Post by mhbruin on Apr 19, 2022 10:29:28 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 566 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 19)
We had some rain up north this week.
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If You Have to Wear Both Mask and Glasses, You Are Entitled to Some Condensation.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Previous Guy's Legacy Continues to Find Ways to Kill Americans. Just in Time for the Latest Surge in Cases.
On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for air travel and other forms of mass transportation. Deaths from COVID-19—and the mask mandates intended to prevent them—may be on the wane nationwide, but whatever you think about such policies, this is the latest and most egregious example of a judge acting as a partisan warrior in the COVID-19 culture wars.
Mizelle was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2020. She was 33, and had been practicing law for only 8 years. She had nevertried a case as a lead attorney. The Senate confirmed her even though the American Bar Association gave her a rating of “not qualified.” This nominee should have been rejected by the Senate not because of her judicial philosophy and not because of her age, but because she simply didn’t have the credentials and experience to be a federal judge with lifetime tenure.
Now she is substituting her opinion for that of scientific professionals at the CDC, and dictating health policy in America. The outcome could be disastrous, only serving to further embolden the right-wing activists who dispute the reality of this horrifically lethal pandemic.
............
You see, Judge Mizelle is one of those folks that the Federalist Society sent up the pneumatic tube that led from its labs to the White House. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and was rated as “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. She was 33 when she was nominated and confirmed as the 2020 lame-duck session was winding down. She was eight years out of law school and had never tried a case of any kind. Her husband was chosen to be acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security through his connection to that noted devotee of the Constitution, Stephen Miller. She had no experience, but she had the golden resume.
The QOP Finds Ways to Spend They Money. Fighting the QOP.
Mitch McConnell isn't backing down in his standoff with Donald Trump.
On Monday, the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with McConnell, announced that it had booked more than $7 miIlion worth of ad time in Alaska as GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski tries to fend off a challenge from Kelly Tshibaka, who has been endorsed by the former President. (The group also reserved ad time in six Senate battleground states.)
The move to defend Murkowski isn't terribly surprising -- McConnell has made clear all along that he supports Republican incumbents, including Murkowski.
But the super PAC's decision to commit $7 million -- by way of context, that's roughly how much Murkowski spent on her 2016 reelection race -- to Alaska means that McConnell is sending a not-so-subtle message to Trump: Time to put up or shut up.
See, Murkowski is crushing Tshibaka in fundraising. As of March 31, Murkowski had more than $5.2 million in the bank to spend on the race; Tshibaka had less than $1 million.
Now That the QOP Has Pulled Out of Presidential Debates
Debate organizers may now try to appease the RNC, but the effort may well only make an already tense situation worse. If you believe that Chris Wallace is biased against Republicans, whom would you regard as an acceptable alternative? Joe Rogan? Tucker Carlson? Alex Jones? Russian state TV’s Vladimir Solovyov? Maybe the only way to satisfy [Trump] fans is to just let Trump interview himself for 90 minutes, to be followed by a panel applauding Trump and ridiculing his rival? (Letting Previous Guy talk for 90 minutes in tront of a large national TV audience would likely be a disaster for him.)
Kids Need TLC, Not THC
At first glance, it looks like a single serving bag of Nerds Rope that your child might eat as a treat. But take a closer look. See the word "medicated" and the small white box at the bottom that says 600 milligrams of THC?
Those three letters stand for tetrahydrocannabinol, the part of the marijuana plant that makes people high.
Eating even a small fraction of that bag would "overwhelm a child," said Danielle Ompad, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Global Public Health and senior author of a new study investigating copycat packaging in cannabis sales. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Another candy package Ompad examined was nearly identical to the popular candy Gushers. The label says the bag contains 500 milligrams of THC, while a look-alike bag of Doritos contained 600 milligrams. The resemblance to the brand-name products is uncanny, she said.
"The Nerd Rope knockoffs I have personally seen looked just like the licensed product," Ompad said. "The (knockoff) Doritos were shaped just like the real thing and had a crunch as well."
Eating 500 to 600 milligrams of THC would be a huge dose, even for an adult. "If I ate that whole package, I would be miserable. People who are using edibles recreationally aren't typically eating more than 10 milligrams," Ompad said.
A thorough examination finds no manufacturer listed on the copycat packaging, she said. However, empty bags mimicking dozens of major brands of snacks and candy can be purchased online in bulk, she said, making it easy for small businesses to join the marketplace.
"The reputable business people in cannabis do not engage in this kind of conduct," said Henry Wykowski, legal council for the National Cannabis Industry Association. "There are other people that are still operating in the illicit market and they aren't following the rules."
"We would like to assist in stopping this. It's not good for anybody," he added.
"Many cannabis edibles companies are overstepping on marketing in an egregious way, putting consumers at risk and infringing on the trademarks of well-known and trusted confectionery brands," said Christopher Gindlesperger, the senior vice president of public affairs and communications for the National Confectioners Association, in an email.
A study published in the journal Pediatrics examined calls to regional poison control centers from 2017 to 2019 and found there were 4,172 cannabis exposure cases in the US among children up to 9 years old. Nearly half (46%) of those calls involved cannabis edibles.
More than 70% of calls to US poison control centers related to marijuana edibles in 2020 "involved children under the age of 5," according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who issued a consumer alert in October 2021.
"In the first half of 2021 alone, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has reported that poison control hotlines have received an estimated 2,622 calls for services related to young children ingesting illegal cannabis products," the alert said
Crypto May Not Be So Safe for Criminals
The U.S. Secret Service is cracking down on illicit digital currency transactions, seizing more than $102 million in cryptocurrency from criminals in connection with fraud-related investigations.
David Smith, assistant director of investigations, said agents and analysts actively track the flow of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain, similar to an old-fashioned surveillance. Best known for protecting presidents, the Secret Service also conducts financial and cybercrime investigations.
“When you follow a digital currency wallet, it’s not different than an email address that has some correlating identifiers,” Smith said in an interview at the agency’s headquarters. “And once a person and another person make a transaction, and that gets into the blockchain, we have the ability to follow that email address or wallet address, if you will, and trace it through the blockchain.”
Those cases include an investigation with the Romanian National Police in which 900 victims across the U.S. were targeted. That scheme involved posting false ads on popular online auctions and sales websites for luxury items that did not exist, and the delivering of invoices supposedly from reputable companies, making it appear the transactions were real. The perpetrators then engaged in a money-laundering scheme in which victims’ funds were converted into digital assets, the Secret Service said.
Other cases targeted a Russian cybercrime syndicate that used a crypto exchange to launder funds as well as a ransomware operation tied to Russian and North Korean criminals in which Bitcoin payments by U.S. companies to stop the attacks were sent to the suspects’ crypto wallets.
Texas Hates Women - Exhibit 14,221
Attorneys for the Texas mom who is facing death for the 2007 accidental death of her toddler have made an urgent plea to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop her execution, set for April 27. Innocence Project said the filing on Friday is the first time a court will see ”new scientific and expert evidence showing that Melissa’s conviction was based on an unreliable, coerced ‘confession’ and unscientific false evidence that misled the jury.”
It may also be the last time a court can intervene in her execution, since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case last fall.
Innocence Project said the petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals “details how the police investigation and prosecution were infected by gender bias,” using interrogation tactics “that replicated the dynamics of domestic violence” to get her to confess to a crime she didn’t commit. Lucio, a childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivor, was berated for hours by detectives on the night of her daughter’s death. Prosecutors then used a coerced statement against her in court.
The petition notes a technique where police, “intentionally or unintentionally, often ‘prompt the suspect’ on how they believed the crime happened, thereby allowing an innocent suspect without any knowledge of the crime to ‘parrot back an accurate-sounding narrative.’”
As previously noted, one of the jurors who has since expressed remorse over sentencing Lucio to death has said that he was never told her history as a sexual and domestic abuse survivor made her particularly vulnerable to interrogation tactics, “or how she repeated the same words the interrogators fed to her.” Johnny Galvan Jr. wrote last month that “no evidence was presented of that and it would have mattered to me.”
“’New linguistic analysis shows that while the police treated Melissa as a suspect, they treated her partner like an innocent victim—even though he was also Mariah’s caretaker, and had a history of intra-familial violence. He is now a free man,’ said Professor Sandra Babcock, Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, and one of Ms. Lucio’s attorneys,” Innocence Project continued.
The QOP Will Celebrate "Destroy the Earth Day"
Lawmakers hellbent on making their own Manifest Destiny will gather in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Earth Day to hold an anti-environmentalist summit. The “Stop 30x30 Summit” is meant to address an ambitious plan proposed by the Biden administration to protect at least 30% of the U.S.’s land and 30% of its oceans by 2030. Instead of looking toward conservation and environmental justice for the sake of combatting climate change, the Republicans featured in this summit will mostly pitch bringing back colonialism by way of land grabs. According to Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, the 30x30 plan constitutes government overreach and could prevent states like his from making the most out of the land it has a history of destroying. So hurt was Ricketts that he wasn’t consulted by the Biden administration on this plan that he sent a letter to the president last year opposing 30x30 and has billed himself ever since as being the first governor to oppose the plan.
Eastman Want to Do the Least a Man Can Do
John Eastman—he of insurrection memo fame—is petitioning to shield thousands of documents from the House Jan. 6 committee, Politico reports. Eastman filed a new petition this week in which he seeks to shield more than 3,200 documents comprising nearly 37,000 pages, claiming attorney-client privilege.
U.S. District Judge David Carter has proven unsympathetic to Eastman thus far in Eastman’s attempts to drag out the release of documents. Carter has ordered Eastman to produce at least 1,500 pages of records per day from a 19,000-page tranche obtained by a committee subpoena sent to Eastman’s ex-employer, Chapman University, and has further ordered him to prioritize emails for the days immediately before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection: Jan. 4-7.
This filing, however, is for the whole period of Eastman’s use of his Chapman account emails. There were nearly 100,000 pages originally included in the House committee’s subpoena of the records, but about 30,000 have already been removed as they were mass mailings unrelated to Eastman’s work with Trump to subvert the election.
Now Eastman is attempting to shield these emails and the Jan. 6 committee has refused “every claim,” so Eastman is asking Carter for a case-by-case review on the 37,000 or so pages left. Carter has already ruled that Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress in a criminal conspiracy in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote in a March decision.
He described the work of the committee as urgent in ordering Eastman to cough up the records, but now will have to look through this tranche of documents. The committee has questioned whether Eastman was actually acting as Trump’s lawyer that early, making his claim for attorney-client privilege at that point moot. Carter’s determination that Eastman was eventually Trump’s attorney puts all this in the chunk of stuff that needs to be reviewed page by page.
Ultimately, though, Eastman now has 3,200 documents that he refuses to turn over, which is not suspicious at all.
It's More Contagious Than COVID: Hypocrisy
In a 30-second TV advertisement filled with footage of adorable dogs, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), a veterinarian and farmer, touts his work to lower prescription drug prices.
Referring to the dogs, Schrader says, “I’m making a real difference for their owners too — taking on drug companies to lower insulin costs, making sure Medicare can negotiate lower drug prices, expanding Pell grants and career and technical education. And I’m leading the fight to get big money out of politics.”
But Schrader is not being completely honest about his record on prescription drug price policy.
He played a key role in watering down Democrats’ efforts to rein in prescription drug prices. And while Schrader portrays himself as a critic of “big money in politics,” Big Pharma has stepped in with major financial support for Schrader’s bid as he seeks to fend off progressive primary challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.
Schrader’s sleight of hand reflects the enduring influence of the biopharmaceutical industry in the Democratic Party, and the difficulty in exposing the sometimes complex ways that politicians advance the industry’s interests.
“It is the height of hypocrisy for Kurt Schrader to take credit for the bill that came out of the House on drug pricing and is now before the Senate when his principal contribution to that bill was to do everything in his power to weaken it,” said David Mitchell, president of the group Patients for Affordable Drugs. “He stood with Pharma against the will of voters who overwhelmingly want action, and the most effective possible action taken, to lower prescription drug prices.”
The Cow Fondler
Stephen Colbert said he tries to ignore Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who he described as “one of the engineers on the express train to right-wing Crazytown.”
Carlson “does and says things that are kind of stupid for attention, but this one is so stupid that it got my attention,” Colbert said.
He was referring, of course, to Carlson’s bonkers TV special about manliness and testosterone, that includes a segment on why guys should tan their testicles. It was also full of naked and nearly naked men engaging in “manly” activities.
“I gotta say, coming from a Fox News anchor, that is a refreshing and positive celebration of homoeroticism,” Colbert noted. “Good for you, fellas!”
One of the clips featured a shirtless man milking a cow, but as Colbert noted, there was no bucket.
“I’m not Farmer Brown, but I’m here to tell you: Unless you bring a bucket, you’re not milking a cow,” Colbert said. “You’re a cow fondler.”
What Is She Qualified For?
A federal judge in Georgia is allowing a lawsuit challenging Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's qualifications to run for re-election to move forward.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg on Monday denied the Georgia Republican's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the suit. Free Speech for People, an election and campaign finance reform organization, filed the lawsuit last month on behalf of a group of the state's voters, alleging Greene facilitated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Pointing to the 14th Amendment's prohibition on anyone who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from running for federal or state office, the suit alleges Greene is ineligible to run because she engaged in obstructing the transfer of presidential power, in part through her rhetoric challenging the election results.
Greene sought to derail the effort with her own lawsuit this month, saying she “vigorously denies that she ‘aided and engaged in insurrection to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power.’”
I Never Thought Nate Silver Would Be a Nominee
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Please Bomb the Sheet Out of My Mansion
A millionaire Ukrainian business titan said he asked Ukraine’s army to bomb his own newly built home after his security webcam showed Russian troops were using it as a base.
During an interview with “Good Morning Britain” on Monday, Andrey Stavnitser recalled his disgust at seeing Russian soldiers using his estate west of the capital Kyiv to launch missile attacks and sort looted goods.
“I felt dirty looking at some guys walking inside my house,” said Stavnitser, who is now assisting with relief efforts from Lublin, Poland. He said the Russian soldiers had stripped his security staff naked and sent them into the woods.
It was “an obvious decision” to call for his estate to be reduced to rubble, he said.
“It’s not about money,” he added. “I want to do everything possible to help Ukraine win, because I think we are safeguarding Europe’s safety and it’s important to kick those bastards out of our land.”
“Good Morning Britain” showed aerial footage of Stavnitser’s home after the Ukrainian strike. Parts of the sprawling structure were reduced to rubble and Russian military equipment was scattered in the ruins.
How Many Times Can a Man Turn His Head and Pretend That He Just Doesn't See?
Clad in combat gear and armed with an assault rifle, longtime MSNBC intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance revealed Monday that he had joined Ukrainian forces fighting on the ground against the Russian invasion.
“I spent quite a bit of time here in the pre-war period,” Nance, a U.S. Navy veteran, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid via video link from Ukraine. “And when the invasion happened, I had friends who were in Donetsk, who were in the Ukrainian army, who were writing to us and telling us, ‘We are not going to survive tonight. We have been hit 500 times.’”
“The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, ‘I’m done talking, all right? It’s time to take action here.’”
He said he had joined the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s army opened by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to allow foreigners to join the resistance against Russia.
An MSNBC spokesperson told The Daily Beast that Nance is no longer an analyst for the network now that he has joined the international legion.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Russia Will Win By May 9th ... No Matter What Happens on the Battlefield
When Ukrainian forces repelled Russian troops aiming to capture the capital, Kyiv, they said they found some interesting baggage among the detritus of the Russian retreat -- abandoned ammunition and armor, and inside the military vehicles, Russian parade uniforms. "They expected to get Kyiv in two days and then have a parade here," said Oleksandr Hruzevych, the deputy chief of staff of Ukraine's ground forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn't get a parade in the Ukrainian capital, but a parade is coming soon to Moscow and, whatever happens on the battlefield, the Russian President is likely to declare victory during that event three weeks from now.
May 9 is when Russia marks one of its most important national holidays, Victory Day -- the anniversary of Germany's surrender at the end of World War II. The Kremlin has used that anniversary for more than 70 years to commemorate the successful heroism against the Nazis but, just as importantly, to proclaim to the Russian people and to the country's friends and foes alike that Moscow's leaders rule over a great and mighty power.
Victory Day is all about military muscle, and when it comes in the middle of a war -- even one that Russians are forbidden to call a "war" and one that state propaganda falsely claims is going perfectly according to plan -- there's almost no alternative but to use the occasion to boast of victory.
US intelligence assessments, Russian foreign policy analysts and common sense all indicate that Putin will use May 9 as a sort of self-imposed deadline in Ukraine. It's not a deadline to win the war -- that will likely not happen by then -- but to pretend Russia has won something. Something major. Something important.
Russia Will Lose By May 9th.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia's war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants.
The 190-country lender cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6% this year, a steep falloff from 6.1% last year and from the 4.4% growth it had expected for 2022 back in January. It also said it expects the world economy to grow 3.6% again next year, slightly slower than the 3.8% it forecast in January.
The war — and the darkening outlook — came just as the global economy appeared to be shaking off the impact of the highly infectious omicron variant.
“The war will slow economic growth and increase inflation," IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters on Tuesday.
Now, the IMF expects Russia’s economy — battered by sanctions — to shrink 8.5% this year and Ukraine’s 35%.
Why the Donbas?
Simply put, the Donbas region is of territorial and ideological significance and making gains there could provide the Kremlin some form of victory after struggling to achieve its initial objectives in the war.
Valeriy Akimenko, a senior research associate at Conflict Studies Research Centre, said that Russia sees the land as valuable and “as historically Russian, ‘gifted’ to Ukraine during the Soviet era.”
“It is also part of the ‘Russian World’ concept Moscow aims to construct,” he added.
The region, almost twice the size of Belgium, is an industrial powerhouse filled with valuable coal and metal deposits and processing centers as well as strategically important ports on the Sea of Azov, which sits between Russia, Crimea and Ukraine.
Since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Moscow-backed separatists have battled Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. The conflict lasted eight years and killed an estimated 14,000 people, according to the United Nations, until Russia invaded its neighbor nearly two months ago.
That move followed Putin's recognition of the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic.” They are named after the two main areas that together make up the Donbas.
The War is Renewed for a Second Season. Will It Be Better Than Season 1?
Season two of Putin’s war in Ukraine is now underway, and while it’s early, we’re starting to get an idea of Russia’s designs. Say goodbye to a push toward Dnipro (the notion was idiotic), and so long pipe-dream pincer—a 200-kilometre attempted encirclement of Ukrainian defensive positions on the eastern Donbas front—that was stupid too. What we’re getting instead is the same shit from the last eight years: direct attacks on the entire Donbas front lines. It looks like this:
Not only is the entire front under pressure, but the Izyum salient is pushing toward Slovyansk (pre-war population 111,000), and Kramtorsk (population 157,000). The pincer maneuver would’ve aimed to cut off Ukraine resupplies to this entire region, starving a third of Ukraine’s army into submission. Perhaps after Mariupol, which still hasn’t fallen, Russia decided that would take too long—parades must be marched on May 9 after all. So Russian troops are gunning for the region’s two major population and cultural centers, cutting them off from supplies, and maybe attempting a Mariupol-style operation to take them.
For once, a Russian move doesn’t appear utterly idiotic. This is what they should’ve done at the start of the war when they were at full strength. Russia can’t maintain long supply lines. This minimizes that deficiency while also making them less vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery hitting them hard from the west. And broad pressure across a wide line means they can keep doing their small-scale advances without having to figure out how to mass forces for a major singular push. In other words, it’s making lemonade out of lemons.
The full story. Here are a few more excerpts:
Meanwhile, Ukraine is on the offensive around Kharkiv, threatening Russia’s supply lines. It looks like this:
War Respects Nothing
In a picturesque resort town on the northern edge of Ukraine's Donbas region, people can hear the shelling coming closer. The Russians are just five miles to the north.
Sviatohirsk was once a staple of the tourist trail but now it is just another place in the Donbas where people flee the fighting. Most of its permanent residents have themselves fled, fearing the war will not stop its ruthless advance here.
It was famed for its historic Russian Orthodox church and monastery, set amid the wooded Holy Mountains of the Donbas. That monastery has been damaged by shrapnel from a Russian air strike that hit a target nearby. There is now a gaping hole in the church spire.
This Yacht May Not Enjoy Fiji Water
The United States is seeking to seize a superyacht suspected of belonging to a Russian oligarch that is docked in the Pacific island nation of Fiji, a restraining order filed on Tuesday by Fiji’s director of public prosecutions showed.
The luxury vessel the Amadea is widely believed to be owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, who has been sanctioned by the US and European Union.
The vessel arrived in Fiji a week ago after leaving Mexico 18 days earlier and crossing the Pacific. Police are investigating.
Authorities in various countries have seized luxury vessels and villas owned by Russian billionaires in response to sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
Fiji’s director of public prosecutions, Christopher Pryde, filed an application to the High Court seeking to prevent the Amadea from leaving Fiji.
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This Will Be a Bitter Pill For Him to Swallow
Twitter's board of directors has adopted a limited-term shareholder rights plan called a "poison pill" that could make it harder for Elon Musk to acquire the company.
The "poison pill" provision, announced in a press release Friday, preserves the right for Twitter shareholders other than Musk to acquire more shares of the company at a relatively inexpensive price, effectively diluting Musk's stake. The provision will be triggered if Musk (or any other investor) acquires more than 15% of the company's shares. Musk currently owns around 9% of Twitter's shares.
The move marks an effort by Twitter's board to wrest back some control in the deal after Musk's stunning acquisition offer. The poison pill — a corporate anti-takeover defense mechanism — won't necessarily stop Musk's bid in its tracks, but it could make buying the company more expensive or force Musk to the negotiating table with the board.
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What's Driving Inflation?
NBC has a story about it but it is way too complex. Here is the simple answer:
1) Lower supply. Whether it is less oil due to the Ukraine war, supply chain issues due to COVID, or a shortage of eggs due to bird flu, many things are in short supply. An key commodities like oil and computer chips drive up the price of everything else.
2) Higher demand. Governments around the world put more money in people's pockets when COVID hit. They are spending it.
It's Econ 101. Supply and demand. Both are pushing prices up.
What's going to happen? Supply will gradually catch up with demand, and central banks will try to reduce the demand. It will likely take a year.
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Just In Time for Killing the Mask Mandate
In the past few months, we have learned that COVID-19 can cause a wide range of neurocognitive anomalies and even damage. From the beginning, people affected with the disease have complained of anosmia (altered sense of smell), ageusia (altered sense of taste), “brain fog”, similar to what has been reported in chronic fatigue syndrome and during chemotherapy, and now even such symptoms as ataxia (altered gait) and psychosis (disordered thinking and/or behavior, possibly coupled with hallucinations or paranoid/persecutory ideations).
Now, a study from Tulane has come out that strongly suggest that, even in mild forms or onsets of the disease, even with asymptomatic presentation, the brain may experience diffuse yet profound insult in the form of “innumerable” microbleeds throughout the brain.
The full story.
Also, COVID-19 reduces grey matter volume in areas related to memory, executive function: Nature Magazine
Not That the QOP Would Notice Reduced Brain Function. When You've Got Nothing, You've Got Nothing to Lose.
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Previous Guy Supporters Want a Selfie With WHOM?
“The Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper on Monday shared a puzzling response he’s been getting when meeting some supporters of Donald Trump.
Instead of wanting to chase him down or scream at him for his videos that expose the hypocrisy of the former president and his devotees, Klepper said right-wingers now often ask him for a selfie.
Klepper was “shocked” by how many selfie requests he received at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, he said on Monday’s episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“What I quickly realized is, I’m part of the narrative there,” he explained.
Klepper recalled one teenager who claimed to be Trump’s biggest fan saying he’d seen all of his videos for Trevor Noah’s Comedy Central program.
The teen told Klepper he watched “all Trump stuff; good, bad” because “it’s all part of this world.”
“Even though I might be espousing some points of view that he doesn’t agree with, I’m the heel in this WWE world,” Klepper suggested. “He needs me. And so he might be mildly aggressive towards me, but beyond that he’s more excited to get this close to the world.”
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 389 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 |
| 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 19)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 79% (70%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 65% (58%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 60% (54%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 29% | 15% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 33% | 27% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 23% | 24% |
If You Have to Wear Both Mask and Glasses, You Are Entitled to Some Condensation.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Previous Guy's Legacy Continues to Find Ways to Kill Americans. Just in Time for the Latest Surge in Cases.
On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for air travel and other forms of mass transportation. Deaths from COVID-19—and the mask mandates intended to prevent them—may be on the wane nationwide, but whatever you think about such policies, this is the latest and most egregious example of a judge acting as a partisan warrior in the COVID-19 culture wars.
Mizelle was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2020. She was 33, and had been practicing law for only 8 years. She had nevertried a case as a lead attorney. The Senate confirmed her even though the American Bar Association gave her a rating of “not qualified.” This nominee should have been rejected by the Senate not because of her judicial philosophy and not because of her age, but because she simply didn’t have the credentials and experience to be a federal judge with lifetime tenure.
Now she is substituting her opinion for that of scientific professionals at the CDC, and dictating health policy in America. The outcome could be disastrous, only serving to further embolden the right-wing activists who dispute the reality of this horrifically lethal pandemic.
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You see, Judge Mizelle is one of those folks that the Federalist Society sent up the pneumatic tube that led from its labs to the White House. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and was rated as “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. She was 33 when she was nominated and confirmed as the 2020 lame-duck session was winding down. She was eight years out of law school and had never tried a case of any kind. Her husband was chosen to be acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security through his connection to that noted devotee of the Constitution, Stephen Miller. She had no experience, but she had the golden resume.
The QOP Finds Ways to Spend They Money. Fighting the QOP.
Mitch McConnell isn't backing down in his standoff with Donald Trump.
On Monday, the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with McConnell, announced that it had booked more than $7 miIlion worth of ad time in Alaska as GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski tries to fend off a challenge from Kelly Tshibaka, who has been endorsed by the former President. (The group also reserved ad time in six Senate battleground states.)
The move to defend Murkowski isn't terribly surprising -- McConnell has made clear all along that he supports Republican incumbents, including Murkowski.
But the super PAC's decision to commit $7 million -- by way of context, that's roughly how much Murkowski spent on her 2016 reelection race -- to Alaska means that McConnell is sending a not-so-subtle message to Trump: Time to put up or shut up.
See, Murkowski is crushing Tshibaka in fundraising. As of March 31, Murkowski had more than $5.2 million in the bank to spend on the race; Tshibaka had less than $1 million.
Now That the QOP Has Pulled Out of Presidential Debates
Debate organizers may now try to appease the RNC, but the effort may well only make an already tense situation worse. If you believe that Chris Wallace is biased against Republicans, whom would you regard as an acceptable alternative? Joe Rogan? Tucker Carlson? Alex Jones? Russian state TV’s Vladimir Solovyov? Maybe the only way to satisfy [Trump] fans is to just let Trump interview himself for 90 minutes, to be followed by a panel applauding Trump and ridiculing his rival? (Letting Previous Guy talk for 90 minutes in tront of a large national TV audience would likely be a disaster for him.)
Kids Need TLC, Not THC
At first glance, it looks like a single serving bag of Nerds Rope that your child might eat as a treat. But take a closer look. See the word "medicated" and the small white box at the bottom that says 600 milligrams of THC?
Those three letters stand for tetrahydrocannabinol, the part of the marijuana plant that makes people high.
Eating even a small fraction of that bag would "overwhelm a child," said Danielle Ompad, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Global Public Health and senior author of a new study investigating copycat packaging in cannabis sales. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Another candy package Ompad examined was nearly identical to the popular candy Gushers. The label says the bag contains 500 milligrams of THC, while a look-alike bag of Doritos contained 600 milligrams. The resemblance to the brand-name products is uncanny, she said.
"The Nerd Rope knockoffs I have personally seen looked just like the licensed product," Ompad said. "The (knockoff) Doritos were shaped just like the real thing and had a crunch as well."
Eating 500 to 600 milligrams of THC would be a huge dose, even for an adult. "If I ate that whole package, I would be miserable. People who are using edibles recreationally aren't typically eating more than 10 milligrams," Ompad said.
A thorough examination finds no manufacturer listed on the copycat packaging, she said. However, empty bags mimicking dozens of major brands of snacks and candy can be purchased online in bulk, she said, making it easy for small businesses to join the marketplace.
"The reputable business people in cannabis do not engage in this kind of conduct," said Henry Wykowski, legal council for the National Cannabis Industry Association. "There are other people that are still operating in the illicit market and they aren't following the rules."
"We would like to assist in stopping this. It's not good for anybody," he added.
"Many cannabis edibles companies are overstepping on marketing in an egregious way, putting consumers at risk and infringing on the trademarks of well-known and trusted confectionery brands," said Christopher Gindlesperger, the senior vice president of public affairs and communications for the National Confectioners Association, in an email.
A study published in the journal Pediatrics examined calls to regional poison control centers from 2017 to 2019 and found there were 4,172 cannabis exposure cases in the US among children up to 9 years old. Nearly half (46%) of those calls involved cannabis edibles.
More than 70% of calls to US poison control centers related to marijuana edibles in 2020 "involved children under the age of 5," according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who issued a consumer alert in October 2021.
"In the first half of 2021 alone, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has reported that poison control hotlines have received an estimated 2,622 calls for services related to young children ingesting illegal cannabis products," the alert said
Crypto May Not Be So Safe for Criminals
The U.S. Secret Service is cracking down on illicit digital currency transactions, seizing more than $102 million in cryptocurrency from criminals in connection with fraud-related investigations.
David Smith, assistant director of investigations, said agents and analysts actively track the flow of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain, similar to an old-fashioned surveillance. Best known for protecting presidents, the Secret Service also conducts financial and cybercrime investigations.
“When you follow a digital currency wallet, it’s not different than an email address that has some correlating identifiers,” Smith said in an interview at the agency’s headquarters. “And once a person and another person make a transaction, and that gets into the blockchain, we have the ability to follow that email address or wallet address, if you will, and trace it through the blockchain.”
Those cases include an investigation with the Romanian National Police in which 900 victims across the U.S. were targeted. That scheme involved posting false ads on popular online auctions and sales websites for luxury items that did not exist, and the delivering of invoices supposedly from reputable companies, making it appear the transactions were real. The perpetrators then engaged in a money-laundering scheme in which victims’ funds were converted into digital assets, the Secret Service said.
Other cases targeted a Russian cybercrime syndicate that used a crypto exchange to launder funds as well as a ransomware operation tied to Russian and North Korean criminals in which Bitcoin payments by U.S. companies to stop the attacks were sent to the suspects’ crypto wallets.
Texas Hates Women - Exhibit 14,221
Attorneys for the Texas mom who is facing death for the 2007 accidental death of her toddler have made an urgent plea to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop her execution, set for April 27. Innocence Project said the filing on Friday is the first time a court will see ”new scientific and expert evidence showing that Melissa’s conviction was based on an unreliable, coerced ‘confession’ and unscientific false evidence that misled the jury.”
It may also be the last time a court can intervene in her execution, since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case last fall.
Innocence Project said the petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals “details how the police investigation and prosecution were infected by gender bias,” using interrogation tactics “that replicated the dynamics of domestic violence” to get her to confess to a crime she didn’t commit. Lucio, a childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivor, was berated for hours by detectives on the night of her daughter’s death. Prosecutors then used a coerced statement against her in court.
The petition notes a technique where police, “intentionally or unintentionally, often ‘prompt the suspect’ on how they believed the crime happened, thereby allowing an innocent suspect without any knowledge of the crime to ‘parrot back an accurate-sounding narrative.’”
As previously noted, one of the jurors who has since expressed remorse over sentencing Lucio to death has said that he was never told her history as a sexual and domestic abuse survivor made her particularly vulnerable to interrogation tactics, “or how she repeated the same words the interrogators fed to her.” Johnny Galvan Jr. wrote last month that “no evidence was presented of that and it would have mattered to me.”
“’New linguistic analysis shows that while the police treated Melissa as a suspect, they treated her partner like an innocent victim—even though he was also Mariah’s caretaker, and had a history of intra-familial violence. He is now a free man,’ said Professor Sandra Babcock, Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, and one of Ms. Lucio’s attorneys,” Innocence Project continued.
The QOP Will Celebrate "Destroy the Earth Day"
Lawmakers hellbent on making their own Manifest Destiny will gather in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Earth Day to hold an anti-environmentalist summit. The “Stop 30x30 Summit” is meant to address an ambitious plan proposed by the Biden administration to protect at least 30% of the U.S.’s land and 30% of its oceans by 2030. Instead of looking toward conservation and environmental justice for the sake of combatting climate change, the Republicans featured in this summit will mostly pitch bringing back colonialism by way of land grabs. According to Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, the 30x30 plan constitutes government overreach and could prevent states like his from making the most out of the land it has a history of destroying. So hurt was Ricketts that he wasn’t consulted by the Biden administration on this plan that he sent a letter to the president last year opposing 30x30 and has billed himself ever since as being the first governor to oppose the plan.
Eastman Want to Do the Least a Man Can Do
John Eastman—he of insurrection memo fame—is petitioning to shield thousands of documents from the House Jan. 6 committee, Politico reports. Eastman filed a new petition this week in which he seeks to shield more than 3,200 documents comprising nearly 37,000 pages, claiming attorney-client privilege.
U.S. District Judge David Carter has proven unsympathetic to Eastman thus far in Eastman’s attempts to drag out the release of documents. Carter has ordered Eastman to produce at least 1,500 pages of records per day from a 19,000-page tranche obtained by a committee subpoena sent to Eastman’s ex-employer, Chapman University, and has further ordered him to prioritize emails for the days immediately before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection: Jan. 4-7.
This filing, however, is for the whole period of Eastman’s use of his Chapman account emails. There were nearly 100,000 pages originally included in the House committee’s subpoena of the records, but about 30,000 have already been removed as they were mass mailings unrelated to Eastman’s work with Trump to subvert the election.
Now Eastman is attempting to shield these emails and the Jan. 6 committee has refused “every claim,” so Eastman is asking Carter for a case-by-case review on the 37,000 or so pages left. Carter has already ruled that Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress in a criminal conspiracy in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote in a March decision.
He described the work of the committee as urgent in ordering Eastman to cough up the records, but now will have to look through this tranche of documents. The committee has questioned whether Eastman was actually acting as Trump’s lawyer that early, making his claim for attorney-client privilege at that point moot. Carter’s determination that Eastman was eventually Trump’s attorney puts all this in the chunk of stuff that needs to be reviewed page by page.
Ultimately, though, Eastman now has 3,200 documents that he refuses to turn over, which is not suspicious at all.
It's More Contagious Than COVID: Hypocrisy
In a 30-second TV advertisement filled with footage of adorable dogs, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), a veterinarian and farmer, touts his work to lower prescription drug prices.
Referring to the dogs, Schrader says, “I’m making a real difference for their owners too — taking on drug companies to lower insulin costs, making sure Medicare can negotiate lower drug prices, expanding Pell grants and career and technical education. And I’m leading the fight to get big money out of politics.”
But Schrader is not being completely honest about his record on prescription drug price policy.
He played a key role in watering down Democrats’ efforts to rein in prescription drug prices. And while Schrader portrays himself as a critic of “big money in politics,” Big Pharma has stepped in with major financial support for Schrader’s bid as he seeks to fend off progressive primary challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.
Schrader’s sleight of hand reflects the enduring influence of the biopharmaceutical industry in the Democratic Party, and the difficulty in exposing the sometimes complex ways that politicians advance the industry’s interests.
“It is the height of hypocrisy for Kurt Schrader to take credit for the bill that came out of the House on drug pricing and is now before the Senate when his principal contribution to that bill was to do everything in his power to weaken it,” said David Mitchell, president of the group Patients for Affordable Drugs. “He stood with Pharma against the will of voters who overwhelmingly want action, and the most effective possible action taken, to lower prescription drug prices.”
The Cow Fondler
Stephen Colbert said he tries to ignore Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who he described as “one of the engineers on the express train to right-wing Crazytown.”
Carlson “does and says things that are kind of stupid for attention, but this one is so stupid that it got my attention,” Colbert said.
He was referring, of course, to Carlson’s bonkers TV special about manliness and testosterone, that includes a segment on why guys should tan their testicles. It was also full of naked and nearly naked men engaging in “manly” activities.
“I gotta say, coming from a Fox News anchor, that is a refreshing and positive celebration of homoeroticism,” Colbert noted. “Good for you, fellas!”
One of the clips featured a shirtless man milking a cow, but as Colbert noted, there was no bucket.
“I’m not Farmer Brown, but I’m here to tell you: Unless you bring a bucket, you’re not milking a cow,” Colbert said. “You’re a cow fondler.”
What Is She Qualified For?
A federal judge in Georgia is allowing a lawsuit challenging Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's qualifications to run for re-election to move forward.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg on Monday denied the Georgia Republican's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the suit. Free Speech for People, an election and campaign finance reform organization, filed the lawsuit last month on behalf of a group of the state's voters, alleging Greene facilitated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Pointing to the 14th Amendment's prohibition on anyone who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from running for federal or state office, the suit alleges Greene is ineligible to run because she engaged in obstructing the transfer of presidential power, in part through her rhetoric challenging the election results.
Greene sought to derail the effort with her own lawsuit this month, saying she “vigorously denies that she ‘aided and engaged in insurrection to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power.’”
I Never Thought Nate Silver Would Be a Nominee
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Please Bomb the Sheet Out of My Mansion
A millionaire Ukrainian business titan said he asked Ukraine’s army to bomb his own newly built home after his security webcam showed Russian troops were using it as a base.
During an interview with “Good Morning Britain” on Monday, Andrey Stavnitser recalled his disgust at seeing Russian soldiers using his estate west of the capital Kyiv to launch missile attacks and sort looted goods.
“I felt dirty looking at some guys walking inside my house,” said Stavnitser, who is now assisting with relief efforts from Lublin, Poland. He said the Russian soldiers had stripped his security staff naked and sent them into the woods.
It was “an obvious decision” to call for his estate to be reduced to rubble, he said.
“It’s not about money,” he added. “I want to do everything possible to help Ukraine win, because I think we are safeguarding Europe’s safety and it’s important to kick those bastards out of our land.”
“Good Morning Britain” showed aerial footage of Stavnitser’s home after the Ukrainian strike. Parts of the sprawling structure were reduced to rubble and Russian military equipment was scattered in the ruins.
How Many Times Can a Man Turn His Head and Pretend That He Just Doesn't See?
Clad in combat gear and armed with an assault rifle, longtime MSNBC intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance revealed Monday that he had joined Ukrainian forces fighting on the ground against the Russian invasion.
“I spent quite a bit of time here in the pre-war period,” Nance, a U.S. Navy veteran, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid via video link from Ukraine. “And when the invasion happened, I had friends who were in Donetsk, who were in the Ukrainian army, who were writing to us and telling us, ‘We are not going to survive tonight. We have been hit 500 times.’”
“The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, ‘I’m done talking, all right? It’s time to take action here.’”
He said he had joined the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s army opened by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to allow foreigners to join the resistance against Russia.
An MSNBC spokesperson told The Daily Beast that Nance is no longer an analyst for the network now that he has joined the international legion.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Russia Will Win By May 9th ... No Matter What Happens on the Battlefield
When Ukrainian forces repelled Russian troops aiming to capture the capital, Kyiv, they said they found some interesting baggage among the detritus of the Russian retreat -- abandoned ammunition and armor, and inside the military vehicles, Russian parade uniforms. "They expected to get Kyiv in two days and then have a parade here," said Oleksandr Hruzevych, the deputy chief of staff of Ukraine's ground forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn't get a parade in the Ukrainian capital, but a parade is coming soon to Moscow and, whatever happens on the battlefield, the Russian President is likely to declare victory during that event three weeks from now.
May 9 is when Russia marks one of its most important national holidays, Victory Day -- the anniversary of Germany's surrender at the end of World War II. The Kremlin has used that anniversary for more than 70 years to commemorate the successful heroism against the Nazis but, just as importantly, to proclaim to the Russian people and to the country's friends and foes alike that Moscow's leaders rule over a great and mighty power.
Victory Day is all about military muscle, and when it comes in the middle of a war -- even one that Russians are forbidden to call a "war" and one that state propaganda falsely claims is going perfectly according to plan -- there's almost no alternative but to use the occasion to boast of victory.
US intelligence assessments, Russian foreign policy analysts and common sense all indicate that Putin will use May 9 as a sort of self-imposed deadline in Ukraine. It's not a deadline to win the war -- that will likely not happen by then -- but to pretend Russia has won something. Something major. Something important.
Russia Will Lose By May 9th.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia's war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants.
The 190-country lender cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6% this year, a steep falloff from 6.1% last year and from the 4.4% growth it had expected for 2022 back in January. It also said it expects the world economy to grow 3.6% again next year, slightly slower than the 3.8% it forecast in January.
The war — and the darkening outlook — came just as the global economy appeared to be shaking off the impact of the highly infectious omicron variant.
“The war will slow economic growth and increase inflation," IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters on Tuesday.
Now, the IMF expects Russia’s economy — battered by sanctions — to shrink 8.5% this year and Ukraine’s 35%.
Why the Donbas?
Simply put, the Donbas region is of territorial and ideological significance and making gains there could provide the Kremlin some form of victory after struggling to achieve its initial objectives in the war.
Valeriy Akimenko, a senior research associate at Conflict Studies Research Centre, said that Russia sees the land as valuable and “as historically Russian, ‘gifted’ to Ukraine during the Soviet era.”
“It is also part of the ‘Russian World’ concept Moscow aims to construct,” he added.
The region, almost twice the size of Belgium, is an industrial powerhouse filled with valuable coal and metal deposits and processing centers as well as strategically important ports on the Sea of Azov, which sits between Russia, Crimea and Ukraine.
Since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Moscow-backed separatists have battled Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. The conflict lasted eight years and killed an estimated 14,000 people, according to the United Nations, until Russia invaded its neighbor nearly two months ago.
That move followed Putin's recognition of the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic.” They are named after the two main areas that together make up the Donbas.
The War is Renewed for a Second Season. Will It Be Better Than Season 1?
Season two of Putin’s war in Ukraine is now underway, and while it’s early, we’re starting to get an idea of Russia’s designs. Say goodbye to a push toward Dnipro (the notion was idiotic), and so long pipe-dream pincer—a 200-kilometre attempted encirclement of Ukrainian defensive positions on the eastern Donbas front—that was stupid too. What we’re getting instead is the same shit from the last eight years: direct attacks on the entire Donbas front lines. It looks like this:
Not only is the entire front under pressure, but the Izyum salient is pushing toward Slovyansk (pre-war population 111,000), and Kramtorsk (population 157,000). The pincer maneuver would’ve aimed to cut off Ukraine resupplies to this entire region, starving a third of Ukraine’s army into submission. Perhaps after Mariupol, which still hasn’t fallen, Russia decided that would take too long—parades must be marched on May 9 after all. So Russian troops are gunning for the region’s two major population and cultural centers, cutting them off from supplies, and maybe attempting a Mariupol-style operation to take them.
For once, a Russian move doesn’t appear utterly idiotic. This is what they should’ve done at the start of the war when they were at full strength. Russia can’t maintain long supply lines. This minimizes that deficiency while also making them less vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery hitting them hard from the west. And broad pressure across a wide line means they can keep doing their small-scale advances without having to figure out how to mass forces for a major singular push. In other words, it’s making lemonade out of lemons.
The full story. Here are a few more excerpts:
Meanwhile, Ukraine is on the offensive around Kharkiv, threatening Russia’s supply lines. It looks like this:
War Respects Nothing
In a picturesque resort town on the northern edge of Ukraine's Donbas region, people can hear the shelling coming closer. The Russians are just five miles to the north.
Sviatohirsk was once a staple of the tourist trail but now it is just another place in the Donbas where people flee the fighting. Most of its permanent residents have themselves fled, fearing the war will not stop its ruthless advance here.
It was famed for its historic Russian Orthodox church and monastery, set amid the wooded Holy Mountains of the Donbas. That monastery has been damaged by shrapnel from a Russian air strike that hit a target nearby. There is now a gaping hole in the church spire.
This Yacht May Not Enjoy Fiji Water
The United States is seeking to seize a superyacht suspected of belonging to a Russian oligarch that is docked in the Pacific island nation of Fiji, a restraining order filed on Tuesday by Fiji’s director of public prosecutions showed.
The luxury vessel the Amadea is widely believed to be owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, who has been sanctioned by the US and European Union.
The vessel arrived in Fiji a week ago after leaving Mexico 18 days earlier and crossing the Pacific. Police are investigating.
Authorities in various countries have seized luxury vessels and villas owned by Russian billionaires in response to sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
Fiji’s director of public prosecutions, Christopher Pryde, filed an application to the High Court seeking to prevent the Amadea from leaving Fiji.
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This Will Be a Bitter Pill For Him to Swallow
Twitter's board of directors has adopted a limited-term shareholder rights plan called a "poison pill" that could make it harder for Elon Musk to acquire the company.
The "poison pill" provision, announced in a press release Friday, preserves the right for Twitter shareholders other than Musk to acquire more shares of the company at a relatively inexpensive price, effectively diluting Musk's stake. The provision will be triggered if Musk (or any other investor) acquires more than 15% of the company's shares. Musk currently owns around 9% of Twitter's shares.
The move marks an effort by Twitter's board to wrest back some control in the deal after Musk's stunning acquisition offer. The poison pill — a corporate anti-takeover defense mechanism — won't necessarily stop Musk's bid in its tracks, but it could make buying the company more expensive or force Musk to the negotiating table with the board.
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What's Driving Inflation?
NBC has a story about it but it is way too complex. Here is the simple answer:
1) Lower supply. Whether it is less oil due to the Ukraine war, supply chain issues due to COVID, or a shortage of eggs due to bird flu, many things are in short supply. An key commodities like oil and computer chips drive up the price of everything else.
2) Higher demand. Governments around the world put more money in people's pockets when COVID hit. They are spending it.
It's Econ 101. Supply and demand. Both are pushing prices up.
What's going to happen? Supply will gradually catch up with demand, and central banks will try to reduce the demand. It will likely take a year.
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Just In Time for Killing the Mask Mandate
In the past few months, we have learned that COVID-19 can cause a wide range of neurocognitive anomalies and even damage. From the beginning, people affected with the disease have complained of anosmia (altered sense of smell), ageusia (altered sense of taste), “brain fog”, similar to what has been reported in chronic fatigue syndrome and during chemotherapy, and now even such symptoms as ataxia (altered gait) and psychosis (disordered thinking and/or behavior, possibly coupled with hallucinations or paranoid/persecutory ideations).
Now, a study from Tulane has come out that strongly suggest that, even in mild forms or onsets of the disease, even with asymptomatic presentation, the brain may experience diffuse yet profound insult in the form of “innumerable” microbleeds throughout the brain.
The full story.
Also, COVID-19 reduces grey matter volume in areas related to memory, executive function: Nature Magazine
Not That the QOP Would Notice Reduced Brain Function. When You've Got Nothing, You've Got Nothing to Lose.
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Previous Guy Supporters Want a Selfie With WHOM?
“The Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper on Monday shared a puzzling response he’s been getting when meeting some supporters of Donald Trump.
Instead of wanting to chase him down or scream at him for his videos that expose the hypocrisy of the former president and his devotees, Klepper said right-wingers now often ask him for a selfie.
Klepper was “shocked” by how many selfie requests he received at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, he said on Monday’s episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“What I quickly realized is, I’m part of the narrative there,” he explained.
Klepper recalled one teenager who claimed to be Trump’s biggest fan saying he’d seen all of his videos for Trevor Noah’s Comedy Central program.
The teen told Klepper he watched “all Trump stuff; good, bad” because “it’s all part of this world.”
“Even though I might be espousing some points of view that he doesn’t agree with, I’m the heel in this WWE world,” Klepper suggested. “He needs me. And so he might be mildly aggressive towards me, but beyond that he’s more excited to get this close to the world.”
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