communicate with top Trump officials, including his son Eric Trump, Rolling Stone reported Tuesday.
Kylie Kremer, a leader of the March for Trump group that helped organized the rally at the Ellipse, reportedly told an aide to buy three burner phones during the planning of the event and said it was of “utmost importance” that they were paid for with cash.
So-called burner phones are cheap, prepaid mobile phones typically purchased for temporary use to protect the user’s anonymity.
Kremer used one of the phones to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials, including Eric Trump and wife Lara Trump, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokesperson, three sources involved with the event told Rolling Stone.
A second phone was given to Kremer’s mother, Amy Kremer, another key rally organizer, a member of the March for Trump team told the magazine. The source said they didn’t know who the third phone was for.
The phones were reportedly used for any conversations between Kylie Kremer and the White House or Trump family, with many crucial planning discussions taking place on them.
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When Harry Met Santa
Created By the Norwegian Post Office
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It Cost Them More to Replace the Street Signs.
Alabama's capital city last month removed the Confederate president's name from an avenue and renamed it after a lawyer known for his work during the civil rights movement.
Now the state attorney general says the city must pay a fine or face a lawsuit for violating a state law protecting Confederate monuments and other longstanding memorials.
Montgomery last month changed the name of Jeff Davis Avenue to Fred D. Gray Avenue. Gray, who grew up on that same street, represented Rosa Parks and others in cases that fought Deep South segregation practices and was dubbed by Martin Luther King Jr. as “the chief counsel for the protest movement."
The Alabama attorney general’s office sent a Nov. 5 letter to Montgomery officials saying the city must pay a $25,000 fine by Dec. 8, “otherwise, the attorney general will file suit on behalf of the state.”
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If You Have a Lot to Be Thankful For, Remember ...
As Giving Tuesday nears, more than 26 million people in America work for companies with charitable-donation matching programs, yet as much as $7 billion in donations from those companies go unused every year.
One of the biggest reasons for this is simple: People don't know their employer has one of these programs.
Countless companies have donation-matching programs. The idea reportedly dates to 1954, when General Electric created the first matching donations program. Today, these programs are common.
According to DoubleTheDonation, which works with companies to help maximize their programs, 65% of Fortune 500 companies offer matching-donation programs – from Disney to Apple to American Express — and more than 26 million people work for companies of all sizes that have these programs.
Companies such as DoubleTheDonation or BrightFunds offer tools to help companies streamline the donation process for employees, whether you're looking to create your own fundraiser, set up a recurring donation or request a match for a recent donation you've made.
However, many employees never take advantage of these programs. According to DoubleTheDonation, while $2 billion to $3 billion is donated through matching programs annually, anywhere from $4 billion to $7 billion in matching donation funds goes unclaimed every year.
That is a staggering amount of money being left on the table. An additional $7 billion in the hands of charities around the country could have a seismic impact. It could change the world for the better in incalculable ways.
- Ask if your company has a donation-matching program. If they do, learn more about it and take advantage of it. If they don't, ask why and then ask them to consider starting one.
Then tell your friends, family and coworkers to do the same thing.
Beautiful Coal...Not Really
A fire at a coal mine in Russia's Siberia killed 11 people and injured more than 40 on Thursday, with dozens of others remaining trapped, authorities said.
Efforts to rescue those trapped in the mine were halted on Thursday afternoon because of an explosion threat, and rescuers were rushed out of the mine, administrators of the mine told the Interfax news agency.
The blaze broke out in the Kemerovo region in southwestern Siberia. Russia's state Tass news agency reported, citing an unnamed emergency official, that coal dust caught fire, and smoke quickly filled the Listvyazhnaya mine through the ventilation system.
Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Coal Miner?
A Mind That's Weak and a Back That's Strong
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The Manhattan DA Won't Be Serving Calamari This Thanksgiving
The Manhattan district attorney is not planning to charge Trump Organization Chief Operating Officer Matthew Calamari in a fraud case in which the former U.S. president's firm and its chief financial officer have been charged, Calamari's lawyer said.
"Mr. Calamari is pleased that the District Attorney's office has indicated that it has no present intention to bring charges against him. That is the fair and appropriate decision. He has committed no crimes and led an exemplary life", Calamari's lawyer Nicholas Gravante said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to comment.
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