Post by mhbruin on Apr 17, 2022 9:34:19 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 566 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 12)
There is some rain and snow in Northern California this week.
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Before the Crowbar Was Invented, Crows Had to Drink At Home.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
We Have Two Nominees in the Same Story: The Jerks Burning the Qorans, and the Jerks Getting Violent Over It. We Have Two, Two, Two Jerks in One.
There has been a third night of unrest in Sweden after protests against a far-right group which burned a copy of the Quran and planned to do so again.
Violence broke out in the city of Malmö late on Saturday after a gathering of the Stram Kurs, or Hard Line, movement led by the extremist Rasmus Paludan.
Vehicles were set on fire, and some protesters threw stones at the police.
A number of other clashes between the police and counter-demonstrators have hit Sweden in recent days.
At least 16 police officers are reported to have been injured and several police vehicles destroyed in unrest that followed the far-right group's rallies, including in the suburbs of Stockholm and in the towns of Linköping and Norrköping.
Sweden's national police chief Anders Thornberg said demonstrators had shown an indifference to the lives of police officers, adding: "We have seen violent riots before. But this is something else."
Outrage at the far right group's actions - which included burning a copy of the Muslim holy book on Thursday, and planning to do so again at other rallies - has also spread beyond Sweden's borders.
Iraq's foreign ministry summoned the Swedish charge d'affaires in Baghdad on Sunday and warned the affair could have "serious repercussions" for relations between Sweden and Muslim communities in general.
Protests against plans by Stram Kurs to burn the Quran have turned violent in Sweden before. In 2020, protesters set cars on fire and shop fronts were damaged in clashes in Malmö.
Paludan - who was jailed for a month in 2020 for offences including racism in Denmark - has also attempted to plan similar burnings of the Quran in other European countries, including France and Belgium.
The Wrong Way to Stop a Bad Guy With a Shoe Is With A Gun
A shoe store owner aiming at would-be shoplifters opened fire in a California mall but struck a 9-year-old girl waiting in line to see the Easter Bunny, police said.
The child was flown to Loma Linda Medical Center after the Tuesday shooting in the Mall of Victor Valley and had surgery. Her injuries were not life threatening. She was released in good condition Thursday, said hospital spokesperson Briana Pastorino.
Marquel Cockrell, co-owner of Sole Addict in the Victor Valley Mall, fled after the shooting, Victorville, California, police said, and was arrested hours later by the Nevada Highway Patrol. He is facing attempted murder charges.
The girl's grandmother, Robin Saldarelli, said Ava's arm will remain in a brace while the bones heal after being shattered by three bullets. The girl and her family were next in line to meet the Easter Bunny.
Sole Addicts posted on Instagram the store will close permanently.
"My business partner's intentions was never to harm this little girl and I know he would want this little girl to be OK," the social media post said.
Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be White Supremacists
The Republican Party is clearly not the party of parents. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of parents of color. But is the Republican Party even the party of white parents?
Every great myth is built on a foundational assumption, a fallacy widely assumed to be true. The foundational assumption of this great myth is that Republican politicians care about white children. But if they did, then they would not be ignoring or downplaying or defending or bolstering the principal racial threat facing white youth today. And I am not talking about critical race theory, which Republican propagandists have quite intentionally redefined, as one admitted, remaking it into a threat, and obscuring the real threat.
What are white children being indoctrinated with? What is making them uncomfortable? What is causing them to hate? White-supremacist ideology: the toxic blend of racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic ideas that is harmful to all minds, especially the naive and defenseless minds of youth. Which group is the prime target of white supremacists? White youth.
What the Fuck, Tuck?
You can be forgiven if you thought you stumbled onto the homoerotic section of Pornhub.
The backstory to this is as follows. Tucker Carlson is:
Heir to the Swanson frozen fish fortune,
the guy who wore a bow tie for decades until Jon Stewart emasculated him, and
the guy who has never worked a day of manual labor in his entire life.
I Am Sure That If He Goes on Russian Idol, He Will Get 99.88% of All the Votes. And They Will Find the 0.12%.
Follow the Money. All Roads Lead to Mar-a-lago
Nearly a quarter of all expenditures this year by a Donald Trump-supporting super PAC reportedly paid for a single lavish event at — wait for it — his golf resort Mar-a-Lago.
New York Times reporters Kenneth Vogel and Shane Goldmacher wrote about the February event earlier this year, describing it as an “elaborate forum” for candidates endorsed by Trump and donors who gave as much as $125,000 per person to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Again! Inc. — which bankrolled the event.
Now Goldmacher has the receipts. The get-together cost an eye-popping $318,000, which was nearly a fourth of the PAC’s total expenditures so far this year, he noted.
The super PAC’s single largest line item for the first quarter of the year was the money to Mar-a-Lago for “event expense: facility rental and catering services,” Politico noted.
Other funding groups also paid tribute to Trump via Mar-a-Lago. Documents show controversial GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, endorsed by Trump, paid $81,000 to Mar-a-Lago in late February.
Campaign donor money shoveled into the pockets of the Trump Organization is nothing new. But it’s continuing as much as ever even though the former president is no longer in office — nor has he officially announced yet whether he’s running for the presidency in the next election.
Some $10.5 million in political donations to Trump and to other Republican candidates and fundraising organizations was funneled into Trump businesses during his presidency through November 2020, according to an analysis by HuffPost.
Trump’s spending doesn’t just involve political events. He spent $375,000 in political donations for rent at Manhattan’s Trump Tower last year ― even though his political committees and staff had no presence in the building, HuffPost reported.
“It’s a huge scam,” said one former aide with direct knowledge of Trump’s political spending. “I can’t believe his base lets him get away with it.”
Quick! Check Under Your Bed! DeathSentence Says There Might Be CRT Lurking There!
Florida officials continued their war on education this week after rejecting more than 50 proposed math textbooks that allegedly “included references to Critical Race Theory.”
The Florida Department of Education announced Friday it would not include 54 of the 132 ― or 41% ― of math textbooks on the state’s adopted list, citing “CRT” as one of the main reasons.
“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the statement said. “The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.”
The state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said without evidence that the math textbooks “included indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.”
DeSantis has been an outspoken critic of CRT, which has become a catchall term ― stripped of its original academic meaning ― for having discussions about racism in the classroom. Since last July, there have been more than 200 instances of public school districts in Florida banning books, the third highest number of incidents of any state in the U.S.
Critics immediately attacked the rejection. State Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D) tweeted “@educationfl just announced they’re banning dozens of math textbooks they claim ‘indoctrinate’ students with CRT. They won’t tell us what they are or what they say b/c it’s a lie. #DeSantis has turned our classrooms into political battlefields and this is just the beginning.”
Public school textbooks in Florida are reviewed by subject every five years. The next subject up for review will be social studies textbooks next month.
You Don't Want Us In Your Hotel? Guess What. You Are on OUR Land
The Black Hills of South Dakota have been inhabited by Indigenous people for thousands of years, but last month the owner of a hotel in Rapid City, located on the eastern edge of the mountain range, said Native people were no longer welcome.
After a Native American man was arrested in connection to a shooting that took place at the Grand Gateway Hotel on March 19, the owner, Connie Uhre, said on Facebook that she'd be banning Natives altogether from the hotel and the adjoining Cheers Sports Bar.
"We will no longer allow any Native American on property," Uhre wrote in a comment that was shared, and condemned, by the mayor of Rapid City, Steve Allender. Uhre also wrote that ranchers and travelers, presumably non-Native ones, would receive a special rate of $59 a night.
In an email chain obtained by South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Uhre wrote: "The problem is we do not know the nice ones from the bad Natives."
Local tribal leaders moved quickly, and on March 26 they hit the hotel with a trespassing notice, citing a 1868 US treaty with the Sioux.
NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization, filed a lawsuit on March 23 against the Uhres, the hotel, and the Retsel Corporation, which lists Connie Uhre as its president, accusing them of "explicit racial discrimination."
The lawsuit said Sunny Red Bear, who is listed as a plaintiff, and another Native woman tried to rent a room at the Grand Gateway Hotel on March 21, a day or so after Uhre's comments, and were refused. An employee told them that the hotel was not renting rooms to people with "local" identifications, according to the lawsuit.
"As a direct result of Connie Uhre's decision, announced on social media, to exclude Native Americans from her businesses, Ms. Red Bear was discriminated against in violation of federal law," the lawsuit said.
Days after the lawsuit was filed, Sioux leaders hit the hotel with the trespass notice.
"You are hereby notified that the Great Sioux Nation has made an investigation, and evidence shows that you are in trespass," the notice said. Protesters gathered at the hotel the day it was delivered and a large "Eviction Notice" was hung over the hotel sign.
The notice said the hotel was in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868, which established that the land of the Black Hills belonged to the Sioux. When gold was found in the area a few years later, the US broke the treaty by allowing white settlers to move there, an action the Supreme Court deemed illegal in 1980.
The treaty articles cited in the notice state that non-Natives cannot pass through the treaty lands "without the consent of the Indians." It also states "if bad men among the whites" commit any wrongdoing against a Native person they would be reported to the federal government "to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States."
Leaders of the Great Sioux Nation consider the treaty valid. Frazier said that there was never an agreement by both parties to dissolve the treaty, so "it's still a legal binding document." He cited Article 6 of the Constitution, which establishes laws and treaties of the US as the supreme law of the land.
"A Sleeper Cell of Protestors". Whether You Agree With Protestors or Not, They Are Not Terrorists
According to ESPN's Ros Gold-Onwude, the protester shared a common cause with the other bizarre protest of the week at the Timberwolves' play-in game. In that case, the animal rights protester tried to glue herself to the court by her wrists.
It appears chains were much more effective than glue, as the first protester was escorted out almost immediately. Neither were as effective as the oil protester who managed to zip tie himself by the neck to a goal post at a Premier League match last month.
Both protesters wore T-shirts reading "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive," apparently referring to alleged practices at the outgoing Timberwolves owner's chicken farm as laid out by a statement from the group behind the disruptions.
The group is calling for the sale of the Timberwolves from Taylor to Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore be expedited with Taylor immediately stepping down from day-to-day team operations and for the billionaire to donate $11.3 million in federal subsidies to public health charities and animal sanctuaries.
Cold, Cold Heart
Police say a northwest Georgia man killed his grandmother by stuffing her in a freezer while she was still alive.
Floyd County Police discovered the body of Doris Cumming, 82, late Thursday in the Armuchee home she shared with her grandson, 29-year-old Robert Keith Tincher III.
Fincher was charged with murder, aggravated battery and concealing the death of another. He remains jailed in Rome. It's unclear if he has a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
Police said Cumming's family believed she had moved out of state, but grew concerned after not hearing from her and reported she might be missing.
Police said they believe that Cumming was injured in a fall in December and that instead of getting her medical attention, Fincher dragged her through home. A warrant says Fincher “heard and saw numerous bones break." He then wrapped her in plastic bags and placed her in a large freezer.
“From what we determined, at the time, he believed she was still breathing and had some movement at the time she was going into the freezer,” said Floyd County Investigator Brittany Werner told WAGA-TV.
Fincher continued living in the home with the body inside the freezer for months, but moved it to a storage unit in March, fearing Cumming's body might be found.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Her Comment About Doocy is a Doozy
As she gears up for her next gig, outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki is looking back on her publicly adversarial relationship with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
At a live taping of the “Pod Save America” podcast Thursday, Psaki was quick to shift the blame for Doocy’s actions to his employer when she was asked if the journalist really was “a stupid son of a bitch.”
“He works for a network that provides people with questions that ― nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy ― but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Get the Truck Out of Here!
A huge queue of trucks has formed on the Poland-Belarus border as Russian and Belarussian drivers try to leave the EU following a sanctions deadline.
In the run-up to the Saturday deadline, the line extended to 80km (60 miles), with some stuck for up to 33 hours.
The EU has banned lorries from Russia and Belarus - except those carrying medicine, mail or petroleum products - from entering or staying in the bloc.
The move is part of sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Drone footage filed by Reuters news agency showed long queues remaining as the midnight deadline neared.
"There are still many kilometres to drive... so it's unrealistic," it quoted a Belarusian driver on his chances of crossing the border in time.
And hours after the deadline passed, the waiting times had been shortened to 12 hours, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw, with the number of trucks at two border crossings between 230-400 vehicles.
However, it is unclear what will happen to thousands of other trucks from the two countries estimated to currently be on EU territory.
One possibility is that they will be seized by national authorities.
What's in the Region That Sounds Like, "Dumb Ass"?
Chimneys, factories and coal fields have dotted the landscape of Donbas for decades, and since its two major cities were founded -- Donetsk by a Welsh ironmaster in 1869, and Luhansk seven decades earlier by a Scottish industrialist -- industry has been the lifeblood of the region.
The name Donbas is itself a portmanteau of the Donets Coal Basin, and throughout most of the 20th century it served an outsized role as the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, pumping out coal in vast quantities.
"The Soviet Union intensively developed the Donbas as an industrial center," said Markian Dobczansky, an associate at Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute. "It was a place that set the tempo of Soviet industrialization."
It was a place, too, of "extremely high-stakes industrial production, and repression," Dobczansky adds. "Terror was present under Soviet rule. Repression happened all over the Soviet Union, but it happened intensely in the Donbas." Suspicion, arrests and show trials were rife.
A rise in steel and metal manufacturing, the creation of a railroad and the development of a shipping industry in the port city of Mariupol diversified Donbas beyond its coal mining roots.
But in the three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the region's economic might has shriveled. "In the 1990s, the Donbas saw the floor drop out economically," Rory Finnin, associate professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge, told CNN.
A decline in living standards and rampant poverty plagued the region during its initial transition from communism, Finnin said, and Donbas is now often likened to the Rust Belt regions of the United States, where once-thriving heartland locations have struggled to adapt. But an upturn in fortunes followed the turn of the century; Donbas remains Ukraine's industrial epicenter, complimenting the agricultural production of the rest of the country.
While prosperity in the region has wavered, one steadfast characteristic of its inhabitants has not. The people of Donbas have and remain "fiercely independent," Finnin said. "It marches to the beat of its own drum."
There ARE Nazis in Ukraine. The Russians Brought Their Own. I Guess the War Is BYON.
One of Vladimir Putin’s primary propaganda points when rationalizing his assault on Ukraine as a “denazification” program is to trot out as proof of his claims the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian fighting unit founded by neo-Nazi nationalists and still reportedly dominated by them. In doing so, he has effectively obfuscated the reality that Russian forces are even more riddled with fascist elements—including forces currently leading their fight in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine.
The largest of these is the Russian Imperialist Movement (RIM), a white supremacist paramilitary organization listed by American authorities as a terrorist body, and the Wagner Group, a private military proxy closely linked to Putin with a history of neo-Nazi activity. Russian troops arriving in Donbas have been recorded flying the RIM flag—a combination of historical Russian flags from its imperial era—while Wagner Group’s mercenaries have been sighted in Donetsk and elsewhere; notably, German intelligence has connected them to the atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
Elves Do More Than Bake Cookies
When Moscow first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a group of volunteers in the small Baltic state of Lithuania, right on Russia’s doorstep, felt compelled to do something.
They decided to call themselves The Elves, evoking the benevolent mythical creatures who quietly hammer away behind the scenes.
Since the war began, the Lithuanian Elves actively took part in denial-of-service or DDOS attacks on Russian and Belarusian state institutions, propaganda outlets and infrastructure sites.
These attacks, which also saw participation by Anonymous, a notorious activist hacking group, knocked out access to websites ranging from private banks to RT and Sputnik and the Russian Ministry of Defence for days on end.
The fight taking place online is a way “to support our brothers in Ukraine”.
“This is additional motivation — to spread information about what is really going on, and to somehow reach Russia, to inform the Russian people that this is a real war, not a bloody ‘special operation’,” he said.
But the task is not simple, and it is an everyday struggle in Lithuania as well as the other 11 countries where The Elves now have a presence.
It's a good story
Things Take Longer Than You Expect, Even If You Already Expect Them to Take Longer Than You Expect.
We can concede that material isn’t getting there fast enough. But that has nothing to do with a “lack of urgency.” Logistical challenges don’t disappear just because Ukraine is one of the good guys. Moving enough material to equip and sustain an Army that has grown to half a million strong takes time.
18 155mm Howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds;
Ten AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars;
Two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars;
300 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
500 Javelin missiles and thousands of other anti-armor systems;
200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
100 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
11 Mi-17 helicopters;
Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
Medical equipment;
30,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
Over 2,000 optics and laser rangefinders;
C-4 explosives and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing; and
M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions configured to be consistent with the Ottawa Convention.
An M113 weights 12 tons. So we’re talking about moving 2,400 tons of armored personnel carriers. A Hummer is 3 tons, so another 300 tons. Those howitzers are around eight tons. There’s only 18 of them, but the ammo? Around 2,000 tons. The rest of this stuff adds up to thousands of additional tons. There is only so much transport capacity available. The fact that the United States can move this much material in a month is incredible.
Not To Be Confused With General Free Love, Who Ran a Commune in the 1960's
Russian Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Army, was buried Saturday after being killed in combat in Ukraine, Russian state media reported, making him the eighth Russian general believed to have been killed in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
A funeral for Frolov was held at a cemetery in St. Petersburg, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Frolov fought in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, TASS reported, without elaborating.
Some of the generals who were killed were veterans of Russian operations in Georgia and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported, depriving the Kremlin of experienced leaders.
As of the end of March, around 14 Russian generals and senior colonels had been killed–a notable death toll likely to have disrupted Russia’s front-line operations. An unnamed Pentagon official said on March 25 that “it's not surprising to us to see that there are [Russian] generals on the battlefield” and vulnerable to Ukrainian fire. The official said Russians “don't delegate very well,” adding they “do not invest a lot of responsibility” in junior-level officers and “don't have a non-commissioned officer corps.”
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It's Not Immunity, It's Resistance
It’s no longer unusual to hear of someone getting COVID-19 even though they’re fully vaccinated and boosted. Yet, many Americans are still shocked when it happens to them.
Early data showed the mRNA vaccines were highly effective against infection, but experts say the virus has changed over time and people need to reconfigure their expectations. The vaccines may not prevent all infection, but they still protect against the worst consequences of the disease.
“That’s what we need to emphasize,” said Dr. Philip Chan, an infectious disease specialist and an associate professor at Brown University. “The fact that these vaccines are still effective against these emerging variants – in terms of severe disease, hospitalizations and death – is definitely a public health win.”
COVID By the Numbers
The Covid-19 pandemic that has shaken the world for the past two years has entered a new phase, one driven by a combination of fear, apathy and uncertainty. In some parts of the country, masks have become a rare sight and the assumption is the pandemic is over. But in other places masking is back, as concerns rise about a new variant and the potential for another spike in cases.
Last week, Philadelphia announced it was reinstating an indoor mask mandate for the city until rates drop again. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course and said masks will continue to be required on commercial flights until at least May 3. That mandate was originally set to expire on April 18.
People may want assurances about the virus and what's coming next, but they are hard to find in the data. Instead, the numbers point to a murky, unclear picture on Covid, particularly looking at case counts and hospital occupancy.
At this point in the pandemic, hospitalizations are probably the most solid measure of where the nation is on Covid, and currently they are still low nationally. Hospitalizations are up very slightly from last week, but still nearly at the lowest they have been in 21 months and nowhere near previous spikes.
The numbers around Covid cases look a bit more troubling. There has been a more significant increase in the last few weeks, not a spike exactly, but a notable increase.
The Cost of COVID in Yuan.
Nearly 400 million people across 45 cities in China are under full or partial lockdown as part of China's strict zero-Covid policy. Together they represent 40%, or $7.2 trillion, of annual gross domestic product for the world's second-largest economy, according to data from Nomura Holdings.
"Zero COVID" is Not Zero Cost
Analysts are ringing warning bells, but say investors aren't properly assessing how serious the global economic fallout might be from these prolonged isolation orders.
"Global markets may still underestimate the impact, because much attention remains focused on the Russian-Ukraine conflict and US Federal Reserve rate hikes," Lu Ting, Nomura's chief China economist and colleagues wrote in a note last week.
Most alarming is the indefinite lockdown in Shanghai, a city of 25 million and one of China's premiere manufacturing and export hubs.
The quarantines there have led to food shortages, inability to access medical care, and even reported pet killings. They've also left the largest port in the world understaffed.
The Port of Shanghai, which handled over 20% of Chinese freight traffic in 2021, is essentially at a standstill. Food supplies stuck in shipping containers without access to refrigeration are rotting.
Incoming cargo is now stuck at Shanghai marine terminals for an average of eight days before it's transported elsewhere, a 75% increase since the recent round of lockdowns began. Export storage time has fallen, but that's likely because there are no new containers being sent to the docks from warehouses, according to supply chain visibility platform project44.
Cargo airlines have canceled all flights in and out of the city, and more than 90% of trucks supporting import and export deliveries are currently out of action.
China's recent pandemic response is likely to cost at least $46 billion in lost economic output per month, or 3.1% of GDP, according to research from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Analysts no longer believe that China's 2022 target of 5.5% economic growth, the country's least ambitious goal in three decades, is realistic. The World Bank revised its estimates for Chinese economic growth this week to 5% but noted that if its restrictive policies continue that could fall to 4%.
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I Can Hear Her Heartbeat for 1,000 Miles
As states become increasingly bold in restricting access to abortion, many have drawn the line at around six weeks of pregnancy — the point at which, the laws say, a so-called fetal heartbeat can be detected.
But according to experts, the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading and medically inaccurate.
“While the heart does begin to develop at around six weeks, at this point the heart as we know it does not yet exist,” said Dr. Ian Fraser Golding, a pediatric and fetal cardiologist at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego.
Instead, at six weeks, the embryo will develop a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses, he said. (Six weeks of pregnancy is closer to four weeks of actual development, because pregnancy is measured from the first day of a woman’s last period, before she is actually pregnant.)
That’s far from a fully formed heart, with four chambers and valves that pump blood throughout the body.
The correct medical term for what’s observed at this point is “cardiac activity,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Washington Medicine.
“It’s not until about 10 weeks that there is an actual structure that has four tubes and connects to the lungs and major vascular system like we would think of as a heart,” she said.
It’s around 10 weeks of pregnancy that the embryo becomes a fetus. It remains a fetus until birth.
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Who Won the Week?
Judge Rick Lawrence, who cleared the Maine state Senate and will become the first Black justice to sit on the Maine Supreme Court
Maryland's House and Senate, for overriding Gov. Hogan's veto and upholding a bill that expands access to abortion services
President Biden: cracks down on untraceable "ghost guns"; OKs $800m for copters/artillery in Ukraine; unveils 5 more judicial nominees; releases more docs to Jan. 6 committee
The Brooklyn Public Library, for fighting book bans by making 350k ebooks and 100 databases available to teens and young adults nationwide via free library eCards
New Jersey's pot industry, as the state licenses its first 13 legal weed dispensaries
Ukraine: week after week, they just keep kicking Russia's ass. This week: the sinking of the Moskva (aka Russia's Bismarck)
The National Recording Registry's 2022 picks, including FDR's speeches, 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' 'Reach Out, I'll Be There,' 'The Christmas Song' and play-by-play of Hank Aaron's 715th homer
San Francisco Giants assistant coach Alyssa Naken, who becomes the first female coach to make an appearance on field during a Major League Baseball game
21-year-old Zack Tahhan and 17-year-old Jack Griffin, who are being hailed as heroes for their roles in identifying the NY subway terrorist, leading to his arrest
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Who Lost the Week?
The Russian Navy, losing its flagship missile cruiser Moskva to a Ukrainian launched missile and sinking while being towed back home
Texas county district attorney Gocha Ramirez, forced to drop an indictment his office obtained against a woman who had a miscarriage which the sheriff’s office considered murder even though Texas law specifically rules this out
State attorney general Jason Ravnsborg (R-SD), facing a Senate trial after being impeached by the House over a 2020 fatal crash (with the victim’s glasses on his front seat) which he told authorities he thought he had struck a deer
Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr., pleading guilty to forcibly touching a woman, after having been accused by several women of sexually groping them in various nightclubs and restaurants in 2018 and 2019
Elon Musk, not joining Twitter board over background check, then sued by a Twitter investor claiming that his delay in disclosing his 5% stake in the social-media company allowed him to scoop up his shares at deflated prices
Charles Barnes and Jay Ketcik, residents of the GOP-friendly retirement community The Villages, pleading guilty to casting multiple ballots in 2020 election (in Florida and their prior residences)
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, scrubbing photos of her shaking hands with Vladimir Putin a few years back yet wanting to withdraw France from the NATO command structure should she win next week’s runoff
GOP representatives Chip Roy and Mike Lee, both staunch defenders of 45’s claims of massive voter fraud in public, yet shown on multiple text messages of begging the Administration for hard evidence to use in public
Ex-British jihadist El Shafee Elsheikh, convicted by a US jury on terror charges for his involvement with the Islamic States linked to the abduction, torture and beheading of several IS hostages in Syria, including journalists and aid workers
Boris Johnson, as he was Britain’s first prime minister to be fined by police for breaking a law (violating lockdown restrictions) and accused by authorities of misleading Parliament
Dustin Thompson, an Ohioan who claimed he was only "following presidential orders" when he stormed the U.S. Capitol (and stole a coat rack) on January 6th, convicted by a jury on all six counts (in less than three hours deliberation)
State Sen. Frank Niceley (R-TN), under fire (especially at Passover) for suggesting – during a debate on criminalizing homelessness – that a role model was Adolf Hitler, “who then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books”
Devin Nunes, losing his appeal of a lower-court judge’s decision last year to toss out a defamation lawsuit that he brought against CNN, claiming it engaged in a conspiracy against him to damage his reputation
Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster (R-NE), as a fellow GOP state senator accused him of groping her, in addition to seven others who (anonymously) said he touched them inappropriately without their consent
Tony Award-winning actor Frank Langella, fired by Netflix from its upcoming mini-series “The Fall of the House of Usher” after a misconduct investigation found he had sexually harassed a female co-star
Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin (D-NY), forced to resign after being arraigned in federal court on bribery and conspiracy charges in connection with a scheme involving phony campaign donations, when he ran for NYC Comptroller
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Top Ten Signs You Might be at a Republican Seder
10. They refuse to answer the four questions without a subpoena.
9. They demand a recount of the ten plagues.
8. They defend not increasing the minimum wage on the grounds that according to Chad Gadya it still costs only two zuzzimto buy a goat.
7. The afikomen is hidden in the Caymen Islands.
6. They refuse to open the door for Elijah until they see his immigration papers.
5. They attack Moses for negotiating a deal with Pharoah because why would we negotiate with our enemies?
4. They don't understand why the Egyptians didn’t cure the plagues with hydroxychloroquine.
3. They omit the parts about slavery from the Haggadah because it reminds them of Critical Race Theory.
2. They keep saying “when do we get to the miracle of the Jewish space lasers?”
And the number one sign that you might be at a Republican seder:
1. They end the seder by singing "Next year in Mar-a-Lago."
Why Should You Leave An Empty Seat For Elijah in Your Car, When You Go to a Poker Game? So You Can Leave with a Prophet.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 16 | ||
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 |
| Apr 9 | 28,339 | 509 |
| Apr 8 | 28,169 | 516 |
| Apr 7 | 26,286 | 471 |
| Apr 6 | 26,595 | 496 |
| Apr 5 | 26,845 | 533 |
| Apr 4 | 25,537 | 537 |
| Apr 3 | 25,074 | 572 |
| Apr 2 | 25,787 | 576 |
| Apr 1 | 26,106 | 584 |
| Mar 31 | 25,980 | 605 |
| Mar 30 | 25,732 | 626 |
| Mar 29 | 25,218 | 644 |
| Mar 28 | 26,190 | 700 |
| Mar 27 | 26,487 | 690 |
| Mar 26 | 26,593 | 697 |
| Mar 25 | 26,874 | 705 |
| Mar 24 | 27,235 | 732 |
| Mar 23 | 27,134 | 753 |
| 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 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.2% | 65.8% | 45.3% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.1% | 70.0% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 86.9% | 74.2% | 47.0% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.6% | 75.7% | 48.2% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 89.5% | 67.2% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 12)
There is some rain and snow in Northern California this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 15% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 27% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 24% |
Before the Crowbar Was Invented, Crows Had to Drink At Home.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
We Have Two Nominees in the Same Story: The Jerks Burning the Qorans, and the Jerks Getting Violent Over It. We Have Two, Two, Two Jerks in One.
There has been a third night of unrest in Sweden after protests against a far-right group which burned a copy of the Quran and planned to do so again.
Violence broke out in the city of Malmö late on Saturday after a gathering of the Stram Kurs, or Hard Line, movement led by the extremist Rasmus Paludan.
Vehicles were set on fire, and some protesters threw stones at the police.
A number of other clashes between the police and counter-demonstrators have hit Sweden in recent days.
At least 16 police officers are reported to have been injured and several police vehicles destroyed in unrest that followed the far-right group's rallies, including in the suburbs of Stockholm and in the towns of Linköping and Norrköping.
Sweden's national police chief Anders Thornberg said demonstrators had shown an indifference to the lives of police officers, adding: "We have seen violent riots before. But this is something else."
Outrage at the far right group's actions - which included burning a copy of the Muslim holy book on Thursday, and planning to do so again at other rallies - has also spread beyond Sweden's borders.
Iraq's foreign ministry summoned the Swedish charge d'affaires in Baghdad on Sunday and warned the affair could have "serious repercussions" for relations between Sweden and Muslim communities in general.
Protests against plans by Stram Kurs to burn the Quran have turned violent in Sweden before. In 2020, protesters set cars on fire and shop fronts were damaged in clashes in Malmö.
Paludan - who was jailed for a month in 2020 for offences including racism in Denmark - has also attempted to plan similar burnings of the Quran in other European countries, including France and Belgium.
The Wrong Way to Stop a Bad Guy With a Shoe Is With A Gun
A shoe store owner aiming at would-be shoplifters opened fire in a California mall but struck a 9-year-old girl waiting in line to see the Easter Bunny, police said.
The child was flown to Loma Linda Medical Center after the Tuesday shooting in the Mall of Victor Valley and had surgery. Her injuries were not life threatening. She was released in good condition Thursday, said hospital spokesperson Briana Pastorino.
Marquel Cockrell, co-owner of Sole Addict in the Victor Valley Mall, fled after the shooting, Victorville, California, police said, and was arrested hours later by the Nevada Highway Patrol. He is facing attempted murder charges.
The girl's grandmother, Robin Saldarelli, said Ava's arm will remain in a brace while the bones heal after being shattered by three bullets. The girl and her family were next in line to meet the Easter Bunny.
Sole Addicts posted on Instagram the store will close permanently.
"My business partner's intentions was never to harm this little girl and I know he would want this little girl to be OK," the social media post said.
Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be White Supremacists
The Republican Party is clearly not the party of parents. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of parents of color. But is the Republican Party even the party of white parents?
Every great myth is built on a foundational assumption, a fallacy widely assumed to be true. The foundational assumption of this great myth is that Republican politicians care about white children. But if they did, then they would not be ignoring or downplaying or defending or bolstering the principal racial threat facing white youth today. And I am not talking about critical race theory, which Republican propagandists have quite intentionally redefined, as one admitted, remaking it into a threat, and obscuring the real threat.
What are white children being indoctrinated with? What is making them uncomfortable? What is causing them to hate? White-supremacist ideology: the toxic blend of racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic ideas that is harmful to all minds, especially the naive and defenseless minds of youth. Which group is the prime target of white supremacists? White youth.
What the Fuck, Tuck?
You can be forgiven if you thought you stumbled onto the homoerotic section of Pornhub.
The backstory to this is as follows. Tucker Carlson is:
Heir to the Swanson frozen fish fortune,
the guy who wore a bow tie for decades until Jon Stewart emasculated him, and
the guy who has never worked a day of manual labor in his entire life.
I Am Sure That If He Goes on Russian Idol, He Will Get 99.88% of All the Votes. And They Will Find the 0.12%.
Follow the Money. All Roads Lead to Mar-a-lago
Nearly a quarter of all expenditures this year by a Donald Trump-supporting super PAC reportedly paid for a single lavish event at — wait for it — his golf resort Mar-a-Lago.
New York Times reporters Kenneth Vogel and Shane Goldmacher wrote about the February event earlier this year, describing it as an “elaborate forum” for candidates endorsed by Trump and donors who gave as much as $125,000 per person to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Again! Inc. — which bankrolled the event.
Now Goldmacher has the receipts. The get-together cost an eye-popping $318,000, which was nearly a fourth of the PAC’s total expenditures so far this year, he noted.
The super PAC’s single largest line item for the first quarter of the year was the money to Mar-a-Lago for “event expense: facility rental and catering services,” Politico noted.
Other funding groups also paid tribute to Trump via Mar-a-Lago. Documents show controversial GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, endorsed by Trump, paid $81,000 to Mar-a-Lago in late February.
Campaign donor money shoveled into the pockets of the Trump Organization is nothing new. But it’s continuing as much as ever even though the former president is no longer in office — nor has he officially announced yet whether he’s running for the presidency in the next election.
Some $10.5 million in political donations to Trump and to other Republican candidates and fundraising organizations was funneled into Trump businesses during his presidency through November 2020, according to an analysis by HuffPost.
Trump’s spending doesn’t just involve political events. He spent $375,000 in political donations for rent at Manhattan’s Trump Tower last year ― even though his political committees and staff had no presence in the building, HuffPost reported.
“It’s a huge scam,” said one former aide with direct knowledge of Trump’s political spending. “I can’t believe his base lets him get away with it.”
Quick! Check Under Your Bed! DeathSentence Says There Might Be CRT Lurking There!
Florida officials continued their war on education this week after rejecting more than 50 proposed math textbooks that allegedly “included references to Critical Race Theory.”
The Florida Department of Education announced Friday it would not include 54 of the 132 ― or 41% ― of math textbooks on the state’s adopted list, citing “CRT” as one of the main reasons.
“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the statement said. “The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.”
The state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said without evidence that the math textbooks “included indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.”
DeSantis has been an outspoken critic of CRT, which has become a catchall term ― stripped of its original academic meaning ― for having discussions about racism in the classroom. Since last July, there have been more than 200 instances of public school districts in Florida banning books, the third highest number of incidents of any state in the U.S.
Critics immediately attacked the rejection. State Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D) tweeted “@educationfl just announced they’re banning dozens of math textbooks they claim ‘indoctrinate’ students with CRT. They won’t tell us what they are or what they say b/c it’s a lie. #DeSantis has turned our classrooms into political battlefields and this is just the beginning.”
Public school textbooks in Florida are reviewed by subject every five years. The next subject up for review will be social studies textbooks next month.
You Don't Want Us In Your Hotel? Guess What. You Are on OUR Land
The Black Hills of South Dakota have been inhabited by Indigenous people for thousands of years, but last month the owner of a hotel in Rapid City, located on the eastern edge of the mountain range, said Native people were no longer welcome.
After a Native American man was arrested in connection to a shooting that took place at the Grand Gateway Hotel on March 19, the owner, Connie Uhre, said on Facebook that she'd be banning Natives altogether from the hotel and the adjoining Cheers Sports Bar.
"We will no longer allow any Native American on property," Uhre wrote in a comment that was shared, and condemned, by the mayor of Rapid City, Steve Allender. Uhre also wrote that ranchers and travelers, presumably non-Native ones, would receive a special rate of $59 a night.
In an email chain obtained by South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Uhre wrote: "The problem is we do not know the nice ones from the bad Natives."
Local tribal leaders moved quickly, and on March 26 they hit the hotel with a trespassing notice, citing a 1868 US treaty with the Sioux.
NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization, filed a lawsuit on March 23 against the Uhres, the hotel, and the Retsel Corporation, which lists Connie Uhre as its president, accusing them of "explicit racial discrimination."
The lawsuit said Sunny Red Bear, who is listed as a plaintiff, and another Native woman tried to rent a room at the Grand Gateway Hotel on March 21, a day or so after Uhre's comments, and were refused. An employee told them that the hotel was not renting rooms to people with "local" identifications, according to the lawsuit.
"As a direct result of Connie Uhre's decision, announced on social media, to exclude Native Americans from her businesses, Ms. Red Bear was discriminated against in violation of federal law," the lawsuit said.
Days after the lawsuit was filed, Sioux leaders hit the hotel with the trespass notice.
"You are hereby notified that the Great Sioux Nation has made an investigation, and evidence shows that you are in trespass," the notice said. Protesters gathered at the hotel the day it was delivered and a large "Eviction Notice" was hung over the hotel sign.
The notice said the hotel was in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868, which established that the land of the Black Hills belonged to the Sioux. When gold was found in the area a few years later, the US broke the treaty by allowing white settlers to move there, an action the Supreme Court deemed illegal in 1980.
The treaty articles cited in the notice state that non-Natives cannot pass through the treaty lands "without the consent of the Indians." It also states "if bad men among the whites" commit any wrongdoing against a Native person they would be reported to the federal government "to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States."
Leaders of the Great Sioux Nation consider the treaty valid. Frazier said that there was never an agreement by both parties to dissolve the treaty, so "it's still a legal binding document." He cited Article 6 of the Constitution, which establishes laws and treaties of the US as the supreme law of the land.
"A Sleeper Cell of Protestors". Whether You Agree With Protestors or Not, They Are Not Terrorists
According to ESPN's Ros Gold-Onwude, the protester shared a common cause with the other bizarre protest of the week at the Timberwolves' play-in game. In that case, the animal rights protester tried to glue herself to the court by her wrists.
It appears chains were much more effective than glue, as the first protester was escorted out almost immediately. Neither were as effective as the oil protester who managed to zip tie himself by the neck to a goal post at a Premier League match last month.
Both protesters wore T-shirts reading "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive," apparently referring to alleged practices at the outgoing Timberwolves owner's chicken farm as laid out by a statement from the group behind the disruptions.
The group is calling for the sale of the Timberwolves from Taylor to Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore be expedited with Taylor immediately stepping down from day-to-day team operations and for the billionaire to donate $11.3 million in federal subsidies to public health charities and animal sanctuaries.
Cold, Cold Heart
Police say a northwest Georgia man killed his grandmother by stuffing her in a freezer while she was still alive.
Floyd County Police discovered the body of Doris Cumming, 82, late Thursday in the Armuchee home she shared with her grandson, 29-year-old Robert Keith Tincher III.
Fincher was charged with murder, aggravated battery and concealing the death of another. He remains jailed in Rome. It's unclear if he has a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
Police said Cumming's family believed she had moved out of state, but grew concerned after not hearing from her and reported she might be missing.
Police said they believe that Cumming was injured in a fall in December and that instead of getting her medical attention, Fincher dragged her through home. A warrant says Fincher “heard and saw numerous bones break." He then wrapped her in plastic bags and placed her in a large freezer.
“From what we determined, at the time, he believed she was still breathing and had some movement at the time she was going into the freezer,” said Floyd County Investigator Brittany Werner told WAGA-TV.
Fincher continued living in the home with the body inside the freezer for months, but moved it to a storage unit in March, fearing Cumming's body might be found.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Her Comment About Doocy is a Doozy
As she gears up for her next gig, outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki is looking back on her publicly adversarial relationship with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
At a live taping of the “Pod Save America” podcast Thursday, Psaki was quick to shift the blame for Doocy’s actions to his employer when she was asked if the journalist really was “a stupid son of a bitch.”
“He works for a network that provides people with questions that ― nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy ― but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Get the Truck Out of Here!
A huge queue of trucks has formed on the Poland-Belarus border as Russian and Belarussian drivers try to leave the EU following a sanctions deadline.
In the run-up to the Saturday deadline, the line extended to 80km (60 miles), with some stuck for up to 33 hours.
The EU has banned lorries from Russia and Belarus - except those carrying medicine, mail or petroleum products - from entering or staying in the bloc.
The move is part of sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Drone footage filed by Reuters news agency showed long queues remaining as the midnight deadline neared.
"There are still many kilometres to drive... so it's unrealistic," it quoted a Belarusian driver on his chances of crossing the border in time.
And hours after the deadline passed, the waiting times had been shortened to 12 hours, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw, with the number of trucks at two border crossings between 230-400 vehicles.
However, it is unclear what will happen to thousands of other trucks from the two countries estimated to currently be on EU territory.
One possibility is that they will be seized by national authorities.
What's in the Region That Sounds Like, "Dumb Ass"?
Chimneys, factories and coal fields have dotted the landscape of Donbas for decades, and since its two major cities were founded -- Donetsk by a Welsh ironmaster in 1869, and Luhansk seven decades earlier by a Scottish industrialist -- industry has been the lifeblood of the region.
The name Donbas is itself a portmanteau of the Donets Coal Basin, and throughout most of the 20th century it served an outsized role as the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, pumping out coal in vast quantities.
"The Soviet Union intensively developed the Donbas as an industrial center," said Markian Dobczansky, an associate at Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute. "It was a place that set the tempo of Soviet industrialization."
It was a place, too, of "extremely high-stakes industrial production, and repression," Dobczansky adds. "Terror was present under Soviet rule. Repression happened all over the Soviet Union, but it happened intensely in the Donbas." Suspicion, arrests and show trials were rife.
A rise in steel and metal manufacturing, the creation of a railroad and the development of a shipping industry in the port city of Mariupol diversified Donbas beyond its coal mining roots.
But in the three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the region's economic might has shriveled. "In the 1990s, the Donbas saw the floor drop out economically," Rory Finnin, associate professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge, told CNN.
A decline in living standards and rampant poverty plagued the region during its initial transition from communism, Finnin said, and Donbas is now often likened to the Rust Belt regions of the United States, where once-thriving heartland locations have struggled to adapt. But an upturn in fortunes followed the turn of the century; Donbas remains Ukraine's industrial epicenter, complimenting the agricultural production of the rest of the country.
While prosperity in the region has wavered, one steadfast characteristic of its inhabitants has not. The people of Donbas have and remain "fiercely independent," Finnin said. "It marches to the beat of its own drum."
There ARE Nazis in Ukraine. The Russians Brought Their Own. I Guess the War Is BYON.
One of Vladimir Putin’s primary propaganda points when rationalizing his assault on Ukraine as a “denazification” program is to trot out as proof of his claims the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian fighting unit founded by neo-Nazi nationalists and still reportedly dominated by them. In doing so, he has effectively obfuscated the reality that Russian forces are even more riddled with fascist elements—including forces currently leading their fight in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine.
The largest of these is the Russian Imperialist Movement (RIM), a white supremacist paramilitary organization listed by American authorities as a terrorist body, and the Wagner Group, a private military proxy closely linked to Putin with a history of neo-Nazi activity. Russian troops arriving in Donbas have been recorded flying the RIM flag—a combination of historical Russian flags from its imperial era—while Wagner Group’s mercenaries have been sighted in Donetsk and elsewhere; notably, German intelligence has connected them to the atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
Elves Do More Than Bake Cookies
When Moscow first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a group of volunteers in the small Baltic state of Lithuania, right on Russia’s doorstep, felt compelled to do something.
They decided to call themselves The Elves, evoking the benevolent mythical creatures who quietly hammer away behind the scenes.
Since the war began, the Lithuanian Elves actively took part in denial-of-service or DDOS attacks on Russian and Belarusian state institutions, propaganda outlets and infrastructure sites.
These attacks, which also saw participation by Anonymous, a notorious activist hacking group, knocked out access to websites ranging from private banks to RT and Sputnik and the Russian Ministry of Defence for days on end.
The fight taking place online is a way “to support our brothers in Ukraine”.
“This is additional motivation — to spread information about what is really going on, and to somehow reach Russia, to inform the Russian people that this is a real war, not a bloody ‘special operation’,” he said.
But the task is not simple, and it is an everyday struggle in Lithuania as well as the other 11 countries where The Elves now have a presence.
It's a good story
Things Take Longer Than You Expect, Even If You Already Expect Them to Take Longer Than You Expect.
We can concede that material isn’t getting there fast enough. But that has nothing to do with a “lack of urgency.” Logistical challenges don’t disappear just because Ukraine is one of the good guys. Moving enough material to equip and sustain an Army that has grown to half a million strong takes time.
18 155mm Howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds;
Ten AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars;
Two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars;
300 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
500 Javelin missiles and thousands of other anti-armor systems;
200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
100 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
11 Mi-17 helicopters;
Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
Medical equipment;
30,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
Over 2,000 optics and laser rangefinders;
C-4 explosives and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing; and
M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions configured to be consistent with the Ottawa Convention.
An M113 weights 12 tons. So we’re talking about moving 2,400 tons of armored personnel carriers. A Hummer is 3 tons, so another 300 tons. Those howitzers are around eight tons. There’s only 18 of them, but the ammo? Around 2,000 tons. The rest of this stuff adds up to thousands of additional tons. There is only so much transport capacity available. The fact that the United States can move this much material in a month is incredible.
Not To Be Confused With General Free Love, Who Ran a Commune in the 1960's
Russian Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Army, was buried Saturday after being killed in combat in Ukraine, Russian state media reported, making him the eighth Russian general believed to have been killed in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
A funeral for Frolov was held at a cemetery in St. Petersburg, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Frolov fought in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, TASS reported, without elaborating.
Some of the generals who were killed were veterans of Russian operations in Georgia and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported, depriving the Kremlin of experienced leaders.
As of the end of March, around 14 Russian generals and senior colonels had been killed–a notable death toll likely to have disrupted Russia’s front-line operations. An unnamed Pentagon official said on March 25 that “it's not surprising to us to see that there are [Russian] generals on the battlefield” and vulnerable to Ukrainian fire. The official said Russians “don't delegate very well,” adding they “do not invest a lot of responsibility” in junior-level officers and “don't have a non-commissioned officer corps.”
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It's Not Immunity, It's Resistance
It’s no longer unusual to hear of someone getting COVID-19 even though they’re fully vaccinated and boosted. Yet, many Americans are still shocked when it happens to them.
Early data showed the mRNA vaccines were highly effective against infection, but experts say the virus has changed over time and people need to reconfigure their expectations. The vaccines may not prevent all infection, but they still protect against the worst consequences of the disease.
“That’s what we need to emphasize,” said Dr. Philip Chan, an infectious disease specialist and an associate professor at Brown University. “The fact that these vaccines are still effective against these emerging variants – in terms of severe disease, hospitalizations and death – is definitely a public health win.”
COVID By the Numbers
The Covid-19 pandemic that has shaken the world for the past two years has entered a new phase, one driven by a combination of fear, apathy and uncertainty. In some parts of the country, masks have become a rare sight and the assumption is the pandemic is over. But in other places masking is back, as concerns rise about a new variant and the potential for another spike in cases.
Last week, Philadelphia announced it was reinstating an indoor mask mandate for the city until rates drop again. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course and said masks will continue to be required on commercial flights until at least May 3. That mandate was originally set to expire on April 18.
People may want assurances about the virus and what's coming next, but they are hard to find in the data. Instead, the numbers point to a murky, unclear picture on Covid, particularly looking at case counts and hospital occupancy.
At this point in the pandemic, hospitalizations are probably the most solid measure of where the nation is on Covid, and currently they are still low nationally. Hospitalizations are up very slightly from last week, but still nearly at the lowest they have been in 21 months and nowhere near previous spikes.
The numbers around Covid cases look a bit more troubling. There has been a more significant increase in the last few weeks, not a spike exactly, but a notable increase.
The Cost of COVID in Yuan.
Nearly 400 million people across 45 cities in China are under full or partial lockdown as part of China's strict zero-Covid policy. Together they represent 40%, or $7.2 trillion, of annual gross domestic product for the world's second-largest economy, according to data from Nomura Holdings.
"Zero COVID" is Not Zero Cost
Analysts are ringing warning bells, but say investors aren't properly assessing how serious the global economic fallout might be from these prolonged isolation orders.
"Global markets may still underestimate the impact, because much attention remains focused on the Russian-Ukraine conflict and US Federal Reserve rate hikes," Lu Ting, Nomura's chief China economist and colleagues wrote in a note last week.
Most alarming is the indefinite lockdown in Shanghai, a city of 25 million and one of China's premiere manufacturing and export hubs.
The quarantines there have led to food shortages, inability to access medical care, and even reported pet killings. They've also left the largest port in the world understaffed.
The Port of Shanghai, which handled over 20% of Chinese freight traffic in 2021, is essentially at a standstill. Food supplies stuck in shipping containers without access to refrigeration are rotting.
Incoming cargo is now stuck at Shanghai marine terminals for an average of eight days before it's transported elsewhere, a 75% increase since the recent round of lockdowns began. Export storage time has fallen, but that's likely because there are no new containers being sent to the docks from warehouses, according to supply chain visibility platform project44.
Cargo airlines have canceled all flights in and out of the city, and more than 90% of trucks supporting import and export deliveries are currently out of action.
China's recent pandemic response is likely to cost at least $46 billion in lost economic output per month, or 3.1% of GDP, according to research from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Analysts no longer believe that China's 2022 target of 5.5% economic growth, the country's least ambitious goal in three decades, is realistic. The World Bank revised its estimates for Chinese economic growth this week to 5% but noted that if its restrictive policies continue that could fall to 4%.
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I Can Hear Her Heartbeat for 1,000 Miles
As states become increasingly bold in restricting access to abortion, many have drawn the line at around six weeks of pregnancy — the point at which, the laws say, a so-called fetal heartbeat can be detected.
But according to experts, the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading and medically inaccurate.
“While the heart does begin to develop at around six weeks, at this point the heart as we know it does not yet exist,” said Dr. Ian Fraser Golding, a pediatric and fetal cardiologist at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego.
Instead, at six weeks, the embryo will develop a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses, he said. (Six weeks of pregnancy is closer to four weeks of actual development, because pregnancy is measured from the first day of a woman’s last period, before she is actually pregnant.)
That’s far from a fully formed heart, with four chambers and valves that pump blood throughout the body.
The correct medical term for what’s observed at this point is “cardiac activity,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Washington Medicine.
“It’s not until about 10 weeks that there is an actual structure that has four tubes and connects to the lungs and major vascular system like we would think of as a heart,” she said.
It’s around 10 weeks of pregnancy that the embryo becomes a fetus. It remains a fetus until birth.
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Who Won the Week?
Judge Rick Lawrence, who cleared the Maine state Senate and will become the first Black justice to sit on the Maine Supreme Court
Maryland's House and Senate, for overriding Gov. Hogan's veto and upholding a bill that expands access to abortion services
President Biden: cracks down on untraceable "ghost guns"; OKs $800m for copters/artillery in Ukraine; unveils 5 more judicial nominees; releases more docs to Jan. 6 committee
The Brooklyn Public Library, for fighting book bans by making 350k ebooks and 100 databases available to teens and young adults nationwide via free library eCards
New Jersey's pot industry, as the state licenses its first 13 legal weed dispensaries
Ukraine: week after week, they just keep kicking Russia's ass. This week: the sinking of the Moskva (aka Russia's Bismarck)
The National Recording Registry's 2022 picks, including FDR's speeches, 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' 'Reach Out, I'll Be There,' 'The Christmas Song' and play-by-play of Hank Aaron's 715th homer
San Francisco Giants assistant coach Alyssa Naken, who becomes the first female coach to make an appearance on field during a Major League Baseball game
21-year-old Zack Tahhan and 17-year-old Jack Griffin, who are being hailed as heroes for their roles in identifying the NY subway terrorist, leading to his arrest
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Who Lost the Week?
The Russian Navy, losing its flagship missile cruiser Moskva to a Ukrainian launched missile and sinking while being towed back home
Texas county district attorney Gocha Ramirez, forced to drop an indictment his office obtained against a woman who had a miscarriage which the sheriff’s office considered murder even though Texas law specifically rules this out
State attorney general Jason Ravnsborg (R-SD), facing a Senate trial after being impeached by the House over a 2020 fatal crash (with the victim’s glasses on his front seat) which he told authorities he thought he had struck a deer
Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr., pleading guilty to forcibly touching a woman, after having been accused by several women of sexually groping them in various nightclubs and restaurants in 2018 and 2019
Elon Musk, not joining Twitter board over background check, then sued by a Twitter investor claiming that his delay in disclosing his 5% stake in the social-media company allowed him to scoop up his shares at deflated prices
Charles Barnes and Jay Ketcik, residents of the GOP-friendly retirement community The Villages, pleading guilty to casting multiple ballots in 2020 election (in Florida and their prior residences)
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, scrubbing photos of her shaking hands with Vladimir Putin a few years back yet wanting to withdraw France from the NATO command structure should she win next week’s runoff
GOP representatives Chip Roy and Mike Lee, both staunch defenders of 45’s claims of massive voter fraud in public, yet shown on multiple text messages of begging the Administration for hard evidence to use in public
Ex-British jihadist El Shafee Elsheikh, convicted by a US jury on terror charges for his involvement with the Islamic States linked to the abduction, torture and beheading of several IS hostages in Syria, including journalists and aid workers
Boris Johnson, as he was Britain’s first prime minister to be fined by police for breaking a law (violating lockdown restrictions) and accused by authorities of misleading Parliament
Dustin Thompson, an Ohioan who claimed he was only "following presidential orders" when he stormed the U.S. Capitol (and stole a coat rack) on January 6th, convicted by a jury on all six counts (in less than three hours deliberation)
State Sen. Frank Niceley (R-TN), under fire (especially at Passover) for suggesting – during a debate on criminalizing homelessness – that a role model was Adolf Hitler, “who then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books”
Devin Nunes, losing his appeal of a lower-court judge’s decision last year to toss out a defamation lawsuit that he brought against CNN, claiming it engaged in a conspiracy against him to damage his reputation
Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster (R-NE), as a fellow GOP state senator accused him of groping her, in addition to seven others who (anonymously) said he touched them inappropriately without their consent
Tony Award-winning actor Frank Langella, fired by Netflix from its upcoming mini-series “The Fall of the House of Usher” after a misconduct investigation found he had sexually harassed a female co-star
Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin (D-NY), forced to resign after being arraigned in federal court on bribery and conspiracy charges in connection with a scheme involving phony campaign donations, when he ran for NYC Comptroller
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Top Ten Signs You Might be at a Republican Seder
10. They refuse to answer the four questions without a subpoena.
9. They demand a recount of the ten plagues.
8. They defend not increasing the minimum wage on the grounds that according to Chad Gadya it still costs only two zuzzimto buy a goat.
7. The afikomen is hidden in the Caymen Islands.
6. They refuse to open the door for Elijah until they see his immigration papers.
5. They attack Moses for negotiating a deal with Pharoah because why would we negotiate with our enemies?
4. They don't understand why the Egyptians didn’t cure the plagues with hydroxychloroquine.
3. They omit the parts about slavery from the Haggadah because it reminds them of Critical Race Theory.
2. They keep saying “when do we get to the miracle of the Jewish space lasers?”
And the number one sign that you might be at a Republican seder:
1. They end the seder by singing "Next year in Mar-a-Lago."
Why Should You Leave An Empty Seat For Elijah in Your Car, When You Go to a Poker Game? So You Can Leave with a Prophet.
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