Sun - The Impulse Control of a Freaking Toddler

--------------
Today's Worst Joke in the World

I'm going to start collecting highlighters.  Mark my words!
--------------
--------------
Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Jesus Didn't Show

Police in Nigeria have rescued 77 people, including children, from a church where they were confined in the south-western state of Ondo.

Some of them are believed to have been there for months.

A police spokesperson said many of them had been told to expect the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in April and had abandoned school to witness the event.

The raid came after a mother complained her children were missing and she thought they were in the church.

Police say they are investigating suspected mass abduction after the raid on the Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino area of Ondo Town.

The pastor of the Pentecostal church, David Anifowoshe, and his deputy have been arrested, while the victims have been taken into the care of the authorities.

"Preliminary investigation revealed that one Pastor Josiah Peter Asumosa, an assistant pastor in the church, was the one who told the members that Rapture will take place in April, but later said it has been changed to September 2022 and told the young members to obey only their parents in the Lord," said police press officer Funmilayo Odunlami.

In all, police rescued 26 children, eight teenagers and 43 adults, she added.

The Second Coming is a Christian belief in the return of Jesus Christ after his Biblical ascension to Heaven. Rapture is the idea that Christian believers will be taken to Heaven at the Second Coming.

While Molasses Merrick Muddles Along, a New Crime Spree Can Begin



Liz Agrees

The Justice Department should not avoid prosecuting Donald Trump in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack if a prosecution is warranted, Rep. Liz Cheney said in an interview with ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

While bringing charges against the former president -- who may challenge President Joe Biden in 2024 -- would be unprecedented and "difficult" for the country, not doing so would support a "much graver constitutional threat," Cheney said Wednesday in an interview at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that aired Sunday on "This Week."

"Are you worried about what that means for the country, to [see] a former president prosecuted? A former president who was a likely candidate; who may in fact be running for president against Biden?" Karl asked Cheney.

"I think it's a much graver constitutional threat if a president can engage in these kinds of activities, and the majority of the president's party looks away; or we as a country decide we're not actually going to take our constitutional obligations seriously," Cheney said. "I think that's a much, a much more serious threat."

The Impulse Control of a Freaking Toddler

Donald Trump may soon officially announce he’ll run for the presidency because he’s having a fit about the dirt revealed about him in hearings investigating the Capitol riot, and because he has “all the impulse control of a freaking toddler,” a former GOP official scoffed Saturday.

“At the end of the day, he’s going to do whatever he wants. He’s shown that time and time again,” Kurt Bardella, a former deputy communications director for the GOP-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told MSNBC. (He’s now a Democrat and news commentator.)

“This guy has the impulse control of a freaking toddler. So nobody should be surprised about that at all. I think that Republicans, yeah, this is the golem they created,” Bardella added.

They Really Do Hate Women





DeathSentence and His Cronies Hate Children

A Florida pediatrician has been booted off a state-appointed public health board of directors for statements about COVID-19 vaccines that displeased at least one Republican elected official.

The pediatrician, Dr. Lisa Gwynn, had been advocating for equal access to the vaccine for children under 5 years old at a time when the state of Florida was running counter to federal health advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida is still currently the only state that has not ordered vaccines for young children, despite the CDC’s recommendation that children under 5 be given the shots to protect against severe illness and death by the coronavirus.

Gwynn’s medical recommendation provoked a harsh response from Florida’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Petronis, an ally of the state’s hard-right Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has peddled misleading information about the vaccines and encouraged residents to do their own research on the pandemic. Both men are up for re-election this year.

The doctor was removed Wednesday from her position on the board of directors of the Florida Healthy Kids Corporation, a state health insurance provider, after being appointed several months earlier.

Petronis’ deputy chief of staff, Susan Miller, told Gwynn in an email viewed by HuffPost that she had made “some very political statements that do not reflect the CFO’s point of view.”

Gwynn told HuffPost she received no prior warning or offer to discuss the situation.
--------------
Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

--------------
Invasions Have Consequences

Day 130

Fighting

Ukrainian separatists backed by Russia say they have “completely” encircled the key city of Lysychansk in the eastern Luhansk region. Meanwhile, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has conceded that the city of Lysychansk, Ukraine’s last big bastion in Luhansk, could fall to the Russians.

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian base with more than 30 strikes in the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol in the region of Zaporizhia, according to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor, Ivan Fedorov. Russia’s RIA news agency confirmed the attacks.

At least three people have been killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod, according to the local governor. Russia has blamed Ukraine but Kyiv has yet to comment.

The Belarusian president says his army has shot down missiles fired into their territory from Ukraine and promised to respond “instantly” to any enemy attack.

Diplomacy

The European Union is preparing an emergency plan to help member states cut back on Russian energy. The new measures — due by mid-July — will build on May’s REPowerEU plan to abandon Russian energy sources because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Leaders from dozens of countries and international organisations will gather on Monday and Tuesday in the Swiss city of Lugano to discuss rebuilding Ukraine, hoping to draw up a “Marshall Plan” for the country’s reconstruction.

Economy

Russia remains a “reliable producer and supplier of grain, fertilisers and energy”, President Vladimir Putin assured Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Fearing Russia might cut off natural gas supplies, the head of Germany’s regulatory agency for energy has called on residents to save energy and to prepare for winter, when use increases.

From The Economist

Ukraine’s forces, outgunned and until recently largely outranged in artillery, have been mauled. The government says they are suffering as many as 200 casualties a day. On June 15th a Ukrainian general said that the army had lost 1,300 armoured vehicles, 400 tanks and 700 artillery systems, far more than previously thought. Many of Ukraine’s most experienced and best-trained units have been destroyed, leaving greener reservists to take their place. On June 19th British defence intelligence said there had been desertions among Ukrainian troops.

Yet this does not mean Russia will sweep through Donbas. Its advance has been slow, grinding and costly, enabled only by massive, indiscriminate bombardments. New recruits are getting just a few days of training before being thrown into battle, according to the bbc’s Russian service. Morale is low: British intelligence points to “armed stand-offs between officers and their troops”. It has taken more than two months to capture Severodonetsk, and Slovyansk and next-door Kramatorsk are better fortified.

Russia still has plenty of munitions and equipment, says Richard Connolly, an expert on the country’s economy and defence industry. Russian arms factories are said to be working double or triple shifts, he notes. Russia also has large stockpiles of old tanks to draw on. Over time, shortages will bite, but they are more likely to lead to the deployment of outmoded or poorly maintained weapons than to a total drought, Mr Connolly believes.

Manpower is a bigger problem. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has refused to call up conscripts and reservists en masse. Instead of a general mobilisation, says Michael Kofman of cna, a think-tank, his army is creating new reserve battalions by signing up new recruits. But finding enough of them is difficult: the government has had to offer lavish pay, of almost three times the median wage. The injured and bereaved have been promised generous settlements, too. The Duma, Russia’s parliament, recently lifted the maximum age to join the army from 40 to 65. The authorities are trying to lure recently retired soldiers back into service.

In an effort to create battle-ready forces much faster than usual, the newly enlisted are being mashed together with serving officers who have not yet deployed and residual equipment from existing brigades, Mr Kofman notes. But generating new units in this way amounts to “selling off the family silver”, says a Western official. The officers and equipment assigned to them would normally be used to train new soldiers or to relieve battle-worn troops. Russia is, in effect, cannibalising its own forces, Mr Kofman says, which will reduce “the overall sustainability of the war effort”.

Russia’s shortage of well-trained troops is one reason its advance in Donbas has been glacial. Ukraine, despite a smaller population, has a larger supply of eager recruits. Training them remains a bottleneck, but that could be overcome with a little help: on June 17th Mr Johnson proposed a scheme whereby Britain would train as many as 10,000 soldiers every 120 days.

Ukraine is also receiving ever more sophisticated Western weaponry. To begin with, it sought chiefly short-range, portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to fend off advancing armoured columns and marauding helicopters. More recently, however, America, Britain and others have been supplying modern artillery and rockets, which will be much more useful in any counter-attacks. On June 23rd Ukraine’s defence minister said that American himars rocket launchers, with gps-guided munitions, had begun to arrive.

Indeed, some Ukrainian officials, including Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, argue that if Western help arrives on a sufficient scale, Ukraine may be able to win the war before winter sets in. A military intelligence officer says that Ukraine’s best window for a counter-offensive will come in late October, when its stock of Western arms should be peaking. “We need the enemy to feel the full force of the weaponry,” he says. There is talk of pushing Russia back to its positions at the start of the war, and then negotiating a peace deal from a position of strength.

But this optimism glosses over several yawning pitfalls. For one thing, Ukraine’s forces have used most of their munitions and, without the domestic manufacturing capacity to replenish them, are now completely reliant on foreign benefactors. The recent fighting has centred on long, heavy artillery barrages that consume vast amounts of ammunition. Russia, which has huge stocks, is thought to be blasting away so indiscriminately that America’s entire annual production would be enough to keep its guns firing for only two weeks, observes Alex Vershinin, a retired us Army officer. Even though Ukraine has been trying to ration its consumption, nato countries may struggle to keep it adequately supplied with shells.

What is more, Ukraine’s backers have already handed over a big share of their stocks of certain weapons. The 7,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles America has provided, for instance, are thought to amount to about a third of its total inventory. Western armies do not want to let their own supplies run too low; in fact, many of them are hoping to add to them in light of Russia’s aggression.

Although America and Europe, with vastly larger economies than Russia, could eventually gear up to produce whatever Ukraine needs, their output of shells and missiles will not double overnight. America produces only 2,100 Javelins a year. Mr Vershinin notes that the number of American small-arms plants has shrunk from five during the Vietnam war to one today.

HIMARS In Action



Kherson


--------------
Wouldn't It Be Clovelly?

There are two immediate signs that Clovelly, located on the coast of Devon in South West England, isn't your usual seaside village. The first is that the only access is through the visitor centre, which charges £8.50 per adult for entrance (£4.95 for children). The second is the sledges. They stand at attention at the top of the cobbled walk that runs through the town's steep lanes of cottages and down to Clovelly's harbour, 120m below, ready for the next time a resident comes back from the shops and needs to lug their purchases home.


They might seem out of place to a first-time visitor. But both the visitor centre, opened in 1988, and the sledges, which largely replaced donkeys by the 1970s, are ways in which this 1,000-year-old community has adapted to modern times – while still preserving the rhythms of the past.

Even today, there are no cars in Clovelly. (It would be too steep for them to get access even if the town wanted them.) There are no chain stores, no traffic noises, no light pollution. Instead, there are cobbled lanes, whitewashed cottages, small boats bobbing in the 14th-Century stone quay, fat bees and butterflies feeding on flowers, and, almost everywhere, the sound, smells and sight of the Atlantic.


--------------
Bullet, Bullet, Who's Got the Bullet?

The Palestinian Authority has handed over to US forensic experts the bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on May 11, according to Palestinian officials.

Akram al-Khatib, general prosecutor for the Palestinian Authority, had said that officials had “agreed to transfer the bullet to the Americans for examination”. However, conflicting reports over who would conduct the tests on the bullet emerged on Sunday, with an Israeli military spokesman telling Army Radio: “The test will not be American. The test will be an Israeli test, with an American presence throughout.”

Al-Khatib, meanwhile, told Voice of Palestine radio that officials had received “guarantees” from the United States “that the examination will be conducted by them and that the Israeli side will not take part”. The US did not immediately comment on the opposing claims.
--------------
Let the Campaign Begin. 

Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis aren’t just avatars for the different futures of their parties, but also for the separate realities blue and red Americans are living in – two people of opposing viewpoints looking at the exact same set of facts and coming to vastly different conclusions.

They’re both governors, rising stars and speculated soon-to-be presidential candidates, building out micro-ideological models in their sunny capitals.

In ever-blue California, Newsom, the son of a state appellate judge, has rebooted from his start as a flashy progressive hero around quieter legislative pushes. Meanwhile, in reddening Florida, there’s DeSantis, the son of a Nielsen box salesman, who in public cleaves less to his two Ivy League degrees than to the anti-elitist, reactionary politics that have consumed the GOP.

Newsom now is going on the air against DeSantis in Florida – with what he says is not the first ad of the 2024, or even the 2028, presidential race – with the goal of trying to get Democrats to reclaim a sense of collective identity that could enable them to beat Trumpism in the long term.

With $105,000 on Fox News, Newsom’s new ad, first provided to CNN and set to air on July 4, is a mashup of a classic campaign spot, business investment pitch and one of those California tourism commercials full of celebrities saying how much better it is there, wrapped in the existential terror that’s wracking progressives these days.


--------------
Women Who Had Abortions Are Not the Deranged Ones

It’s an unfounded message experts say is repeated again and again: Having an abortion may damage a woman’s mental health, perhaps for years.

“There’s so much misinformation, so many myths about abortion. Abortion will lead to substance abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts; abortion is bad for your health; every woman is going to regret it,” said social psychologist Brenda Major, a distinguished professor emeritus in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In reality, decades of research has shown “the vast majority of women feel they made the right choice, and they don’t experience regret,” said Major, who led a 2008 American Psychological Association task force exploring the science on abortion and mental health.

Women who had an abortion in the first trimester were no more likely to have mental health problems than women who continued with an unplanned pregnancy, the APA review concluded.

A large, long-term study, called The Turnaway Study, followed the mental health of nearly 1,000 women in 21 states who wanted and received an abortion and women who wanted but were denied an abortion between 2008 and 2010.

The women were interviewed every six months over the next five years. At the end of that time, 99% of the women who had an abortion believed they had made the right decision – in fact relief was the prominent emotion, one analysis noted.

It's the QOP Who Are At Home on Derange.
--------------
It's Not Just Floods in Yellowstone

When Garrett Dickman drove through Yosemite National Park early this week, he passed through a diverse band of large trees – conifer, red fir, lodgepole pine – and noticed a grim pattern: many of the trees were either dead or dying.

“It was really striking to see that every single tree seems to be getting hit by either climatic changes; it could be dying from drought, or it could be insect attack or fungus, but they’re certainly weakened,” Dickman, a forest ecologist with the National Park Service, told CNN. “There’s a big shift happening right now, and it’s right in front of our eyes.”

The consequences of the climate crisis – more wildfires, devastating drought, sea level rise, flooding, ecological disease – are plaguing the country’s national parks. Most recently, unprecedented flash flooding overwhelmed Yellowstone National Park and some of its surrounding areas.

Scientists and officials say it signals a dramatic change unfolding at the nation’s most prized parks. And unless the planet slashes fossil fuel emissions, scientists believe the climate crisis could drastically alter the landscapes, cultural sites and ecosystems in the parks, potentially making them inaccessible for humans and uninhabitable for other species.
--------------
Today's Worst Snails in the World

A Florida county is under quarantine due to the discovery of a fast-growing population of invasive giant African land snails.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) confirmed there were giant African land snails in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County on June 23, according to FDACS’ website.

The snails pose a health risk to humans because they carry a parasite called rat lungworm, which can cause meningitis, Christina Chitty, a public information director at FDACS, told CNN.

They can produce up to 2,500 eggs per year, so the population is difficult to control.

According to Chitty, the population in Pasco County likely originated from the illegal pet trade. Giant African land snails are illegal to own as pets in the United States. But some exotic pet owners still keep the invasive pests. If the owners discard them into the wild or accidentally lose them, they can quickly establish a foothold, feeding on over 500 different plant species and even consuming the paint and stucco off houses as a source of calcium.

Chitty said the department is currently investigating the population and determining how many snails are in Pasco County. The snails are native to east Africa and can grow up to 8 inches long.

The quarantine took effect June 25 and prevents residents from moving the snail or related items, like plants and soil, in or out of the designated quarantine area. Residents who think they have spotted a giant African land snail are advised to call the FDACS hotline and avoid touching the snail without gloves on due to the meningitis risk.

According to Chitty, FDACS plans to spend three years eradicating the population in Pasco County, using the pesticide metaldehyde to treat the soil.


--------------
Sorry ET.  You Can't Phone Home.  The Spectrum is Busy.

In recent years, however, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has become even more complicated. Increasing demands for mobile services and wireless internet have crowded the radio spectrum, creating interference that can skew data and add "noise" to scientific results.

"Earth is just getting more and more polluted," said Werthimer, chief technologist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. "With some radio bands, it's already impossible to do SETI because they're so full of television transmitters, WiFI and cellphone bands."

As wireless technologies continue to grow, the problem will only get worse, Werthimer said, potentially jeopardizing one of the key ways that scientists have to search for intelligent life in the universe.

Werthimer was recently one of the authors of a pre-print study led by Chinese researchers that identified a radio signal that several news outlets mistakenly reported as having characteristics of an alien civilization. The signal was actually found to have been radio interference, Werthimer clarified.
--------------
Something is Rotten in Rotterdam

The mayors of Amsterdam and Rotterdam are warning of a “culture of crime and violence that is gradually acquiring Italian traits”, with record amounts of intercepted drugs at the port of Rotterdam, extreme violence that often kills the wrong target, and €15bn to €30bn a year laundered into property, cannabis “coffee shops”, tourism and bars. Allegations that the country, better known for its tolerance and fiscal frugality, has the characteristics of a “narco state 2.0” are now being taken extremely seriously.

The Dutch government announced a new international collaboration last Monday against criminals who ship cocaine from South America via the ports of Rotterdam and nearby Antwerp in Belgium. Politicians also want to scrutinise “facilitator” businesses, expand crown witness schemes, delve into opaque financial structures and offer vulnerable young people in 16 neighbourhoods better options than crime.

Paul Vugts, a crime reporter for Amsterdam paper Het Parool, who spent six months living under police protection after getting death threats, said it was high time for action. “It took the killing of a crime blogger, the innocent brother of a crown witness against [alleged drug gang chief] Ridouan Taghi and others, then the witness’s lawyer Derk Wiersum, and last summer my colleague Peter R de Vries, the crown witness’s official confidant. We don’t have mafia like Italy, but this kind of violence is mafia-like. It is terror.”
--------------
Don't Forget to Get Your Flu Shot This Fall

One of the many tragic turns the politicization of COVID-19 and our country’s response to it has been the deleterious effect it has had on public health consensus. With the rise in privatization, greed, and a withering government response over the decades, the public’s trust in medicine and science as entities above politics and money has dwindled. The novel coronavirus pandemic, as it did with everything else, expedited the trend of deteriorating public trust.

One of the places that has seeped into is the annual, and for some demographics semiannual, flu shot. Polling has shown that this past fall, 4 in 10 Americans said they weren’t planning on getting the flu shot, regardless of their feelings about—or whether or not they had received—the COVID-19 jab. Unfortunately, what many Americans continue to take with them is the age-old wisdom that getting the flu and building up a natural immunity to whatever specific strain you may catch, is preferable to either immunizing yourself from catching it at all, or simply blunting the severity of suffering infection.

The fact is that the flu shot helps save tens of thousands of people’s lives every year, while also preventing millions of hospital visits, and millions more from ever getting seriously ill. It is a win-win, considering that the cost is mostly an uncomfortably sore arm for a few hours. Now researchers out of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have added another reason to look forward to getting your flu shot.

Combing through a large nationwide sample of U.S. seniors (65 and older), including 935,887 flu-vaccinated patients and 935,887 non-vaccinated patients, researchers found that a single flu shot provided a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease “for several years.” That is not all. Avram S. Bukhbinder, MD, a recent alumnus of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston explained in a statement that the “strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine—in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer's was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year.”

During four-year follow-up appointments, about 5.1% of flu-vaccinated patients were found to have developed Alzheimer's disease. Meanwhile, 8.5% of non-vaccinated patients had developed Alzheimer's disease during follow-up.

“Since there is evidence that several vaccines may protect from Alzheimer's disease, we are thinking that it isn't a specific effect of the flu vaccine. Instead, we believe that the immune system is complex, and some alterations, such as pneumonia, may activate it in a way that makes Alzheimer's disease worse. But other things that activate the immune system may do so in a different way -- one that protects from Alzheimer's disease. Clearly, we have more to learn about how the immune system worsens or improves outcomes in this disease.”
--------------
Who Won the Week?

West coast governors Jay Inslee (WA), Kate Brown (OR), and Gavin Newsom (CA), for issuing a Multi State Commitment to Reproductive Freedom within hours of the SCOTUS repeal of Roe v. Wade

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom you can now call Associate Justice Jackson and the first Black woman on the Supreme Court

The NATO alliance, as Finland and Sweden get the green light to join the coalition

Ukraine, for continuing to fight the smart fight against Putin's orcs…and bravo for kicking the Russki horde off of Snake Island

The 1,400+ pro-choice people who have signed up to run for office since the repeal of Roe

White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, the surprise witness at the Jan. 6 hearings...and the eye-popping 13,000,000+ Americans who tuned in

Trumpet, the first bloodhound to win Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in its 145-year history
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------