Mon - Poor Alan Dershowitz. Do Redheads Have More Fun?

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Being cremated is my last hope for a hot smoking body.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

As If You Needed a Reason to Hate Reality TV (Much of Which is Scripted)

A contestant on the second series of Netflix show Love Is Blind is suing the streaming service over alleged breaches of labour laws.

Jeremy Hartwell alleges that producers encouraged the cast to drink alcohol, while limiting access to food and water and underpaying them.

In Love Is Blind, the contestants meet their dates but are unable to see each other and have to converse solely through speakers.

The candidates then couple up but who must get engaged before they are allowed to meet face-to-face. Some couples end up marrying on-screen while others break up.

Mr Hartwell told CNN in an interview at the weekend that he had to try to fight the effects of sleep deprivation after long hours filming under bright lights.

He said he could not access food and water, but alcohol was available and even encouraged on an empty stomach.

Mr Hartwell added that the way the cast's luggage was searched was like being on a "boot camp".

The lawsuit, obtained by People, claims the cast were "regularly refused timely food and water... while on set severely restricting the availability of hydration opportunities."

"Even at the hotel living quarters, food was restricted to the point of severe hunger."

According to the lawsuit, the contestants should have been treated as employees rather than independent contractors under under California state law because producers made all the decisions about the nature of the cast's work and how many hours they worked.

Hartwell's lawsuit reportedly seeks unpaid wages plus financial compensation for missed meal breaks and rest periods, as well as unspecified monetary damages for unfair business practices and civil penalties for labour code violations.

Fishermen Need to Earn a Living, But ...

At least 30 green sea turtles have been found dead on a beach of a remote Japanese island, with many having been stabbed in the neck.



Locals on Kumejima island made the discovery last Thursday, after a low tide revealed the bodies.

At least one fishing operator admitted to wounding the animals to remove them from fishing nets, said news site the Mainichi.

Police are investigating animal cruelty claims.

"I disentangled some of the [turtles] and released them into the sea, but I couldn't free [the] heavy ones so I stabbed them to get rid of them," an unnamed fishing operator told a close source, said a report by the Mainichi.

Green sea turtles are considered endangered by Japanese and global authorities

When Is A Deleted Text Not Deleted?

The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot expects to receive erased Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, by Tuesday, and will present testimony from new witnesses during Thursday's public hearing, its members said Sunday.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, has called allegations that the agency deleted messages categorically false. During a “pre-planned, three-month system migration,” he said, data on some phones was lost but that none of the text messages being sought was permanently deleted. Guglielmi also insisted that the Secret Service would respond “swiftly to the Committee’s subpoena."

Yes, It's Not Complicated









The QOP Won't Drop Their Lies

The expanded use of drop boxes for mailed ballots during the 2020 election did not lead to any widespread problems, according to an Associated Press survey of state election officials across the U.S. that revealed no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft that could have affected the results.

The findings from both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states run contrary to claims made by former President Donald Trump and his allies who have intensely criticized their use and falsely claimed they were a target for fraud.

Drop boxes are considered by many election officials to be safe and secure, and have been used to varying degrees by states across the political spectrum. Yet conspiracy theories and efforts by Republicans to eliminate or restrict them since the 2020 election persist. This month, the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that drop boxes are not allowed under state law and can no longer be widely used.

Drop boxes also are a focal point of the film “2,000 Mules,” which used a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

They're Not Going To Take It Anymore



Poor Alan Dershowitz.  I Guess When You Defend O. J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Previous Guy, Some People Take Offense.

Alan Dershowitz—who, according to Alan Dershowitz, definitely did not rape any underage girls with connections to Jeffrey Epstein—defended disgraced former Pr*sident Donald Trump during the latter’s first impeachment by saying Trump was allowed to use any corrupt methods he chose to stay in office, including pressuring a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political opponent, because he thought he was a great president.

“I have essentially been excluded from the Democratic Party. There was recently an event on Martha's Vineyard for Jewish Democrats – who would be the first person you would think of as a Jewish Democrat on Martha’s Vineyard – me, but I wasn't invited because I'm now cancelled essentially from the Democratic Party.

“The library won't allow me to speak on Martha's Vineyard, the Community Center, the major synagogue, all of them have canceled me because I had the chutzpah to defend the constitution on behalf of a president of the United States that they all voted against – the fact that I voted against him, too, and then I remain — in my mind a Liberal Democrat doesn't much matter. If I don't follow the party line down to the extreme, I am cancelled. People refuse to attend events if they know I'm gonna be there and that's why several friends of mine have who have invited me for years to events in their home or concerts that they've sponsored have apologetically said, ‘We're sorry we can't invite you because if you come everybody will leave,’” he added.

“If people don't think there's a cancel culture, I welcome them to Martha's Vineyard and I welcome them to see it with their own eyes.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

Someone is Listening to the Committee (If You Can Believe a Sample of 14)

Focus groups: Wisconsin swing voters say Trump guilty for Jan. 6

Driving the news: 10 of 14 Wisconsin swing voters last week said Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the attack on the Capitol; 10 of 13 Arizona swing voters in panels last month said the same.

Why it matters: The findings follow bombshell testimony by former White House aides and lawyers. Committee members have previewed forthcoming revelations about potential witness tampering.

The focus groups track with national polling showing more than half of Americans believe Trump should face criminal charges.

Best Question of the Day

A Rail Strike Right Now Would Have Been Disastrous.  But All the Media Seems to Care About is a Fist Bump.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday named the members of an emergency board tasked with helping resolve disputes between freight rail carriers and their unions, the White House said.

Biden signed an order on Friday ahead of a deadline to intervene in nationwide U.S. railroad labor talks covering 115,000 workers or open the door to a potential strike or lockout that could threaten an already fragile economy and choke supplies of food and fuel.

If Biden had not created the board by Monday, railroads and unions could have opted for operational shutdowns or strikes, respectively.

The board "will provide a structure for workers and management to resolve their disagreements. The Board will investigate the dispute and, within 30 days of its establishment, deliver a report recommending how the dispute should be resolved," the White House said.

Talks between major freight railroads, including Union Pacific and Berkshire Hathaway-owned BNSF, and unions representing their workers have dragged on for more than two years.

The order triggers a "cooling-off" period to help the sides reach a settlement.

U.S. business groups representing retailers as well as food and fuel producers warned that failing to appoint a board would be "disastrous" for the softening economy.

Railroads move everything from Amazon.com Inc. packages to fuel oil and soybeans, and a shutdown of any kind could send prices for necessities higher and upend battered supply chains.
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 145

Fighting

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai disputed claims that the region is entirely in Russian hands, saying Ukraine still has two villages in its control and is inflicting losses on Russian soldiers and weapons in the area.

The Russian military said it destroyed numerous weapons supplied by the United States and other NATO countries, including an advanced rocket system, during new attacks on Ukrainian positions on Sunday.

A senior aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday the head of the powerful domestic security agency, Security Service of Ukraine (Sluzhba Bespeky Ukrayiny, or SBU), and the state prosecutor have been suspended pending investigations but have not been formally dismissed. On Sunday, Zelenskyy had said Ivan Bakanov had been removed as head of the SBU and Iryna Venediktova had been removed as prosecutor general, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies.

At least one person has been wounded in the overnight shelling on the southern Ukrainian town of Nikopol, the head of the district military administration, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, said.

Diplomacy

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for a “European political community” a deliberately confrontational idea with anti-Russian intentions, according to state news agency TASS.

The refusal of Ukraine and Western powers to recognise Moscow’s control of Crimea poses a “systemic threat” for Russia and any outside attack on the region will prompt a “Judgement Day” response, former President Dmitry Medvedev said.

The Ukraine war shows that the West’s dominance is coming to an end as China rises to superpower status in partnership with Russia at one of the most significant inflexion points in centuries, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

Economy

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will travel to Baku on Monday to seek more natural gas from Azerbaijan, the European Union’s executive said, as the bloc seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian energy.

Gazprom’s gas transit to Europe via Ukraine was stable on Sunday.

Putin Doesn't Care

Russia has lost more than 30% of its land combat effectiveness and 50,000 of its soldiers have either died or been injured in the conflict, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the UK defence staff, told the BBC. The military chief added that Russia posed “the biggest threat” to the UK and that its challenge would endure for decades.

Maybe He Should



Sanctions “have practically broken all the logistics in our country,” according to Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev. Take aviation: The United States and Europe have banned parts or services for the several hundred Boeing and Airbus jets operating in Russia, forcing Russian airlines to sharply curtail flights and cannibalize their fleets. A European Union aviation regulator said last month he was “very worried” about safety of these Western jets in Russia.

Let’s imagine that somehow, despite the sanctions, Russia staggers on with its bloody assault of Ukraine. What then? To think about Putin’s potential problems, just look at a map. Russia is the largest country in the world, by far. To support his reckless, illegal war in Ukraine, Putin has stripped forces from the Far East, the Baltic, the vast underbelly that borders South Asia. He has a country that’s in slow-motion collapse, and too few people to protect it.

Putin plays his hand boldly. But he’s holding fewer high cards than it might appear.

I Can't Bring Myself to Read It Even Once



This report on and evidence of war crimes committed by RU is staggering:

-Systemic, planned, deliberate & indiscriminate attacks on civilians
-Establishment of formal torture chambers & extrajudicial executions
-Mass forcible transfer & use of "filtration centers" 5/
-Widespread mass rapes & indiscriminate murders, including these acts against 100's of children
-Approved looting & resale of stolen personal property
-Conscription of Ukrainians to fight AGAINST their fellow citizens
-Use of banned weapons against UA & Ukraine citizens 6/
-Precision targeting of hundreds of protected infrastructure: Schools, hospitals, water and energy plants, military medical treatment centers
-The theft of thousands of tons of grain as part of a with a planned attempt to exacerbate famine in other regions/countries. 7/

All wide-scale & flagrant breaches of the rules of land warfare & established international law...and morality:

Hard to Know If This is True

A $36 million Russian Su-34 bomber was reportedly shot down by Russia's own forces over Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, Ukrainian media outlets claimed on Monday.

The jet was reportedly downed near Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region—one of the areas where the war is currently focused. Alchevsk is currently under the occupation of Moscow-backed separatist forces.

Videos and images shared by the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Telegram messaging app on Monday appear to show the charred remains of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber.

In the video, the cameraman states that a Ukrainian plane was shot down, but an inscription on the military plane states that it is a jet belonging to Russia's Air Force, local news outlets said.

Ukrainian media outlets, including TSN, reported that a message had circulated on Telegram that the Su-34 jet had been accidentally shot down by Russia's own air defense.
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What Does It Take to Stop a Bad Buy With a Gun?

A Good Guy With a Gun

Four people were dead, including the suspected shooter, after a man with a long gun entered a mall south of Indianapolis and opened fire, police said.

Two others were injured in the early evening attack at Greenwood Park Mall, Jim Ison, the police chief of Greenwood, Indiana, said at a Sunday night news conference. One remained hospitalized, he said. A 12-year-old girl with abrasions was treated and released.

Four of six people who were injured or killed were female, Ison said.

The shooter appeared to have been fatally shot by a 22-year-old "good Samaritan" who witnessed the attack and opened fire with a handgun with the intention of ending the assault, Ison said.

He praised the young man, identifying him only as being from Bartholomew County, south of the metro area.

Or More Than 376 Police With Guns, Body Armor, and Shields.

A scathing report released Sunday by a Texas House committee investigating the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde faulted “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making” by law enforcement and the school district.

While 376 officers responded to the scene, a lack of clear leadership and direction contributed to officers' “overall lackadaisical approach,” the report found.

Or Keeping the Bad Guy From Getting the Gun.  Even When the Good Guy Showed Up, Three Innocent People Died.
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COVID, Monkey Pox, and Marburg, Oh My!

Ghana has confirmed its first two cases of the highly infectious Marburg virus disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Sunday in a statement.

The announcement comes after two unrelated patients from the southern Ashanti region of Ghana, both of whom later died, tested positive for the virus.

The patients had shown symptoms including diarrhea, fever, nausea, and vomiting, WHO said, adding that more than 90 contacts are being monitored.

Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as the better known Ebola virus disease and has a fatality ratio of up to 88%, according to WHO. “Illness begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache, and malaise,” it stated.

The virus is transmitted to humans from fruit bats and can then be spread human-to-human through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids, WHO explained.
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Something's Happening Here.  What It is Ain't Exactly Clear

"The results of a USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted June 10-13 show that the news for Democrats is a lot better than they have any right to expect," The Bulwark's Brent Orrell wrote. The Pennsylvania survey showed the Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, leading his GOP challenger by 9 points while the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, held a 4-point advantage over his Republican challenger.

But Orrell's point marked the beginning of a phenomenon that political analysts have been grappling with ever since: President Joe Biden's approvals have tanked, inflation has soared, and the right track/wrong track numbers are abysmal, but many Democrats are looking competitive or even better this fall.

Nate Cohn's write up of the New York Times/Siena poll this week opened with a similar observation.

With President Biden’s approval rating mired in the 30s and with nearly 80 percent of voters saying the country is heading in the wrong direction, all the ingredients seem to be in place for a Republican sweep in the November midterm elections.

But Democrats and Republicans begin the campaign in a surprisingly close race for control of Congress
.................
The pattern so far has been striking: Biden’s net approval keeps sinking lower, but the generic ballot margin has hardly budged. In fact, it’s even moved slightly back toward the Democrats, perhaps thanks in part to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Follow the Money

Senate GOP fundraising flop

Top Senate Republican candidates turned in poor fundraising numbers in key races from Arizona to New Hampshire.

Why it matters: It's as if big GOP donors either don’t realize a Senate majority is in reach or wrongly think it's a sure thing. And it's clear they don’t like a lot of the Trumpy candidates.

Context: Democratic Senate candidates are posting blockbuster hauls.

Republicans could be surfing a tidal wave of discontent about the country (75% wrong track in Real Clear Politics average) and President Biden (39% approval).

What's happening: In Arizona, the leading Republican candidate, Blake Masters, raised just $827,000 in the quarter ($1.58 million cash on hand) to $13.6 million ($24.9 million cash on hand) for Sen. Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent.
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Is It True Redheads Have More Fun?

As temperatures soar to dangerous heights across Britain this week, one movie theater chain is offering shelter from the sun to one potentially vulnerable group: redheads.

“Free tickets for redheads on the hottest days ever,” read an Instagram post from Showcase Cinemas earlier this week. It prompted many Britons to tag their flame-haired friends and family members in the comments section so they wouldn’t miss out on the offer to cool off in an air-conditioned venue amid the national emergency.

The offer, for redheads only, will run from Monday to Tuesday, when temperatures are expected to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

Research has found that people with pale skin, freckles and red hair are more at risk of developing skin cancer due to their genes — although heat of this scale is dangerous for anyone. Hundreds of people have died in recent days as a punishing heat wave sweeps Britain, France, Spain and Portugal.

Unlike in the United States, many locations and homes in the United Kingdom do not have air conditioning. Most cinemas, however, do.
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The Gathering Storm

Earth might experience some minor geomagnetic storms later this week if a slow-moving cloud of solar particles reaches Earth.

Geomagnetic storms are the results of changes to Earth's magnetic field due to the interactions between it and charged particles from the sun. If they're strong enough, these storms can interfere with communication networks and the power grid.

It's unlikely this will be the case with the potential upcoming storm, however, which is only expected to be a G1-class storm—the mildest type, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) space weather scale.

The SWPC states that G1-class storms may cause weak power grid fluctuations and have a minor impact on satellite operations. In addition, auroras may be visible in the sky in lower latitudes than normal, such as over U.S. states like northern Michigan and Maine.
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Wanda Wakes. David Quakes.

A West Virginia woman awoke from a years-long coma after being brutally attacked and identified her brother as the assailant, according to local reports.

Wanda Palmer had been in a long term care facility in New Martinsville, West Virginia, after being beaten in her home in June of 2020, according to the West Virginia Metro News. When Palmer was discovered, Jackson County Sheriff Ross Mellenger said she was so savagely attacked, authorities thought she was dead, the paper reported.

Palmer's care facility contacted authorities last week to let them know the woman had come out of her coma, the Metro News reported.

Medical staff told authorities that, despite suffering brain damage from the assault, that Palmer was able to speak enough to identify her assailant, Metro News reported.

“The keys to the whole thing lay with the victim herself and with her unable to communicate we were left with nothing. Now low and behold two years later and boom, she’s awake and able to tell us exactly what happened,” Mellenger told Metro News.

Daniel Palmer, Wanda Palmer's brother, was arrested after being identified as the attacker, according to Metro News.

"He didn’t give us any fight or anything. There was a little bit of surprise, but not entirely," Mellenger told Metro News of the arrest.
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