Post by mhbruin on Mar 24, 2022 10:18:09 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 559 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
↓ 30.0% Cases, two-week change
↓ 38.2% Deaths, two-week change
979.515 Total confirmed deaths
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 22)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Cancun Cruz is Still a Massive Hypocrite. As If We Needed Reminding
Georgetown Day School, in the nation’s capital, does indeed take a strong “anti-racism” approach. So does St. John’s School, the private school in Houston where, as the New Republic’s Timothy Noah noted, Cruz sends his daughters.
As the headmaster and chair of the board of trustees at St. John’s put it in 2020: “Black lives matter. … St. John’s, as an institution, must be anti-racist and eliminate racism of any type — including institutional racism. ”
To its credit, the school has vowed to continue to “ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational aspects of our educational program,” and to “incorporate cultural proficiency, diversity, global awareness, and inclusivity into all facets of the K-12 curricula.”[...]
And there in the St. John’s library catalog is — wait for it — Kendi’s “Stamped (for Kids),” the very book Cruz demanded Jackson account for at Georgetown Day School. Cruz’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Was He Being a Dick to Get Mentions on Twitter?
Sen. Ted Cruz was photographed checking his Twitter mentions immediately after he aggressively questioned the Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
During the hearing, Cruz went over his 20-minute allotted questioning time and repeatedly ignored requests from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to stop grilling Jackson.
He had been asking her about her sentencing record on child-pornography cases, a topic which she repeatedly defended throughout the week.
Shortly after the heated exchange between Durbin and Cruz, Los Angeles Times reporter Nolan D. McCaskill tweeted a photo of the Texas senator in which he appears to be looking down at his phone.
"Ted Cruz looks like he's checking his mentions after his back and forths with KBJ and Durbin," McCaskill wrote alongside the picture. "He's had his head down during all of Coons' testimony, even as Sasse and Tillis are clearly listening to their Democratic colleague and the nominee before them."
The Hypocrite Can Sell Books
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a big production on Tuesday about how wrong it is that children’s books promoting anti-racism are being taught at a private school in Washington, D.C., where Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is a board member.
During Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Cruz propped up posters featuring blown-up images from some of these books and held up individual copies of them. One of the books he singled out was “Antiracist Baby” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.
This book is one of the “most stunning” taught at Georgetown Day School, Cruz said, holding up a copy. He lamented that it teaches children that babies are taught to be racist, not born racist, and that they are encouraged to admit if they have been racist and to talk about it.
“Do you agree … that babies are racist?” Cruz asked Jackson. (Jackson said she didn’t know the book and had no say over what books were taught at Georgetown Day School, the first integrated school in the nation’s capital.)
But Cruz’s efforts to smear the book, which he falsely claimed brainwashes children about a law school-level academic discipline known as critical race theory, may have had the opposite of his intended effect.
As of Tuesday night, “Antiracist Baby,” which came out two years ago, is currently one of the bestselling children’s books on Amazon in multiple categories, including the bestselling children’s book on prejudice and racism.
There Are Always Scum Waiting to Further Victimize the Victims
“We’ve registered the first cases of [suspected] pimps preying on Ukrainian women near refugee shelter points in Lublin; accosting them, sometimes aggressively, under the guise of offering transport, work or accommodation,” said Karolina Wierzbińska, a coordinator at Homo Faber, a human rights organisation based in the Polish city of Lublin.
“These are not only men,” she said. “There are also women attempting to procure female refugees at bus stations.”
Wierzbińska said there had also been teams of people working together to try to lure women into unidentified cars.[...]
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the Polish army – along with firefighters and police – have been on the border at Medyka, Poland’s busiest crossing with Ukraine, to organise and assist the thousands of refugees arriving every day.
Who Is Ketanji Brown Jackson? This Will Not Tell You.
Is Stupidity Contagious?
Maybe Ben Mathurin Will Want to Buy Epstein's Islands (See Below)
I'll Bet She Loves Allowing People to Carry Guns, As Long As They Are White
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a federal courthouse in a South Dakota city Wednesday to cheer the filing of a federal lawsuit over a hotel owner’s pledge to ban Native Americans from the property.
The protesters held a rally and prayer meeting in a Rapid City park then walked the streets in response to a social media post by a Grand Gateway Hotel owner who said she would not allow Native Americans on the property. Demonstrators marched to sounds of drums and carried tribal flags and signs.
Connie Uhre, one of the owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, posted the ban notice on Facebook Sunday. That followed a shooting at the hotel early Saturday involving two Native American teenagers, Rapid City police said. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier called the post racist and discriminatory and demanded an apology.
Red Elk Zephier, the hotel manager, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting that the entire staff at the hotel bar and some hotel workers quit due to the proposed ban. Elk Zephier. who is who is Yankton Sioux and Oneida, also quit.
“I can’t have that be a part of my life, that negativity. So I just don’t want to be associated with that,” said Zephier. “I didn’t even think about the money or anything involved, I just, I can’t have that in my life.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Remember Dr. Ford? The QOP Doesn't Want You To.
So what does one do when a nominee’s ascension to the bench is most likely a foregone conclusion? You use that big stage and the bright light to put on a show. In many ways, Judge Jackson is just a prop in that show, the reason all 22 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are gathered for this performance, but nothing more. In many ways, she is being used.
For the Republicans, these hearings present an opportunity to rehabilitate Kavanaugh, to rewrite history to pretend that the reason he had a tough confirmation hearing was because Democrats lacked civility, not because Dr. Ford had leveled a damning accusation against him. The Republicans have invoked Kavanaugh repeatedly over the last few days, and yet Dr. Ford never gets so much as a reference. She is being erased from this history altogether. Republicans are crafting their own judicial “Lost Cause” narrative around Kavanaugh.
Let's Also Remember Nurses
The country is approaching 1 million documented Covid-19 deaths, a once unimaginable milestone that invites us to take stock of the manifold harms inflicted by the pandemic. This includes the mental health battering that nurses, in particular, have endured with little attention even as they poured attention on others.
A suicide death can’t be neatly explained. It’s not a simple cause and effect, like how a pathogen infiltrates the lungs and kills. Instead, it’s typically the result of a confluence of factors. Odell, for instance, had been dealing with depression. Experts note that even during periods of immense trauma, it’s a small minority of people who will have thoughts of suicide, and far fewer will act on it.
But it’s also true that nurses — who studies suggest had higher pre-pandemic suicide rates not just than the general public, but doctors as well — have withstood challenges of both greater depth and duration than ever before. They were a sometimes invisible phalanx of frontline workers, counseling families remotely through their grief and taking the brunt of their rage over hospital policies, humanizing patients’ last days tethered to machines, and absorbing a barrage of death in a career that drilled into them that their priority was helping those very patients.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Inflation on Steroids (Russian Athletes Know All About Steroids.)
The cost of living in Russia is surging following the country's invasion of Ukraine, according to new data.
Official figures show price of some household staples - such as sugar - have jumped by as much as 14% over the past week.
Inflation is set to keep rising in Russia where the rouble has fallen sharply since the Ukraine war began.
The value of the currency has dropped about 22% this year, and this has pushed up the cost of importing goods.
Was China Betting on Russian Defeat All Along?
This is a longer article, but an interesting theory
BTW, in one Robert Heinlein novel (during the Cold War), he predicted that communist China would eventually dominate communist Russia.
The Gold Standard of Sanctions
The West should consider ways to stop Russia using its gold reserves to prop up the rouble, the prime minister said.
Boris Johnson's comments came as the UK announced sanctions on 65 more groups and individuals, including a private military firm and a major Russian bank.
Speaking ahead of a Nato summit, the PM said the UK and the West must "tighten the economic vice" on Vladimir Putin.
He said Russia crossed "red lines" by targeting Ukrainian civilians and tough steps now could help shorten the war.
In addition to the new raft of financial sanctions, the UK government has announced plans to send 6,000 more missiles to Ukraine.
If We Are Sanctioning Lawmakers, Can We Add Marjorie Taylor Greene to the List?
The United States announced a package of new sanctions against Russia and further aid for Ukrainian refugees as President Joe Biden looked to rally the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful democracies to increase their efforts to help Ukraine in a series of high-stakes meetings.
The U.S. said it would place additional sanctions on more than 400 Russians and Russian entities, including the Duma and more than 300 of its members, along with more than 40 defense companies, a senior administration official said. It plans to take additional steps to prevent Russia from attempting to prop up its economy.
The White House also announced it would allow as many as 100,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S., with a focus on those who are most vulnerable. (прошу Welcome!)The administration is also prepared to offer more than $1 billion in additional funding toward humanitarian assistance and $11 billion over the next five years to address worldwide food security threats after the disruptions to the Russian and the Ukrainian agricultural industries.
Ivan & Boris Meet Davy Jones. Бердянськ!!!
One month into Russia’s ill-fated invasion of its southern neighbour and the Ukrainians have scored another dramatic success, this time hitting Russian landing ships offloading military equipment and supplies at the port of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.
Information provided by Ukraine’s military and other sources indicates that 2 SRBM ballistic missiles hit the main port facility where three Russian landing ships — 1 x Alligator class and 2 x Ropucha class ships — had been offloading armored vehicles, ammo and supplies. Berdyansk has been a primary point for supplying Russian forces trying to capture Mariupol, and presumably for an offensive northward in attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.
Video of the strike can be found here
20% Casualties
Roughly 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in four weeks of fighting in Ukraine, a senior NATO military official said Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under NATO ground rules, said the estimate was based on several factors, including information from Ukrainian officials, what the Russian side has released and open sources.
For comparison, the entire 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan resulted in 2,461 American fatalities, according to Pentagon figures. Russia lost about 15,000 troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to the Associated Press, making Moscow’s potential losses in Ukraine in just one month far more costly.
NATO estimates that, in total, 30,000 to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded or taken prisoner in Ukraine — an estimate based on the assumption that for every soldier killed, three are wounded, the official added.
What is He Hiding?
Former President Donald Trump's lawyers brought his years-long battle to keep his tax returns out of the public eye to a U.S. appeals court on Thursday, where a congressional committee argued it had the right to force their release.
The tax-writing House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee asserted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that it has the power to obtain the former president's tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, part of the Treasury Department.
Senior Judge David Sentelle, a conservative jurist, expressed skepticism's of Trump's arguments during the hearing.
And Why Hasn't He Been Indicted? Has Alvin Bragg Been Taking Procrastination Lessons from Merrick Garland?
An ex-Manhattan prosecutor who was investigating former President Donald Trump's business dealings said in his February resignation letter that he believes Trump is "guilty of numerous felony violations."
In the letter, published Thursday by the New York Times, Mark Pomerantz wrote that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not authorize prosecution of the case he and another attorney, Carey Dunne, had built against the former president — a decision Pomerantz called a "grave failure of justice."
"I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest," Pomerantz said.
He additionally wrote that the team investigating Trump "harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did."
Trump has not been indicted. If that were to occur, it would make him the first American president to face criminal charges.
Alex Jones Has a Medical Condition Called "Being a Lying Scumbag".
Infowars host Alex Jones failed to show up and testify under oath at a deposition Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, leading the families' lawyer to call for Jones' arrest if he doesn't appear again Thursday.
Jones, whose attorney said he missed the deposition because of an appointment for undisclosed medical conditions, was scheduled to testify Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based, in connection with the relatives’ defamation lawsuit against him for saying the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.
Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable for damages in November. A trial on how much he should pay the families is set to begin in August.
Bellis on Wednesday ordered Jones to appear at the deposition Thursday and warned he would be in contempt of her order if he doesn't show. She denied a request by the families' lawyer, Christopher Mattei, to issue an arrest order to have Jones brought to the proceeding if he fails to attend again, but said Mattei could seek to subpoena Jones and request sanctions against him.
Mattei said he would seek a subpoena in Texas if the judge didn't approve his request for an arrest order.
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Want to Buy a Sex Trafficker's Island? Underage Girls NOT Included (At Least I Hope They Are Not Included.)
Private Caribbean islands owned by the deceased sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein are up for sale and could fetch up to $125m (£94.7m).
A lawyer for Epstein's estate confirmed to the BBC that the two islands - Little St James and Great St James - have been listed.
Lawyer Daniel Weiner said some proceeds from the sale will be used to settle outstanding lawsuits.
Epstein died in jail in 2019, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
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Lapsus$ Has Had Moral Lapses
A 16-year-old from Oxford has been accused of being one of the leaders of cyber-crime gang Lapsus$.
The teenager, who is alleged to have amassed a $14m (£10.6m) fortune from hacking, has been named by rival hackers and researchers.
City of London Police say they have arrested seven teenagers in relation to the gang but will not say if he is one.
The boy's father told the BBC his family was concerned and was trying to keep him away from his computers.
Under his online moniker "White" or "Breachbase" the teenager, who has autism, is said to be behind the prolific Lapsus$ hacker crew, which is believed to be based in South America.
Lapsus$ is relatively new but has become one of the most talked about and feared hacker cyber-crime gangs, after successfully breaching major firms like Microsoft and then bragging about it online.
The teenager, who can't be named for legal reasons, attends a special educational school in Oxford.
Couldn't He have Just Joined the Sharks or the Jets?
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The Biden Boom Continues.
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits dropped to a 52 1/2-year low last week, while unemployment rolls continued to shrink, pointing to rapidly diminishing labor market slack that will keep boosting wage inflation.
The strength in the job market reported by the Labor Department on Thursday may push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by half a percentage point at its next policy meeting in May. Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Monday said the U.S. central bank must move “expeditiously” to raise rates and possibly “more aggressively” to keep high inflation from becoming entrenched.
The Fed last week increased its policy interest rate by 25 basis points, the first hike in more than three years.
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The Car that Hitler Created Vs the Car that Musk Created
In the battle to dominate the emerging market for battery-electric vehicles, two industry giants are trading shots in each other’s home market.
This week saw Tesla officially launch production at its new "Gigafactory" in Berlin. The plant is located just an hour away from the Wolfsburg headquarters of Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer and the current leader in European electric vehicle sales.
But the German automaker is taking the fight to the U.S., a market where Tesla is the overwhelmingly dominant EV manufacturer. VW announced plans this week to invest $7.1 billion in North America, where it will add new production capacity for all-electric models like the ID.Buzz microbus.
VW and Tesla have done little to hide their goals of dominating the expanding market for battery-electric vehicles. In a tweet marking the roll-off of the first production vehicles at the Berlin factory, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the goal of his company’s “master plan part 3 … will be scaling to extreme size.”
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Brexit Has Consequences
New York has extended its lead among the world's top financial centres, with runner up London losing ground to increasingly competitive rivals in the United States and Asia, the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) showed on Thursday.
The index from think tank Z/Yen Group in partnership with the China Development Institute showed the U.S. financial capital holding the top spot with 759 points, down 3 points from six months ago.
Rankings are based on surveys and 150 factors, with quantitative measures from the World Bank, The Economist Intelligence Unit, the OECD and United Nations.
London held on to second place despite shedding 14 points to 726. A similar fall next time would put it behind Hong Kong, Shanghai and Los Angeles, and on par with Singapore, based on their current performances.
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It's No Longer the Land of Oz. Or the Land of Walker.
President Joe Biden has asked a pair of high-profile Republican Senate candidates to resign from a committee they were appointed to by former President Donald Trump.
The White House sent letters to Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker, telling them they would be fired if they did not resign from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, according to reports by several media outlets.
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Walker, a former star running back in the NFL, is a candidate for Senate in Georgia. Both are competing in Republican primary elections in May.
Citing a White House official, CNN reported that the pair was asked to resign because it is against the administration's policy to have federal candidates sit on presidential councils.
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Cannabis is Threatened By Hemp
Over the past few years, Jonny Griffis has invested millions of dollars in his legal marijuana farm in northern Michigan, which produces extracts to be used in things like gummy bears and vape oils.
But now that farm — like many other licensed grows in states that have legalized marijuana — faces an existential threat: high-inducing cannabis compounds derived not from the heavily regulated and taxed legal marijuana industry, but from a chemical process involving little-regulated, cheaply grown hemp.
“It's going to make our farm obsolete,” Griffis, the chief operating officer of True North Collective, testified before Michigan's Marijuana Regulatory Agency recently. “The $3 million or so that I’ve invested ... is going to be wiped out.”
At the center of the issue is THC, marijuana’s main intoxicating component. While marijuana and hemp are the same plant — cannabis — the distinction between the two is a legal one, and comes down to the amount of THC in the plant, specifically the amount of a type of THC called delta-9.
Hemp is defined in federal law by its low delta-9 THC content and is traditionally used for food, clothing and industrial applications. “Rope not dope” was long a motto for those who advocated the legalization of hemp.
But since Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, authorizing the growing of hemp nationwide, there’s been an unforeseen consequence: People exploiting what they see as a loophole in the law have taken that hemp, extracted a non-intoxicating compound called CBD, and chemically changed it — generally by the addition of solvents and heat — into various types of impairing THC.
Unlike the completely artificial, often dangerous drugs known as K2 or Spice and called “synthetic marijuana,” the chemically created THC at issue here consists of molecules found naturally in cannabis, though sometimes in vanishingly small amounts. It's far cheaper to produce THC chemically from hemp than to extract it from marijuana.
Because it is derived from hemp, that THC — often in a form called delta-8 — can wind up in candies, vape oils and other products sold in gas stations, convenience stores and online, even in states where marijuana is illegal. The Food and Drug Administration warned last year that the substances pose a public health risk due to multiple factors, including the way they are marketed and because of potential contamination when manufactured.
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The Forgotten Victims
As the war in Ukraine enters into its fourth week, Columbus advocates who work closely with refugees are urging Americans not to forget other ongoing crises around the world.
The Russian invasion that started on Feb. 24 provoked swift condemnation by the international community and a series of sanctions. But conflicts outside Europe that also are causing large-scale death, destruction and displacement haven't been treated the same way, according to Dr. Seleshi Asfaw, president of Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS).
Afghanistan
Those in Afghanistan have had to endure more than 40 years of conflicts, natural disasters and poverty. More than 6 million Afghans have had to flee their homes.
Ethiopia's Tigray region
The ongoing civil war began in November 2020 in Ethiopia’s Tigray – the country’s northernmost regional state. These armed conflicts have, especially, put in danger the lives of about 96,000 Eritrean refugees who escaped persecution in their own country to reside in Ethiopia’s refugee camps.
In recent months, the Tigray War has “deteriorated significantly,” according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Fighting has extended to other parts of Ethiopia, and airstrikes have resulted in at least 300 deaths in the past four months.
Myanmar
Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is a country in Southeast Asia that has suffered devastating natural disasters, military dictatorship and ethnic conflicts. The Rohingya people –– a stateless Muslim minority residing on the western coast of the country –– in particular face long-time discrimination and persecution by the government.
Somalia
Somalia’s ongoing civil war that started in 1991 has led to widespread poverty, hunger, political instability, civil unrest as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite the international community’s resettlement efforts, more than 750,000 Somali refugees remain in neighboring countries, and 2.6 million are internally displaced in Somalia.
Iraq
The Iraqi refugee crisis is the result of decades of wars and continuous fighting among local militant groups. Conflicts escalated in 2014 when the Islamic State attacked northern Iraq. Since then, more than 3 million Iraqis were displaced. Residents, including millions of children, are in dire need of assistance.
This Doesn't Include Syrian Refugees
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↓ 30.0% Cases, two-week change
↓ 38.2% Deaths, two-week change
979.515 Total confirmed deaths
New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Mar 23 | 27,134 | 1,268 |
| Mar 22 | 27,545 | 787 |
| Mar 21 | 28,657 | 861 |
| Mar 20 | 27,786 | 901 |
| Mar 19 | 27,747 | 909 |
| Mar 18 | 28,274 | 972 |
| Mar 17 | 29,317 | 1,035 |
| Mar 16 | 30,040 | 1,052 |
| Mar 15 | 30,934 | 1,107 |
| Mar 14 | 32,458 | 1,186 |
| Mar 13 | 34,113 | 1,187 |
| Mar 12 | 34,253 | 1,210 |
| Mar 11 | 34,805 | 1,198 |
| Mar 10 | 35,269 | 1,197 |
| Mar 9 | 37,146 | 1,179 |
| Mar 8 | 37,879 | 1,161 |
| Mar 7 | 40,433 | 1,208 |
| Mar 6 | 42,204 | 1,259 |
| Mar 5 | 43,665 | 1,281 |
| Mar 4 | 45,555 | 1,319 |
| Mar 3 | 49,888 | 1,413 |
| Mar 2 | 53,016 | 1,558 |
| Mar 1 | 56,253 | 1,674 |
| Feb 28 | 68,480 | 1,832 |
| Feb 27 | 62,556 | 1,686 |
| Feb 26 | 66,053 | 1,719 |
| Feb 25 | 69,203 | 1,751 |
| Feb 24 | 72,111 | 1,720 |
| Feb 23 | 75,208 | 1,674 |
| Feb 22 | 79,539 | 1,602 |
| Feb 21 | 78,306 | 1,872 |
| Feb 20 | 98,012 | 1,872 |
| Feb 19 | 100,129 | 1,890 |
| Feb 18 | 103,462 | 1,920 |
| Feb 17 | 112,653 | 1,998 |
| Feb 16 | 121,664 | 2,020 |
| Feb 15 | 134,468 | 2,100 |
| Feb 14 | 146,921 | 2,208 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 76.6% | 65.2% | 44.2% |
| % of Population 5+ | 81.4% | 69.3% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 86.3% | 73.6% | 45.8% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.1% | 75.2% | 47.6% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.9% | 66.7% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 22)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
| Percent of Average for this Date | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 79% (62% of full season average) | 84% (61%) | 87% (60%) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 69% (54%) | 74% (53%) | 76% (51%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 65% (51%) | 71% (51%) | 70% (48%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 46% | 55% (52%) | 59% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 55% | 59% (64%) | 58% (66%) |
| Snow Water Content - South | 52% | 60% (66%) | 54% (63%) |
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Cancun Cruz is Still a Massive Hypocrite. As If We Needed Reminding
Georgetown Day School, in the nation’s capital, does indeed take a strong “anti-racism” approach. So does St. John’s School, the private school in Houston where, as the New Republic’s Timothy Noah noted, Cruz sends his daughters.
As the headmaster and chair of the board of trustees at St. John’s put it in 2020: “Black lives matter. … St. John’s, as an institution, must be anti-racist and eliminate racism of any type — including institutional racism. ”
To its credit, the school has vowed to continue to “ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational aspects of our educational program,” and to “incorporate cultural proficiency, diversity, global awareness, and inclusivity into all facets of the K-12 curricula.”[...]
And there in the St. John’s library catalog is — wait for it — Kendi’s “Stamped (for Kids),” the very book Cruz demanded Jackson account for at Georgetown Day School. Cruz’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Was He Being a Dick to Get Mentions on Twitter?
Sen. Ted Cruz was photographed checking his Twitter mentions immediately after he aggressively questioned the Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
During the hearing, Cruz went over his 20-minute allotted questioning time and repeatedly ignored requests from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to stop grilling Jackson.
He had been asking her about her sentencing record on child-pornography cases, a topic which she repeatedly defended throughout the week.
Shortly after the heated exchange between Durbin and Cruz, Los Angeles Times reporter Nolan D. McCaskill tweeted a photo of the Texas senator in which he appears to be looking down at his phone.
"Ted Cruz looks like he's checking his mentions after his back and forths with KBJ and Durbin," McCaskill wrote alongside the picture. "He's had his head down during all of Coons' testimony, even as Sasse and Tillis are clearly listening to their Democratic colleague and the nominee before them."
The Hypocrite Can Sell Books
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a big production on Tuesday about how wrong it is that children’s books promoting anti-racism are being taught at a private school in Washington, D.C., where Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is a board member.
During Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Cruz propped up posters featuring blown-up images from some of these books and held up individual copies of them. One of the books he singled out was “Antiracist Baby” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.
This book is one of the “most stunning” taught at Georgetown Day School, Cruz said, holding up a copy. He lamented that it teaches children that babies are taught to be racist, not born racist, and that they are encouraged to admit if they have been racist and to talk about it.
“Do you agree … that babies are racist?” Cruz asked Jackson. (Jackson said she didn’t know the book and had no say over what books were taught at Georgetown Day School, the first integrated school in the nation’s capital.)
But Cruz’s efforts to smear the book, which he falsely claimed brainwashes children about a law school-level academic discipline known as critical race theory, may have had the opposite of his intended effect.
As of Tuesday night, “Antiracist Baby,” which came out two years ago, is currently one of the bestselling children’s books on Amazon in multiple categories, including the bestselling children’s book on prejudice and racism.
There Are Always Scum Waiting to Further Victimize the Victims
“We’ve registered the first cases of [suspected] pimps preying on Ukrainian women near refugee shelter points in Lublin; accosting them, sometimes aggressively, under the guise of offering transport, work or accommodation,” said Karolina Wierzbińska, a coordinator at Homo Faber, a human rights organisation based in the Polish city of Lublin.
“These are not only men,” she said. “There are also women attempting to procure female refugees at bus stations.”
Wierzbińska said there had also been teams of people working together to try to lure women into unidentified cars.[...]
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the Polish army – along with firefighters and police – have been on the border at Medyka, Poland’s busiest crossing with Ukraine, to organise and assist the thousands of refugees arriving every day.
Who Is Ketanji Brown Jackson? This Will Not Tell You.
Is Stupidity Contagious?
Maybe Ben Mathurin Will Want to Buy Epstein's Islands (See Below)
I'll Bet She Loves Allowing People to Carry Guns, As Long As They Are White
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a federal courthouse in a South Dakota city Wednesday to cheer the filing of a federal lawsuit over a hotel owner’s pledge to ban Native Americans from the property.
The protesters held a rally and prayer meeting in a Rapid City park then walked the streets in response to a social media post by a Grand Gateway Hotel owner who said she would not allow Native Americans on the property. Demonstrators marched to sounds of drums and carried tribal flags and signs.
Connie Uhre, one of the owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, posted the ban notice on Facebook Sunday. That followed a shooting at the hotel early Saturday involving two Native American teenagers, Rapid City police said. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier called the post racist and discriminatory and demanded an apology.
Red Elk Zephier, the hotel manager, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting that the entire staff at the hotel bar and some hotel workers quit due to the proposed ban. Elk Zephier. who is who is Yankton Sioux and Oneida, also quit.
“I can’t have that be a part of my life, that negativity. So I just don’t want to be associated with that,” said Zephier. “I didn’t even think about the money or anything involved, I just, I can’t have that in my life.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Remember Dr. Ford? The QOP Doesn't Want You To.
So what does one do when a nominee’s ascension to the bench is most likely a foregone conclusion? You use that big stage and the bright light to put on a show. In many ways, Judge Jackson is just a prop in that show, the reason all 22 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are gathered for this performance, but nothing more. In many ways, she is being used.
For the Republicans, these hearings present an opportunity to rehabilitate Kavanaugh, to rewrite history to pretend that the reason he had a tough confirmation hearing was because Democrats lacked civility, not because Dr. Ford had leveled a damning accusation against him. The Republicans have invoked Kavanaugh repeatedly over the last few days, and yet Dr. Ford never gets so much as a reference. She is being erased from this history altogether. Republicans are crafting their own judicial “Lost Cause” narrative around Kavanaugh.
Let's Also Remember Nurses
The country is approaching 1 million documented Covid-19 deaths, a once unimaginable milestone that invites us to take stock of the manifold harms inflicted by the pandemic. This includes the mental health battering that nurses, in particular, have endured with little attention even as they poured attention on others.
A suicide death can’t be neatly explained. It’s not a simple cause and effect, like how a pathogen infiltrates the lungs and kills. Instead, it’s typically the result of a confluence of factors. Odell, for instance, had been dealing with depression. Experts note that even during periods of immense trauma, it’s a small minority of people who will have thoughts of suicide, and far fewer will act on it.
But it’s also true that nurses — who studies suggest had higher pre-pandemic suicide rates not just than the general public, but doctors as well — have withstood challenges of both greater depth and duration than ever before. They were a sometimes invisible phalanx of frontline workers, counseling families remotely through their grief and taking the brunt of their rage over hospital policies, humanizing patients’ last days tethered to machines, and absorbing a barrage of death in a career that drilled into them that their priority was helping those very patients.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Inflation on Steroids (Russian Athletes Know All About Steroids.)
The cost of living in Russia is surging following the country's invasion of Ukraine, according to new data.
Official figures show price of some household staples - such as sugar - have jumped by as much as 14% over the past week.
Inflation is set to keep rising in Russia where the rouble has fallen sharply since the Ukraine war began.
The value of the currency has dropped about 22% this year, and this has pushed up the cost of importing goods.
Was China Betting on Russian Defeat All Along?
This is a longer article, but an interesting theory
BTW, in one Robert Heinlein novel (during the Cold War), he predicted that communist China would eventually dominate communist Russia.
The Gold Standard of Sanctions
The West should consider ways to stop Russia using its gold reserves to prop up the rouble, the prime minister said.
Boris Johnson's comments came as the UK announced sanctions on 65 more groups and individuals, including a private military firm and a major Russian bank.
Speaking ahead of a Nato summit, the PM said the UK and the West must "tighten the economic vice" on Vladimir Putin.
He said Russia crossed "red lines" by targeting Ukrainian civilians and tough steps now could help shorten the war.
In addition to the new raft of financial sanctions, the UK government has announced plans to send 6,000 more missiles to Ukraine.
If We Are Sanctioning Lawmakers, Can We Add Marjorie Taylor Greene to the List?
The United States announced a package of new sanctions against Russia and further aid for Ukrainian refugees as President Joe Biden looked to rally the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful democracies to increase their efforts to help Ukraine in a series of high-stakes meetings.
The U.S. said it would place additional sanctions on more than 400 Russians and Russian entities, including the Duma and more than 300 of its members, along with more than 40 defense companies, a senior administration official said. It plans to take additional steps to prevent Russia from attempting to prop up its economy.
The White House also announced it would allow as many as 100,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S., with a focus on those who are most vulnerable. (прошу Welcome!)The administration is also prepared to offer more than $1 billion in additional funding toward humanitarian assistance and $11 billion over the next five years to address worldwide food security threats after the disruptions to the Russian and the Ukrainian agricultural industries.
Ivan & Boris Meet Davy Jones. Бердянськ!!!
One month into Russia’s ill-fated invasion of its southern neighbour and the Ukrainians have scored another dramatic success, this time hitting Russian landing ships offloading military equipment and supplies at the port of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.
Information provided by Ukraine’s military and other sources indicates that 2 SRBM ballistic missiles hit the main port facility where three Russian landing ships — 1 x Alligator class and 2 x Ropucha class ships — had been offloading armored vehicles, ammo and supplies. Berdyansk has been a primary point for supplying Russian forces trying to capture Mariupol, and presumably for an offensive northward in attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.
Video of the strike can be found here
20% Casualties
Roughly 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in four weeks of fighting in Ukraine, a senior NATO military official said Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under NATO ground rules, said the estimate was based on several factors, including information from Ukrainian officials, what the Russian side has released and open sources.
For comparison, the entire 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan resulted in 2,461 American fatalities, according to Pentagon figures. Russia lost about 15,000 troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to the Associated Press, making Moscow’s potential losses in Ukraine in just one month far more costly.
NATO estimates that, in total, 30,000 to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded or taken prisoner in Ukraine — an estimate based on the assumption that for every soldier killed, three are wounded, the official added.
What is He Hiding?
Former President Donald Trump's lawyers brought his years-long battle to keep his tax returns out of the public eye to a U.S. appeals court on Thursday, where a congressional committee argued it had the right to force their release.
The tax-writing House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee asserted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that it has the power to obtain the former president's tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, part of the Treasury Department.
Senior Judge David Sentelle, a conservative jurist, expressed skepticism's of Trump's arguments during the hearing.
And Why Hasn't He Been Indicted? Has Alvin Bragg Been Taking Procrastination Lessons from Merrick Garland?
An ex-Manhattan prosecutor who was investigating former President Donald Trump's business dealings said in his February resignation letter that he believes Trump is "guilty of numerous felony violations."
In the letter, published Thursday by the New York Times, Mark Pomerantz wrote that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not authorize prosecution of the case he and another attorney, Carey Dunne, had built against the former president — a decision Pomerantz called a "grave failure of justice."
"I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest," Pomerantz said.
He additionally wrote that the team investigating Trump "harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did."
Trump has not been indicted. If that were to occur, it would make him the first American president to face criminal charges.
Alex Jones Has a Medical Condition Called "Being a Lying Scumbag".
Infowars host Alex Jones failed to show up and testify under oath at a deposition Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, leading the families' lawyer to call for Jones' arrest if he doesn't appear again Thursday.
Jones, whose attorney said he missed the deposition because of an appointment for undisclosed medical conditions, was scheduled to testify Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based, in connection with the relatives’ defamation lawsuit against him for saying the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.
Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable for damages in November. A trial on how much he should pay the families is set to begin in August.
Bellis on Wednesday ordered Jones to appear at the deposition Thursday and warned he would be in contempt of her order if he doesn't show. She denied a request by the families' lawyer, Christopher Mattei, to issue an arrest order to have Jones brought to the proceeding if he fails to attend again, but said Mattei could seek to subpoena Jones and request sanctions against him.
Mattei said he would seek a subpoena in Texas if the judge didn't approve his request for an arrest order.
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Want to Buy a Sex Trafficker's Island? Underage Girls NOT Included (At Least I Hope They Are Not Included.)
Private Caribbean islands owned by the deceased sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein are up for sale and could fetch up to $125m (£94.7m).
A lawyer for Epstein's estate confirmed to the BBC that the two islands - Little St James and Great St James - have been listed.
Lawyer Daniel Weiner said some proceeds from the sale will be used to settle outstanding lawsuits.
Epstein died in jail in 2019, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
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Lapsus$ Has Had Moral Lapses
A 16-year-old from Oxford has been accused of being one of the leaders of cyber-crime gang Lapsus$.
The teenager, who is alleged to have amassed a $14m (£10.6m) fortune from hacking, has been named by rival hackers and researchers.
City of London Police say they have arrested seven teenagers in relation to the gang but will not say if he is one.
The boy's father told the BBC his family was concerned and was trying to keep him away from his computers.
Under his online moniker "White" or "Breachbase" the teenager, who has autism, is said to be behind the prolific Lapsus$ hacker crew, which is believed to be based in South America.
Lapsus$ is relatively new but has become one of the most talked about and feared hacker cyber-crime gangs, after successfully breaching major firms like Microsoft and then bragging about it online.
The teenager, who can't be named for legal reasons, attends a special educational school in Oxford.
Couldn't He have Just Joined the Sharks or the Jets?
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The Biden Boom Continues.
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits dropped to a 52 1/2-year low last week, while unemployment rolls continued to shrink, pointing to rapidly diminishing labor market slack that will keep boosting wage inflation.
The strength in the job market reported by the Labor Department on Thursday may push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by half a percentage point at its next policy meeting in May. Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Monday said the U.S. central bank must move “expeditiously” to raise rates and possibly “more aggressively” to keep high inflation from becoming entrenched.
The Fed last week increased its policy interest rate by 25 basis points, the first hike in more than three years.
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The Car that Hitler Created Vs the Car that Musk Created
In the battle to dominate the emerging market for battery-electric vehicles, two industry giants are trading shots in each other’s home market.
This week saw Tesla officially launch production at its new "Gigafactory" in Berlin. The plant is located just an hour away from the Wolfsburg headquarters of Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer and the current leader in European electric vehicle sales.
But the German automaker is taking the fight to the U.S., a market where Tesla is the overwhelmingly dominant EV manufacturer. VW announced plans this week to invest $7.1 billion in North America, where it will add new production capacity for all-electric models like the ID.Buzz microbus.
VW and Tesla have done little to hide their goals of dominating the expanding market for battery-electric vehicles. In a tweet marking the roll-off of the first production vehicles at the Berlin factory, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the goal of his company’s “master plan part 3 … will be scaling to extreme size.”
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Brexit Has Consequences
New York has extended its lead among the world's top financial centres, with runner up London losing ground to increasingly competitive rivals in the United States and Asia, the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) showed on Thursday.
The index from think tank Z/Yen Group in partnership with the China Development Institute showed the U.S. financial capital holding the top spot with 759 points, down 3 points from six months ago.
Rankings are based on surveys and 150 factors, with quantitative measures from the World Bank, The Economist Intelligence Unit, the OECD and United Nations.
London held on to second place despite shedding 14 points to 726. A similar fall next time would put it behind Hong Kong, Shanghai and Los Angeles, and on par with Singapore, based on their current performances.
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It's No Longer the Land of Oz. Or the Land of Walker.
President Joe Biden has asked a pair of high-profile Republican Senate candidates to resign from a committee they were appointed to by former President Donald Trump.
The White House sent letters to Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker, telling them they would be fired if they did not resign from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, according to reports by several media outlets.
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Walker, a former star running back in the NFL, is a candidate for Senate in Georgia. Both are competing in Republican primary elections in May.
Citing a White House official, CNN reported that the pair was asked to resign because it is against the administration's policy to have federal candidates sit on presidential councils.
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Cannabis is Threatened By Hemp
Over the past few years, Jonny Griffis has invested millions of dollars in his legal marijuana farm in northern Michigan, which produces extracts to be used in things like gummy bears and vape oils.
But now that farm — like many other licensed grows in states that have legalized marijuana — faces an existential threat: high-inducing cannabis compounds derived not from the heavily regulated and taxed legal marijuana industry, but from a chemical process involving little-regulated, cheaply grown hemp.
“It's going to make our farm obsolete,” Griffis, the chief operating officer of True North Collective, testified before Michigan's Marijuana Regulatory Agency recently. “The $3 million or so that I’ve invested ... is going to be wiped out.”
At the center of the issue is THC, marijuana’s main intoxicating component. While marijuana and hemp are the same plant — cannabis — the distinction between the two is a legal one, and comes down to the amount of THC in the plant, specifically the amount of a type of THC called delta-9.
Hemp is defined in federal law by its low delta-9 THC content and is traditionally used for food, clothing and industrial applications. “Rope not dope” was long a motto for those who advocated the legalization of hemp.
But since Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, authorizing the growing of hemp nationwide, there’s been an unforeseen consequence: People exploiting what they see as a loophole in the law have taken that hemp, extracted a non-intoxicating compound called CBD, and chemically changed it — generally by the addition of solvents and heat — into various types of impairing THC.
Unlike the completely artificial, often dangerous drugs known as K2 or Spice and called “synthetic marijuana,” the chemically created THC at issue here consists of molecules found naturally in cannabis, though sometimes in vanishingly small amounts. It's far cheaper to produce THC chemically from hemp than to extract it from marijuana.
Because it is derived from hemp, that THC — often in a form called delta-8 — can wind up in candies, vape oils and other products sold in gas stations, convenience stores and online, even in states where marijuana is illegal. The Food and Drug Administration warned last year that the substances pose a public health risk due to multiple factors, including the way they are marketed and because of potential contamination when manufactured.
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The Forgotten Victims
As the war in Ukraine enters into its fourth week, Columbus advocates who work closely with refugees are urging Americans not to forget other ongoing crises around the world.
The Russian invasion that started on Feb. 24 provoked swift condemnation by the international community and a series of sanctions. But conflicts outside Europe that also are causing large-scale death, destruction and displacement haven't been treated the same way, according to Dr. Seleshi Asfaw, president of Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS).
Afghanistan
Those in Afghanistan have had to endure more than 40 years of conflicts, natural disasters and poverty. More than 6 million Afghans have had to flee their homes.
Ethiopia's Tigray region
The ongoing civil war began in November 2020 in Ethiopia’s Tigray – the country’s northernmost regional state. These armed conflicts have, especially, put in danger the lives of about 96,000 Eritrean refugees who escaped persecution in their own country to reside in Ethiopia’s refugee camps.
In recent months, the Tigray War has “deteriorated significantly,” according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Fighting has extended to other parts of Ethiopia, and airstrikes have resulted in at least 300 deaths in the past four months.
Myanmar
Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is a country in Southeast Asia that has suffered devastating natural disasters, military dictatorship and ethnic conflicts. The Rohingya people –– a stateless Muslim minority residing on the western coast of the country –– in particular face long-time discrimination and persecution by the government.
Somalia
Somalia’s ongoing civil war that started in 1991 has led to widespread poverty, hunger, political instability, civil unrest as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite the international community’s resettlement efforts, more than 750,000 Somali refugees remain in neighboring countries, and 2.6 million are internally displaced in Somalia.
Iraq
The Iraqi refugee crisis is the result of decades of wars and continuous fighting among local militant groups. Conflicts escalated in 2014 when the Islamic State attacked northern Iraq. Since then, more than 3 million Iraqis were displaced. Residents, including millions of children, are in dire need of assistance.
This Doesn't Include Syrian Refugees
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