Weds-Previous Guy Promises Dystopian Police State

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Without freedom of speech we would not know who the idiots are.
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It Came From Wuhan

Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold – further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab.

The research, published online Tuesday by the journal Science, shows that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge that has now killed nearly 6.4 million people around the world. Scientists conclude that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.

“All this evidence tells us the same thing: It points right to this particular market in the middle of Wuhan,” said Kristian Andersen a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and coauthor of one of the studies. “I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.”

In one study, which incorporated data collected by Chinese scientists, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the locations of more than 150 of the earliest reported COVID-19 cases from December 2019. They also mapped cases from January and February 2020 using data from a social media app that had created a channel for people with COVID-19 to get help.

They asked, “Of all the locations that the early cases could have lived, where did they live? And it turned out when we were able to look at this, there was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market,” Worobey said at a press briefing. “Crucially, this applies both to all cases in December and also to cases with no known link to the market … And this is an indication that the virus started spreading in people who worked at the market but then started to spread into the local community.”
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

4-Year-Old Gang Member is Killed

A member of a gang of monkeys that has terrorised residents of a Japanese city for weeks has been caught and killed, officials say.

The macaques have injured almost 50 people in Yamaguchi.

The male primate was found in the grounds of a high school on Tuesday evening by specially commissioned hunters.

It was tranquilised and later put down when it was identified as one of the animals responsible for the attacks.

Authorities have been hunting the monkeys since the attacks began on adults and children about three weeks ago. Most injuries have been mild scratches and bites.

Incidents are still being reported and the search continues for other members of the gang, an official at the local agricultural department told AFP.

"Eyewitnesses describe monkeys of different sizes, and even after the capture, we've been getting reports of new attacks," he said.

The captured monkey was estimated to be four years old and was about half a metre tall (1ft 7in).

The News From MerrickLand - Even Molasses Moves

The Department of Justice is investigating then-President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, an administration official familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry is related to the department's broader probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and not a criminal investigation of Trump himself, the official said.

The Washington Post first reported that the Justice Department was investigating Trump's actions leading up to Jan. 6, citing four people familiar with the matter, whom it did not name. The department declined to comment on the investigation.

The Post, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that prosecutors have asked witnesses before a grand jury about conversations with Trump. Some of the questions focused on substituting Trump allies for electors in states Joe Biden won and on a pressure campaign on then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election, the newspaper reported.

The Post also reported that the Justice Department has acquired phone records of aides, including former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. The department, a spokesperson for Trump, and a lawyer for Meadows did not respond to the Post's requests for comment. NBC News has not confirmed the details of the Post's report about the Justice Department's line of questioning or the phone records.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said an interview that aired on "NBC Nightly News" on Tuesday that “anyone” could be held accountable.

Maybe Merrick Can Read Polls

Let Me Get This Straight.  Democrats Applaud Republicans With the Courage to Stand Up to Trump and Then Try to Sabotage Them in Their Primaries?

The House Democrats' campaign arm is running a TV ad that could undermine Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., in his competitive primary election next week against Trump-backed opponent John Gibbs.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched the 30-second ad, which amplifies Gibbs' ties to former President Donald Trump by way of attacking him — which Meijer's campaign said was an attempt by Democrats to boost their chances of winning the district in the fall.

Gibbs, a former Trump administration official who secured an endorsement from his former boss, is “too conservative” for Western Michigan, the ad says, pointing to his work for Trump's secretary of housing and urban development, Ben Carson.

The ad asserts that Gibbs was “handpicked by Trump to run" and claims he has promised to carry out the former president's conservative agenda in Congress, including a hard-line stance on immigration and support for “patriotic education.”

While the ad is presented as an attack on Gibbs over his connections to Trump, GOP primary voters could be motivated to vote for him for that reason. Meijer, his first-term opponent, was one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Not all Democrats support the campaign committee's strategy.

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., voiced his opposition in a strongly worded tweet Tuesday afternoon.

"I’m disgusted that hard-earned money intended to support Democrats is being used to boost Trump-endorsed candidates, particularly the far-right opponent of one of the most honorable Republicans in Congress," Phillips wrote, referring to Meijer. "Another reason to reform our broken campaign finance system."

Is Herschel Lie-Walker Walking Away From Debating?

Sen. Raphael Warnock is putting on the pressure as his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, lays the groundwork to dodge any debates at all in their hotly contested Georgia Senate race.

Walker skipped debates in his Republican primary, but said he would debate Warnock before the general election. He wouldn’t just debate, in fact. He said he’d do it “any day of the week.” He said, “Name the place and the time, and we can get it on.” Now that Warnock has accepted invitations to three debates in three different cities, it’s a different story.

In a single day of campaigning, Walker said, “If we negotiate and we got everything right, we’ll be debating on Oct. 16 and I’ll be ready to go” at a debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club, then a spokesperson started making noises about the campaign requiring a “fair and equitable format and unbiased moderator,” and then Walker wondered aloud who made Warnock “the ruler of just giving dates.” Even though all Warnock did was accept invitations from media organizations.

In translation: Walker’s campaign is planning to dodge this debate unless he gets a set of outrageously unbalanced rules and a moderator committed to giving him a tongue bath. And even then he’d probably find an excuse not to attend.

Walker further set the stage on Tuesday with tweets suggesting that unless a moderator asked Warnock questions drawn directly from Walker’s campaign talking points (sample: “Why do you believe our law enforcement officers are thugs?”), it would be evidence that the moderator was “shielding” Warnock from voters. Big talk from a guy who could very fairly be asked questions like “When did you stop beating your wife?” and “Do you have any more secret children, or just the three we’ve found out about during the campaign?”

Previous Guy Promises Dystopia

The focus of Trump’s speech—when he wasn’t whining about the House select committee on Jan. 6—was on law enforcement. In short, he wants a lot of it. In fact, he wants the U.S. to be more like—wait for it—China. Police on every corner. “Very short trials.” And mass executions. Trump also praised the way crime is handled in the Philippines, where over 12,000 people have been executed for drug-related crimes. And while the police were busy shooting everyone they suspected of selling or using drugs, Trump also insisted they force homeless people to leave the cities for tent-based camps erected in the wilderness.

But while Trump had plenty of time to explain how the police “are my heroes” and to push for lots of executions and a new generation of internment camps, there was one thing he didn’t get around to mentioning. In all his calls for law and order, there was not a peep about how his followers savaged police on the steps of the Capitol. In fact, when it came to the assault on the Capitol, Trump said, “We may just have to do it again.”

Trump spent a big section of the speech complaining about how all those unsightly homeless people spoiled his view of cities and made the scenes outside his limo unpleasant. So he advocated for all homeless people to be rounded up and forced from the cities, safely out of view of those who were deemed wealthy enough to remain. Trump didn’t say exactly where he wanted the homeless to be sent, other than to “large parcels of inexpensive land.” Places like Tule Lake, California; Minidoka, Idaho; and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. These camps, Trump insisted, could be created “in one day.” And then everything would be better.

But wait. It gets better.

Nowhere was the irony level more skull-crushingly high than when clear when Trump actually started talking about calling out the National Guard. “Where there is a true breakdown of law and order,” said Trump, “… then the federal government should send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it’s politically incorrect to call them in.”

In addition to removing governors from the loop so that the whole National Guard would become his personal police force, nowhere—nowhere—did Trump mention that when he had the opportunity to call in the National Guard to halt the assault on the Capitol, he refused to take that action. It fell to Mike Pence to finally get the Guard moving, while Trump sat in the White House dining room, flinging ketchup on the walls and fretting that his insurgents weren’t able to actually hang anyone.

They Were Just Faking It

Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6

In emails reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who had worked with the Trump campaign at the time, one lawyer involved in the detailed discussions repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome. And lawyers working on the proposal made clear they knew that the pro-Trump electors they were putting forward might not hold up to legal scrutiny.



A Message From the King SCOTUS



Good Idea.  It Won't Happen.

US House Democrats have introduced a bill to establish term limits for supreme court justices, after an unprecedented term in which the highest court produced a series of deeply conservative rulings upending American law.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

If You Are Close to Dying of Cancer, They May Be Able to Cure Your AIDS. 

Two new cases presented Wednesday at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal have advanced the field of HIV cure science, demonstrating yet again that ridding the body of all copies of viable virus is indeed possible, and that prompting lasting viral remission also might be attainable.

In one case, scientists reported that a 66-year-old American man with HIV has possibly been cured of the virus through a stem cell transplant to treat blood cancer. The approach — which has demonstrated success or apparent success in four other cases — uses stem cells from a donor with a specific rare genetic abnormality that gives rise to immune cells naturally resistant to the virus.

In another case, Spanish researchers determined that a woman who received an immune-boosting regimen in 2006 is in a state of what they characterize as viral remission, meaning she still harbors viable HIV but her immune system has controlled the virus’s replication for over 15 years.

Experts stress, however, that it is not ethical to attempt to cure HIV through a stem cell transplant — a highly toxic and potentially fatal treatment — in anyone who is not already facing a potentially fatal blood cancer or other health condition that would make them a candidate for such a treatment.

Doctor Who Provided Abortion To Raped 10-Year-Old Gives First TV Interview

Doctor Who provides abortions?
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 154

Fighting

Nearly 40,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more “wounded and maimed” since the start of Russia’s invasion on February 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

A Moscow-backed official in the Russian-occupied Kherson region said the southern cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv will soon be “liberated” from Ukraine as Russia ups its attacks on the two Black Sea regions.

Six people were wounded after a missile strike on the city of Kharkiv on Wednesday morning, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Russian private military company Wagner has likely made tactical advances close to the Vuhlehirska power plant and the nearby village of Novoluhanske in the Donetsk region, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry said.



Diplomacy

US basketball star Brittney Griner is expected to testify in a Russian courtroom on Wednesday as her lawyers lay out their case for leniency after she admitted to bringing cannabis oil into the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron, during an official visit to Cameroon, criticised Russia’s influence in Africa, deeming it a “preoccupation” for the continent’s people.

Russia’s new space chief signalled his country’s intent to withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) programme after 2024; the US State Department said it was taken by surprise by the announcement.

A tongue-in-cheek petition to give the United Kingdom’s outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country’s prime minister garnered more than 2,500 signatures, hours after being put up on Ukraine’s official petitions site on Tuesday.

Economy

Gazprom’s move to cut flows to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 20 percent from Wednesday is a form of “price terror” after gas prices surged, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine aims to strike a deal for a $15-20bn programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before year-end to help shore up its war-torn economy, the country’s central bank governor, Kyrylo Shevchenko, has said.

The International Monetary Fund warned that downside risks from high inflation and the Ukraine war are materialising and could push the world economy to the brink of recession if left unchecked.

Ukraine’s Naftogaz has become the first Ukrainian government entity to default since the start of the Russian invasion, after the state energy firm said it would not make payments on international bonds before the Tuesday expiry of a grace period.

Russia Isn't Passing Gas Like They Used To

Gas prices have soared after Russia further cut gas supplies to Germany and other central European countries after threatening to earlier this week.

European gas prices rose almost 2%, trading above an earlier all-time high after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Critics accuse the Russian government of using gas as a political weapon.

Russia has been cutting flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, with it now operating at less than a fifth of its normal capacity.

Before the Ukraine War, Germany imported over half of its gas from Russia and most of it came through Nord Stream 1 - with the rest coming from land-based pipelines.

By the end of June, that had reduced to just over a quarter.

Kherson

A key Russian held bridge into the occupied southern city of Kherson was hit with a barrage of rocket fire by Ukrainian forces who appeared to be stepping up operations to isolate the city.

Video and witness accounts showed up to 18 detonations on the Antonivskiy bridge over the Dnipro river, one of the main Russian resupply routes into Kherson, with Russian anti-missile air defences apparently failing to intercept the strikes.

Senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Anton Herashchenko, cited Ukraine’s armed forces in an update posted on Tuesday morning: “Himars dealt another powerful blow to one of the two bridges across the Dnieper, which are used by the invaders for a massive transfer of troops. Let’s hope that this time the Antonivskiy bridge will not withstand the power of the Himars missile attack.”

The bridge has come under repeated attack in the past week as Ukraine has tried to cut off the handful of routes Russia can use to move heavy weapons in and around Kherson, including a road over the dam at nearby Nova Khakovka.

Kherson, captured in early March, has long been a focus for the Ukrainians, with the defenders making limited gains in the countryside between Mykolaiv and the target city since April. But, apparently helped by longer-range weapons, with an effective firing distance of up to 50 miles (80km), the Ukrainians are growing more confident.



Sergiy Khlan, an aide to the administrative head of the Kherson region, told Ukrainian TV a turning point had been reached, and the region “will definitely be liberated by September”.




A rare bird will FLY from the middle of the Dnipro. You can, of course, call the Antoniv bridge a means of ru-air defense that intercepts ua-missiles, but you cannot escape from reality: the occupiers should learn to swim across the Dnieper. Or leave Kherson while you can. There may not be a third warning.


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There's Nothing Eerie About This Lake 

Lake Erie - one of five connected bodies of freshwater that make up the Great Lakes system along the US-Canada border - might not seem like a solution to America's supply chain issues.

But it might just be exactly that, writes Stephen Starr for the BBC.

Connected to the Atlantic Ocean via a system of canals and locks, the Port of Cleveland is one of several Great Lakes shipping centres experiencing a revival. Last year, the total tonnage handled by the port increased by 69% from 2020. April's tonnage numbers were double that of the same month in 2021.

"We're getting a lot more calls from people - shippers, cargo owners - that typically wouldn't want to consider using a smaller, inland port to move their cargo," said David Gutheil, chief commercial officer at the port.

With major ports along the US east and west coasts struggling with cargo backlogs due to knock-on effects from supply chain issues caused by everything from China's Covid lockdowns to Russia's war in Ukraine, shippers are looking to long-ignored ports as a way to get supplies into and out of America.


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You Can Disapprove of the Job Biden Is Doing, But Still Not Want the QOP in Charge

On one hand, President Biden is historically unpopular: As of July 25 at 5 p.m. Eastern, he had an average approval rating of 38 percent and an average disapproval rating of 57 percent — a net approval rating of -19 percentage points. You have to go back to Harry Truman to find a president with a net approval rating that bad at this point in his term.

On the other, generic-congressional-ballot polls are pretty close. As of the same date and time, Republicans had an average lead of 1 point.

Those two numbers feel difficult to reconcile. Biden’s approval rating suggests that the national mood is extremely poor for Democrats, while the generic-ballot polling suggests that the political environment is only slightly Republican-leaning. But in reality, these two types of polls aren’t in opposition as much as you might think. They’re separate metrics, and a look back at past midterm elections shows they don’t always line up. But history also shows that when they do diverge, one is more predictive than the other.

First, it’s kind of an obvious point, but presidential-approval polls and generic-ballot polls are measuring two different things.
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Remember the Trade Deficit?

The U.S. trade deficit in goods narrowed 5.6% to $98.2 billion in June, according to the Commerce Department’s advanced estimate released Wednesday.

After jumping in May, the deficit has narrowed for three straight month. This is the smallest deficit since November.

Economists polled by Econoday were looking for the deficit to narrow only slightly to a $103.2 billion deficit.

Key details: Exports of goods rose $4.4 billion to $181.5 in June. Imports fell $1.5 billion to $279.7 billion.

The data is not adjusted for inflation. The complete report on the international trade deficit, which will include inflation-adjusted data, will be released on Aug. 4.

According to the report, wholesale inventories were up 1.9% in June for the second straight month.

Retail inventories were up 2% after a 1.6% gain in May. Nonauto retail inventories were up 1.6%.

Big picture: Trade data has been volatile during the pandemic. Essentially, the U.S. consumer has been the “buyer-of-last-resort” for world economy. With the International Monetary Fund warning the global economy might soon fall into a recession, trade activity might shrink with weaker activity impacting exports.

The narrowing of the deficit in June could provide a boost to second-quarter GDP growth, to be released Thursday.
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