Thurs-Secret Service Motto: "Worthy of Trust and Confidence"

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Not all math puns are bad.  Just sum of them.  
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Today's Worst Murder in the World

A woman who was doused with alcohol and set alight in a park in central Mexico has died of her injuries.

Luz Raquel Padilla, 35, had sustained burns on 90% of her body in the attack in Zapopan on Saturday.

Her killing has caused outrage in Mexico both for its brutality and the fact that she had alerted the authorities months before the attack.

The case is being investigated as a possible femicide, a murder in which a woman is killed because of her gender.

Mexico has seen a surge in the number of femicides in recent years, registering a record 1,004 in 2021.

Prosecutor Luis Joaquín Méndez said witnesses had described three men and a woman launching the attack against Ms Padilla in a park in Zapopan. The four fled the scene.

Ms Padilla, whose 11-year old son has autism, was a member of a group of people caring for relatives with disabilities called "Yo cuido México" (I care for Mexico).

The group said Ms Padilla had received multiple threats from a neighbour who had objected to the noise her son made.

In May, she had posted photos on Twitter of graffiti sprayed onto the walls of her building's staircase which read: "I'm going to burn you alive".

The Secret Service Motto is "Worthy of Trust and Confidence."  Stop Laughing!

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general has directed the Secret Service to stop its internal investigations into what happened to text messages related to January 6 that may have been deleted, according to a letter reviewed by CNN.

The inspector general wrote that the Secret Service should stop investigating the matter because it could interfere with the inspector general’s own investigation into what happened to the agency’s text messages.

The letter adds to the growing tension between the Secret Service and the DHS inspector general over the potentially missing text messages, which are being sought by the House select committee as part of its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s actions and movements on January 6, 2021.

“To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the USSS must not engage in any further investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence referenced above,” DHS deputy inspector general Gladys Ayala wrote in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray on Wednesday evening. “This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking any other action that would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.”

He Looks Like a Munchkin



This May Be the Best Political Attack Ad I Have Ever Seen



If You Thought the AK-47 Was Bad 

This is just beyond insane. The psychopaths who run the gun manufacturer Sig Sauer are about to release the MCX-SPEAR, which is the civilian version of the US Army’s new NGSW-R (Next Generation Squad Weapon-Rifle) onto American streets, as if the AR-15 wasn’t bad enough.

What is the NGSW-R? From Wiki:

The Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program is a United States military program created in 2017 to replace the M4 carbine and M249 SAW light machine gun (both 5.56mm ammunition) and the 7.62mm M240 machine gun, with a common system with 6.8mm cartridges; and to develop small arms fire control systems for the new weapons.

“This is a weapon that could defeat any body armor, any planned body armor that we know of in the future,” then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Army Times in 2019. “This is a weapon that can go out at ranges that are unknown today.”

“It’ll shoot through almost all of the bulletproof vests that are worn by law enforcement in the country right now,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms company executive.

The QOP Is Thrilled With Deadly Guns

The House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee voted to approve new legislation that would ban assault weapons, with all of the Democratic members supporting the measure.


All of the 18 Republican members of the committee who were present for the vote opposed the adoption of the legislation, while GOP Representative Greg Steube wasn't in attendance.

The QOP Opposes Birth Control.  

The House passed the Right to Contraception Act on Thursday ― a bill that codifies the right to birth control and other contraceptives amid fears that the Supreme Court may come for that aspect of reproductive health care next after the high court repealed Roe v. Wade’s protection of abortion rights last month.

The bill passed despite 195 Republicans who voted against the bill in a final vote of 228 to 195. Republicans who voted against the legislation included Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Jack Bergman (Mich.) and Joe Wilson (S.C.). Just eight Republicans voted in favor of the bill.




Spain Needs to Take the Bull By the Horns and Stop This

Spain’s traditional running of the bulls has claimed the lives of three spectators who were maimed during festivals in the last two weeks in the Valencia region.

The victims, all men, died within 24 hours of each other in hospitals, according to the BBC.

A 56-year-old man who was tossed into the air by a bull as he took cover behind a block in the middle of a street died Tuesday in a Valencia hospital after suffering brain damage. He was injured nine days earlier at a festival south of Valencia in the city of Picassent.

A 50-year-old man who was gored by a bull north of Valencia in the city of Meliana died after suffering a pierced lung. The tradition also claimed a 64-year-old French tourist injured by a bull in Pedreguer.

Spain hosts nearly 10,000 bull-running events annually, with the San Fermin bull run in Pamplona the best known. That festival resulted in 35 injuries earlier this month.

At least 20 people have died in bull-running events in the past eight years, with 478 people injured across Spain this year, according to Reuters.

Reason 1,239,488 to Hate Crypto

Federal agents arrested a former Coinbase product manager and his brother Thursday on charges they used the cryptocurrency exchange to orchestrate a year-long insider trading scheme that netted $1.5 million in illegal profits.

Ishan Wahi is alleged to have used his position helping coordinate Coinbase’s listings of new tokens to tip off his brother, Nikhil Wahi, and a friend, who bought the digital assets before their debut on the platform caused their prices to rise.
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Elon Musk, who's currently trying to back out of buying Twitter, revealed on Wednesday that Tesla dumped 75% of its bitcoin holdings last quarter. The mercurial tech billionaire has offered excuses, but it seems likely that plunging asset prices and a bleak economic backdrop played a role in both decisions.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

I Hate to Say This, But I Like Something Joe Manchin and Susan Collins Support

A bipartisan group of senators proposed new legislation on Wednesday to modernize the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, working to overhaul a law that President Donald J. Trump tried to abuse on Jan. 6, 2021, to interfere with Congress’s certification of his election defeat.

The legislation aims to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to the next, after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol exposed how the current law could be manipulated to disrupt the process. One measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge a state’s electoral votes when Congress meets to count them. It would also clarify that the vice president has no discretion over the results, and it would set out the steps to begin a presidential transition.

A second bill would increase penalties for threats and intimidation of election officials, seek to improve the Postal Service’s handling of mail-in ballots and renew for five years an independent federal agency that helps states administer and secure federal elections.

While passage of the legislation cannot guarantee that a repeat of Jan. 6 will not occur in the future, its authors believe that a rewrite of the antiquated law, particularly the provisions related to the vice president’s role, could discourage such efforts and make it more difficult to disrupt the vote count.
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 148

Fighting

CIA chief Bill Burns said the United States estimates Russian casualties in Ukraine so far have reached about 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded.

Russian forces are likely closing in on Ukraine’s second biggest power plant at Vuhlehirska, 50km (31 miles) northeast of Donetsk, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry said.

Several cities in the Donetsk region were shelled and two schools were destroyed on Wednesday, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has documented serious violations of international humanitarian and rights law on a massive scale by Russian troops since the invasion of Ukraine.

Diplomacy

Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska asked for more US air defence systems to block Russian missiles during a visit to the US Capitol.

The United Nations warned that funding to meet key development goals like ending extreme poverty and hunger by 2030 might be neglected by Western donor nations supporting Ukraine militarily and financially.

The head of the UN’s body promoting development, Collen Kelapile, warned that the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the war in Ukraine have led to “an unprecedented reversal” of decades of progress in combating global poverty and hunger, and ensuring quality education for children everywhere.

Moscow-installed officials in Ukraine’s occupied southeastern city of Enerhodar started handing out Russian passports to residents, Russia’s state news agency RIA reported.

Economy

Natural gas started flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany after a 10-day shutdown for maintenance, the operator said, but the gas flow is expected to fall well short of full capacity.

The US hopes to see a global price cap on Russian oil introduced by December, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.

Russia’s central bank will allow banks from designated “unfriendly countries” – a list that includes the entire European Union, US, UK, Japan, Australia and others – to trade between foreign currencies on the Russian forex markets, the regulator said.

Ukraine’s Western creditor governments urged bondholders to accept Kyiv’s request for a two-year delay on its debt payments and said they would suspend payments owed to them.

Wake Me Up, When September Ends

From the beginning, Ukraine has claimed any real counteroffensive to liberate Russian-held territory will start around late August into September. The rationale is simple, and comes in three parts:

Western equipment has been flowing in, and Ukraine has been busy standing up entire new armor brigades. Training and equipping such units takes time.

Winter is coming, and Ukraine doesn’t trust Western resolve in the face of a Russia gas shut-off. People lost their shit over a strip of cloth during a deadly global pandemic; having to use extra blankets might cause European politicians headaches they don’t want to deal with. If Ukraine’s partners force a cease fire and freeze the conflict in place (no pun intended), then Ukraine needs to make sure Russia has as little new territory under its control as possible.

Russia isn’t just depleting itself with its plodding advances (in both material and personnel), but thanks to HIMARS, an already precarious logistical system is on the verge of collapse. Indeed, Ukraine’s intelligence chief has been talking about this coming moment since May: ”The breaking point will be in the second part of August.”



It's a Bridge Over Troubled Waters

What if Ukraine could cut off supplies not just from the south, but also from the east? There are indications that Russia, having flooded reinforcements to Kherson, have hollowed out their defenses in the southern Donbas and Zaporizhzhia fronts. And Ukraine has been making advances in the area.

Check out this map of southeastern Ukraine:



Those green lines on the map are rail lines, and we all know how critically important those are to Russia’s logistics. They can’t function far from a railhead, lacking the trucks to move supplies and ammo and the systems to make loading and unloading fast and efficient (such as cranes and pallets).

Follow those green lines from the bottom left of the map to the bottom right, and what do you see?

There is just one rail line connecting both sides.

There is a highway that runs along that southern coast, but again, trucks aren’t helpful to Russia, not over those hundreds of kilometers. Their main way to move supplies—rail lines—all converge at Tokmak (pop. 32,000 pre-war).

From the south, there is a single rail line from Crimea to Kherson:



So we have a single rail line connecting Crimea to Kherson, and at Kherson, there is a single bridge left standing, Antonovsky Bridge. Ukraine has started shelling it, rendering large parts of the bridge unusable. It can be repaired, so Ukraine will need to keep hitting it, but it has shown an ability to do so at will.


Are Jets Coming?

Atop U.S. military general says the United States and its allies are considering providing Ukraine with fighter jets, a decision that would sharply escalate the level of weaponry being sent to Kyiv.

Gen. Charles Brown, Air Force chief of staff, said the jets could come from the U.S. or its allies.

They Treat Their Soldiers Like Iran Treats Dogs



Russian recruits are being rushed to the front line in Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine with little to no training, according to reports.



Independent news outlet MediaZona reported in June that Yevgeny Chubarin, 24, was killed combat while in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, just days after he was transferred to Belgorod, near the Ukraine border, on a three-month contract with the Russian military.



His mother, Nina Chubarina, said her son told her via WhatsApp that he and other recruits were brought from Belgorod to a military base in Valuyki, given weapons and uniforms, and sent to Ukraine.



"There was no training," his mother told MediaZona. "They arrived, got a uniform and a machine gun—and that's it, go ahead."



Russian soldiers who were captured and held in a detention camp near Dnipro, Ukraine, told The Sun in an interview published in May that troops weren't trained before being deployed to fight in Putin's war, which began on February 24.



"A lot of people think it is the second army in the world, but we have nothing. We have no training, we have no equipment and it is a crime to say that in Russia," a 26-year-old soldier, named Vadim, said.



He added: "They don't care about their men. They treat us like dogs."



"We only do field exercises twice a year," another captured soldier, 22-year-old Ivan, told the news outlet, explaining that troops were under-prepared for battle.
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It Is Not True that Amazon Plans on Buying Everything ... Is It?

Amazon.com Inc. announced it would buy primary-care company One Medical for $18 a share, the latest move by the e-commerce giant to muscle into the healthcare market.

The all-cash transaction is valued at approximately $3.9 billion, including One Medical’s net debt, Amazon said in a statement Thursday.

One Medical, whose parent is called 1Life Healthcare Inc., operates 182 medical offices in 25 markets in the US. Customers pay a subscription fee for access to its physicians and round-the-clock digital health services.

“We think healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention,” said Neil Lindsay, the senior vice president leading Amazon’s healthcare push.

Amazon in recent years has launched an online drug store, following its acquisition of mail-order pharmacy PillPack Inc., and started a primary-care clinic for its employees and some other companies, among other health-focused initiatives. The One Medical deal would be Amazon’s third-biggest acquisition, trailing only its purchases of organic grocer Whole Foods Market and film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


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