Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2022 9:29:28 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 578 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 3)
We had some rain up north this week.
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I'm Friends With 25 Letters of the Alphabet. I Don't Know Y.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
The Philippines Select theDevil Dictator and Thief They Know
Ferdinand Marcos Jr looked on course for a huge victory in the Philippines presidential election on Monday, after an unofficial tally of two thirds of the votes showed the son of the notorious late dictator surging ahead of his nearest rival.
The massive lead bolsters the chances of a once unthinkable return to rule of the Marcos family, 36 years after its patriarch’s overthrow in a “people power” revolution and his family’s humiliating retreat into exile.
Marcos Jr had 21.7 million votes, more than double the 10.3 million votes for Leni Robredo, the vice president, with 66.1 percent of the number of eligible ballots counted, according to an unofficial tally by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
Marcos, 64, has presented no real policy platform but his presidency is expected to provide continuity from outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte, whose ruthless, strongman approach proved popular and helped him to consolidate power rapidly.
The results so far demonstrate the huge success of Marcos’s massive social media operation, which critics say has sought to discredit historical accounts of cronyism, plunder and brutality during the two-decade Marcos rule, about half of which was under martial law.
The Marcos family denies siphoning off billions of dollars of state wealth during its time at the helm of what its opponents say was one of Asia’s most famous kleptocracies.
How Starbucks Bucked the Unions
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is taking Starbucks’ union-busting campaign very seriously. The board’s regional director in Buffalo issued a complaint late Friday accusing the company of 29 unfair labor practices involving 200 violations of the law.
The complaint specifically names interim CEO Howard Schultz for dangling improved benefits if workers didn’t unionize, and calls on Schultz or Executive Vice President Rossann Williams to make clear to workers what their rights are—the very rights that Starbucks has so dramatically been trampling on—as well as calling for the company to provide “equal time to address employees if they are convened by [Starbucks] for 'captive audience' meetings.” The complaint also calls on Starbucks to reinstate seven fired workers, with back pay.
The NLRB complaint also points to Starbucks closing stores in Buffalo as workers started organizing, retaliatory discipline and firings of union supporters, and “unprecedented and repeated” visits by top national executives to the Buffalo stores.
”Starbucks has been saying that no union-busting ever occurred in Buffalo. Today, the NLRB sets the record straight. The complaint confirms the extent and depravity of Starbucks’ conduct in Western New York for the better part of a year,” Starbucks Workers United said in a statement. “Starbucks will be held accountable for the union-busting minefield they forced workers to walk through in fighting for their right to organize. This Complaint fully unmasks Starbucks’ facade as a ‘progressive company’ and exposes the truth of Howard Schultz’s anti-union war.”
Starbucks Also Did This
Starbucks also took action against its own union-supporting customers. Many customers have been expressing support for the union by ordering under names like “Union Strong.” Starbucks is done putting up with that, instructing managers to not call out the names on those orders.
Sadly, Americans Don't Seem to Vote Based on Policies
Only 1 in 4 Americans supports the sweeping platform laid out by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, ahead of the 2022 midterms. In fact, every Scott policy tested by the progressive consortium Navigator Research was opposed by a majority of Americans.
Two of the most eye-popping provisions in Scott's 11-point plan included raising taxes on roughly 100 million working-class Americans and adding sunset provisions for Social Security and Medicare every five years that could eliminate them if they fell victim to congressional gridlock.
When people learned about those two provisions alone, just 25% of Americans supported the plan while 59% opposed it, according to a survey released Friday by Navigator. Opposition included 70% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 46% of Republicans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overall unpopularity of the Republican plan hasn't changed much in the last several weeks, with it being 34 points underwater now compared to 32 points underwater in mid-April.
WTF is Molasses Merrick Waiting For? Of Course, We Are Still Waiting For Holder to Prosecute a Wall Street Banker.
Brennan: Merrick Garland, you mentioned, he's now in your old job as Attorney General. There have been critics of him who say that he isn't being aggressive enough around the prosecutions of January 6th. Do you think that's right?
Holder: No one knows. I mean, I have great faith in Merrick and the people at the Justice Department. We won't really know how aggressive they've been until they are before a camera and announcing a decision, either to indict certain people or not indict certain people. Here's my prediction. At some point people at the Justice Department, perhaps that prosecutor in Atlanta, are gonna have to make a determination about whether or not they want to indict Donald Trump.
Brennan: Will they do it?
Holder: Well, I think there's gonna be sufficient factual information. And I think that there's going to be sufficient proof of intent. And then the question becomes, what's the impact of of such an indictment? I'm an institutionalist. My initial thought was not to indict the former president out of concern of how divisive it would be. But given what we have learned, I think that he probably has to be held accountable.
What's That About "The Will of the People" Thing?
It's Not Like Previous Guy Could Ever Get Elected. It's Not Like We Could Ever Have a Dictatorship Here.
Too Little, Too Late
SCOTUS Will Create More Hungry Children and Poor, Miserable Mothers
As a nation we like to tell ourselves stories, about our love of family and justice. About how individual responsibility, hard work and gumption are enough to give every one of us an equal chance to claim our piece of the American Dream.
But that's mostly make-believe.
Too many of us ignore the broken rungs on the ladder, the discriminatory policies, systems and laws that have preserved access and support for the privileged few. Then we look down on people — often female, often poor, often Black and brown — who struggle to pull themselves off the ground.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe V. Wade, as a draft opinion leaked to Politico indicates it likely will, it will be just the latest legal barrier that undermines social and economic justice.
For millions of women, the end of Roe could be just the beginning of a lifetime of economic harm ..
Being forced to have a baby you're not ready for can mean having far less to give the children you already have. It can derail your career or your education, undermining your aspirations to build a financial foundation your entire family can stand on.
And potentially limiting a woman's economic mobility by denying her the freedom to end an unwanted pregnancy is the height of cruelty in a nation hostile to helping women feed, educate, and house those children once they are born. In 2020, children and adults in 7.6% –or 2.9 million–of U.S. households with children faced food insecurity, according to the USDA.
Fighting Back Against the Lie
Conservative groups perpetuating Donald Trump’s false charges that the 2020 election was rigged have sparked a lawsuit against one in Colorado, and a congressional panel investigation of another in New Mexico, over aggressive tactics allegedly used to seek out possible voter fraud.
The scrutiny and criticism facing these conservative groups underscore how Trump loyalists in several US states are working to sustain falsehoods about Trump’s loss, while launching new drives that voting rights advocates say smack of voter intimidation, often targeting communities of color.
A lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and two other groups in March charging that Colorado-based US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has echoed Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 election fraud, has gone door to door in some counties aggressively questioning residents about their voting status and sometimes bearing arms.
Moreover, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has been investigating EchoMail, a firm that helped push false claims of election fraud in Arizona and has reportedly been paid $50,000 by a New Mexico county to oversee a local “audit force” doing intrusive door-to-door voter canvassing.
Other states including Michigan and Utah boast conservative groups that, under the guise of protecting voting integrity by ferreting out fraud, have been criticized for the methods they employed in seeking out potential voter fraud.
The Wrong Way to Fight Back
Arson investigators were probing a fire Sunday inside the headquarters of anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action, where someone had spray-painted a message outside the building.
Madison police spokeswoman Stephanie Fryer told the Wisconsin State Journal that the fire reported shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday in Madison was suspicious in nature. Federal officials and the Madison Fire Department are helping with the investigation.
No one was injured, and officials were still working to determine how much damage the fire caused.
It wasn't immediately clear who vandalized the building, but the message “If abortions aren't safe than you aren't either” was spray-painted on the building.
“It appears a specific non-profit that supports anti-abortion measures was targeted,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said in a statement.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Soon More People Will Be Able to Read My Bad Jokes
The Biden administration has announced a plan to expand access to affordable high-speed internet access for millions of Americans. The plan is part of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which was created under the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law in November.
Twenty internet service providers have agreed to either lower costs or increase speeds to provide eligible households with access to broadband internet with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, at a cost of no more than $30 per month, the administration said in a statement released Monday morning. The 20 ISPs, which include AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, cover roughly 80% of the U.S. population, according to the administration.
In a Sunday briefing with reporters, administration officials said Latino Americans are 15% less likely to have high-speed internet than their white peers, while Black families are 9% less likely. In addition, roughly 35% of all people living on Tribal lands lack access to broadband services.
They Are Building Back. Will It Be Better? It Reads Like an Open Bucha.
The mere sight of a child here — wearing sunglasses, pulling a scooter, bugging his mother to buy him candy — was enough to impress Petro Trotsenko, a stall owner at a market in Bucha that reopened this past week.
Just over a month ago, the market lay bare, looted of all its wares, cut up by shrapnel. The nearby glass factory where Trotsenko, 74, worked in his younger years was being used as a torture chamber by Russian soldiers occupying this suburb of Kyiv. The bodies of 22 people from his neighborhood, summarily executed over the course of March, lay where they had fallen in the streets. Nearly every yard was filled with rubble, burned-out vehicles and makeshift graves. Nearly every family with children had fled.
Trotsenko and his wife, who hid for weeks in their basement, burned wood from the fence that surrounded their house to boil rainwater. That’s how they cooked the gruel that kept them alive.
The market in Bucha is starting to come back to life.
But in about the same amount of time as the Russians occupied Bucha, the city has remade itself. The market is open, and Trotsenko has restocked. Huge divots in roads where the shells fell have been paved over. The suburban train to Kyiv is running again. Water and electricity have been largely restored. Families are returning.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says it will cost Ukraine at least $600 billion to rebuild what has been destroyed in Bucha and across the country during the Russian invasion. But local officials and regular citizens are not waiting for some new Marshall Plan. They are cleaning up and rebuilding their cities, even as the question of when the war will end remains unanswerable.
California and New York Are Open for Business
State legislators in California have proposed a package of bills to address what they expect to be an influx in people seeking access to abortion in the state if Roe is overturned. New York lawmakers have also proposed legislation that would help people pay for abortions, even allowing taxpayers to contribute donations.
Every Sunday in Ukraine is Bloody Sunday
U2' Bono and The Edge held a surprise performance in Ukraine on Sunday, singing in a subway station in Kyiv. The singer and guitarist were joined by members of a Ukrainian band as they performed hits like "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
"President Zelensky invited us to perform in Kyiv as a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people and so that's what we've come to do," the band tweeted from its official account
Members of the Ukrainian pop-rock band Antytila joined Bono and The Edge to sing "Stand By You," Antytila wrote on Instagram. They wore military fatigues and said the performance was impromptu and without rehearsal.
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Invasions Have Consequences
When the War is Over, Could There Be Another Bloodbath?
A clash of loyalties is dividing opinion among residents in Bakhmut - a town on the front line in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
Sometimes it slips out as a whisper. More often, it is hidden behind euphemisms and shrugs - and carefully ambivalent replies. And then, once in a while, a fiercely pro-Russian sentiment is simply blurted out, like the crack of a gunshot, here in the rolling green hills of the Donbas.
"This is Russian territory. Ukraine is the occupier here," said a man in overalls, standing with a group of council workers. They had been clearing weeds in Bakhmut - a Ukrainian town currently within easy earshot of Russian artillery.
And the man was not alone in his apparent contempt for Ukraine's territorial integrity. Beside him, 65-year-old Yelena merely couched her views in more ambiguous terms.
"I don't know Putin personally, so I can't tell you what I think of him. But I don't see Russia as the enemy. We all lived together in the Soviet Union. So, let's see what happens [if Russia occupies the town]," she said.
The notion that Ukraine stands resolutely united in opposition to Russia's invasion may hold true for much for the country. But here in the Donbas, there is a large ethnic-Russian minority, a painful history of eight years of separatist conflict with Russian-backed militias and - particularly for an older generation - a powerful nostalgia for the USSR.
Some Ukrainians here have brushed aside these pro-Russian comments as the harmless grumblings of an out-of-touch generation - of a handful of elderly pensioners who are reluctant to leave their homes, and whose opinions are unlikely to have any significant impact on the course of this war.
But in other parts of Ukraine, recently liberated from Russian occupation, there is evidence that collaborators may have actively assisted the Kremlin's troops. And today, in front-line towns like Bakhmut, there are concerns that pro-Russian sentiment could pose a real risk, particularly if it is shared by officials in local administrations.
"These guys are trying to have it both ways - win or lose," said a local businessman, Dmytro Kononets, describing what he claimed was the attitude of some figures in the town council.
"Karma will quickly catch up with them," said Svetlana Kravchenko, 57, of anyone in Bakhmut who supported the Russian offensive.
She helps run a small charity collecting food and other supplies to distribute to the town's soldiers and to elderly civilians in the surrounding villages. Their basement office is also home to a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, where she and others pray daily. Most of the more traditional churches in Bakhmut are still officially linked to the Russian Orthodox church, whose leadership has publicly endorsed President Putin's invasion.
"Everyone makes their own choice. And they will have to answer for that. Maybe some people here want to surrender [to the Russians]. But when this conflict is over, when the shelling and shooting stops, then the traitors will be punished, either in this world or the next," said Kravchenko.
We Can Hope
Ukraine Can Kill Them While They Are Trying to Get Close Enough to Fire
Where's the Victory in Victory Day? Nothing But a Big Loser
The Hackers Won Big on Victory Day
Russians using smart TVs reported seeing something atypical: A message appeared instead of the usual listing of channels. “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of murdered children is on your hands,” read the message that took over their screens. “TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.”
The apparent hack, targeting ordinary Russians sitting by their televisions or looking things up on their search engines, broke through the pro-Moscow messaging Monday as Russia celebrated Victory Day, a commemoration of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.
The antiwar message that appeared on the screens of Russian smart TVs also appeared on the platforms of Yandex, Russia’s IT giant. Like Google, it combines many products under one umbrella, including a search engine and a service providing TV programming schedules. On that page, the daily programs for state-run Channel One and Russia-1 were also defaced early Monday.
Russia’s equivalent of YouTube, called Rutube, was also affected, it said in a statement. (Maybe we should rename Fox News "RubeTube".)
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Boeing is Going
Boeing is moving its headquarters from Chicago to a suburb of Washington, DC. But some analysts think this move is one in the wrong direction.
Boeing was based in Seattle from its founding in 1916 to 2001. During its heyday it was renowned as an engineering-driven company that made the best, safest planes. But many industry watchers felt that reputation was lost as Boeing shifted to focus on the bottom line — and they point to its 2001 decision to move headquarters from Seattle to Chicago as a stark sign of that ill-advised shift.
The company's Thursday announcement that it will move once again, to Arlington, Virginia, only gives critics more fuel: By moving into the shadow of both the Pentagon and Congress, Boeing seems to be signaling it has lost the commercial race to Airbus and wants to be seen as primarily a defense and space contractor.
The fact that the announcement comes the same week Airbus (EADSF) revealed it's increasing production of commercial jets at its factory in Mobile, Alabama, only seems to drive home that point.
"One company is saying 'We're going to build lots of jets.' The other is saying 'We're going to lobby the Pentagon and Congress for defense dollars.' It's a big contrast," said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory and a leading aerospace analyst.
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Will Katy Perry Start Singing, "Baby, You're a Drone Show"
When the Caldor Fire raced toward the southern shore of Lake Tahoe last year, its 100-foot (30-meter) flames spread across the tree canopy. Miles away, towns on the north shore took notice.
In response, three communities on the California-Nevada border are switching from the traditional fireworks show for the U.S. Independence Day holiday this July 4 to a drone light show, a growing trend across the United States that has overwhelmed drone companies.
"The conversation we had was: 'Is throwing lit objects up into the sky in the height of the fire season the best thing for us to do?'" said Andy Chapman, president of the Incline Village Crystal Bay Visitors Bureau, which coordinates the July 4 show for Incline Village, Nevada.
With Western states enduring a historic drought, some towns are rejecting fireworks as a wildfire risk, even though nearly all civic fireworks displays are safely monitored by firefighters.
Incline Village and the neighboring California towns of Kings Beach and Tahoe City switched to drones after the Caldor Fire burned for 69 days, scorching 221,835 acres, destroying 1,003 structures and forcing the evacuation of 50,000 people.
A typical drone show has no bombs bursting in air but dozens or hundreds of tiny lit flying machines executing maneuvers to music, forming improbable, multicolored and shifting designs suspended in the night sky.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| May 8 | 66,564 | 323 | |
| May 7 | 67,561 | 335 | 2,310 |
| May 6 | 68,807 | 340 | 2,396 |
| May 5 | 67,263 | 341 | 2.363 |
| May 4 | 64,780 | 334 | 2,267 |
| May 3 | 61,712 | 325 | 2,219 |
| May 2 | 60,410 | 318 | 2.214 |
| May 1 | 57,020 | 307 | 2,072 |
| Apr 30 | 56,581 | 310 | 1,882 |
| Apr 29 | 56,166 | 308 | 1,946 |
| Apr 28 | 54,696 | 311 | 1,955 |
| Apr 27 | 53,133 | 334 | 1,941 |
| Apr 26 | 48,692 | 299 | 1,889 |
| Apr 25 | 47,407 | 330 | 1,840 |
| Apr 24 | 44,416 | 314 | 1,779 |
| Apr 23 | 45,413 | 315 | 1,629 |
| Apr 22 | 44,308 | 311 | 1,642 |
| Apr 21 | 40,744 | 346 | 1,647 |
| Apr 20 | 42,604 | 375 | 1,609 |
| Apr 19 | 40,985 | 385 | 1,582 |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 380 | 1,564 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 | 1,542 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 | 1,532 |
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 | 1,510 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 | 1,490 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 | 1,477 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 | 1,463 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 | 1.447 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 | 1,443 |
| 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 | |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.7% | 66.3% | 45.9% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.6% | 70.4% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 87.4% | 74.7% | 47.7% |
| % of Population 18+ | 89.1% | 76.2% | 49.5% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 90.4% | 68.8% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 3)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks Ago | 3 Weeks Ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 80% (74%) | 81% (74%) | 79% (70%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 66% (61%) | 67% (61%) | 65% (58%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 61% (57%) | 62% (57%) | 60% (54%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 20% | 29% | 15% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 27% | 33% | 27% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 17% | 23% | 24% |
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I'm Friends With 25 Letters of the Alphabet. I Don't Know Y.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
The Philippines Select the
Ferdinand Marcos Jr looked on course for a huge victory in the Philippines presidential election on Monday, after an unofficial tally of two thirds of the votes showed the son of the notorious late dictator surging ahead of his nearest rival.
The massive lead bolsters the chances of a once unthinkable return to rule of the Marcos family, 36 years after its patriarch’s overthrow in a “people power” revolution and his family’s humiliating retreat into exile.
Marcos Jr had 21.7 million votes, more than double the 10.3 million votes for Leni Robredo, the vice president, with 66.1 percent of the number of eligible ballots counted, according to an unofficial tally by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
Marcos, 64, has presented no real policy platform but his presidency is expected to provide continuity from outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte, whose ruthless, strongman approach proved popular and helped him to consolidate power rapidly.
The results so far demonstrate the huge success of Marcos’s massive social media operation, which critics say has sought to discredit historical accounts of cronyism, plunder and brutality during the two-decade Marcos rule, about half of which was under martial law.
The Marcos family denies siphoning off billions of dollars of state wealth during its time at the helm of what its opponents say was one of Asia’s most famous kleptocracies.
How Starbucks Bucked the Unions
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is taking Starbucks’ union-busting campaign very seriously. The board’s regional director in Buffalo issued a complaint late Friday accusing the company of 29 unfair labor practices involving 200 violations of the law.
The complaint specifically names interim CEO Howard Schultz for dangling improved benefits if workers didn’t unionize, and calls on Schultz or Executive Vice President Rossann Williams to make clear to workers what their rights are—the very rights that Starbucks has so dramatically been trampling on—as well as calling for the company to provide “equal time to address employees if they are convened by [Starbucks] for 'captive audience' meetings.” The complaint also calls on Starbucks to reinstate seven fired workers, with back pay.
The NLRB complaint also points to Starbucks closing stores in Buffalo as workers started organizing, retaliatory discipline and firings of union supporters, and “unprecedented and repeated” visits by top national executives to the Buffalo stores.
”Starbucks has been saying that no union-busting ever occurred in Buffalo. Today, the NLRB sets the record straight. The complaint confirms the extent and depravity of Starbucks’ conduct in Western New York for the better part of a year,” Starbucks Workers United said in a statement. “Starbucks will be held accountable for the union-busting minefield they forced workers to walk through in fighting for their right to organize. This Complaint fully unmasks Starbucks’ facade as a ‘progressive company’ and exposes the truth of Howard Schultz’s anti-union war.”
Starbucks Also Did This
Starbucks also took action against its own union-supporting customers. Many customers have been expressing support for the union by ordering under names like “Union Strong.” Starbucks is done putting up with that, instructing managers to not call out the names on those orders.
Sadly, Americans Don't Seem to Vote Based on Policies
Only 1 in 4 Americans supports the sweeping platform laid out by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, ahead of the 2022 midterms. In fact, every Scott policy tested by the progressive consortium Navigator Research was opposed by a majority of Americans.
Two of the most eye-popping provisions in Scott's 11-point plan included raising taxes on roughly 100 million working-class Americans and adding sunset provisions for Social Security and Medicare every five years that could eliminate them if they fell victim to congressional gridlock.
When people learned about those two provisions alone, just 25% of Americans supported the plan while 59% opposed it, according to a survey released Friday by Navigator. Opposition included 70% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 46% of Republicans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overall unpopularity of the Republican plan hasn't changed much in the last several weeks, with it being 34 points underwater now compared to 32 points underwater in mid-April.
WTF is Molasses Merrick Waiting For? Of Course, We Are Still Waiting For Holder to Prosecute a Wall Street Banker.
Brennan: Merrick Garland, you mentioned, he's now in your old job as Attorney General. There have been critics of him who say that he isn't being aggressive enough around the prosecutions of January 6th. Do you think that's right?
Holder: No one knows. I mean, I have great faith in Merrick and the people at the Justice Department. We won't really know how aggressive they've been until they are before a camera and announcing a decision, either to indict certain people or not indict certain people. Here's my prediction. At some point people at the Justice Department, perhaps that prosecutor in Atlanta, are gonna have to make a determination about whether or not they want to indict Donald Trump.
Brennan: Will they do it?
Holder: Well, I think there's gonna be sufficient factual information. And I think that there's going to be sufficient proof of intent. And then the question becomes, what's the impact of of such an indictment? I'm an institutionalist. My initial thought was not to indict the former president out of concern of how divisive it would be. But given what we have learned, I think that he probably has to be held accountable.
What's That About "The Will of the People" Thing?
It's Not Like Previous Guy Could Ever Get Elected. It's Not Like We Could Ever Have a Dictatorship Here.
Too Little, Too Late
SCOTUS Will Create More Hungry Children and Poor, Miserable Mothers
As a nation we like to tell ourselves stories, about our love of family and justice. About how individual responsibility, hard work and gumption are enough to give every one of us an equal chance to claim our piece of the American Dream.
But that's mostly make-believe.
Too many of us ignore the broken rungs on the ladder, the discriminatory policies, systems and laws that have preserved access and support for the privileged few. Then we look down on people — often female, often poor, often Black and brown — who struggle to pull themselves off the ground.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe V. Wade, as a draft opinion leaked to Politico indicates it likely will, it will be just the latest legal barrier that undermines social and economic justice.
For millions of women, the end of Roe could be just the beginning of a lifetime of economic harm ..
Being forced to have a baby you're not ready for can mean having far less to give the children you already have. It can derail your career or your education, undermining your aspirations to build a financial foundation your entire family can stand on.
And potentially limiting a woman's economic mobility by denying her the freedom to end an unwanted pregnancy is the height of cruelty in a nation hostile to helping women feed, educate, and house those children once they are born. In 2020, children and adults in 7.6% –or 2.9 million–of U.S. households with children faced food insecurity, according to the USDA.
Fighting Back Against the Lie
Conservative groups perpetuating Donald Trump’s false charges that the 2020 election was rigged have sparked a lawsuit against one in Colorado, and a congressional panel investigation of another in New Mexico, over aggressive tactics allegedly used to seek out possible voter fraud.
The scrutiny and criticism facing these conservative groups underscore how Trump loyalists in several US states are working to sustain falsehoods about Trump’s loss, while launching new drives that voting rights advocates say smack of voter intimidation, often targeting communities of color.
A lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and two other groups in March charging that Colorado-based US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has echoed Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 election fraud, has gone door to door in some counties aggressively questioning residents about their voting status and sometimes bearing arms.
Moreover, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has been investigating EchoMail, a firm that helped push false claims of election fraud in Arizona and has reportedly been paid $50,000 by a New Mexico county to oversee a local “audit force” doing intrusive door-to-door voter canvassing.
Other states including Michigan and Utah boast conservative groups that, under the guise of protecting voting integrity by ferreting out fraud, have been criticized for the methods they employed in seeking out potential voter fraud.
The Wrong Way to Fight Back
Arson investigators were probing a fire Sunday inside the headquarters of anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action, where someone had spray-painted a message outside the building.
Madison police spokeswoman Stephanie Fryer told the Wisconsin State Journal that the fire reported shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday in Madison was suspicious in nature. Federal officials and the Madison Fire Department are helping with the investigation.
No one was injured, and officials were still working to determine how much damage the fire caused.
It wasn't immediately clear who vandalized the building, but the message “If abortions aren't safe than you aren't either” was spray-painted on the building.
“It appears a specific non-profit that supports anti-abortion measures was targeted,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said in a statement.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Soon More People Will Be Able to Read My Bad Jokes
The Biden administration has announced a plan to expand access to affordable high-speed internet access for millions of Americans. The plan is part of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which was created under the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law in November.
Twenty internet service providers have agreed to either lower costs or increase speeds to provide eligible households with access to broadband internet with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, at a cost of no more than $30 per month, the administration said in a statement released Monday morning. The 20 ISPs, which include AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, cover roughly 80% of the U.S. population, according to the administration.
In a Sunday briefing with reporters, administration officials said Latino Americans are 15% less likely to have high-speed internet than their white peers, while Black families are 9% less likely. In addition, roughly 35% of all people living on Tribal lands lack access to broadband services.
They Are Building Back. Will It Be Better? It Reads Like an Open Bucha.
The mere sight of a child here — wearing sunglasses, pulling a scooter, bugging his mother to buy him candy — was enough to impress Petro Trotsenko, a stall owner at a market in Bucha that reopened this past week.
Just over a month ago, the market lay bare, looted of all its wares, cut up by shrapnel. The nearby glass factory where Trotsenko, 74, worked in his younger years was being used as a torture chamber by Russian soldiers occupying this suburb of Kyiv. The bodies of 22 people from his neighborhood, summarily executed over the course of March, lay where they had fallen in the streets. Nearly every yard was filled with rubble, burned-out vehicles and makeshift graves. Nearly every family with children had fled.
Trotsenko and his wife, who hid for weeks in their basement, burned wood from the fence that surrounded their house to boil rainwater. That’s how they cooked the gruel that kept them alive.
The market in Bucha is starting to come back to life.
But in about the same amount of time as the Russians occupied Bucha, the city has remade itself. The market is open, and Trotsenko has restocked. Huge divots in roads where the shells fell have been paved over. The suburban train to Kyiv is running again. Water and electricity have been largely restored. Families are returning.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says it will cost Ukraine at least $600 billion to rebuild what has been destroyed in Bucha and across the country during the Russian invasion. But local officials and regular citizens are not waiting for some new Marshall Plan. They are cleaning up and rebuilding their cities, even as the question of when the war will end remains unanswerable.
California and New York Are Open for Business
State legislators in California have proposed a package of bills to address what they expect to be an influx in people seeking access to abortion in the state if Roe is overturned. New York lawmakers have also proposed legislation that would help people pay for abortions, even allowing taxpayers to contribute donations.
Every Sunday in Ukraine is Bloody Sunday
U2' Bono and The Edge held a surprise performance in Ukraine on Sunday, singing in a subway station in Kyiv. The singer and guitarist were joined by members of a Ukrainian band as they performed hits like "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
"President Zelensky invited us to perform in Kyiv as a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people and so that's what we've come to do," the band tweeted from its official account
Members of the Ukrainian pop-rock band Antytila joined Bono and The Edge to sing "Stand By You," Antytila wrote on Instagram. They wore military fatigues and said the performance was impromptu and without rehearsal.
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Invasions Have Consequences
When the War is Over, Could There Be Another Bloodbath?
A clash of loyalties is dividing opinion among residents in Bakhmut - a town on the front line in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
Sometimes it slips out as a whisper. More often, it is hidden behind euphemisms and shrugs - and carefully ambivalent replies. And then, once in a while, a fiercely pro-Russian sentiment is simply blurted out, like the crack of a gunshot, here in the rolling green hills of the Donbas.
"This is Russian territory. Ukraine is the occupier here," said a man in overalls, standing with a group of council workers. They had been clearing weeds in Bakhmut - a Ukrainian town currently within easy earshot of Russian artillery.
And the man was not alone in his apparent contempt for Ukraine's territorial integrity. Beside him, 65-year-old Yelena merely couched her views in more ambiguous terms.
"I don't know Putin personally, so I can't tell you what I think of him. But I don't see Russia as the enemy. We all lived together in the Soviet Union. So, let's see what happens [if Russia occupies the town]," she said.
The notion that Ukraine stands resolutely united in opposition to Russia's invasion may hold true for much for the country. But here in the Donbas, there is a large ethnic-Russian minority, a painful history of eight years of separatist conflict with Russian-backed militias and - particularly for an older generation - a powerful nostalgia for the USSR.
Some Ukrainians here have brushed aside these pro-Russian comments as the harmless grumblings of an out-of-touch generation - of a handful of elderly pensioners who are reluctant to leave their homes, and whose opinions are unlikely to have any significant impact on the course of this war.
But in other parts of Ukraine, recently liberated from Russian occupation, there is evidence that collaborators may have actively assisted the Kremlin's troops. And today, in front-line towns like Bakhmut, there are concerns that pro-Russian sentiment could pose a real risk, particularly if it is shared by officials in local administrations.
"These guys are trying to have it both ways - win or lose," said a local businessman, Dmytro Kononets, describing what he claimed was the attitude of some figures in the town council.
"Karma will quickly catch up with them," said Svetlana Kravchenko, 57, of anyone in Bakhmut who supported the Russian offensive.
She helps run a small charity collecting food and other supplies to distribute to the town's soldiers and to elderly civilians in the surrounding villages. Their basement office is also home to a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, where she and others pray daily. Most of the more traditional churches in Bakhmut are still officially linked to the Russian Orthodox church, whose leadership has publicly endorsed President Putin's invasion.
"Everyone makes their own choice. And they will have to answer for that. Maybe some people here want to surrender [to the Russians]. But when this conflict is over, when the shelling and shooting stops, then the traitors will be punished, either in this world or the next," said Kravchenko.
We Can Hope
Ukraine Can Kill Them While They Are Trying to Get Close Enough to Fire
Where's the Victory in Victory Day? Nothing But a Big Loser
The Hackers Won Big on Victory Day
Russians using smart TVs reported seeing something atypical: A message appeared instead of the usual listing of channels. “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of murdered children is on your hands,” read the message that took over their screens. “TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.”
The apparent hack, targeting ordinary Russians sitting by their televisions or looking things up on their search engines, broke through the pro-Moscow messaging Monday as Russia celebrated Victory Day, a commemoration of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.
The antiwar message that appeared on the screens of Russian smart TVs also appeared on the platforms of Yandex, Russia’s IT giant. Like Google, it combines many products under one umbrella, including a search engine and a service providing TV programming schedules. On that page, the daily programs for state-run Channel One and Russia-1 were also defaced early Monday.
Russia’s equivalent of YouTube, called Rutube, was also affected, it said in a statement. (Maybe we should rename Fox News "RubeTube".)
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Boeing is Going
Boeing is moving its headquarters from Chicago to a suburb of Washington, DC. But some analysts think this move is one in the wrong direction.
Boeing was based in Seattle from its founding in 1916 to 2001. During its heyday it was renowned as an engineering-driven company that made the best, safest planes. But many industry watchers felt that reputation was lost as Boeing shifted to focus on the bottom line — and they point to its 2001 decision to move headquarters from Seattle to Chicago as a stark sign of that ill-advised shift.
The company's Thursday announcement that it will move once again, to Arlington, Virginia, only gives critics more fuel: By moving into the shadow of both the Pentagon and Congress, Boeing seems to be signaling it has lost the commercial race to Airbus and wants to be seen as primarily a defense and space contractor.
The fact that the announcement comes the same week Airbus (EADSF) revealed it's increasing production of commercial jets at its factory in Mobile, Alabama, only seems to drive home that point.
"One company is saying 'We're going to build lots of jets.' The other is saying 'We're going to lobby the Pentagon and Congress for defense dollars.' It's a big contrast," said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory and a leading aerospace analyst.
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Will Katy Perry Start Singing, "Baby, You're a Drone Show"
When the Caldor Fire raced toward the southern shore of Lake Tahoe last year, its 100-foot (30-meter) flames spread across the tree canopy. Miles away, towns on the north shore took notice.
In response, three communities on the California-Nevada border are switching from the traditional fireworks show for the U.S. Independence Day holiday this July 4 to a drone light show, a growing trend across the United States that has overwhelmed drone companies.
"The conversation we had was: 'Is throwing lit objects up into the sky in the height of the fire season the best thing for us to do?'" said Andy Chapman, president of the Incline Village Crystal Bay Visitors Bureau, which coordinates the July 4 show for Incline Village, Nevada.
With Western states enduring a historic drought, some towns are rejecting fireworks as a wildfire risk, even though nearly all civic fireworks displays are safely monitored by firefighters.
Incline Village and the neighboring California towns of Kings Beach and Tahoe City switched to drones after the Caldor Fire burned for 69 days, scorching 221,835 acres, destroying 1,003 structures and forcing the evacuation of 50,000 people.
A typical drone show has no bombs bursting in air but dozens or hundreds of tiny lit flying machines executing maneuvers to music, forming improbable, multicolored and shifting designs suspended in the night sky.
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