Thurs - Are They Going to Stop Calling Heroes "Brave"?

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Be careful when you eat at Sam & Ella's Diner.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Of Course Clarence and Ginny Get a Round-the-Clock Security Detail.

The court struck down a century-old New York law that has restricted the concealed carry of handguns in public to only those with a "proper cause."

The 6-3 opinion was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's most senior conservative member. The three liberal justices dissented.

Thomas wrote that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual's right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

Is Musk Trying to Tank Another Stock?

Elon Musk says Tesla's new factories in Germany and the US are "losing billions of dollars" due to battery shortages and supply disruptions in China.

The multi-billionaire also called the plants in Berlin and Austin, Texas "gigantic money furnaces".

Covid-19 lockdowns in China this year, including in Shanghai where Tesla has a huge factory, have made it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to operate.

In recent weeks Mr Musk has been warning of job cuts at the firm.

"Both Berlin and Austin factories are gigantic money furnaces right now. It's really like a giant roaring sound, which is the sound of money on fire," said Mr Musk, who is the electric vehicle maker's chief executive.

The plants are "losing billions of dollars right now. There's a ton of expense and hardly any output," he added in an interview with the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley, a company-recognised club.

Not Even a QOP Senator Would Do This...Would They?  Ron Johnson Would Claim a Staffer Did It.

A top Nigerian senator and his wife have been identified as the couple charged in London with a child organ-harvesting plot.

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, and Beatrice Nwanneka Ekweremadu, 55, both Nigerian nationals, will appear at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court later.

Mr Ekweremadu's spokesperson confirmed to BBC Igbo that the senator had been charged in the UK over the case.

A child of unknown age has been taken into care.

The couple have been charged with conspiring to transport a child into the UK in order to harvest organs.

The investigation began when detectives were alerted to potential modern day slavery offences.

Just Another Day in the Middle East

Hurriyet newspaper reported Turkish authorities arrested five Iranian nationals on Wednesday suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate Israeli citizens in Istanbul.

Police seized two pistols and two silencers in searches conducted in houses and hotels where the suspects were staying, according to the report.

Mike Pence Lies About Lies

Mike Pence says no president in his lifetime has lied as often as Joe Biden.

Big Tech's Untouchables

America’s most prominent caste equity activist, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, was slated to give a talk at Google in April, for Dalit History Month. She was ready, she said, to explain to one of the world’s largest tech companies that caste oppression is a problem — and that it probably exists under its roof, too.

She was armed with years worth of stats gathered through her civil rights organization, Equality Labs, which show that two-thirds of Dalits, those who have been historically oppressed under India’s caste system, have faced discrimination in their U.S. workplace.

But as news spread of her impending appearance, not everyone at Google was happy. A handful of Hindu employees said that they felt “targeted” on the basis of religion, a company statement and several anonymous interviews confirmed. They appealed to Google leadership asking that the speech be canceled, and so it was.

Soundararajan was informed her talk would not go forward, The Washington Post first reported.

“It was very troubling that Google News management could not discern disinformation and bigotry,” Soundararajan told NBC Asian America. “We are seeing people who have multiple protected classes weaponize language of equity to avoid confronting the systems that have given them privilege.”

In a statement to NBC Asian America, a Google representative said the company is against casteism, but Soundararajan’s speech would have been too divisive.

“Caste discrimination has no place in our workplace,” the company said. “Here, there was specific conduct, and internal posts, that made employees feel targeted and retaliated against for raising concerns about a proposed talk… We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor.”

Dalits, or those born into marginalized castes in India’s rigid hierarchies, have faced violence and oppression on the subcontinent for thousands of years. Though the system is now illegal in India, its impacts are still far-reaching and can manifest in every aspect of life. With the growing Indian diaspora in the U.S., the system has been brought to a new continent.

It’s been two years since California sued tech conglomerate Cisco and blew open conversations about casteism in the U.S. (The lawsuit alleges the company failed to protect an Indian Dalit employee who was being actively targeted by his dominant-caste Hindu managers.)

Since then, a dialogue that employees say was once in the shadows has stirred the entirety of Silicon Valley.

“No one wants to be the next Cisco,” Soundararajan said.

Some things have changed. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have started moderating caste-based hate speech on their platforms. Dell, Apple and Amazon now include caste-proficiency in some employee manuals and trainings.

But Dalit tech workers say that’s not enough. While caste policies are sweeping some sectors, like academia, it’s still not an explicitly protected category federally or at the biggest U.S. tech companies. This means Dalits have little institutional support in the industry. It's difficult for their complaints about caste discrimination at work to lead to disciplinary action, especially if their co-workers claim religious discrimination in response.

Religion, unlike caste, is a protected category in the workplace, and many non-Dalit coworkers aren't aware of the starkly different work environment they face, according to an expert.

I Am Pretty Sure Millnocket Was Always on the Map

The small town of Millinocket, Maine, is now officially on the map. But not for its famed Golden Road, North Maine Woods, or Baxter State Park hiking trails. Nope. Now the town that sits about three hours outside of Portland has become synonymous with a sign taped to the front window of the Harry E. Reed Insurance Agency on Juneteenth.

"Juneteenth ~it's whatever... We're closed. Enjoy your fried chicken & collard greens," the sign read.

In a statement sent to NPR, Allstate wrote:

“We are terminating our contract with this independent agent. Our commitment to Inclusive Diversity and Equity is non-negotiable and we take action when individuals violate our code of conduct."

Tuesday, Millinocket Town Council Chair Steve Golieb posted a statement on Facebook that read:

"It is deeply saddening, disgraceful and unacceptable for any person, business, or organization to attempt to make light of Juneteenth and what it represents for millions of slaves and their living descendants… There is no place in the Town of Millinocket for such a blatant disregard of human decency."

Are They Going to Stop Calling Heroes "Brave"?

Late last month, the San Francisco Unified School District announced that, out of respect for Native Americans, it was eliminating the word chief from employees’ job titles: chief of staff, chief technology officer, etc.

It’s the kind of language decision that ignores language itself in favor of political posturing.

Claims of offensiveness surrounding chief disregard the word’s etymology, which is essential in determining intent, not to mention its myriad definitions that have nothing to do with Native Americans.

The word chief comes from Middle English, and before that, Old French. It dates to 1297 — almost 200 years before English speakers met Native Americans. Shakespeare was fond of it.

When Was It Legal to Kill Gay People?

A Whidbey Island, Washington, man who had been making threatening remarks to his gay neighbors, and posting comments on social media talking about his desire to kill gays and to attack a nearby Pride parade with his semiautomatic rifle, was arrested on Friday by Oak Harbor police on a $1 million warrant, the day before the event.

It shortly emerged that not only was 27-year-old Tyler Dinsmoor a Navy veteran who had settled into the community after serving at Whidbey Island Naval Station, but is a devoted member of a western Washington church where the pastor, Aaron Thompson, regularly demands the death penalty be levied and enforced against the LGBTQ community.

Oak Harbor police and prosecutors said they arrested Dinsmoor less for his threats against the Pride event—which they had deemed too vague to constitute a “direct threat”—but chose to charge him with malicious harassment (Washington’s version of a hate crime) for the threats he directed against his neighbors.

The charging documents indicated the basis of the arrest was remarks he directed against the neighbor on June 14. She had been returning home from the grocery store with her wife when he yelled at them: “It used to be legal to kill gay people!”

Over the previous month, Dinsmoor’s online homophobia had grown increasingly violent, particularly his posts on Gab, the white-nationalist-friendly chat forum where he spent most of his social-media time. He posted memes demanding “Death Penalty for Fags” and warned early in June that he “was 9mm away from fedposting [shooting] two faggots at home depot yesterday.” He added: “Pray for me bros, I might not make it through this fag month.”

According to the warrant issued in the case, Dinsmoor in May started focusing on last Saturday’s Pride Parade in Anacortes, about 20 miles from Oak Harbor, and asked his friends on Gab to “talk me out of it.”

On May 2, Dinsmoor posted a Photoshopped picture of a white man pointing a handgun at a group of people waving and holding a Pride flag.

A few weeks later, he laid out his range of far-right views, including his underlying antisemitism:

I am Tyler and the Jews are responsible for just about every bad thing in this world, they are agents of Satan and deserve severe punishment for their nefarious deeds. They will go to hell. All homosexuals are child-rapists in wait, and all (every single one) should be put to death immediately. They will go to hell. Adulterers should be put to death, with no exceptions. White people are not responsible for the bad behavior of blacks, and the best case scenario is that we live separately, in our own nations. There is nothing more useless that a ‘career woman’—it’s an abomination.

The detective investigating the June 14 incident wrote that she believes Dinsmoor is “an extreme risk to the public, especially the upcoming Pride events in the area.” She recommended Dinsmoor be ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation if he’s released.

QANON Ron Wins a New Award

Stephen Colbert gave one U.S. lawmaker a scathing new distinction on Wednesday.

“Most historians agree: Ron Johnson is the dumbest person ever to sit in the United States Senate,” Colbert declared on “The Late Show.”

Newly revealed text messages showed the Wisconsin Republican’s chief of staff tried to arrange a meeting in which Johnson would hand-deliver a slate of fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence’s office declined.

This week, Johnson claimed “some staff intern” wanted an envelope delivered to the vice president and his office tried to arrange it but he didn’t know who sent it or what it was, according to The Washington Post.

Colbert was incredulous:

“So, he has no idea where it came from, no idea who gave it to them, no idea what it is, but he can’t wait to hand-deliver it to the second-in-command. There could’ve been anything in that envelope, he doesn’t care: fake electors, angry bees, naked pictures of Mary Todd Lincoln. It don’t matter to Ron! He’s just a delivery boy.”

Colbert also said this situation answered a question he’d always had.

“You know those announcements in the airport when they say, ‘Do not carry onto the flight a package for someone you don’t know’? I’ve always wondered who those announcements are for,” he said. “Turns out it’s Ron Johnson.”

More QOP Hypocrisy About Fatherhood.


Is It Really Obvious?  It's Not Obvious That Herschel Knows Anything.

There are 50 states in the United States of America.

But in an interview Tuesday, Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker said there were 52.

Walker was going after Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor, for recently saying, “I am tired of hearing about [Georgia] being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live.”

Abrams cited the state’s problems with mental health treatment, maternal mortality, incarceration rates and wages. Republicans seized upon the remark and used it to criticize her, although Abrams said she stood by her belief that Republican Brian Kemp is “a failed governor, who doesn’t care about the people of Georgia.”

In an interview Tuesday with the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Walker said Abrams should go live in another state ― saying she had 51 others from which to choose.

“If you don’t believe in the country, leave and go somewhere else,” he said. “If it’s the worst state, why are you here? Why don’t you leave ― go to another? There’s, what, 51 more other states that you can go to?”

“Herschel misspoke ― he obviously knows there are 50 states,” spokeswoman Mallory Blount told HuffPost.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

This is So Important, I am Posting It For a Second Day.  


This is the Real Friendly Skye

Islanders rallied to save an American couple's wedding after their luggage - including the bride's dress - was lost on their trouble-hit trip to Skye.

Amanda and Paul Riesel arrived the night before their big day with only their wedding rings and flowers after their flight was diverted and delayed.

Skye wedding photographer Rosie Woodhouse took to social media to ask islanders for help.

By the next morning they had provided a dress and a kilt.

Amanda, who had been ready to give up and go home, said Rosie and the community of Skye saved the day.

She said: "Our perfectly imperfect wedding was only a possibility because of Rosie and the wonderful folks in Skye.

"Fate had a hand in our happy day because local Broadford Primary dinner lady, Theresa, was the owner of my dress and I'm also a dinner lady back home. (In England, a dinner lady is a woman who serves meals to children in a school.)

"Wearing it meant even more to me knowing it came from someone who loves and feeds her students just like I do."


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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 120

Fighting

An adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the battles for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are entering a “sort of fearful climax”. Russian forces have taken another two villages near Lysychansk, Luhansk’s Governor Serhiy Haidai said, and Russia said it has Ukraine’s troops surrounded south of the city.

About 25 people have been killed in Russia’s shelling of the Kharkiv region on Tuesday and Wednesday, the regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.

A British man sentenced to death by a Russian proxy court for fighting in Ukraine has been told the execution will be carried out, his family have told the BBC.

A drone attack has hit a major Russian oil refinery near the border with Ukraine, the plant’s management said, prompting the suspension of operations.

Diplomacy

The European Parliament has voted in favour of offering candidacy status to Ukraine at a two-day summit in Brussels.

Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s allies to accelerate the shipment of heavy weapons to match Russia on the battlefield as the Donbas region is under intensifying attacks.

The United States is hopeful there will soon be a positive resolution of the issues between Turkey, Finland and Sweden regarding the NATO accession bids of the two Nordic countries, the State Department’s top diplomat for Europe said.

Leaders from the G7 and the NATO alliance will seek to increase pressure on Russia over its war in Ukraine at meetings next week, while making clear that they remain concerned about China, the Reuters news agency cited senior US administration officials as saying.

Economy

The EU will temporarily shift to coal to cope with slowing Russian gas flows and soaring prices, an official said on Wednesday.

Moscow is working on a “practical” response to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of goods sanctioned by the EU to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Russian officials said on Wednesday.

Ukraine said it exported 48 percent less grain in the first 22 days of June than a year earlier.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would focus its trade on the other BRICS emerging economies.

Severdonetsk

Ukrainian resistance in Severodonetsk is confined to the city’s industrial zone, akin to what we saw in Mariupol. Night time is supposedly a different story. If reports are true, Ukrainian special forces roam the city at night, when their night-vision gear provides an advantage over their blind Russian invaders, retreating to the industrial zone at daylight. It’s hybrid guerrilla warfare, holding a known, fixed position by day, but sniping and harassing at night. The situation in the industrial zone is surprisingly secure enough that Ukraine can take prisoners:


These guys are chill and laughing, literally taking prisoners. Cornered, desperate soldiers don’t take prisoners.

Reports claim Ukraine isn’t overcommitting to the city’s defense, with only around 600-800. In this concrete jungle, where rubble doubles as defensive positions, it doesn’t take many defenders to extract a severe toll on advancing Russian troops. Even more so if those advancing forces lack competence.

See the POW video above? The prisoners are wearing the red armbands of Russia’s Donbas proxy forces. (Russian forces wear white armbands.) These are untrained proxy cannon fodder. Russia isn’t storming this maze of industrial buildings with professional forces well-trained in urban combat and building-clearing operations. They are shepherding meat to slaughter. That all likely feeds into Ukraine’s decision to continue the defense.

Ukraine has consistently said they won’t be in position for any full-scale counter-offensives until maybe August, most likely September. Severodonetsk thus serves two critical functions:

1. It thins the (Russian) herd.

Russia’s Donbas proxies have exhausted their mobilization, having grabbed all men up to the age of 60. They may be Russia’s preferred source of cannon fodder, but they are an exhaustible supply. Once that cannon fodder runs out, Russia will have to risk more of its own men,

2. It bogs down Russian forces away from other fronts

There’s a reason why Ukraine has been able to push forward around Kherson and Kharkiv, even before their reserves are trained and Western equipment has been fielded and operational. Ukraine is on the counteroffensive because Russia has hollowed out defenses in those areas, giving Ukraine the unexpected opportunity to jostle for positioning ahead of those big promised offensives a few months down the road.

What are Russian POWs Saying?

Deutsche Welle interviewed four prisoners after they gave their consent; they were all professional soldiers and had nothing to hide, they said.

"Honestly, we were deceived," Roman, who is from Vyborg in Russia, tells us. "In the beginning, we were told it was about humanitarian things. But I was immediately sent to the front lines." Roman was injured during fighting in the Kharkiv region. The Ukrainian military, he says, took him along and provided medical care.

On the other hand, Artyom, another prisoner, says he made a conscious decision to take part in the "special military operation" against Ukraine. (Editor's note: This is the official Kremlin term for Russia's war against Ukraine.)

Asked why he went to Ukraine, Artyom says: "On television, they tell us that we are supposedly fighting for a good cause but in reality that is not the case at all. It was only here that I realized that."

Artyom calls the Russian army "looters and murderers" when speaking with DW.
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I'll Bet You Were Wondering What is Going on in Maharashtra.  

India's richest state, Maharashtra, is witnessing high political drama that has put the fate of its government in jeopardy.

Around 35 lawmakers - led by an influential state minister, Eknath Shinde - are holed up in a hotel in Guwahati city in the north-eastern state of Assam, thousands of kilometres away from Maharashtra.

They belong to the Shiv Sena party, which is currently governing Maharashtra as part of a coalition with the Congress party and the regional Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Mr Shinde - who has been part of the Shiv Sena for decades - claims that he is acting in the interests of his party. But his rebellion has brought the state's government to the brink of collapse.

On Wednesday night, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray - who also heads the Shiv Sena - left his official residence after delivering an emotional speech urging the rebel lawmakers to return and speak to him.

Maharashtra is one of India's largest states and politically crucial for all national parties - it is home to India's financial capital Mumbai, film industry Bollywood and some of the country's largest industries.

Developments in the state often have a direct impact on national politics.

Since 2019, it has been governed by an unusual coalition comprising the stridently right-wing Shiv Sena, the centrist NCP and the Congress, along with independent lawmakers.

Together, they managed to cobble together enough numbers to cross the halfway mark of 144 lawmakers in the 288-member assembly, thwarting India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had won the largest number of seats.

Senior leaders of the Shiv Sena have said they would welcome Mr Shinde back into the party

The alliance took shape after the Shiv Sena split with the BJP, its long-time partner, following differences over power sharing. Despite sharing a similar ideology, the two Hindu nationalist parties had an uneasy relationship in the years leading up to the split.

The Shiv Sena began as an ethnic, nativist party to support the interests of Mumbai's Marathi-speaking people. After the erosion of its original vote bank, it positioned itself as a party which represented Hindu interests, and its base has been traditionally anti-Congress.

So its alliance with the Congress had raised a number of eyebrows and brought forth predictions of political doom. But Mr Thackeray and his allies had managed to weather several crises - until now.
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I Feel the Need, the Need for Mead

Lake Mead's water levels this week dropped to historic lows, bringing the nation's largest reservoir less than 150 feet away from "dead pool" — when the reservoir is so low that water cannot flow downstream from the dam.

Lake Mead's water level on Wednesday was measured at 1,044.03 feet, its lowest elevation since the lake was filled in the 1930s. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet — a possibility still years away — Lake Mead would reach dead pool, carrying enormous consequences for millions of people across Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico.

Dead pool would not mean that there was no water left in the reservoir, but even before Lake Mead were to hit that point, there are concerns that water levels could fall so low that the production of hydroelectric power would be hindered.

"Electricity generation in our western reservoirs becomes a problem as the water level in the reservoirs goes down," Glennon said.

As a reservoir is depleted, there is less water flowing through turbines and less liquid pressure to make them spin, which means the turbines produce less electricity, he added.

Glennon said water levels at Lake Mead have seen unexpectedly significant declines in recent years. At roughly this same time last year, Lake Mead's elevation was measured at around 1,069 feet, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. In 2020, water levels at the end of June were around 1,087 feet.

"This is the 23rd year of drought, and we don't know if it's a 23-year drought, a 50-year drought or maybe it's a 100-year drought," he said. "We just don't know what's going to turn this around."
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Are the Fake Electors Getting Nervous?

Agents conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity Wednesday morning at different locations, FBI officials confirmed to The Washington Post. One was the home of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer who allegedly signed a document claiming to be a Trump elector. The other was the Virginia home of Thomas Lane, who worked on the Trump campaign’s efforts in Arizona and New Mexico. The FBI officials did not identify the people associated with those addresses, but public records list each of the locations as the home addresses of the men.

Among those who received a subpoena Wednesday was David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who served as a Trump elector in that state, people familiar with the investigation said. Shafer’s lawyer declined to comment.

Separately, at least some of the would-be Trump electors in Michigan received subpoenas, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. But it was not immediately clear whether that activity was related to a federal probe or a state-level criminal inquiry.
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The Gun Bill is Designed to Do Nothing

The bill seemed like the safest bet to get anything across the finish line with Republicans wary of taking any action on guns, lest they lose their re-elections. Tellingly, several of the GOP senators in the bipartisan Uvalde-response contingent are retiring.

But while the incentive money could be used to help states that already have red flag laws, half a dozen state lawmakers and experts tell Mother Jones it is unlikely federal funding will persuade states that don’t already have red flag laws to create them.
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You Are In Or You Are Out

Ppro-Trump Republicans have discovered that since Kevin McCarthy cut them out off the Jan 6 Committee, they have, shockingly, been cut out of the committee. That is, they haven’t been privy to the inner workings of the investigation or had any clarity on how the committee staff was building the case against Trump and his supporters. That’s left them open to surprises in terms of documents and testimony turned up in the investigation.

The absence of Trump-defenders on the committee has become exceedingly obvious during the public hearings, as the testimony of witnesses has not been hijacked or sidetracked as it frequently was during the House impeachment hearings. Witnesses to Jan. 6 violence have not been asked to give their opinion on Hunter Biden’s laptop, to discuss how President Joe Biden is responsible for high gas prices, or about anything related to Hillary Clinton. And Republicans are suddenly regretting that.
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And You Thought There Would Be Nothing Worth Watching in July

There is so much new evidence rolling in for the Jan. 6 committee to review that on Wednesday, Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters gathered on Capitol Hill that the committee will now hold additional hearings in July.
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