Thurs - Manchin Hornswoggles Mitch. A Tale of 3 Bridges

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Good moms let you lick the beaters. Great moms turn them off first.
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Look on the Bright Side.  Arby's Won't Taste Worse than Expensive Food

About 5% of patients with confirmed cases of Covid-19 — some 27 million people worldwide — are estimated to have suffered a long-lasting loss of smell or taste, a new analysis suggests.

In the analysis published Wednesday in The BMJ (the peer-reviewed medical journal of the British Medical Association), researchers evaluated 18 previous studies of smell and taste loss across several continents and in varying demographic groups. About three quarters of those affected by loss of taste or smell regained those senses within 30 days.

Rates of recovery improved over time, but about 5% of people reported “persistent dysfunction” six months after their infection with Covid-19.

The analysis suggests loss of smell and taste could be a prolonged concern that requires more research and health resources for patients struggling with long-term symptoms.

Losing smell has been linked to higher death rates in older adults and has been shown to have major impacts on people’s emotional and psychological well-being, said Dr. Zara Patel, a rhinologist at Stanford University who was not involved in The BMJ research.

“Having these now millions more people worldwide with decreased ability to smell — that may simply be a new public health crisis,” Patel said.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Original Sinema

Oz Fuhgoddaboudit

Dr. Mehmet Oz was busted again. Not for trying to hawk diet supplements, but this time for forgetting to mention that he owns a condo in New Jersey. Oz and his wife also own a mansion overlooking the Hudson River. The issue? Oz failed to disclose the condo in his April senatorial candidacy paperwork from Pennsylvania, The Daily Beast reports.

Additionally, Oz’s tenants in the condo, according to The Daily Beast, are friends of the former daytime TV talk show host. That’s all well and good, except for this bit: The tenants are “a pair of apparent longtime friends deeply involved in Turkish nationalist activism and connected to groups that have fought to prevent the United States from recognizing the extermination of Armenians on Turkish territory during World War I—which Oz himself has refused to describe as a genocide, despite a consensus among respected historians.”

QOP Says, "Thank You For Your Service.  Now, Go Away and Die"

Republican lawmakers blocked passage of a bill in the U.S. Senate Wednesday that expands healthcare coverage for military veterans who were exposed to toxins and burn pits during their service.


All Democrats and eight Republicans voted for the Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act, but the 55 yes votes fell short of the 60 needed to end a filibuster in the Senate. Three Senators did not vote.

The PACT Act, which the House passed earlier this month, would enable additional healthcare coverage for more than three million veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits and Vietnam-era veterans exposed to the deadly herbicide Agent Orange.

Guess Who ISN'T Opposed to Human Trafficking?

Twenty Republicans on Wednesday voted against legislation that would reauthorize programs to combat human trafficking.

The bill, called the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022, passed the House by a tally of 401-20. It first became law in 2000 and saw almost no opposition from either party at the time.

Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is reportedly himself under federal investigation for sex trafficking allegations involving a minor, was among the GOP members who voted "no" on the bill.

Gaetz was accused of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paying for her travel, The New York Times first reported in March 2021. The Florida congressman has denied any wrongdoing and suggested to the Times that the investigation is part of a scheme to extort him and his family.

You Better Run, Better Run, Faster than My Bullet

Nearly one third of people killed by US police since 2015 were running away, driving off or attempting to flee when the officer fatally shot or used lethal force against them, data reveals.

In the past seven years, police in America have killed more than 2,500 people who were fleeing, and those numbers have slightly increased in recent years, amounting to an average of roughly one killing a day of someone running or trying to escape, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research group that tracks lethal force cases.

In many cases, the encounters started as traffic stops, or there were no allegations of violence or serious crimes prompting police contact. Some were shot in the back while running and others were passengers in fleeing cars.



I Thought Previous Guy LOVED Lawsuits

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are urging a federal appeals court to rule that he cannot be sued for allegedly inciting the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol because he has total immunity from such lawsuits.

While the House Jan. 6 committee examines his role in the assault on the Capitol and the Justice Department conducts a wide-ranging criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers are seeking to shield him from civil lawsuits filed by Democratic members of Congress and two U.S. Capitol police officers who said were injured during the siege.

Guess Who Is Paying for the Lawyers in the Previous Story

Republican leaders who worry that Donald Trump could hurt their midterm chances by announcing a presidential run too soon are hoping he'll be dissuaded from doing so by the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal payments, according to an RNC official.

Since October 2021, the Republican National Committee has paid nearly $2 million to law firms representing Trump as part of his defense against personal litigation and government investigations.

But an RNC official told ABC News that as soon as Trump would announce he is running for president, the payments would stop because the party has a "neutrality policy" that prohibits it from taking sides in the presidential primary.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

Manchin Hornswoggles Mitch

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last month that he wouldn’t allow the Senate to pass a bipartisan bill on computer chips if Democrats tried to revive their “Build Back Better” agenda.

On Wednesday, the Senate approved the bipartisan tech manufacturing bill, and hours later Democrats announced a breakthrough on their big domestic policy legislation.

In other words, McConnell’s gambit failed.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced they’d agreed on the new bill Wednesday after Manchin had refused to support Build Back Better last year.

It was a significant breakthrough for Democrats, who have been frustrated that it seemed like the bulk of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda was doomed. Though the new deal isn’t nearly as large as the initial Build Back Better legislation, it would still provide hundreds of billions of dollars for some of the party’s long-sought priorities.

The legislation, called the “Inflation Reduction Act,” consists of a handful of Build Back Better provisions that Manchin liked: It would require Medicare to pry lower prescription prices from drugmakers, impose a minimum tax on corporations and boost tax revenue through an investment in Internal Revenue Service enforcement.

Crucially, for Manchin, the bill would reduce the federal budget deficit $300 billion. Democrats had previously wanted to use every penny of increased tax revenue for new social spending but have given up on winning Manchin over. Manchin has said that shrinking the deficit could help with inflation; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers also reportedly told Manchin this week that the other provisions in the measure aren’t inflationary.

“Build Back Better is dead, and instead we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together,” Manchin said in a lengthy statement.

Schumer said the Senate could vote on the new bill as soon as next week, so long as the Senate parliamentarian says the bill’s components pass muster under the Senate’s special “budget reconciliation,” which would allow legislation to pass the Senate with only 50 votes instead of the usual 60 needed to avoid a filibuster.

McConnell had said in June that “there will be no bipartisan [chips bill] as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.”

The statement seemed designed to prevent Republicans from supporting the chips bill — which plows $50 billion into the domestic semiconductor industry — and to scare Manchin away from reconciliation.

Last week, Manchin warned his colleagues that he would never support new spending or taxes amid high inflation, and talks between him and Schumer had reportedly broken down. Meanwhile, a slimmed-down chips bill chugged along through a series of procedural votes and cleared the Senate on Wednesday by a vote of 64 to 33, with 17 Republicans in support, including McConnell.

Then, after it passed, Manchin announced the breakthrough on reconciliation. The new bill still has a long way to go, since it’s unclear if it will win the needed support from Senate and House Democrats, though Manchin had been the largest obstacle.

McConnell does not seem pleased.

Would you Like Chips With Your Hornswoggle?

The Senate on Wednesday approved a sweeping package aimed at boosting domestic production of computer chips and helping the United States stay competitive with China.

The 64-33 vote represents a rare bipartisan victory a little more than three months before the crucial November midterms; 17 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting yes. The package, known as “CHIPS-plus,” now heads to the House, which is expected to pass it by the end of the week and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature.
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 155

Fighting

Russian forces are undertaking a “massive redeployment” of troops to Ukraine’s occupied Kherson and partially occupied Zaporizhia regions, in what appears to be a change of tactics by Moscow, Kyiv adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kherson is gathering momentum after Kyiv used long-range artillery to damage three key bridges Russia relies on to supply the area, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry said.

Russian forces attacked the town of Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region on Thursday morning, Mayor Halyna Minaeva said, adding there was an unconfirmed number of casualties.

Russian missiles have reportedly struck infrastructure in the Kyiv region, according to Governor Oleksiy Kuleba, while the mayor of the port city of Mykolaiv, Aleksander Senkevich, has once again reported “powerful explosions” in a Telegram post.

Diplomacy

A United States prisoner swap offer to Russia to gain the release of US citizens Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, who are detained by Russian authorities, was made weeks ago and the White House was hoping Russia will react favourably. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would press his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to respond.

Blinken said the war in Ukraine has “profoundly” weakened Russia despite Moscow’s insistence that it is thriving politically and economically.

The United Nations Security Council has been unable to agree on a statement welcoming last week’s deal to get grain and fertiliser moving from Ukraine and Russia to millions of hungry people around the world, Norway’s UN ambassador said.

Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar unveiled a centre in Istanbul to oversee the unblocking of Ukrainian grain exports after a landmark UN deal last week, with the first shipment expected to depart from Black Sea ports within days.

Economy

Russia delivered less gas to Europe on Wednesday in a further escalation of an energy standoff between Moscow and the European Union that will make it harder, and costlier, for the bloc to fill up storage in advance of the winter heating season.

The UK’s National Grid said there could be periods when electricity supply is tight in the northern winter, given uncertainty over supplies of Russian gas to Europe, but that it expects to be able to meet demand.

The Kremlin said the EU had understood how essential to Russia the issue of goods transit to the country’s Kaliningrad exclave is after Lithuania lifted the ban last Friday.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Sanctions have been effective at crippling the Russian economy. That's the conclusion of a new 118-page paper from Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and 18 c0-authors.

Why it matters: The big question about Russia sanctions is whether they have teeth, if they exclude Russian oil and gas. While official Russian statistics suggest the economy is using its oil and gas revenues to withstand the effects of sanctions, Sonnenfeld's paper says that the official Russian statistics are lies.

What they found: The paper's results include sobering facts about the Russian economy.

"Russian imports have largely collapsed," the paper says — creating massive supply shortages and denying the country crucial parts and technologies.

"Russian domestic production has come to a complete standstill."

Foreign companies that have left Russia account for 40% of Russian GDP, the author wrote, almost none of which is going to come back any time soon.

The conclusion: "Looking ahead, there is no path out of economic oblivion for Russia as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure."

Driving the news: Russia has announced further cuts in its supply of natural gas to Europe. But the paper makes the case that Russia needs Europe to buy its natural gas more than Europe needs Russian natural gas to buy.

Because natural gas is "a highly non-fungible commodity," delivered through pipes that take decades to build, Russia has very few alternative export markets for its gas, and 83% of its natural gas exports go to Europe.

Europe, on the other hand, imports just 46% of its natural gas from Russia.

The bottom line: The economic repercussions of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine are being felt in all countries. But they're particularly devastating in Russia — with little, if any, future upside so long as sanctions remain in place.

The Abstract of the Paper is REALLY Worth Reading

A Tale of Three Bridges

Russians in Kherson are supplied by two road, that cross a total of  three bridges.



Going from left to right (west to east), they are:

• The Antonivskyi Bridge over the Dnipro River
• The Daryivka Bridge over the Inhulets River
• The  Kakhovka Bridge over the Dnipro River

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Follow the Money



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