Post by mhbruin on May 30, 2022 8:56:19 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 585 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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It Takes a Good Year to Eat a Tire.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
You May Think This is Overkill, but in 2000, One 6-Year-Old Shot Another at School
A fifth grade student in Florida was arrested over the weekend after allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting in a text message, authorities said.
In a statement Saturday, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said it had learned earlier that day of a "threatening text message" sent by a student at an elementary school.
It said its local school threat enforcement team was immediately notified and started investigating. The 10-year-old boy was interviewed and later charged with "making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting," the sheriff's office said.
Is CPAC Going Full Nazi?
The people who run CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference meetups that feature top Republican elected officials intermingling with the movement's most notorious conspiracy cranks—but I repeat myself—have been attempting to expand internationally with conferences in Brazil and Hungary in recent years. The premise has been to attach themselves, suction-eel style, to autocratic nationalists in other countries. Whether this is an earnest attempt to promote their hoax-dependent fascism abroad or just another very gaudy grift is debatable.
In either case, the American far right has been falling over itself with admiration for the emerging Hungarian autocracy, with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in particular promoting far-right nationalist Viktor Orban with a vigor that far eclipses his praise for any Republican here. CPAC Republicans are open in praising Hungary's autocratic descent as being the road America itself should travel, but have been slightly vaguer in explaining why. That is because the Hungarian fascist movement is Extremely F--king Nasty, full of the same bigotries and conspiracy theories that animate neo-Nazi movements here and actual damn Nazis where they still exist elsewhere.
It looks like CPAC head Matt Schlapp and Carlson feel that the time is right to drop the charade, though. Recent CPAC events in Budapest, Hungary, boasted a notorious Hungarian antisemite, one who has publicly declared Jews to be "stinking excrement," among their featured speakers. "Stinking excrement" is just one of the xenophobic and genocide-supporting rants that Hungarian television screamer Zsolt Bayer is known for. As reported by The Guardian, Bayer was a featured speaker at the allegedly conservative conference, holding forth as part of a speakers list that included Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Carlson, and others.
Bayer's views are not nuanced. It will come as no surprise that he is aggressively racist—it might be more eyebrow-raising to learn that he has particular contempt for Roma people in particular, resurrecting the genocidal conspiracy beliefs of Nazism. Even that, however, goes a long way towards explaining why Carlson, of all people, has chosen "gypsies" as one of his own baffling xenophobic targets. A 2017 Fox News segment entitled "GYPSIES: COMING TO AMERICA" and warning that the Roma "have little regard for law or public decency" remains one of the most batshit episodes of Tuckerism to be put on the network—but it seems that Carlson was already coordinating rhetoric with Europe's far-far-right even then.
Hizzonor
Dude, Where's My Government
Republican congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama said about one of the stupidest things you’d imagine a Republican congressman from Alabama could say today, and that’s saying something.
“Brooks Warns that Guns are Needed to ‘Take Back Our Government.’”
Which quote immediately sent me down dark corridors of thought. Mo Brooks is in Congress. He literally is the government. Is he saying we need guns to take stuff from him? Is this some weird “Falling Down” suicide by cop plea for help? Are you okay, congressman? Should we call someone?
Soon, though, I came back to my first reaction: “Dude, you are the government,”
Ab-Butt Get the Reception He Deserves
President Joe Biden was warmly greeted when he visited Uvalde Sunday, but Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was loudly booed as he approached the makeshift memorial at the elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed last week in a mass shooting.
Keep Your Gazpacho Out Of Her Peach Tree
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is warning supporters that the government is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.”
The extremist lawmaker who once warned the world of “gazpacho police” now claims the feds are planning to track bowel movements, too.
“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said in a rant from her podcast clipped and posted online by Patriot Takes, a right-wing watchdog group.
“They want to know when you’re eating,” the conspiracy theorist added. “They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”
And if you’re not eating “peach tree dish” meat, the government ― of which she is a part ― will find a way to “zap” you into compliance.
“You’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying ‘No, no. Don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake burger, the fake meat, from Bill Gates,’” Greene said.
Insanity
I Guess His Heart Was in the Right Place, but WTF??
I'm Guessing the Hayes Family Won't Be Voting For Previous Guy.
The family of the late legendary musician Isaac Hayes has posted an angry tweet lashing former President Donald Trump’s use of one of Hayes’s songs at his controversial speech Friday at the National Rifle Association convention.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
They Raised $2 for Every Man, Woman, and Child
Hundreds of Lithuanians contributed to a fundraiser to buy an advanced military drone for Ukraine in its war against Russia in a show of solidarity with a fellow country formerly under Moscow’s rule.
The target of 5 million euros ($5.4m) was raised in just three and a half days in Lithuania – a country of 2.8 million people – largely in small amounts to fund the purchase of a Byraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle from Turkey.
It's Not Up to Lithuanian Standards, But Still Damned Good
A GoFundMe campaign started in honor of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed in the Texas school shooting, and her husband, Joe, who died Thursday, has raised more than $2.6 million in just four days.
Debra Austin, Irma's cousin, apparently started the campaign, which has also been covered by other national outlets, including CNN and The Washington Post. NBC News was not able to independently confirm Austin's identity. The Detroit Free Press reported that it confirmed that the site has verified the account.
The campaign, which quickly surpassed its initial goal of $10,000, has raised its money from more than 46,000 donations, according to the page. The campaign was combined with another campaign set up by John Martinez, whom CNN identified as Irma Garcia's nephew, which raised more than $550,000 and got a boost from philanthropist Bill Pulte after he encouraged his 3.2 million followers to donate to it.
Irma was a fourth grade teacher who had been teaching at Robb Elementary in Uvalde for 23 years, according to her school biography. She and her co-teacher of five years, Eva Mireles, were killed along with 19 children after the 18-year-old gunman gunned them down last week.
Let's Hear it For the Poles
Poland has reportedly already trained 100 Ukrainian soldiers to operate those AHS Krab, which are capable of firing a standard round 30km and an extended range round 40km, making them one of the longest ranged artilleries.
And there’s something else that makes this gift from Poland special: These guns are brand new. They’re not just sending Ukraine the latest design created for their own army, they’re sending over half of all the AHS Krab guns that have rolled off the lines. That’s an extremely high level of commitment.
Does Fox News Have a Gulag For People Who Tell the Truth?
A Fox News anchor broke rank with many of her colleagues Sunday by openly calling for gun law reform in the wake of the Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde mass shootings.
“As we’ve said before, prayers are not enough. We have to do something. We’ve got to get the lawmakers to do something,” Arthel Neville said as she covered President Joe Biden’s visit to a memorial in Uvalde for the 19 children and two teachers killed at an elementary school last week.
’Now, the president is, you know, the commander in chief. This is happening on his watch, but he needs the help of Congress to get something done.”
Neville’s guest, Fox News contributor Griff Jenkins, argued that Biden was not uniting Democrats and Republicans on the issue and noted that Biden also failed to do so as vice president after the 2012 Sandy Hook, Connecticut, school shooting.
“Excuse me. It’s not just about the president uniting, okay?” Neville cut in.
“It’s more than that. It’s lawmakers who are stopping the unification. So let’s be clear about that. Yes, this is happening on his watch. Yes, he is responsible. Yes, he campaigned on a united America. And, yes, he needs to do something about it, but he can’t do it alone.”
Is There a NRA Gulag? Or Do They Just Shoot People?
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 96
Fighting
Russian troops are moving deeper into the besieged Donbas city of Severodonetsk from the outskirts. Two civilians killed and five wounded by Russian shelling.
All critical infrastructure in Severodonetsk has been destroyed and 90 percent of buildings damaged as Ukrainian forces battle to hold off Russian attempts to capture the key city in the eastern Luhansk region, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian forces counterattack in the south, claiming to have pushed back Russian troops in Kherson – the only region fully controlled by Russian forces.
Russian forces fired on 46 communities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, killing at least three civilians, wounding two others, and destroying or damaging 62 civilian buildings, Ukraine’s army said.
Russia holds one-third of the Kharkiv region under its occupation, but Zelenskyy said Ukraine will “definitely liberate the entire territory”.
The “liberation” of Ukraine’s Donbas is an “unconditional priority” for Moscow, while other Ukrainian territories should decide their future on their own, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Zelenskyy visited troops in the northeastern Kharkiv region. It was his first official appearance outside the Kyiv region since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
Zelenskyy fired Kharkiv’s security services chief for “not working on the defence of the city” during the start of Russia’s invasion and “thinking only of himself”.
The Russian defence ministry said Russian missiles have destroyed a large arsenal of the Ukrainian army in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Ukraine prosecutor’s office in the Donetsk region opened five criminal proceedings into Russia’s use of heavy artillery on May 28 against the town of Toretsk, and villages in the Bakhmut and Pokrovsky districts.
Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra, the winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, raised $900,000 for the country’s military by selling its trophy.
Diplomacy
NATO is no longer bound by past commitments to hold back from deploying its forces in Eastern Europe following Russia’s invasion, Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana said.
Moscow “voided of any content” the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, under which both sides agreed to work to prevent any potentially threatening build-up of conventional forces in agreed regions of Europe.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna meets Ukraine’s president in Kyiv to express France’s solidarity with Ukraine and offer more support for the country.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said talks last week with Finnish and Swedish delegations were not at the “expected level”, and Ankara cannot say yes to “terrorism-supporting” countries entering NATO, state broadcaster TRT Haber reported.
Russia is looking at all international treaties with the United States “in fields of scientific and educational cooperation” to analyse whether Russia’s participation in various joint organisations is feasible.
Canada asked South Korea to supply it with artillery rounds, apparently to “backfill” supplies that Ottawa has sent to Ukraine.
Economy
Top European Union diplomats meet on Monday for a last-ditch attempt to agree on a Russian oil embargo.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic announced he secured an “extremely favourable” three-year natural gas supply deal with Russia amid efforts by the EU to phase out Russian energy supplies.
New satellite imagery shows a Russian ship carrying grains – allegedly taken from Ukrainian farms – arrived in the Syrian port of Latakia.
Generally, If a Russian Official Says It, Believe the Opposite
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied speculation that President Vladimir Putin is ill.
In an interview with French TV, Mr Lavrov said the Russian leader appears in public every day, and no sane person would see any signs of an ailment.
There has been increasing unconfirmed media speculation that Mr Putin, who turns 70 this year, may be suffering from ill health, possibly cancer.
The New Counter-Offensive is Near Kherson
Russia is pouring everything in an effort to take that little slice out of Ukraine, and they’re doing it now. However, if Russia’s effort to take Severodonetsk is rapidly turning that city into the kind of hell all too familiar from images of Mariupol and Popasna, there is one thing concentrating all the forces there means: Russia is weaker everywhere else.
Ukraine appears to be taking advantage of this fact. In addition to the counteroffensive north of Kherson that has now been going on for three weeks, there are reports in the last two days of counterattacks near Kherson and Izyum as Ukraine takes advantage of Russia’s all-in-on-Severodonetsk position to recapture villages and pressure Russian positions.
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“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.” --- As Long As They Have a Good Degree
Graduates from the world's top universities will be able to apply to come to the UK under a new visa scheme.
The government says the "high-potential individual" route will attract the "brightest and best" early in their careers.
The scheme will be available to alumni of the top non-UK universities who have graduated in the past five years.
Graduates will be eligible regardless of where they were born, and will not need a job offer in order to apply.
Successful applicants will be given a work visa lasting two years if they hold a bachelor's or master's degree, and three years if they hold a PhD.
They will then be able to switch to other long-term employment visas if they meet certain requirements. There will be no cap on the number of eligible graduates.
To qualify, a person must have attended a university which appeared in the top 50 of at least two of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings or The Academic Ranking of World Universities, in the year in which they graduated.
This Strikes Me as A Good Idea
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Here's a Story You Won't See on US Cable News: The View from Al Jazeera
“Jerusalem Day” and its accompanying ‘flag march’ came and went in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, but, despite Israeli authorities breathing a sigh of relief that it did not trigger wider confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly Hamas in Gaza, the reality was a day of violence in which ultra-nationalist Jewish Israelis attacked countless Palestinians, many times under the eyes of Israeli police.
At least 81 Palestinians were wounded on Sunday by Israeli forces and far-right Jews in Jerusalem during and after the flag march, which marked the day Israel illegally occupied and annexed the city’s eastern half in 1967. Most Jewish Israelis view it as the day Jerusalem was “unified”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent told Al Jazeera that injuries during the day-long rally had been caused by rubber-coated bullets, beatings, pepper spray, and one case of live ammunition. At least 28 Palestinians were transferred to hospital for treatment.
Israeli police said that five of its officers were lightly injured.
At least 70,000 Israelis participated in the annual march, which has been described as a “racist” and “fascist” rally in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, and specifically passed through the Muslim Quarter, where shops were largely shuttered in preparation.
What Does the AP Say About It?
Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, in a show of force that risked setting off a new wave of violence in the tense city.
The crowds, who were overwhelmingly young Orthodox Jewish men, were celebrating Jerusalem Day—an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians see the event, which passes through the heart of the Muslim Quarter, as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped trigger an 11-day war with Gaza militants, and this year’s march drew condemnations from the Palestinians and neighboring Jordan.
Israel said it deployed thousands of police and security forces for the event, and violent scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian groups erupted inside the Old City before the parade began.
As the march got underway, groups of Orthodox Jewish youths gathered outside Damascus Gate, waving flags, singing religious and nationalistic songs, and shouting “the Jewish nation lives” before entering the Muslim Quarter. One large group chanted “Death to Arabs,” and “Let your village burn down” before descending into the Old City.
Police cleared Palestinians out of the area, which is normally a bustling Palestinian thoroughfare. At one point, a drone flying a Palestinian flag flew overhead before police intercepted it.
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Fox News Blames it On Biden
German inflation hit another all-time high, adding urgency to the European Central Bank’s exit from crisis-era stimulus after numbers from Spain also topped economists’ estimates.
Driven by soaring energy and food costs, data released Monday showed consumer prices in the continent’s biggest economy jumped 8.7% from a year ago in May. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predicted an 8.1% advance.
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It's Getting Hot Out There. Don't Take Off All Your Clothes
Cities across the United States are preparing for what could be a sweltering summer, enacting rules to protect people during heat waves and experimenting with new ways to communicate the risks of extreme temperatures.
The measures can't come soon enough, even with the official start of summer still weeks away.
More than a week ago, temperature records were set in Mississippi and Texas, after conditions reached nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas on May 21. That same weekend, a heat dome baked much of the Southeast up through New England.
It was the kind of early season heat wave that serves as an important reminder of the risks of extreme temperatures, said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. And with heat waves becoming both more frequent and more severe because of climate change, Dahl said it should be a wake-up call for the entire country.
"Heat is dangerous no matter where you are or how used to it you think you might be," she said.
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Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 1
The Covid vaccines, while holding up strong against hospitalization and death, offer little protection against long Covid, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature Medicine.
The findings are disappointing, if not surprising, to researchers who were once hopeful that vaccination could significantly reduce the risk of long Covid.
Compared to an unvaccinated individual, the risk of long Covid in a fully vaccinated individual was cut by only about 15 percent, the study found.
“The vaccines are miraculous at doing what they were designed to do” — that is, prevent hospitalization and death, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the lead author of the study. But they “offer very modest protection against long Covid,” he said.
Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 2
The devastating neurological effects of long Covid can persist for more than a year, research published Tuesday finds — even as other symptoms abate.
The study, published in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, is the longest follow-up study of the neurological symptoms among long Covid patients who were never hospitalized for Covid.
The neurological symptoms — which include brain fog, numbness, tingling, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and fatigue — are the most frequently reported for the illness.
The new study, from researchers at Northwestern University, is a follow-up to a shorter-term study published last spring that focused on 100 patients with long Covid. That research found that 85 percent of the patients reported at least four lasting neurological problems at least six weeks after their acute infections.
Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 3
The number of new covid19 cases in the U.S. right now is five times higher than a year ago
It Has Been Worse Than Guns
How many people have died of COVID so far? The numbers vary a bit (not too much) depending on where you look:
The New York Times reports 1,003,167 Americans.
Johns Hopkins reports 1,004,733 Americans.
Worldometer reports 1,031,273 Americans.
The CDC reports 1,001,313 Americans.
But, we know that the number of true COVID deaths is higher than reported for a variety of reasons: fewer primary care physicians, less access to health insurance, more people dying at home, and political motivations. Estimates of undercounting range from 20% to 36% (see here, here, and here). Taking an average of the number of deaths listed above (1,010,122), we can calculate that the true number of COVID deaths is somewhere between 1,262,653 and 1,578,316 Americans. If we go with the halfway point, that would be 1,420,484 Americans.
2022 Looks a Lot Like 2021
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| May 29 | |||
| May 28 | |||
| May 27 | |||
| May 26 | 109,643 | 315 | |
| May 25 | 109,564 | 305 | 3,609 |
| May 24 | 104,399 | 288 | 3,614 |
| May 23 | 104,480 | 279 | 3,604 |
| May 22 | 102,940 | 281 | 3,531 |
| May 21 | 105,198 | 283 | 3,226 |
| May 20 | 105,713 | 284 | 3,369 |
| May 19 | 101,029 | 279 | 3,379 |
| May 18 | 101,130 | 280 | 3,332 |
| May 17 | 99,347 | 273 | 3,250 |
| May 16 | 94,199 | 274 | 3,136 |
| May 15 | 90,337 | 263 | 3,013 |
| May 14 | 88,187 | 265 | 2,698 |
| May 13 | 87,831 | 266 | 2,798 |
| May 12 | 87,382 | 272 | 2,731 |
| May 11 | 84,778 | 272 | 2,652 |
| May 10 | 78,236 | 326 | 2,629 |
| May 9 | 74,712 | 323 | 2,597 |
| May 8 | 66,564 | 323 | 2,510 |
| 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 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
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It Takes a Good Year to Eat a Tire.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
You May Think This is Overkill, but in 2000, One 6-Year-Old Shot Another at School
A fifth grade student in Florida was arrested over the weekend after allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting in a text message, authorities said.
In a statement Saturday, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said it had learned earlier that day of a "threatening text message" sent by a student at an elementary school.
It said its local school threat enforcement team was immediately notified and started investigating. The 10-year-old boy was interviewed and later charged with "making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting," the sheriff's office said.
Is CPAC Going Full Nazi?
The people who run CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference meetups that feature top Republican elected officials intermingling with the movement's most notorious conspiracy cranks—but I repeat myself—have been attempting to expand internationally with conferences in Brazil and Hungary in recent years. The premise has been to attach themselves, suction-eel style, to autocratic nationalists in other countries. Whether this is an earnest attempt to promote their hoax-dependent fascism abroad or just another very gaudy grift is debatable.
In either case, the American far right has been falling over itself with admiration for the emerging Hungarian autocracy, with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in particular promoting far-right nationalist Viktor Orban with a vigor that far eclipses his praise for any Republican here. CPAC Republicans are open in praising Hungary's autocratic descent as being the road America itself should travel, but have been slightly vaguer in explaining why. That is because the Hungarian fascist movement is Extremely F--king Nasty, full of the same bigotries and conspiracy theories that animate neo-Nazi movements here and actual damn Nazis where they still exist elsewhere.
It looks like CPAC head Matt Schlapp and Carlson feel that the time is right to drop the charade, though. Recent CPAC events in Budapest, Hungary, boasted a notorious Hungarian antisemite, one who has publicly declared Jews to be "stinking excrement," among their featured speakers. "Stinking excrement" is just one of the xenophobic and genocide-supporting rants that Hungarian television screamer Zsolt Bayer is known for. As reported by The Guardian, Bayer was a featured speaker at the allegedly conservative conference, holding forth as part of a speakers list that included Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Carlson, and others.
Bayer's views are not nuanced. It will come as no surprise that he is aggressively racist—it might be more eyebrow-raising to learn that he has particular contempt for Roma people in particular, resurrecting the genocidal conspiracy beliefs of Nazism. Even that, however, goes a long way towards explaining why Carlson, of all people, has chosen "gypsies" as one of his own baffling xenophobic targets. A 2017 Fox News segment entitled "GYPSIES: COMING TO AMERICA" and warning that the Roma "have little regard for law or public decency" remains one of the most batshit episodes of Tuckerism to be put on the network—but it seems that Carlson was already coordinating rhetoric with Europe's far-far-right even then.
Hizzonor
Dude, Where's My Government
Republican congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama said about one of the stupidest things you’d imagine a Republican congressman from Alabama could say today, and that’s saying something.
“Brooks Warns that Guns are Needed to ‘Take Back Our Government.’”
Which quote immediately sent me down dark corridors of thought. Mo Brooks is in Congress. He literally is the government. Is he saying we need guns to take stuff from him? Is this some weird “Falling Down” suicide by cop plea for help? Are you okay, congressman? Should we call someone?
Soon, though, I came back to my first reaction: “Dude, you are the government,”
Ab-Butt Get the Reception He Deserves
President Joe Biden was warmly greeted when he visited Uvalde Sunday, but Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was loudly booed as he approached the makeshift memorial at the elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed last week in a mass shooting.
Keep Your Gazpacho Out Of Her Peach Tree
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is warning supporters that the government is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.”
The extremist lawmaker who once warned the world of “gazpacho police” now claims the feds are planning to track bowel movements, too.
“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said in a rant from her podcast clipped and posted online by Patriot Takes, a right-wing watchdog group.
“They want to know when you’re eating,” the conspiracy theorist added. “They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”
And if you’re not eating “peach tree dish” meat, the government ― of which she is a part ― will find a way to “zap” you into compliance.
“You’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying ‘No, no. Don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake burger, the fake meat, from Bill Gates,’” Greene said.
Insanity
I Guess His Heart Was in the Right Place, but WTF??
I'm Guessing the Hayes Family Won't Be Voting For Previous Guy.
The family of the late legendary musician Isaac Hayes has posted an angry tweet lashing former President Donald Trump’s use of one of Hayes’s songs at his controversial speech Friday at the National Rifle Association convention.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
They Raised $2 for Every Man, Woman, and Child
Hundreds of Lithuanians contributed to a fundraiser to buy an advanced military drone for Ukraine in its war against Russia in a show of solidarity with a fellow country formerly under Moscow’s rule.
The target of 5 million euros ($5.4m) was raised in just three and a half days in Lithuania – a country of 2.8 million people – largely in small amounts to fund the purchase of a Byraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle from Turkey.
It's Not Up to Lithuanian Standards, But Still Damned Good
A GoFundMe campaign started in honor of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed in the Texas school shooting, and her husband, Joe, who died Thursday, has raised more than $2.6 million in just four days.
Debra Austin, Irma's cousin, apparently started the campaign, which has also been covered by other national outlets, including CNN and The Washington Post. NBC News was not able to independently confirm Austin's identity. The Detroit Free Press reported that it confirmed that the site has verified the account.
The campaign, which quickly surpassed its initial goal of $10,000, has raised its money from more than 46,000 donations, according to the page. The campaign was combined with another campaign set up by John Martinez, whom CNN identified as Irma Garcia's nephew, which raised more than $550,000 and got a boost from philanthropist Bill Pulte after he encouraged his 3.2 million followers to donate to it.
Irma was a fourth grade teacher who had been teaching at Robb Elementary in Uvalde for 23 years, according to her school biography. She and her co-teacher of five years, Eva Mireles, were killed along with 19 children after the 18-year-old gunman gunned them down last week.
Let's Hear it For the Poles
Poland has reportedly already trained 100 Ukrainian soldiers to operate those AHS Krab, which are capable of firing a standard round 30km and an extended range round 40km, making them one of the longest ranged artilleries.
And there’s something else that makes this gift from Poland special: These guns are brand new. They’re not just sending Ukraine the latest design created for their own army, they’re sending over half of all the AHS Krab guns that have rolled off the lines. That’s an extremely high level of commitment.
Does Fox News Have a Gulag For People Who Tell the Truth?
A Fox News anchor broke rank with many of her colleagues Sunday by openly calling for gun law reform in the wake of the Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde mass shootings.
“As we’ve said before, prayers are not enough. We have to do something. We’ve got to get the lawmakers to do something,” Arthel Neville said as she covered President Joe Biden’s visit to a memorial in Uvalde for the 19 children and two teachers killed at an elementary school last week.
’Now, the president is, you know, the commander in chief. This is happening on his watch, but he needs the help of Congress to get something done.”
Neville’s guest, Fox News contributor Griff Jenkins, argued that Biden was not uniting Democrats and Republicans on the issue and noted that Biden also failed to do so as vice president after the 2012 Sandy Hook, Connecticut, school shooting.
“Excuse me. It’s not just about the president uniting, okay?” Neville cut in.
“It’s more than that. It’s lawmakers who are stopping the unification. So let’s be clear about that. Yes, this is happening on his watch. Yes, he is responsible. Yes, he campaigned on a united America. And, yes, he needs to do something about it, but he can’t do it alone.”
Is There a NRA Gulag? Or Do They Just Shoot People?
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 96
Fighting
Russian troops are moving deeper into the besieged Donbas city of Severodonetsk from the outskirts. Two civilians killed and five wounded by Russian shelling.
All critical infrastructure in Severodonetsk has been destroyed and 90 percent of buildings damaged as Ukrainian forces battle to hold off Russian attempts to capture the key city in the eastern Luhansk region, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian forces counterattack in the south, claiming to have pushed back Russian troops in Kherson – the only region fully controlled by Russian forces.
Russian forces fired on 46 communities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, killing at least three civilians, wounding two others, and destroying or damaging 62 civilian buildings, Ukraine’s army said.
Russia holds one-third of the Kharkiv region under its occupation, but Zelenskyy said Ukraine will “definitely liberate the entire territory”.
The “liberation” of Ukraine’s Donbas is an “unconditional priority” for Moscow, while other Ukrainian territories should decide their future on their own, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Zelenskyy visited troops in the northeastern Kharkiv region. It was his first official appearance outside the Kyiv region since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
Zelenskyy fired Kharkiv’s security services chief for “not working on the defence of the city” during the start of Russia’s invasion and “thinking only of himself”.
The Russian defence ministry said Russian missiles have destroyed a large arsenal of the Ukrainian army in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Ukraine prosecutor’s office in the Donetsk region opened five criminal proceedings into Russia’s use of heavy artillery on May 28 against the town of Toretsk, and villages in the Bakhmut and Pokrovsky districts.
Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra, the winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, raised $900,000 for the country’s military by selling its trophy.
Diplomacy
NATO is no longer bound by past commitments to hold back from deploying its forces in Eastern Europe following Russia’s invasion, Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana said.
Moscow “voided of any content” the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, under which both sides agreed to work to prevent any potentially threatening build-up of conventional forces in agreed regions of Europe.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna meets Ukraine’s president in Kyiv to express France’s solidarity with Ukraine and offer more support for the country.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said talks last week with Finnish and Swedish delegations were not at the “expected level”, and Ankara cannot say yes to “terrorism-supporting” countries entering NATO, state broadcaster TRT Haber reported.
Russia is looking at all international treaties with the United States “in fields of scientific and educational cooperation” to analyse whether Russia’s participation in various joint organisations is feasible.
Canada asked South Korea to supply it with artillery rounds, apparently to “backfill” supplies that Ottawa has sent to Ukraine.
Economy
Top European Union diplomats meet on Monday for a last-ditch attempt to agree on a Russian oil embargo.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic announced he secured an “extremely favourable” three-year natural gas supply deal with Russia amid efforts by the EU to phase out Russian energy supplies.
New satellite imagery shows a Russian ship carrying grains – allegedly taken from Ukrainian farms – arrived in the Syrian port of Latakia.
Generally, If a Russian Official Says It, Believe the Opposite
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied speculation that President Vladimir Putin is ill.
In an interview with French TV, Mr Lavrov said the Russian leader appears in public every day, and no sane person would see any signs of an ailment.
There has been increasing unconfirmed media speculation that Mr Putin, who turns 70 this year, may be suffering from ill health, possibly cancer.
The New Counter-Offensive is Near Kherson
Russia is pouring everything in an effort to take that little slice out of Ukraine, and they’re doing it now. However, if Russia’s effort to take Severodonetsk is rapidly turning that city into the kind of hell all too familiar from images of Mariupol and Popasna, there is one thing concentrating all the forces there means: Russia is weaker everywhere else.
Ukraine appears to be taking advantage of this fact. In addition to the counteroffensive north of Kherson that has now been going on for three weeks, there are reports in the last two days of counterattacks near Kherson and Izyum as Ukraine takes advantage of Russia’s all-in-on-Severodonetsk position to recapture villages and pressure Russian positions.
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“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.” --- As Long As They Have a Good Degree
Graduates from the world's top universities will be able to apply to come to the UK under a new visa scheme.
The government says the "high-potential individual" route will attract the "brightest and best" early in their careers.
The scheme will be available to alumni of the top non-UK universities who have graduated in the past five years.
Graduates will be eligible regardless of where they were born, and will not need a job offer in order to apply.
Successful applicants will be given a work visa lasting two years if they hold a bachelor's or master's degree, and three years if they hold a PhD.
They will then be able to switch to other long-term employment visas if they meet certain requirements. There will be no cap on the number of eligible graduates.
To qualify, a person must have attended a university which appeared in the top 50 of at least two of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings or The Academic Ranking of World Universities, in the year in which they graduated.
This Strikes Me as A Good Idea
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Here's a Story You Won't See on US Cable News: The View from Al Jazeera
“Jerusalem Day” and its accompanying ‘flag march’ came and went in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, but, despite Israeli authorities breathing a sigh of relief that it did not trigger wider confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly Hamas in Gaza, the reality was a day of violence in which ultra-nationalist Jewish Israelis attacked countless Palestinians, many times under the eyes of Israeli police.
At least 81 Palestinians were wounded on Sunday by Israeli forces and far-right Jews in Jerusalem during and after the flag march, which marked the day Israel illegally occupied and annexed the city’s eastern half in 1967. Most Jewish Israelis view it as the day Jerusalem was “unified”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent told Al Jazeera that injuries during the day-long rally had been caused by rubber-coated bullets, beatings, pepper spray, and one case of live ammunition. At least 28 Palestinians were transferred to hospital for treatment.
Israeli police said that five of its officers were lightly injured.
At least 70,000 Israelis participated in the annual march, which has been described as a “racist” and “fascist” rally in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, and specifically passed through the Muslim Quarter, where shops were largely shuttered in preparation.
What Does the AP Say About It?
Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, in a show of force that risked setting off a new wave of violence in the tense city.
The crowds, who were overwhelmingly young Orthodox Jewish men, were celebrating Jerusalem Day—an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians see the event, which passes through the heart of the Muslim Quarter, as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped trigger an 11-day war with Gaza militants, and this year’s march drew condemnations from the Palestinians and neighboring Jordan.
Israel said it deployed thousands of police and security forces for the event, and violent scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian groups erupted inside the Old City before the parade began.
As the march got underway, groups of Orthodox Jewish youths gathered outside Damascus Gate, waving flags, singing religious and nationalistic songs, and shouting “the Jewish nation lives” before entering the Muslim Quarter. One large group chanted “Death to Arabs,” and “Let your village burn down” before descending into the Old City.
Police cleared Palestinians out of the area, which is normally a bustling Palestinian thoroughfare. At one point, a drone flying a Palestinian flag flew overhead before police intercepted it.
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Fox News Blames it On Biden
German inflation hit another all-time high, adding urgency to the European Central Bank’s exit from crisis-era stimulus after numbers from Spain also topped economists’ estimates.
Driven by soaring energy and food costs, data released Monday showed consumer prices in the continent’s biggest economy jumped 8.7% from a year ago in May. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predicted an 8.1% advance.
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It's Getting Hot Out There. Don't Take Off All Your Clothes
Cities across the United States are preparing for what could be a sweltering summer, enacting rules to protect people during heat waves and experimenting with new ways to communicate the risks of extreme temperatures.
The measures can't come soon enough, even with the official start of summer still weeks away.
More than a week ago, temperature records were set in Mississippi and Texas, after conditions reached nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas on May 21. That same weekend, a heat dome baked much of the Southeast up through New England.
It was the kind of early season heat wave that serves as an important reminder of the risks of extreme temperatures, said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. And with heat waves becoming both more frequent and more severe because of climate change, Dahl said it should be a wake-up call for the entire country.
"Heat is dangerous no matter where you are or how used to it you think you might be," she said.
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Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 1
The Covid vaccines, while holding up strong against hospitalization and death, offer little protection against long Covid, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature Medicine.
The findings are disappointing, if not surprising, to researchers who were once hopeful that vaccination could significantly reduce the risk of long Covid.
Compared to an unvaccinated individual, the risk of long Covid in a fully vaccinated individual was cut by only about 15 percent, the study found.
“The vaccines are miraculous at doing what they were designed to do” — that is, prevent hospitalization and death, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the lead author of the study. But they “offer very modest protection against long Covid,” he said.
Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 2
The devastating neurological effects of long Covid can persist for more than a year, research published Tuesday finds — even as other symptoms abate.
The study, published in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, is the longest follow-up study of the neurological symptoms among long Covid patients who were never hospitalized for Covid.
The neurological symptoms — which include brain fog, numbness, tingling, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and fatigue — are the most frequently reported for the illness.
The new study, from researchers at Northwestern University, is a follow-up to a shorter-term study published last spring that focused on 100 patients with long Covid. That research found that 85 percent of the patients reported at least four lasting neurological problems at least six weeks after their acute infections.
Why I Still Wear a Mask - Part 3
The number of new covid19 cases in the U.S. right now is five times higher than a year ago
It Has Been Worse Than Guns
How many people have died of COVID so far? The numbers vary a bit (not too much) depending on where you look:
The New York Times reports 1,003,167 Americans.
Johns Hopkins reports 1,004,733 Americans.
Worldometer reports 1,031,273 Americans.
The CDC reports 1,001,313 Americans.
But, we know that the number of true COVID deaths is higher than reported for a variety of reasons: fewer primary care physicians, less access to health insurance, more people dying at home, and political motivations. Estimates of undercounting range from 20% to 36% (see here, here, and here). Taking an average of the number of deaths listed above (1,010,122), we can calculate that the true number of COVID deaths is somewhere between 1,262,653 and 1,578,316 Americans. If we go with the halfway point, that would be 1,420,484 Americans.
2022 Looks a Lot Like 2021
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