Post by mhbruin on Jan 24, 2022 10:07:53 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 534 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 18)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty bad. There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers blasted President Joe Biden and his “fake White House” in an anti-vaccine rant that also seemed to question the 2020 election result.
“When the president of the United States says, ‘This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ it’s because him and his constituents, which — I don’t know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking — but I guess he got 81 million votes,” the NFL star told ESPN before his season ended in a playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday.
“But when you say stuff like that, and then you have the CDC, which — how do you even trust them — but then they come out and talk about 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities,” he continued. “And you still have this fake White House set saying that this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated. That’s not helping the conversation.”
Hey Robert. You Can Go to Haiti Where Almost No One is Vaccinated. You Don't Even Have to Climb a Wall.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted wild and unfounded conspiracy theories during an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Washington, D.C., at one point likening the experience of anti-vaxxers to victims of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy said of the young Jewish writer whose diary was published after she died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. “I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father, and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible — many died doing it, but it was possible.”
Kennedy, the son of U.S. senator and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1968, has become a leading figure in the movement against vaccinations amid the coronavirus pandemic. He frequently shares misinformation and unfounded claims against vaccines.
“Bill Gates and his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet, 24 hours a day,” Kennedy claimed on Sunday, without proof. “They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior — digital currencies that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply.”
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Ready For Bannon Bucks? He Controls Who Wins and Loses.
Extremist Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon, who was indicted for allegedly bilking MAGA supporters in a multi-million-dollar “build the wall” scheme (then pardoned by Trump), has taken a “strategic partnership” position in a cryptocurrency — and experts are already concerned, Mother Jones reports.
The former White House strategist, along with ex-Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, announced a prominent role in the crypto coin called $FJB — which stands for “Fuck Joe Biden” — on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
Bannon has touted $FJB on the podcast as the “currency for the MAGA movement.” Epshteyn called investment in the coin a “primal political scream” for the “deplorables.”
Crypto experts pointed out that every purchase directly boosts the value of Bannon’s and Epshteyn’s holdings, which they touted as significant. According to Mother Jones, the currency is also designed to give operators an unusual amount of power to block coin traders from selling their tokens.
The code for $FJB allows the currency’s operators to lock an owner’s token balance, according to crypto expert Simon de la Rouviere (and others), who reviewed the code for Mother Jones.
But those same constraints don’t apply to operators. That means if the price for $FJB started to drop, for example, the coin’s operators could stop some token holders from bailing, while the operators could sell off their own holdings before their investment tanked. The magazine noted that some $FJB owners have already complained that their transactions were frozen.
The QOP Is Always Nominated
In November, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, was one of 205 House Republicans to vote against the bipartisan, $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, calling it irresponsible and the "Green New Deal in disguise."
On Friday, he took to Twitter to tout funding from the bill he voted against -- highlighting a $70 million expansion of the Port of Virginia in Norfolk -- one of the busiest and deepest ports in the United States.
Wittman, who deleted the tweet Friday shortly after ABC News reached out to his office for comment, is the latest member of a growing group of Republicans celebrating new initiatives they originally opposed on the floor.
Shortly after voting against the measure last fall, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Alabama, celebrated its hundreds of millions in funding for a stalled highway project in Birmingham.
Last week, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, touted new funding for a flood control project from the package, which she opposed last year, decrying it at the time as a "so-called infrastructure bill."
Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, a freshman lawmaker who also voted against the infrastructure bill, celebrating new "game-changing" funding to upgrade locks along the Upper Mississippi Rive
What An Ego! I Of Newt.
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, stoked outrage on Sunday by predicting members of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack will be imprisoned if Republicans retake the chamber this year.
Calling the members of the 6 January committee “wolves [who] are going to find out that they’re now sheep”, he said that if Republicans take Congress in November, “this is all going to come crashing down … they’re the ones who in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking”.
One of two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney, said: “A former speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent attack on our Capitol and our constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.”
COVID Testing For Fun and Profit?
The FBI on Saturday searched the headquarters of a nationwide string of coronavirus testing sites known as the Center for COVID Control.
The company and its main lab, which has been reimbursed more than $124 million from the federal government for coronavirus testing, are under investigation by state and federal officials. The company and lab are registered at the same address in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.
Gonzo Gonzaga Grad Gets a Goodbye
Gonzaga has suspended John Stockton’s basketball season tickets after the Hall of Fame point guard refused to comply with the university's mask mandate.
Stockton, one of Gonzaga's most prominent alums, confirmed the move in a Saturday interview with The Spokesman-Review.
“Basically, it came down to, they were asking me to wear a mask to the games and being a public figure, someone a little bit more visible, I stuck out in the crowd a little bit,” Stockton said. “And therefore they received complaints and felt like from whatever the higher-ups — those weren’t discussed, but from whatever it was higher up — they were going to have to either ask me to wear a mask or they were going to suspend my tickets.”
Stockton has come out against COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates and other protective measures. Last June, he participated in a documentary titled “COVID and the Vaccine: Truth, Lies and Misconceptions Revealed.”
In the interview with the Spokane newspaper, Stockton claimed without evidence that more than 100 professional athletes have died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead — professional athletes — the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said.
If You Have to Say You Don't Have Malicious Intent, You Probably Have Malicious Intent
Flyers containing an antisemitic conspiracy theory linking the COVID pandemic with several American Jews were distributed throughout Miami Beach Saturday night.
The flyer lists 14 prominent figures who work at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, COVID vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, investment firms BlackRock and Vanguard, and other organizations, identifying them as Jewish and, in one case, transgender.
At least one of them, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, was wrongly identified as Jewish.
Similar flyers are posted on various extremist groups’ websites and have also been distributed over the past few months in at least eight other states including Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont, according to local and national news outlets.
The flyers were folded inside plastic baggies and weighted down with stones or rice. A Miami Beach Police spokesman did not say where any of the ones in that city were left, but Mayor Dan Gelber said in a tweet that they appeared at “hundreds of homes in our community.”
The top of the flyer shows a Jewish star and a pentagram, a symbol commonly associated with satanism. They include a link to a white supremacist website with various Hitler speeches, conspiracy theories and other antisemitic content.
The bottom of the flyer claims “these flyers were distributed randomly and without malicious intent.”
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Today's Worst Town in the World Nominee
An Alabama town of just over 1,250 people saw more people arrested and accused of misdemeanors than it had residents in 2020, according to an investigation by The Birmingham News. Brookside, which is about 15 miles northeast of Birmingham, experienced a more than 640% increase in fines and forfeitures from 2018 to 2020. The number of vehicles towed jumped from 50 in 2018 to 789 in 2020, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Let’s call a duck a duck: The allegation here is police corruption. “Brookside officers have been accused in lawsuits of fabricating charges, using racist language and ‘making up laws’ to stack counts on passersby,” journalist John Archibald wrote. “Defendants must pay thousands in fines and fees – or pay for costly appeals to state court – and poorer residents or passersby fall into patterns of debt they cannot easily escape.”
Ramon Perez, who was ticketed for allegedly running a stop sign and driving 48 mph in a 40-mph zone, told The Birmingham News when he showed up to court on Dec. 2 to fight the tickets, there were so many people fighting citations like his that officers had to direct traffic into the court parking lot. Perez said in his case that he spotted the officer who stopped him a while before rolling past his patrol car. “I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” Perez said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”
Carla Crowder, director of an equity and justice nonprofit dubbed Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, called Brookside a “poster child for policing for profit.”
Why a Duck?
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SCOTUS Wants to Protect White People From Discrimination
The US Supreme Court has announced that it will consider whether university race-based admissions violate civil rights laws.
It will hear challenges to affirmative actions policies at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Both have faced lawsuits alleging admissions processes are discriminatory against Asian American or white applicants.
It may have far-reaching implications for colleges across the country.
The court has repeatedly upheld racially-conscious admissions, most recently at the University of Texas in 2016.
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If You Get the Chance, Drop the "K"
The Biden administration will soon be distributing 400 million N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile.
Americans will be able to pick up free N95 masks from various pharmacies and community health centers. The program will be “fully up and running by early February,” a White House official said, and each person will be limited to 3.
Well-fitting N95 masks give the best protection against the spread of Covid-19 compared to other masks, such as KN95 masks, disposable surgical masks and cloth masks, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
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That's Still Around $35,000 Too High
Cryptocurrencies continued their dramatic slide over the weekend, with bitcoin losing nearly half of its value since hitting its November high.
Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market value, tumbled about 8 percent on Saturday to trade just above $35,000. The coin hit a record high of $69,000 in November.
Bitcoin traded around $33,500 on Monday morning.
Meantime, ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, sank nearly 10 percent to trade around $2,400.
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Somebody Had a Bad Week
In Georgia…
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
In New York…
NEW YORK — The New York attorney general says her investigators have uncovered evidence that former President Donald Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other property to get loans and tax benefits.
In the Supreme Court:
The court’s decision was a brutal, and personally stinging, loss for Trump. And the arguments his own lawyers advanced may have made the defeat worse.
Trump lost the case in virtually record time. He sued the committee and the National Archives on Oct. 18, lost in the district court on Nov. 9, lost in the court of appeals on Dec. 9 and lost in the Supreme Court on Jan. 19. And so, today, the Jan. 6 committee has hundreds of documents Trump desperately wanted kept under wraps.
It’s hard to lose in so many courts so quickly — unless, I suppose, you’re Donald Trump contesting election results. So much losing, you almost have to feel sorry for the former guy.
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No-Action Noem
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Boosters Get a Boost from Qatar
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Row, Row, Row Your Boat. What Could Go Wrong?
The body of the French adventurer trying to row across the Atlantic has not been recovered, the Portuguese navy said Sunday, a day after his support team said he had been found dead in his boat.
"The search ended at the end of the day yesterday (Saturday) without it being possible to find the victim," said a statement from the navy on the search for 75-year-old Jean-Jacques Savin.
Questioned by AFP, a navy spokesman said that during the rescue operation, the team had had "strong reasons to believe that a body could be inside" the cabin of Savin's vessel, the Audacieux.
He had been hoping to reach the Caribbean, in his rowing boat, which was 26 feet long and five-and-a-half feet wide, with a rowing station at its center.
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Barr Hopes We Forget What a Scumbag He Is
Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, revealed Sunday that former Attorney General William Barr has spoken with investigators.
"We've had conversations with the former attorney general already. We have talked to Department of Defense individuals," Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said in an interview with "Face the Nation" when asked if the committee intended to speak with Barr about a draft executive order reportedly given to former President Donald Trump that would have directed the Defense Department to seize voting machines after he lost the 2020 election.
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Then They Can Wait For Merrick "Molasses" Garland
The U.S. House probe of the deadly assault on the Capitol will share with federal prosecutors any evidence of potential crimes aimed at pushing phony Republican electors in states won by Democratic President Joe Biden, the committee's chairman said on Sunday.
The House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 is looking for evidence that Republican officials in some states sought to nominate their own slates of electors, rather than those chosen by voters in 2020, panel chairman Representative Bernie Thompson told CBS News.
Republicans had publicly pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject official slates of electors to allow Republican state lawmakers to offer an alternate group of electors backing then-President Donald Trump. Pence rejected that plea.
"If we determine specifically individuals who did this, we will make the referral to the Justice Department," Thompson said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation. "We are concerned that documents have been filed saying they were individuals responsible for conducting and certifying elections and they're not. And when you falsify documents, in most instances, that's a criminal act."
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If You Can Build It They Will Come ... And Buy
Ford told its dealers in a memo that it is suspending customer orders for the Maverick pickup truck because it is already straining to fill a backlog, the WSJ reported.
The company will resume taking orders for the 2023 Maverick in the summer, the report said.
Ford did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Maverick compact pickup truck was launched with a gasoline-electric hybrid powertrain as standard equipment, a technology choice aimed at keeping the vehicle's starting price below $20,000.
The worldwide shortage of computer chips has left car manufacturers unable to complete assembly of some new vehicles. Suppy-chain and production disruptions have left auto dealers with reduced inventory levels.
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CDC doesn't do a good job of reporting around holidays.
Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People 2 or More Doses | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Jan 24 | |||||
| Jan 23 | 1,101,405 | 250,763,600 | 210,358,008 | ||
| Jan 22 | 1,002,322 | 250,568,431 | 210,229,586 | ||
| Jan 21 | 1,035,111 | 250,262,153 | 210,021,766 | 716,829 | 1,974 |
| Jan 20 | 1,094,988 | 250,028,635 | 209,842,610 | 726,870 | 1,843 |
| Jan 19 | 1,135,453 | 249,702,939 | 209,509,297 | 744,615 | 1,749 |
| Jan 18 | 1,158,537 | 249,393,487 | 209,312,770 | 755,095 | 1,669 |
| Jan 17 | No Data | 736,350 | 1,746 | ||
| Jan 16 | No Data | 771,131 | 1,851 | ||
| Jan 15 | 1,268,202 | 248,707,432 | 208,995,438 | 788,628 | 1,858 |
| Jan 14 | 1,286,773 | 248,338,448 | 208,791,862 | 798,335 | 1,784 |
| Jan 13 | 1,291,013 | 247,987,225 | 208,564,894 | 794,587 | 1,730 |
| Jan 12 | 1,234,672 | 247,695,845 | 208,182,657 | 782,765 | 1,729 |
| Jan 11 | 1,213,113 | 247,321,023 | 207,954,605 | 761,535 | 1,656 |
| Jan 10 | 1,307,445 | 247,051,363 | 207,796,335 | 750,996 | 1,633 |
| Jan 9 | 1,331,635 | 246,812,939 | 207,662,071 | 674,406 | 1,552 |
| Jan 8 | 1,286,783 | 246,447,823 | 207,452,448 | 680,330 | 1,544 |
| Jan 7 | 1,226,151 | 246,050,320 | 207,229,983 | 668,497 | 1,513 |
| Jan 6 | 1,164,127 | 245,653,518 | 207,016,514 | 614,552 | 1,350 |
| Jan 5 | 1,117,999 | 245,278,020 | 206,797,799 | 586,391 | 1,245 |
| Jan 4 | 1,093,005 | 244,947,293 | 206,581,659 | 554,328 | 1,238 |
| Jan 3 | No Data | 491,652 | 1,165 | ||
| Jan 2 | No Data | 438,082 | 1,174 | ||
| Jan 1 | No Data | 411,871 | 1,151 | ||
| Dec 31 | No Data | 391,098 | 1,135 | ||
| Dec 30 | 1,234,917 | 243,527,564 | 205,811,394 | 360,276 | 1,144 |
| Dec 29 | 1,042,911 | 243,182,423 | 205,638,307 | 316,277 | 1,100 |
| Dec 28 | 1,091,279 | 242,813,374 | 205,420,745 | 277,241 | 1,085 |
| Dec 27 | 1,034,442 | 242,433,620 | 205,196,973 | 240,408 | 1,096 |
| Dec 26 | No Data | 206,577 | 1,041 | ||
| Dec 25 | No Data | 196,511 | 1,053 | ||
| Dec 24 | No Data | 195,713 | 1,108 | ||
| Dec 23 | 1,189,954 | 241,520,561 | 204,740,321 | 192,453 | 1,199 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 75.5% | 64.4% | 39.9% |
| % of Population 5+ | 80.3% | 67.4% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 85.5% | 72.2% | 43.0% |
| % of Population 18+ | 87.4% | 73.8% | 54.4% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.2% | 63.0% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 18)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty bad. There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 134% | 149% | 158% | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 121% | 138% | 156% | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 112% | 127% | 145% | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 117% | 128% | 135% | 134% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 114% | 129% | 148% | 148% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 121% | 135% | 160% | 158% |
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers blasted President Joe Biden and his “fake White House” in an anti-vaccine rant that also seemed to question the 2020 election result.
“When the president of the United States says, ‘This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ it’s because him and his constituents, which — I don’t know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking — but I guess he got 81 million votes,” the NFL star told ESPN before his season ended in a playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday.
“But when you say stuff like that, and then you have the CDC, which — how do you even trust them — but then they come out and talk about 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities,” he continued. “And you still have this fake White House set saying that this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated. That’s not helping the conversation.”
Hey Robert. You Can Go to Haiti Where Almost No One is Vaccinated. You Don't Even Have to Climb a Wall.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted wild and unfounded conspiracy theories during an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Washington, D.C., at one point likening the experience of anti-vaxxers to victims of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy said of the young Jewish writer whose diary was published after she died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. “I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father, and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible — many died doing it, but it was possible.”
Kennedy, the son of U.S. senator and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1968, has become a leading figure in the movement against vaccinations amid the coronavirus pandemic. He frequently shares misinformation and unfounded claims against vaccines.
“Bill Gates and his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet, 24 hours a day,” Kennedy claimed on Sunday, without proof. “They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior — digital currencies that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply.”
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Ready For Bannon Bucks? He Controls Who Wins and Loses.
Extremist Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon, who was indicted for allegedly bilking MAGA supporters in a multi-million-dollar “build the wall” scheme (then pardoned by Trump), has taken a “strategic partnership” position in a cryptocurrency — and experts are already concerned, Mother Jones reports.
The former White House strategist, along with ex-Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, announced a prominent role in the crypto coin called $FJB — which stands for “Fuck Joe Biden” — on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
Bannon has touted $FJB on the podcast as the “currency for the MAGA movement.” Epshteyn called investment in the coin a “primal political scream” for the “deplorables.”
Crypto experts pointed out that every purchase directly boosts the value of Bannon’s and Epshteyn’s holdings, which they touted as significant. According to Mother Jones, the currency is also designed to give operators an unusual amount of power to block coin traders from selling their tokens.
The code for $FJB allows the currency’s operators to lock an owner’s token balance, according to crypto expert Simon de la Rouviere (and others), who reviewed the code for Mother Jones.
But those same constraints don’t apply to operators. That means if the price for $FJB started to drop, for example, the coin’s operators could stop some token holders from bailing, while the operators could sell off their own holdings before their investment tanked. The magazine noted that some $FJB owners have already complained that their transactions were frozen.
The QOP Is Always Nominated
In November, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, was one of 205 House Republicans to vote against the bipartisan, $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, calling it irresponsible and the "Green New Deal in disguise."
On Friday, he took to Twitter to tout funding from the bill he voted against -- highlighting a $70 million expansion of the Port of Virginia in Norfolk -- one of the busiest and deepest ports in the United States.
Wittman, who deleted the tweet Friday shortly after ABC News reached out to his office for comment, is the latest member of a growing group of Republicans celebrating new initiatives they originally opposed on the floor.
Shortly after voting against the measure last fall, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Alabama, celebrated its hundreds of millions in funding for a stalled highway project in Birmingham.
Last week, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, touted new funding for a flood control project from the package, which she opposed last year, decrying it at the time as a "so-called infrastructure bill."
Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, a freshman lawmaker who also voted against the infrastructure bill, celebrating new "game-changing" funding to upgrade locks along the Upper Mississippi Rive
What An Ego! I Of Newt.
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, stoked outrage on Sunday by predicting members of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack will be imprisoned if Republicans retake the chamber this year.
Calling the members of the 6 January committee “wolves [who] are going to find out that they’re now sheep”, he said that if Republicans take Congress in November, “this is all going to come crashing down … they’re the ones who in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking”.
One of two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney, said: “A former speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent attack on our Capitol and our constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.”
COVID Testing For Fun and Profit?
The FBI on Saturday searched the headquarters of a nationwide string of coronavirus testing sites known as the Center for COVID Control.
The company and its main lab, which has been reimbursed more than $124 million from the federal government for coronavirus testing, are under investigation by state and federal officials. The company and lab are registered at the same address in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.
Gonzo Gonzaga Grad Gets a Goodbye
Gonzaga has suspended John Stockton’s basketball season tickets after the Hall of Fame point guard refused to comply with the university's mask mandate.
Stockton, one of Gonzaga's most prominent alums, confirmed the move in a Saturday interview with The Spokesman-Review.
“Basically, it came down to, they were asking me to wear a mask to the games and being a public figure, someone a little bit more visible, I stuck out in the crowd a little bit,” Stockton said. “And therefore they received complaints and felt like from whatever the higher-ups — those weren’t discussed, but from whatever it was higher up — they were going to have to either ask me to wear a mask or they were going to suspend my tickets.”
Stockton has come out against COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates and other protective measures. Last June, he participated in a documentary titled “COVID and the Vaccine: Truth, Lies and Misconceptions Revealed.”
In the interview with the Spokane newspaper, Stockton claimed without evidence that more than 100 professional athletes have died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead — professional athletes — the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said.
If You Have to Say You Don't Have Malicious Intent, You Probably Have Malicious Intent
Flyers containing an antisemitic conspiracy theory linking the COVID pandemic with several American Jews were distributed throughout Miami Beach Saturday night.
The flyer lists 14 prominent figures who work at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, COVID vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, investment firms BlackRock and Vanguard, and other organizations, identifying them as Jewish and, in one case, transgender.
At least one of them, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, was wrongly identified as Jewish.
Similar flyers are posted on various extremist groups’ websites and have also been distributed over the past few months in at least eight other states including Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont, according to local and national news outlets.
The flyers were folded inside plastic baggies and weighted down with stones or rice. A Miami Beach Police spokesman did not say where any of the ones in that city were left, but Mayor Dan Gelber said in a tweet that they appeared at “hundreds of homes in our community.”
The top of the flyer shows a Jewish star and a pentagram, a symbol commonly associated with satanism. They include a link to a white supremacist website with various Hitler speeches, conspiracy theories and other antisemitic content.
The bottom of the flyer claims “these flyers were distributed randomly and without malicious intent.”
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Today's Worst Town in the World Nominee
An Alabama town of just over 1,250 people saw more people arrested and accused of misdemeanors than it had residents in 2020, according to an investigation by The Birmingham News. Brookside, which is about 15 miles northeast of Birmingham, experienced a more than 640% increase in fines and forfeitures from 2018 to 2020. The number of vehicles towed jumped from 50 in 2018 to 789 in 2020, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Let’s call a duck a duck: The allegation here is police corruption. “Brookside officers have been accused in lawsuits of fabricating charges, using racist language and ‘making up laws’ to stack counts on passersby,” journalist John Archibald wrote. “Defendants must pay thousands in fines and fees – or pay for costly appeals to state court – and poorer residents or passersby fall into patterns of debt they cannot easily escape.”
Ramon Perez, who was ticketed for allegedly running a stop sign and driving 48 mph in a 40-mph zone, told The Birmingham News when he showed up to court on Dec. 2 to fight the tickets, there were so many people fighting citations like his that officers had to direct traffic into the court parking lot. Perez said in his case that he spotted the officer who stopped him a while before rolling past his patrol car. “I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” Perez said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”
Carla Crowder, director of an equity and justice nonprofit dubbed Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, called Brookside a “poster child for policing for profit.”
Why a Duck?
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SCOTUS Wants to Protect White People From Discrimination
The US Supreme Court has announced that it will consider whether university race-based admissions violate civil rights laws.
It will hear challenges to affirmative actions policies at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Both have faced lawsuits alleging admissions processes are discriminatory against Asian American or white applicants.
It may have far-reaching implications for colleges across the country.
The court has repeatedly upheld racially-conscious admissions, most recently at the University of Texas in 2016.
--------------
If You Get the Chance, Drop the "K"
The Biden administration will soon be distributing 400 million N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile.
Americans will be able to pick up free N95 masks from various pharmacies and community health centers. The program will be “fully up and running by early February,” a White House official said, and each person will be limited to 3.
Well-fitting N95 masks give the best protection against the spread of Covid-19 compared to other masks, such as KN95 masks, disposable surgical masks and cloth masks, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
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That's Still Around $35,000 Too High
Cryptocurrencies continued their dramatic slide over the weekend, with bitcoin losing nearly half of its value since hitting its November high.
Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market value, tumbled about 8 percent on Saturday to trade just above $35,000. The coin hit a record high of $69,000 in November.
Bitcoin traded around $33,500 on Monday morning.
Meantime, ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, sank nearly 10 percent to trade around $2,400.
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Somebody Had a Bad Week
In Georgia…
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
In New York…
NEW YORK — The New York attorney general says her investigators have uncovered evidence that former President Donald Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other property to get loans and tax benefits.
In the Supreme Court:
The court’s decision was a brutal, and personally stinging, loss for Trump. And the arguments his own lawyers advanced may have made the defeat worse.
Trump lost the case in virtually record time. He sued the committee and the National Archives on Oct. 18, lost in the district court on Nov. 9, lost in the court of appeals on Dec. 9 and lost in the Supreme Court on Jan. 19. And so, today, the Jan. 6 committee has hundreds of documents Trump desperately wanted kept under wraps.
It’s hard to lose in so many courts so quickly — unless, I suppose, you’re Donald Trump contesting election results. So much losing, you almost have to feel sorry for the former guy.
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No-Action Noem
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Boosters Get a Boost from Qatar
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Row, Row, Row Your Boat. What Could Go Wrong?
The body of the French adventurer trying to row across the Atlantic has not been recovered, the Portuguese navy said Sunday, a day after his support team said he had been found dead in his boat.
"The search ended at the end of the day yesterday (Saturday) without it being possible to find the victim," said a statement from the navy on the search for 75-year-old Jean-Jacques Savin.
Questioned by AFP, a navy spokesman said that during the rescue operation, the team had had "strong reasons to believe that a body could be inside" the cabin of Savin's vessel, the Audacieux.
He had been hoping to reach the Caribbean, in his rowing boat, which was 26 feet long and five-and-a-half feet wide, with a rowing station at its center.
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Barr Hopes We Forget What a Scumbag He Is
Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, revealed Sunday that former Attorney General William Barr has spoken with investigators.
"We've had conversations with the former attorney general already. We have talked to Department of Defense individuals," Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said in an interview with "Face the Nation" when asked if the committee intended to speak with Barr about a draft executive order reportedly given to former President Donald Trump that would have directed the Defense Department to seize voting machines after he lost the 2020 election.
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Then They Can Wait For Merrick "Molasses" Garland
The U.S. House probe of the deadly assault on the Capitol will share with federal prosecutors any evidence of potential crimes aimed at pushing phony Republican electors in states won by Democratic President Joe Biden, the committee's chairman said on Sunday.
The House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 is looking for evidence that Republican officials in some states sought to nominate their own slates of electors, rather than those chosen by voters in 2020, panel chairman Representative Bernie Thompson told CBS News.
Republicans had publicly pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject official slates of electors to allow Republican state lawmakers to offer an alternate group of electors backing then-President Donald Trump. Pence rejected that plea.
"If we determine specifically individuals who did this, we will make the referral to the Justice Department," Thompson said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation. "We are concerned that documents have been filed saying they were individuals responsible for conducting and certifying elections and they're not. And when you falsify documents, in most instances, that's a criminal act."
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If You Can Build It They Will Come ... And Buy
Ford told its dealers in a memo that it is suspending customer orders for the Maverick pickup truck because it is already straining to fill a backlog, the WSJ reported.
The company will resume taking orders for the 2023 Maverick in the summer, the report said.
Ford did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Maverick compact pickup truck was launched with a gasoline-electric hybrid powertrain as standard equipment, a technology choice aimed at keeping the vehicle's starting price below $20,000.
The worldwide shortage of computer chips has left car manufacturers unable to complete assembly of some new vehicles. Suppy-chain and production disruptions have left auto dealers with reduced inventory levels.
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