Weds-If "Asshole" were a Gender, What would Josh Hawley Be?

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Two bees ran into each other and one asked the other how things were going. "Really bad," said the second bee. "The weather has been really wet and damp. There aren't any flowers or pollen, so I can't make any honey."

"No problem," said the first bee. "Just fly down five blocks and turn left and keep going until you see all the cars. There's a Bar Mitzvah going on. There are all kinds of fresh flowers and fresh fruit."

"Thanks for the tip," said the second bee and flew away.

A few hours later the two bees ran into each other again and the first bee asked, "How'd it go?"

"Fine," said the second bee, "It was everything you said it would be."

"Uh, what's that thing on your head?" asked the first bee.

"That's my yarmulke," said the second bee. "I didn't want them to think I was a wasp."
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Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Nationwide, hospitalizations have doubled since May, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a media briefing Tuesday. An NBC News analysis found that Covid-related hospitalizations are up in all but four states, with the biggest recent jumps in the South.

The increase is driven by BA.5 and another closely related subvariant, BA.4, Walenksy said. BA.5 accounted for 65% of new cases for the week ending July 9, according to the CDC. BA.4 accounted for 16.3%.

Both subvariants are “more transmissible and more immune evading” than previous versions of omicron. That is, any immunity a person has from vaccination or previous infection may offer little to no protection against what’s currently circulating.

“Even if somebody had an infection in the massive wave of last winter,” said Dr. Jorge Salinas, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at Stanford University, “they could still get sick with these new variants.” Salinas, too, has noted the increase in Covid-related hospitalizations.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Psst John.  He Attempted a Failed Coup.  And It's A Lot Easier When You Are Already President.

John Bolton, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations and ex-White House national security adviser, has admitted in an interview he had helped plan coups in foreign countries.

Bolton made the remarks to CNN on Tuesday after the day’s congressional hearing into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Former President Donald Trump has faced accusations of inciting the violence in a last-ditch bid to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.

Speaking to CNN anchor Jake Tapper, however, Bolton suggested Trump was not competent enough to pull off a “carefully planned coup d’etat”, later adding: “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here but, you know, [in] other places – it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he [Trump] did.”

Bolton Provides the "Infant Defense"

At the end of an almost three-hour hearing of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, Rep. Liz Cheney detailed how extremists planned and appeared to have coordinated the Capitol attack with the White House.



"President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child,” Cheney said. “Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices."
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Bolton told journalist Jake Tapper it's a "mistake" to think Trump is capable of a “carefully planned” coup. “That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton said. “It’s rambling from one half, vast idea to another, one plan that falls through and another comes up—that’s what he was doing.”

Not a Hard Question



It Was Planned and Kept Secret.  Why Hide the Plan?

Trump’s call to march on the Capitol was planned in advance, committee shows

A draft tweet obtained by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee showed that prior to the insurrection, Trump had written: “I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House). Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the steal!!”

Trump never sent the tweet.

The committee also presented texts among Trump’s supporters in the days leading up to the insurrection that suggested that Trump’s call for his supporters to march on the Capitol was premeditated. A text from far-right activist Ali Alexander at 7:19 a.m. Jan. 5 read: “Tomorrow: Ellipse then US Capitol. Trump is supposed to order us to Capitol at end of his speech but we will see.”

Here's My Question

What was previous guy planning on doing if Secret Service hadn't stop him from going to the Capitol?

What's More American Than Baseball, Kids, and Guns?

Gunshots were fired during a Little League baseball game in North Carolina over the weekend, prompting frantic children to drop to the ground and adults to protectively shield them with their bodies.

The children were participating in a tournament in Wilson, roughly 40 miles east of Raleigh, on Sunday morning when three gunshots were fired, igniting fears of an active shooter, the Wilson Police Department said in a statement.

One car was found damaged in a nearby parking lot, but no injuries were reported. There was no evidence that anyone at the ballpark was intentionally targeted in the shooting, which had resulted in no arrests as of Tuesday afternoon, police said.

Parents said the gunfire came dangerously close to the children, however, with one of the bullets landing in the field near where some of the players were standing.



If "Asshole" were a Gender, We Know What Josh Hawley Would Be.

A University of California, Berkeley School of Law professor called out Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) for a transphobic line of questioning that denied the existence of trans and nonbinary people.

Khiara M. Bridges was one of five expert panelists to testify in a hearing about the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that protected the right to abortion.

Bridges, whose work focuses on civil rights, reproductive rights and constitutional law, sparred with Hawley when he attempted to mock her for using the phrase “people with the capacity for pregnancy.”

After the professor explained that cisgender women are not the only people who can become pregnant, Hawley continued to pick at Bridges for her word choice, asking: “So this isn’t really a women’s rights issue?”

“We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley,” Bridges responded.

She went on to tell Hawley that his line of questioning was “transphobic” and “opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.” She later asked him whether he believes that men can be pregnant. He said no, which she noted is “denying that trans people exist.”

Hawley, who was once an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, asked her: “Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you?”

“Absolutely! We have a good time in my class, you should join. You might learn a lot,” Bridges said.

This isn’t the first time Hawley has made a point of denying trans people’s existence. Earlier this year, HuffPost reporters Arthur Delaney and Jennifer Bendery asked the senator to define the term “woman.”

“Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman. Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me,” Hawley said.

He said he didn’t know a woman would still be a woman if she had a hysterectomy or lost her reproductive organs to cancer.

Meadows in the Crosshairs

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications director, said that she was told by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that Donald Trump would not be leaving office in the wake of his 2020 election defeat.

Griffin in a CNN appearance Tuesday discussed the day's January 6 committee hearing. At the hearing, witnesses described a chaotic December 18, 2020, White House meeting where allies of Trump pressed him to seize voting machines to cling onto power after his election defeat, and pushed wild conspiracy theories.

In the interview, Griffin said she had tried to discover who had let the group, which included Michael Flynn and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, into the White House.

"Who waived them?" Griffin asked on CNN. "Which is putting them through security to get onto White House grounds. We don't even have that answer now."

She speculated that it had been Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time, one of the most ardent backers of Trump's bid to retain power despite his defeat. Meadows' actions have been among the key focuses of the inquiry.

"I suspect it was Mark Meadows and I say that because I can tell you before I resigned, I said 'Sir, I'm planning to move on, I want to put in my notice.' And he said to me, 'What if I could tell you we're actually going to be staying?' You can interpret that as hypothetical, but there were people around the president telling him that, and that's what led to this absolute insanity," Griffin said.

He's Just Following Previous Guy's Example, By Running a Scam

A Trump supporter falsely claimed his garage was burned down by left-wing extremists in a $300,000 insurance scam attempt, federal prosecutors say.

They said Dennis Molla, of Minnesota, set his own garage on fire after scrawling it with graffiti showing an antifa symbol, BLM, and "Biden 2020" during the last presidential election campaign.

Per an indictment reviewed by Insider, prosecutors said Molla wanted to defraud insurers by claiming he had been politically targeted.

His story gained widespread sympathetic media coverage in which he described being shocked to discover how his home was attacked.

On September 23, 2020, Molla told CBS Minnesota that he awoke early that morning to "a loud boom, or a bang" outside his home and saw three people running away.

The outlet cited a police report that said Molla's garage, car, and three further vehicles were on fire.

Molla had been flying "Trump 2020" flags at the property, he told CBS. He told police that it was politically motivated and referred to it as a "hate crime" in his insurance claim, court documents say.

"For them to see me express my beliefs as a Republican, it's crazy to think it came down to this," he told the Star-Tribune newspaper.

In his indictment, prosecutors said: "In reality, as Molla well knew, Molla started his own property on fire, Molla spray painted the graffiti on his own property, and there were no unknown males near his home."

Molla was charged with wire fraud charges for his insurance claims and two fundraisers in his name.

According to the indictment, he made multiple insurance claims totalling $300,000. The company rejected some but paid out $61,000, it said.

In response, per the document, Molla threatened to report the insurance company to authorities.

He also took $17,000 in donations from two GoFundMe fundraisers, the indictment said. Two fundraisers matching that description were still online Wednesday (here is the first and the second). They both have a message of thanks purporting to be by Molla, dated November 2020.

Molla's story came at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign, when conservative media in particular focused on issues of left-wing violence.



When's the Last Time You Saw a Mom and Pop Gas Station?



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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 140

Fighting

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not commented on a Russian-backed official’s claim that a Ukrainian strike on Nova Kakhovka, in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, killed at least seven people, including civilians, and wounded dozens more.

Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported a significant buildup of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Siversk areas, and close to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, as the region braces for a powerful offensive.

The death toll from a collapsed apartment block in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar climbed to 45.

The United Nations human rights office said more than 5,000 civilians had been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, adding that the real death toll was probably much higher.

Diplomacy

Military delegations from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey will meet UN officials in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss a deal to export Ukraine’s grain from the Black Sea port of Odesa as a global food crisis worsens.

Ukraine is getting an additional $1.7bn in assistance from the United States government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered healthcare workers and provide other essential services.

The self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) opened an embassy in Russia, one of only two countries to recognise the separatist “statelet” in eastern Ukraine, and defended its right to impose capital punishment.

Economy

G20 finance leaders will meet in Bali this week for talks that are due to include issues like global food security and soaring inflation, as host Indonesia tries to ensure frictions over the war in Ukraine do not blow discussions off course.

The Polish cabinet backed legislation loosening gas trading rules, extending tariff protection for consumers, and contingency planning for grid operators to allow for a swift reaction if the energy crisis deteriorates.

The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.83bn) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Russia’s war against Ukraine, the bloc’s top justice official said.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Carlos França said his country wants to buy as much diesel as it can from Russia following a deal with Moscow.

Recruiting Prisoners?  Will They Increase Arrests to Give Them More Soldiers?



Russian forces conducted limited and unsuccessful ground assaults north of Slovyansk and east of Siversk.

Russian forces continued air and artillery strikes around Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

Russian forces conducted multiple unsuccessful ground assaults north of Kharkiv City.

Russian forces likely conducted a false-flag attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in occupied Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian strikes killed multiple Russian officers in Kherson City on July 10.

Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian ammunition depots on the Southern Axis.



There Are Reports of Reduced Russian Shelling.  Could It Be All Those Supply Depots Blown Up?



Here Come the Euros



There Go the Euros

The euro and the U.S. dollar are exchanging at a nearly 1-to-1 rate for the first time in nearly two decades, when the European currency was in its infancy.

The euro has been losing ground against the dollar since the start of the year, when it hovered near $1.13, amid an aggressive inflation-fighting campaign by the U.S. Federal Reserve, along with broader global disruptions set off by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of Tuesday it stood near $1.0040 — just a hair above parity.

There Goes the General

Ukraine said it killed a Russian general with a long-range rocket system donated by the US.

Maj. Gen. Artem Nasbulin of Russia was killed in the Kherson region by High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) missiles, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional administration spokesperson, said in Telegram.

The US has sent eight HIMARS to Ukraine, and said last week that it was sending four more. The first arrived on June 23, Ukraine's defense secretary.

Bratchuk did not say exactly where the attack took place, or when. Russia has not confirmed Nasbulin's death — as has been common with other reported Russian deaths — and it has not been independently verified.


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Do single-use plastic bans work?

It's too complicated to just do an excerpt, but a good article
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I Am Not Sure Buying a Home is the Best Way to Build Wealth

As real estate in the United States remains strong despite rising interest rates, market analysts interviewed by Al Jazeera predict that the next housing crisis will centre around Americans locked out of homeownership.

“That’s our big problem going forward,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a research firm based in New York City, told Al Jazeera. “It’s not going to be a crash in house prices; it’s going to be getting people into homeownership so they can build wealth. I think younger people are going to have a great deal of difficulty.”

The coronavirus pandemic sparked a home-buying frenzy as millions of Americans across the economic spectrum, working from home, set out in search of more space. Low interest rates fuelled the purchasing spree.

“You had very few homes and a lot of people that were going to try to buy them,” said Nicole Bachaud, an economist at Zillow, a tech real-estate marketplace company in Seattle, Washington.

Purchasing a home has become much more expensive recently as the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates to fight runaway inflation. Rates for a 30-year mortgage recently neared 6 percent, after dropping to 2.65 percent in January 2021.

And real estate agents say they are already seeing cracks in the housing market.

“We’re seeing price reductions a little bit more frequently than we had before,” said David Berger, real estate agent at Compass, a broker agency in New York. “We’re seeing listings stay on the market a little longer than a year ago, even six months ago.”

I Think the Key is Saving and Investing Well.  Lifetime Home Ownership is Expensive.
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A Preview of the Fed Meeting?

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday surprised markets with a full-percentage-point rate increase, a super-sized increase last seen in 1998, citing “higher and more persistent” inflation and the increased risk of those price gains becoming entrenched.

The central bank, in a regular rate decision, raised its policy rate to 2.5 percent from 1.5 percent, and said more rises would be needed. The move was more forceful than the 75-basis point increase economists and money markets had forecast. “With the economy clearly in excess demand, inflation high and broadening, and more businesses and consumers expecting high inflation to persist for longer, the Governing Council decided to front-load the path to higher interest rates,” the bank said.

Pessimism on Inflation?

Surging prices for gas, food and rent catapulted U.S. inflation to a new four-decade peak in June, further pressuring households and likely sealing the case for another large interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, with higher borrowing costs to follow.

Consumer prices soared 9.1% compared with a year earlier, the government said Wednesday, the biggest 12-month increase since 1981, and up from an 8.6% jump in May. On a monthly basis, prices rose 1.3% from May to June, another substantial increase, after prices had jumped 1% from April to May.

Optimism on Inflation?

Digging deeper into the data on inflation reveals that while the situation is worrying, there are some reasons for optimism.

1. Core inflation. Annual core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, appears to have peaked in March. Federal Reserve officials are most concerned when there are signs inflation is broad-based, so this provides some hope the underlying situation is improving even as grocery and gas prices go haywire.

Core inflation in the 12 months to June edged down to 5.9% from 6% in May. It could keep dropping should consumer demand for goods continue to soften, as shoppers balk at high prices and redirect their income towards services like dining out.

2. Oil prices. Concerns about whether the global economy could tip into a recession have dimmed expectations for fuel demand, helping relieve pressure on gasoline prices in the United States this month. The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Wednesday was $4.63, compared to $4.78 a week ago and $5.01 one month ago.

That wasn’t reflected in the June data, given that gasoline prices were at a record high when the Bureau of Labor Statistics crunched the CPI numbers. The gasoline index rose 11.2% between May and June.

But it does mean July will probably look better — and markets like to look ahead.

3. Long-term inflation expectations. A survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published this week showed that while consumer inflation expectations for the next year marked a new high in June, expectations for the medium and long term declined.

This indicates that American consumers still have faith that the Fed can get the inflation situation under control by hiking interest rates and ending crisis-era bond purchases. The economy might slow, but price stability will ultimately be restored, as will the much-maligned credibility of central banks.
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Dancing Galaxies?  Quite the Headline

"James Webb Telescope shows dying star, dancing galaxies"



How pictures from the Webb telescope compare to Hubble’s
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This Really Puts Doctors and Hospitals in the Middle

Physicians must provide abortions in medical emergencies under federal law and will face penalties if they decline to offer the procedure in these cases, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote in a letter to health care providers on Monday.

Becerra said federal law pre-empts state abortion bans in cases where women face medical emergencies associated with pregnancy under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. If an abortion is necessary to treat a woman facing a medical emergency, physicians must offer the procedure, the health secretary wrote.

Hospitals that decline to provide abortions in these cases could have their Medicare provider agreement terminated or face financial penalties, Becerra said. Individual physicians could also be cut from Medicare and state health programs if they refuse to offer abortions in medical emergencies, he added. Physicians can also use federal law as a defense if they face state prosecution when providing abortions in emergencies, according to HHS.
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Show Them the Money!

The NBA is coming off a massive financial year, with revenue topping $10 billion for the first time and basketball-related income reaching $8.9 billion, another record.

Silver said the numbers are particularly strong considering the league is still dealing with a pandemic, and it wasn't that long ago when some questioned whether sports could survive the virus — at least in the sense of whether people would want to gather again.

“The numbers did surprise me to a certain degree because it exceeded projections, and the projections represent where we think our business is going," Silver said. “I think it's quite remarkable from where we came 2 1/2 years ago."
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