Post by mhbruin on Feb 11, 2022 9:59:31 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 546 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Feb 9f)
January had NO rain or snow. February looks the same.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Dumber Than the Average Bear
An Oregon man took his own life after accidentally shooting his brother while loading a gun to fire at a bear on their property, police have said.
The man called 911 to report the tragedy, but turned the gun on himself before police arrived.
The incident took place on Tuesday morning in the community of Sunny Valley in rural Josephine County, just north of the border with California.
Neither of the men involved has been identified.
This Sounds Just Like the Tea Party Movement
Thurgood Marshall Attended Lincoln University and Howard Law School. Does the NYT Have a Problem With That?
Ontario, Ohio -- "O..io" -- It's an Easy Mistake to Make.
A man living in Ohio tried to divert Canadian police in Ottawa with a bogus bomb threat to show support for truckers in the country who are protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, the unidentified 20-year-old man actually called police in Ottawa, Ohio — a village in Putnam County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Toledo.
After he allegedly made his bogus bomb threat (to the wrong police department) this individual then followed up and called them again, falsely claiming he’d been shot. Upon being advised that his call would have to be forwarded to the authorities in Canada, a light bulb must have suddenly gone off. He sheepishly admitted to the police that he hadn’t been shot at all, and that he was simply trying to “divert the attention of Ottawa, Canada police.” According to Epstein, after realizing he had just made a bomb threat to an Ohio police department instead of one in Canada, the man then acknowledged he didn't really have a bomb and was "just trying to waste their time and resources because [he didn't] like their mask mandates.’”
Hate-Riot Front
In the early hours of June 24, 2021, four masked men in a black Jeep SUV arrived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and parked one block away from an intersection where five days earlier, on Juneteenth, artists and politicians had unveiled a statue of George Floyd. Surveillance cameras captured the men walking toward the bust, one of them shaking what appears to be a can of spray paint with one hand and carrying a stencil in the other. A red light, possibly from a GoPro camera, glowed on the chest of another masked man.
The New York Police Department said that these men then vandalized the statue, dumping paint over the bust of Floyd and stenciling its base with the address of a website belonging to a notorious extremist organization: Patriot Front.
Minutes later, the men returned to the Jeep and drove off into the night. Locals discovered the vandalism as the sun rose over Brooklyn. By that afternoon, news headlines broadcast the cruelty of the act — the defacement of a statue of a Black man by a white supremacist group in a predominantly Black neighborhood — across the country.
And it wasn’t just in New York: From Philadelphia to Louisville to Nashville to Austin to Portland, Oregon, Patriot Front has held brazen public demonstrations and vandalizations intended to get eyeballs on its white nationalist cause. In December, about 100 Patriot Front members marched through the National Mall in Washington, D.C., all dressed in khaki cargo pants, brown combat boots, navy blue jackets, white gaiters, sunglasses and beige baseball hats. Some carried shields and wore shin guards, prepared for violence.
The name “Patriot Front” is a rebrand — a variant that evolved from America’s burgeoning pandemic of Trump-era hate groups and cross-pollinated with far-right strains originating in Europe. Patriot Front grew out of another white supremacist organization called Vanguard America, which fractured not long after a man associated with the group, James Alex Fields, drove his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters during the infamous 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He killed one person and injured 19 others.
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Document Dump
Just in case you are having trouble keeping up with all this:
There must be a pattern here.
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White Dwarf. Shouldn't It Be "White Little Person" or "White Person of Short Stature"?
Researchers believe there may be a planet that could sustain life, in the vicinity of a dying sun.
If confirmed, this would be the first time that a potentially life-supporting planet has been found orbiting such a star, called a "white dwarf".
The planet was detected in the star's "habitable zone", where it's neither too cold nor too hot to sustain life.
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Punishing the Victim
Rebecca Hogue's boyfriend beat her toddler son to death while she was at work. So why is she the one being called a murderer?
In the early hours of New Year's Day 2020, Rebecca Hogue came home from a 12-hour shift at the Oklahoma casino where she worked as a cocktail waitress, crawled into bed next to her 2-year-old son Ryder, and her boyfriend, and drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, she woke to find that Ryder wasn't breathing. Her boyfriend, Christopher Trent, was at work. She called the police and panicked.
Bodycam footage of that day from emergency responders shows her trying in vain to perform CPR on her son, who was pronounced dead when he arrived at hospital.
A coroner's report later concluded that his cause of death was blunt-force trauma, and evidence from the home Hogue shared with Trent showed strands of Ryder's hair were found in the drywall.
Hogue says she didn't know any of that then. She called Trent, begging him to meet her at the hospital.
But he wouldn't respond to her texts or voice messages.
Four days later, police found Trent's body in the Wichita Mountains. He had died by an apparent suicide. A prosecutor would later make clear it was known that Trent had killed Ryder.
Carved into a tree near the site where his body was found were these words: Rebecca is innocent.
But with Trent dead, the investigation turned to the 29-year-old Hogue, who was charged with first-degree murder. In Oklahoma, parents who fail to protect their children from child abuse can be charged with the same crimes as the actual abuser.
"Failure to protect" laws, which exist in many US states, have drawn criticism from domestic violence experts who say in practice, they often criminalise victims of domestic abuse who may be too scared to leave.
Several pieces of evidence were not allowed into trial, which Hogue's pro-bono attorney Andrew Casey believes could have helped her case.
The tree-carving with the words "Rebecca is innocent" was considered hearsay, and a ban was placed on distributing those images.
The lead detective who investigated the murder was not allowed to give his opinion on the merits of the case, and an audio recording that captured him discussing it with a friend of Hogue was not allowed into court.
On the recording, obtained by the BBC, he admits that his team looked into the question of whether to lay charges and decided they did not have enough evidence for a "failure to protect" first-degree murder charge.
"We don't believe in this charge and there's a good chance she ends up in prison anyway because of the way the system is," Detective Sean Judy can be heard saying on the recording.
The district attorney's office chose to bypass police charges by asking a jury to ask a jury to decide if charges should be brought, which is allowed in some American jurisdictions, rather than bringing police charges. Ultimately, the jury decided charges were warranted.
And finally, the jury were not allowed to hear expert testimony about Hogue's previous experiences with domestic violence and how it could affect her, because she was not the one being physically abused by Trent.
Over the eight-day trial, prosecutors repeatedly showed graphic images of Ryder's dead body covered in bruises, including leaving a picture of his bruised genitals up for 10 minutes during closing arguments.
It took the jury less than two hours to convict.
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Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Inverted Yield Curve
Past may not be prologue for financial markets as the global economy continues to reel from the pandemic. But a traditional recession signal is still catching Wall Street's attention.
What's happening: The US government bond market sold off on Thursday alongside stocks following the news that inflation reached 7.5% in January — its highest level in four decades. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury, which moves opposite prices, shot above 2% for the first time since 2019. It was close to 1.5% at the end of last year.
Investors were particularly worried, however, about the yield on shorter-term US bonds like the two-year note, which has been rising even more dramatically. It's now above 1.5%, gaining about 110% so far in 2022.
But if yields on shorter-dated bonds jump above the 10-year — producing an "inverted yield curve" — that's a sign that investors expect a deterioration in near-term economic conditions and aggressive intervention from the Federal Reserve.
In 2018, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published research that found a yield curve inversion preceded every recession since 1955, producing a "false positive" just one time. (It looked specifically at the yield on one-year Treasuries.)
It Hasn't Happened -- Yet
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If It Weren't for the Committee: A Partial List
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Trump stole top secret documents and took them to Mar-a-Lago.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of credible claims the President of the United States tore up, burned, or otherwise destroyed or attempted to destroy documents required to be retained by law.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that the Trump Administration had a plan to use the military to seize every election machine in the country and conduct the Administration's own recount of votes.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Trump planned to appoint the now sanctioned (for fraudulent claims about the election), attorney Sidney Powell, as a special prosecutor into election fraud. Powell herself is now the subject of a criminal investigation.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that the Trump Campaign orchestrated the forging of fraudulent electoral college certificates and submitted the counterfeits to the National Archivist and Congress as authentic.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of the still hidden dealings at the Willard Hotel "war room" up to and through January 6th.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Jim Jordan lied when he said he did not talk to Trump the morning of January 6th. We would not know why Jim Jordan tried so hard to be on the Committee, to cover his own culpability.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of Sean Hannity's involvement, working with the Trump Administration, in efforts to overthrow the election results, or his ignored efforts to convince Trump to stop the insurrection.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of the Russia connected OAN's role in drafting documents planning a military coup to overturn the election results.
Volatile, Nasty to Women, Armed, and Dangerous. The Perfect QOP Candidate.
One warm fall evening in 2001, police in Irving, Texas, received an alarming call from Herschel Walker’s therapist. The football legend and current Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was “volatile,” armed and scaring his estranged wife at the suburban Dallas home they no longer shared.
Officers took cover outside, noting later that Walker had “talked about having a shoot-out with police.” Then they ordered the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and onetime Dallas Cowboy to step out of the home, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Much of what happened that day at the $1.9 million mansion remains shrouded from view because the report, which Irving police released to the AP only after ordered to do so by the Texas attorney general’s office, was extensively redacted.
The incident adds another layer to Walker’s already turbulent personal history, which includes his acknowledged struggles with mental health, violent outbursts and accusations that he repeatedly threatened his ex-wife. And it will test voters’ acceptance of Walker’s assertion that he has long since been a changed person.
Or Maybe This is the Perfect QOP Candidate. Armed, Violent, and White
Jim Lamon, a Republican candidate for senator in Arizona, drew widespread condemnation on Thursday for a campaign ad in which he shoots at actors portraying President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
Lamon plays a gun-slinging sheriff who blasts weapons out of the Democrats’ hands in the Western movie-style spot. The 70-second commercial dubs Biden “Old Joe,” Pelosi “Crazyface,” and Kelly “Shifty.”
“The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown,” Lamon says in the video that will reportedly air on television statewide on Sunday, including during the Super Bowl.
Do You Think the Members of Berkeley County West Virginians for Life Are White?
Delegate Danielle Walker, the only Black woman serving in the West Virginia Legislature, had just finished a busy day of committee meetings on the first day of Black History Month when she opened her inbox and found an email that would take her days to process.
The message came from Berkeley County West Virginians for Life, an anti-abortion group east of Walker’s district. In it appeared a graphic of a Ku Klux Klan member giving a Nazi salute with a message for the Democrat, who had recently introduced legislation to roll back West Virginia’s abortion restrictions.
“The idiot featured in the picture below is an ally of yours and holds the same beliefs you do that the killing of children look like you is a good thing,” the email read in part.
I Also Want to Know Who Is a Pedophile
Maybe They Thought He was a Bear
ABlack FedEx driver in Mississippi says he was making deliveries late last month when he was chased by a pair of white men, one of whom fired multiple bullets into his vehicle as he tried to escape them.
D'Monterrio Gibson, 24, said he believes the men pursued him because he is Black and because they thought he didn't belong in their neighborhood. Now he's asking the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to take the case from local police and for the men to face federal hate crime charges.
The incident has drawn comparisons to the encounter between Ahmaud Arbery, who was Black, and three white residents who chased him through a south Georgia neighborhood in a pair of pickup trucks for five minutes in February 2020.
Maybe They Thought They Were Beating a Bear
A top Republican state lawmaker announced Thursday a bipartisain committee to investigate the death of Ronald Greene, an unarmed Black motorist who died in 2019 following a brutal beating by Louisiana State Police whose troopers then covered it up.
Republican state House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said the committee was prompted by continuing questions about a State Police coverup of details surrounding Greene's death and Gov. John Bel Edwards' denial that he impeded any investigation.
"These events have raised serious questions regarding who knew what and when," Schexnayder said in a statement.
Greene's cause of death was first covered up by State Police troopers on the scene who said Greene died from injuries suffered in a car accident during their pursuit of him.
Last year, the Associated Press published videos showing State Police troopers beating, stunning and dragging Greene after a car chase in 2019 outside Monroe. “I’m sorry,” he pleaded, blood splashed on his skin and clothes. “I beat the ever-living f--- out of him,” one officer said in an audio recording. Greene stopped breathing soon after.
They Fired The Guy Who Tried to Do the Right Thing
Louisiana State Police trooper fired for speaking out about a Black man's death in custody and cover-up
The Louisiana State Police on Monday fired a trooper who helped expose how the department allegedly covered up the death of an unarmed Black motorist, Ronald Greene, in 2019.
The department fired Trooper Carl Cavalier for disloyalty, seeking publicity and other infractions related to his “openly critical” public statements about the Greene case, according to the termination letter.
“They’re trying to make an example out of me to keep people from speaking up,” Cavalier said in an interview. “It’s a horrible feeling because I worked so hard to be a part of the department.”
Cavalier was one of several police officers featured in a recent USA TODAY series on law enforcement’s blue wall of silence. The newspaper’s investigation found that departments around the country – especially in Louisiana – frequently retaliate against whistleblowers in order to hide misconduct. Cavalier is the latest officer who has faced additional repercussions after speaking to reporters, including one in Illinois who was ousted from his union.
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I Ordered a Chicken and An Egg From Amazon. I'll Let You Know Which One Comes First.
And Rotterdam residents are so riled up that more than 4,000 people have already signed up on a Facebook event page to throw rotten eggs at Bezos’ superyacht when it’s finished, most likely in early June. Organizer Pablo Strormann told NL Times that the egg-throwing event “started more as a joke among friends” after they heard the news about the possible dismantling of the city’s beloved Koningshaven Bridge, popularly known as De Hef. But what he said was originally intended to be a satirical message is “now getting way out of hand” after thousands of people responded to the event invite.
Strormann said he was particularly bothered by the double standard. "Normally it’s the other way around: If your ship doesn’t fit under a bridge, you make it smaller. But when you happen to be the richest person on Earth you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That’s ridiculous."
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They Know What You Did Last Summer
The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information collected about Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said. While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics about the data, the senators alleged the CIA had long hidden details about the program from the public and Congress.
Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico sent a letter to top intelligence officials calling for more details about the program to be declassified. Large parts of the letter, which was sent in April 2021 and declassified Thursday, and documents released by the CIA were blacked out. Wyden and Heinrich said the program operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.”
There have long been concerns about what information the intelligence community collects domestically, driven in part by previous violations of Americans’ civil liberties. The CIA and National Security Agency have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or U.S. businesses. But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ messages and data incidentally.
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How Many "F" Words Can You Come Up With in One Minute
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I'm Sorry, but There Are So Many Victims of Violence in the US More Needy Than 9/11 Families
President Biden began clearing a pathway Friday for releasing about $3.5 billion of frozen Afghan assets held in the United States to be used for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, while an equal amount would go to relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks.
The maneuvers, included in executive orders that Biden signed Friday, attempt to grapple with the financial implications related to Biden’s decision to end a 20-year war in Afghanistan. When the Taliban toppled the Afghanistan government last summer, it left uncertainty around Afghan Central Bank funds remaining in the United States.
The White House said in a statement that the move “is designed to provide a path for the funds to reach the people of Afghanistan, while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and malicious actors.”
The Biden administration in August froze a total of about $7 billion in Afghan government assets held at the New York Federal Reserve, blocking the Taliban from accessing the money. Additional funds totaling more than $3 billion are also frozen in other countries.
Maybe Use the Money to Help These Kids
COVID-19 has made tens of thousands of children orphans, and, in some cases, they're left with little resources to help them with their burdens.
A bill introduced in the California Legislature last month seeks to give children who are in this situation some hope for a better future, and one children welfare policy expert told ABC News this legislation could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the country.
Under California state Sen. Nancy Skinner's Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance, and Empowerment (HOPE) for Children Act, children who lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 and are in the state's foster care system or a low-income household would be eligible for a state-funded trust fund.
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They Have Already Broken a Ton of Laws. Who Thinks They Will Listen to an Injunction?
Authorities in Canada headed for court Friday in an attempt to break the bridge blockade by truckers protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions as parts shortages rippled through the auto industry on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.
The mayor of Windsor, Ontario, planned to seek an injunction at an afternoon hearing against members of the self-proclaimed Freedom Convoy who have used scores of pickup trucks to bottle up the Ambassador Bridge connecting the city to Detroit. The standoff entered its fifth day Friday.
Federal, provincial and local authorities have hesitated to forcibly remove the protesters there and elsewhere around the country, reflecting apparently a lack of manpower by local police, Canada's reverence for free speech, and fear of a violent backlash. Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens warned earlier this week that some of the truckers are “willing to die.”
They Have Already Proven They Are Willing to Die. They are Unvaccinated.
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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 | |
| Feb 11 | 568,820 | 251,755,851 | 213,563,173 | ||
| Feb 10 | 580,896 | 251,655,172 | 213,430,434 | 190,401 | 2,305 |
| Feb 9 | 591,786 | 251,467,303 | 213,246,140 | 215,418 | 2,313 |
| Feb 8 | 602,606 | 251,312,470 | 213,061,117 | 230,602 | 2,303 |
| Feb 7 | 611,742 | 251,176,199 | 212,920,278 | 247,319 | 2,404 |
| Feb 6 | 627,161 | 251,070,439 | 212,806,521 | 291,471 | 2,294 |
| Feb 5 | 655,591 | 250,915,858 | 212,657,682 | 298,890 | 2,331 |
| Feb 4 | 680,135 | 250,731,754 | 212,481,465 | 313,117 | 2,404 |
| Feb 3 | 719,986 | 250,593,665 | 212,336,183 | 343,563 | 2,371 |
| Feb 2 | 494,092 | 250,378,993 | 212,130,684 | 378,015 | 2,403 |
| Feb 1 | 510,477 | 250,184,240 | 211,954,555 | 415,552 | 2,369 |
| Jan 31 | 575,732 | 250,029,773 | 211,818,885 | 446,355 | 2,287 |
| Jan 30 | 603,030 | 249,892,470 | 211,695,131 | 497,296 | 2,234 |
| Jan 29 | 595,871 | 249,695,301 | 211,533,229 | 522,626 | 2,261 |
| Jan 28 | 626,946 | 249,473,925 | 211,343,818 | 543,016 | 2,265 |
| Jan 27 | 643,725 | 249,267,851 (I don't know why) | 211,162,083 | 577,748 | 2,300 |
| Jan 26 | 962,958 | 251,518,114 | 210,850,212 | 596,859 | 2,288 |
| Jan 25 | 1,011,603 | 251,289,667 | 210,682,471 | 627,294 | 2,246 |
| Jan 24 | 1,201,186 | 250,964,433 | 210,459,963 | 692,359 | 2,166 |
| Jan 23 | 1,101,405 | 250,763,600 | 210,358,008 | 663,908 | 1,936 |
| Jan 22 | 1,002,322 | 250,568,431 | 210,229,586 | 686,715 | 1,939 |
| 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 |
| 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 | 75.8% | 64.3% | 42.7% |
| % of Population 5+ | 80.6% | 68.4% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 85.6% | 72.9% | 44.1% |
| % of Population 18+ | 87.4% | 74.5% | 45.9% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.5% | 65.3% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Feb 9f)
January had NO rain or snow. February looks the same.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | 4 Weeks ago | 5 Weeks ago | 6 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 105% (59% of average for full season) | 113% | 124% | 134% | 149% | 158% | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 92% (51%) | 99% | 110% | 121% | 138% | 156% | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 84% (46%) | 91% | 101% | 112% | 127% | 145% | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 80% (58%) | 89% | 117% | 128% | 135% | 134% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 80% (57%) | 89% | 114% | 129% | 148% | 148% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 81% (57%) | 92% | 121% | 135% | 160% | 158% |
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Dumber Than the Average Bear
An Oregon man took his own life after accidentally shooting his brother while loading a gun to fire at a bear on their property, police have said.
The man called 911 to report the tragedy, but turned the gun on himself before police arrived.
The incident took place on Tuesday morning in the community of Sunny Valley in rural Josephine County, just north of the border with California.
Neither of the men involved has been identified.
This Sounds Just Like the Tea Party Movement
Thurgood Marshall Attended Lincoln University and Howard Law School. Does the NYT Have a Problem With That?
Ontario, Ohio -- "O..io" -- It's an Easy Mistake to Make.
A man living in Ohio tried to divert Canadian police in Ottawa with a bogus bomb threat to show support for truckers in the country who are protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, the unidentified 20-year-old man actually called police in Ottawa, Ohio — a village in Putnam County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Toledo.
After he allegedly made his bogus bomb threat (to the wrong police department) this individual then followed up and called them again, falsely claiming he’d been shot. Upon being advised that his call would have to be forwarded to the authorities in Canada, a light bulb must have suddenly gone off. He sheepishly admitted to the police that he hadn’t been shot at all, and that he was simply trying to “divert the attention of Ottawa, Canada police.” According to Epstein, after realizing he had just made a bomb threat to an Ohio police department instead of one in Canada, the man then acknowledged he didn't really have a bomb and was "just trying to waste their time and resources because [he didn't] like their mask mandates.’”
Hate-Riot Front
In the early hours of June 24, 2021, four masked men in a black Jeep SUV arrived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and parked one block away from an intersection where five days earlier, on Juneteenth, artists and politicians had unveiled a statue of George Floyd. Surveillance cameras captured the men walking toward the bust, one of them shaking what appears to be a can of spray paint with one hand and carrying a stencil in the other. A red light, possibly from a GoPro camera, glowed on the chest of another masked man.
The New York Police Department said that these men then vandalized the statue, dumping paint over the bust of Floyd and stenciling its base with the address of a website belonging to a notorious extremist organization: Patriot Front.
Minutes later, the men returned to the Jeep and drove off into the night. Locals discovered the vandalism as the sun rose over Brooklyn. By that afternoon, news headlines broadcast the cruelty of the act — the defacement of a statue of a Black man by a white supremacist group in a predominantly Black neighborhood — across the country.
And it wasn’t just in New York: From Philadelphia to Louisville to Nashville to Austin to Portland, Oregon, Patriot Front has held brazen public demonstrations and vandalizations intended to get eyeballs on its white nationalist cause. In December, about 100 Patriot Front members marched through the National Mall in Washington, D.C., all dressed in khaki cargo pants, brown combat boots, navy blue jackets, white gaiters, sunglasses and beige baseball hats. Some carried shields and wore shin guards, prepared for violence.
The name “Patriot Front” is a rebrand — a variant that evolved from America’s burgeoning pandemic of Trump-era hate groups and cross-pollinated with far-right strains originating in Europe. Patriot Front grew out of another white supremacist organization called Vanguard America, which fractured not long after a man associated with the group, James Alex Fields, drove his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters during the infamous 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He killed one person and injured 19 others.
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Document Dump
Just in case you are having trouble keeping up with all this:
- Previous Guy (PG) tore up documents, breaking the law.
- PG took official documents with him when he left office, breaking the law
- PG took classified documents to Mar-A-Lago, including some labeled "Top Secret", where they were almost certainly not stored correctly, breaking the law.
- PG used private phones from official business on Jan 6th, breaking the law.
- PG didn't log calls from the White House on Jan 6th, breaking the law.
- PG flushed documents down the toilet at the White House, clogging the toilets and breaking the law.
There must be a pattern here.
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White Dwarf. Shouldn't It Be "White Little Person" or "White Person of Short Stature"?
Researchers believe there may be a planet that could sustain life, in the vicinity of a dying sun.
If confirmed, this would be the first time that a potentially life-supporting planet has been found orbiting such a star, called a "white dwarf".
The planet was detected in the star's "habitable zone", where it's neither too cold nor too hot to sustain life.
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Punishing the Victim
Rebecca Hogue's boyfriend beat her toddler son to death while she was at work. So why is she the one being called a murderer?
In the early hours of New Year's Day 2020, Rebecca Hogue came home from a 12-hour shift at the Oklahoma casino where she worked as a cocktail waitress, crawled into bed next to her 2-year-old son Ryder, and her boyfriend, and drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, she woke to find that Ryder wasn't breathing. Her boyfriend, Christopher Trent, was at work. She called the police and panicked.
Bodycam footage of that day from emergency responders shows her trying in vain to perform CPR on her son, who was pronounced dead when he arrived at hospital.
A coroner's report later concluded that his cause of death was blunt-force trauma, and evidence from the home Hogue shared with Trent showed strands of Ryder's hair were found in the drywall.
Hogue says she didn't know any of that then. She called Trent, begging him to meet her at the hospital.
But he wouldn't respond to her texts or voice messages.
Four days later, police found Trent's body in the Wichita Mountains. He had died by an apparent suicide. A prosecutor would later make clear it was known that Trent had killed Ryder.
Carved into a tree near the site where his body was found were these words: Rebecca is innocent.
But with Trent dead, the investigation turned to the 29-year-old Hogue, who was charged with first-degree murder. In Oklahoma, parents who fail to protect their children from child abuse can be charged with the same crimes as the actual abuser.
"Failure to protect" laws, which exist in many US states, have drawn criticism from domestic violence experts who say in practice, they often criminalise victims of domestic abuse who may be too scared to leave.
Several pieces of evidence were not allowed into trial, which Hogue's pro-bono attorney Andrew Casey believes could have helped her case.
The tree-carving with the words "Rebecca is innocent" was considered hearsay, and a ban was placed on distributing those images.
The lead detective who investigated the murder was not allowed to give his opinion on the merits of the case, and an audio recording that captured him discussing it with a friend of Hogue was not allowed into court.
On the recording, obtained by the BBC, he admits that his team looked into the question of whether to lay charges and decided they did not have enough evidence for a "failure to protect" first-degree murder charge.
"We don't believe in this charge and there's a good chance she ends up in prison anyway because of the way the system is," Detective Sean Judy can be heard saying on the recording.
The district attorney's office chose to bypass police charges by asking a jury to ask a jury to decide if charges should be brought, which is allowed in some American jurisdictions, rather than bringing police charges. Ultimately, the jury decided charges were warranted.
And finally, the jury were not allowed to hear expert testimony about Hogue's previous experiences with domestic violence and how it could affect her, because she was not the one being physically abused by Trent.
Over the eight-day trial, prosecutors repeatedly showed graphic images of Ryder's dead body covered in bruises, including leaving a picture of his bruised genitals up for 10 minutes during closing arguments.
It took the jury less than two hours to convict.
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Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Inverted Yield Curve
Past may not be prologue for financial markets as the global economy continues to reel from the pandemic. But a traditional recession signal is still catching Wall Street's attention.
What's happening: The US government bond market sold off on Thursday alongside stocks following the news that inflation reached 7.5% in January — its highest level in four decades. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury, which moves opposite prices, shot above 2% for the first time since 2019. It was close to 1.5% at the end of last year.
Investors were particularly worried, however, about the yield on shorter-term US bonds like the two-year note, which has been rising even more dramatically. It's now above 1.5%, gaining about 110% so far in 2022.
But if yields on shorter-dated bonds jump above the 10-year — producing an "inverted yield curve" — that's a sign that investors expect a deterioration in near-term economic conditions and aggressive intervention from the Federal Reserve.
In 2018, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published research that found a yield curve inversion preceded every recession since 1955, producing a "false positive" just one time. (It looked specifically at the yield on one-year Treasuries.)
It Hasn't Happened -- Yet
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If It Weren't for the Committee: A Partial List
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Trump stole top secret documents and took them to Mar-a-Lago.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of credible claims the President of the United States tore up, burned, or otherwise destroyed or attempted to destroy documents required to be retained by law.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that the Trump Administration had a plan to use the military to seize every election machine in the country and conduct the Administration's own recount of votes.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Trump planned to appoint the now sanctioned (for fraudulent claims about the election), attorney Sidney Powell, as a special prosecutor into election fraud. Powell herself is now the subject of a criminal investigation.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that the Trump Campaign orchestrated the forging of fraudulent electoral college certificates and submitted the counterfeits to the National Archivist and Congress as authentic.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of the still hidden dealings at the Willard Hotel "war room" up to and through January 6th.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know that Jim Jordan lied when he said he did not talk to Trump the morning of January 6th. We would not know why Jim Jordan tried so hard to be on the Committee, to cover his own culpability.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of Sean Hannity's involvement, working with the Trump Administration, in efforts to overthrow the election results, or his ignored efforts to convince Trump to stop the insurrection.
If not for the January 6 investigation we would not know of the Russia connected OAN's role in drafting documents planning a military coup to overturn the election results.
Volatile, Nasty to Women, Armed, and Dangerous. The Perfect QOP Candidate.
One warm fall evening in 2001, police in Irving, Texas, received an alarming call from Herschel Walker’s therapist. The football legend and current Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was “volatile,” armed and scaring his estranged wife at the suburban Dallas home they no longer shared.
Officers took cover outside, noting later that Walker had “talked about having a shoot-out with police.” Then they ordered the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and onetime Dallas Cowboy to step out of the home, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Much of what happened that day at the $1.9 million mansion remains shrouded from view because the report, which Irving police released to the AP only after ordered to do so by the Texas attorney general’s office, was extensively redacted.
The incident adds another layer to Walker’s already turbulent personal history, which includes his acknowledged struggles with mental health, violent outbursts and accusations that he repeatedly threatened his ex-wife. And it will test voters’ acceptance of Walker’s assertion that he has long since been a changed person.
Or Maybe This is the Perfect QOP Candidate. Armed, Violent, and White
Jim Lamon, a Republican candidate for senator in Arizona, drew widespread condemnation on Thursday for a campaign ad in which he shoots at actors portraying President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
Lamon plays a gun-slinging sheriff who blasts weapons out of the Democrats’ hands in the Western movie-style spot. The 70-second commercial dubs Biden “Old Joe,” Pelosi “Crazyface,” and Kelly “Shifty.”
“The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown,” Lamon says in the video that will reportedly air on television statewide on Sunday, including during the Super Bowl.
Do You Think the Members of Berkeley County West Virginians for Life Are White?
Delegate Danielle Walker, the only Black woman serving in the West Virginia Legislature, had just finished a busy day of committee meetings on the first day of Black History Month when she opened her inbox and found an email that would take her days to process.
The message came from Berkeley County West Virginians for Life, an anti-abortion group east of Walker’s district. In it appeared a graphic of a Ku Klux Klan member giving a Nazi salute with a message for the Democrat, who had recently introduced legislation to roll back West Virginia’s abortion restrictions.
“The idiot featured in the picture below is an ally of yours and holds the same beliefs you do that the killing of children look like you is a good thing,” the email read in part.
I Also Want to Know Who Is a Pedophile
Maybe They Thought He was a Bear
ABlack FedEx driver in Mississippi says he was making deliveries late last month when he was chased by a pair of white men, one of whom fired multiple bullets into his vehicle as he tried to escape them.
D'Monterrio Gibson, 24, said he believes the men pursued him because he is Black and because they thought he didn't belong in their neighborhood. Now he's asking the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to take the case from local police and for the men to face federal hate crime charges.
The incident has drawn comparisons to the encounter between Ahmaud Arbery, who was Black, and three white residents who chased him through a south Georgia neighborhood in a pair of pickup trucks for five minutes in February 2020.
Maybe They Thought They Were Beating a Bear
A top Republican state lawmaker announced Thursday a bipartisain committee to investigate the death of Ronald Greene, an unarmed Black motorist who died in 2019 following a brutal beating by Louisiana State Police whose troopers then covered it up.
Republican state House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said the committee was prompted by continuing questions about a State Police coverup of details surrounding Greene's death and Gov. John Bel Edwards' denial that he impeded any investigation.
"These events have raised serious questions regarding who knew what and when," Schexnayder said in a statement.
Greene's cause of death was first covered up by State Police troopers on the scene who said Greene died from injuries suffered in a car accident during their pursuit of him.
Last year, the Associated Press published videos showing State Police troopers beating, stunning and dragging Greene after a car chase in 2019 outside Monroe. “I’m sorry,” he pleaded, blood splashed on his skin and clothes. “I beat the ever-living f--- out of him,” one officer said in an audio recording. Greene stopped breathing soon after.
They Fired The Guy Who Tried to Do the Right Thing
Louisiana State Police trooper fired for speaking out about a Black man's death in custody and cover-up
The Louisiana State Police on Monday fired a trooper who helped expose how the department allegedly covered up the death of an unarmed Black motorist, Ronald Greene, in 2019.
The department fired Trooper Carl Cavalier for disloyalty, seeking publicity and other infractions related to his “openly critical” public statements about the Greene case, according to the termination letter.
“They’re trying to make an example out of me to keep people from speaking up,” Cavalier said in an interview. “It’s a horrible feeling because I worked so hard to be a part of the department.”
Cavalier was one of several police officers featured in a recent USA TODAY series on law enforcement’s blue wall of silence. The newspaper’s investigation found that departments around the country – especially in Louisiana – frequently retaliate against whistleblowers in order to hide misconduct. Cavalier is the latest officer who has faced additional repercussions after speaking to reporters, including one in Illinois who was ousted from his union.
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I Ordered a Chicken and An Egg From Amazon. I'll Let You Know Which One Comes First.
And Rotterdam residents are so riled up that more than 4,000 people have already signed up on a Facebook event page to throw rotten eggs at Bezos’ superyacht when it’s finished, most likely in early June. Organizer Pablo Strormann told NL Times that the egg-throwing event “started more as a joke among friends” after they heard the news about the possible dismantling of the city’s beloved Koningshaven Bridge, popularly known as De Hef. But what he said was originally intended to be a satirical message is “now getting way out of hand” after thousands of people responded to the event invite.
Strormann said he was particularly bothered by the double standard. "Normally it’s the other way around: If your ship doesn’t fit under a bridge, you make it smaller. But when you happen to be the richest person on Earth you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That’s ridiculous."
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They Know What You Did Last Summer
The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information collected about Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said. While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics about the data, the senators alleged the CIA had long hidden details about the program from the public and Congress.
Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico sent a letter to top intelligence officials calling for more details about the program to be declassified. Large parts of the letter, which was sent in April 2021 and declassified Thursday, and documents released by the CIA were blacked out. Wyden and Heinrich said the program operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.”
There have long been concerns about what information the intelligence community collects domestically, driven in part by previous violations of Americans’ civil liberties. The CIA and National Security Agency have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or U.S. businesses. But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ messages and data incidentally.
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How Many "F" Words Can You Come Up With in One Minute
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I'm Sorry, but There Are So Many Victims of Violence in the US More Needy Than 9/11 Families
President Biden began clearing a pathway Friday for releasing about $3.5 billion of frozen Afghan assets held in the United States to be used for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, while an equal amount would go to relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks.
The maneuvers, included in executive orders that Biden signed Friday, attempt to grapple with the financial implications related to Biden’s decision to end a 20-year war in Afghanistan. When the Taliban toppled the Afghanistan government last summer, it left uncertainty around Afghan Central Bank funds remaining in the United States.
The White House said in a statement that the move “is designed to provide a path for the funds to reach the people of Afghanistan, while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and malicious actors.”
The Biden administration in August froze a total of about $7 billion in Afghan government assets held at the New York Federal Reserve, blocking the Taliban from accessing the money. Additional funds totaling more than $3 billion are also frozen in other countries.
Maybe Use the Money to Help These Kids
COVID-19 has made tens of thousands of children orphans, and, in some cases, they're left with little resources to help them with their burdens.
A bill introduced in the California Legislature last month seeks to give children who are in this situation some hope for a better future, and one children welfare policy expert told ABC News this legislation could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the country.
Under California state Sen. Nancy Skinner's Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance, and Empowerment (HOPE) for Children Act, children who lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 and are in the state's foster care system or a low-income household would be eligible for a state-funded trust fund.
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They Have Already Broken a Ton of Laws. Who Thinks They Will Listen to an Injunction?
Authorities in Canada headed for court Friday in an attempt to break the bridge blockade by truckers protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions as parts shortages rippled through the auto industry on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.
The mayor of Windsor, Ontario, planned to seek an injunction at an afternoon hearing against members of the self-proclaimed Freedom Convoy who have used scores of pickup trucks to bottle up the Ambassador Bridge connecting the city to Detroit. The standoff entered its fifth day Friday.
Federal, provincial and local authorities have hesitated to forcibly remove the protesters there and elsewhere around the country, reflecting apparently a lack of manpower by local police, Canada's reverence for free speech, and fear of a violent backlash. Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens warned earlier this week that some of the truckers are “willing to die.”
They Have Already Proven They Are Willing to Die. They are Unvaccinated.
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