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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:34:39 GMT -8
What did the surgeon say to the patient who insisted on closing up his own incision? Suture self. It's Zulu TimeThousands of people came out to celebrate the coronation of Misuzulu ka Zwelithini as Zulu king in South Africa on Saturday. The 48 year old pledged to unite the Zulu nation after his accession was contested. But the controversy did not dampen the spirits of those who went to the KwaKhangelamankengane Palace in KwaZulu-Natal province.   The throne has no formal political power, but a fifth of South Africa's population is Zulu and its monarchy remains hugely influential. |
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:37:44 GMT -8
I Won't Shed a Tear.
Russian authorities said Sunday they had opened a murder investigation after the daughter of influential, ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin was killed by a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow.
The Russian Investigative Committee said it believed someone planned and ordered the car explosion that killed Darya Dugina, based on evidence already collected from the blast. “Taking into account the data already obtained, the investigation believes that the crime was pre-planned and was of an ordered nature,” the investigative committee said in a statement Sunday.
Dugina died at the scene after “an explosive device, presumably installed in the Toyota Land Cruiser, went off on a public road and the car caught fire” at around 9.00 p.m. local time on Saturday, near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, according to the press service of the Russian Investigative Committee, as reported by the Russian state news agency TASS.
Dugina’s father is a Russian author and ideologue, credited with being the architect or “spiritual guide” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He is purported to have significant influence over Russian President Vladimir Putin and was described as “Putin’s Brain” by Foreign Affairs magazine.
Both Dugin and his daughter have been sanctioned by the United States. The United Kingdom sanctioned Dugina in July for being “a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platform,” it wrote.
Videos of the explosion showed a vehicle on fire at the side of the road and smashed car parts strewn across the surrounding area. One unverified video appears to show Dugin at the scene.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:45:48 GMT -8
Ab-Butt - Winning Hearts and Minds One Citation at a Time.
The web of state highway troopers that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has woven at the border has ensnared local drivers pulled over by officers searching for smugglers and people who've slipped across the border.
Abbott’s election-year attempt to thwart illegal immigration, called Operation Lone Star, has vexed some residents in small towns and counties where the number of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers has increased along with citations of drivers.
In Kinney County, where Brackettville is the county seat, citations more than quadrupled, from 1,400 in 2019-2020 to more than 6,800 in 2021-2022, more than in any other Texas county. The number of officers working in this county of 3,674 nearly tripled, from 14 to 41, an NBC News analysis of Texas DPS data shows.
As citations climb, residents decry a loss of freedom and civil liberties as they are pulled over for what they and civil rights groups say are questionable reasons and grilled or searched without probable cause. Some say they fear for their safety as high-speed pursuits by troopers have turned deadly.
“I never had this problem before this border situation came into their minds. We were just a regular little sleepy town and all of a sudden now, it’s pursuits everywhere and that’s because there are so many, a flood of law enforcement officers here,” said Richard Gonzalez, 73, a 31-year veteran police officer who worked patrol in California and now lives in Brackettville, a town of 1,642.
The stops are increasingly seen by some residents as targeted at Latinos or at people who fit a stereotype. Many officers are from other parts of the state with smaller Latino populations, although there are Hispanic troopers in Operation Lone Star.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:47:38 GMT -8
Just in Time For College Football
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:50:56 GMT -8
When Nate Silver is Confused, Where Does That Leave the Rest of Us?Ohio is the type of Senate race that Democrats shouldn’t have much business competing in. The state is increasingly red, having voted for former President Donald Trump by 8 percentage points in 2020. True, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was reelected in Ohio in 2018 — but that was in a strongly Democratic environment that is unlikely to be replicated this November, in what’s expected to be a Republican-leaning year. And yet, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan had led in five consecutive polls since late July until an Emerson College poll this week put J.D. Vance — the Trump-endorsed venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” — ahead. Ryan still holds a narrow 1-point lead in our polling average. Our election forecast is … confused. The Lite version of our forecast, which just uses the polls, sticks to our polling average and has Ryan as a slight 56 percent favorite.1 The Classic version, which incorporates “fundamentals” such as Ohio’s Republican lean and Ryan’s fundraising advantage so far, puts Ryan’s chances at 39 percent and Vance as a slight favorite. And the Deluxe forecast, which also accounts for expert race ratings — in essence, the conventional wisdom that the race is an uphill climb for Democrats — has Ryan’s chances at 21 percent, making Vance a clear favorite. I’ll save the value of expert ratings and the differences between the Classic and Deluxe versions of the forecast for another time. But suffice it to say that they do add to our forecast’s accuracy — or at least they’re supposed to. So there’s no need to, say, blend the Classic and Deluxe forecasts together; the Deluxe forecast should be the one you’d bet on. It already puts the “right” amount of weight on the expert ratings, based on what would have produced the best forecasts empirically. Still, even a 21 percent chance isn’t nothing. So let’s step back and ask a more basic question: Is it plausible that Ryan could win in a state like Ohio in a political environment like the one we’re likely to see in November? Can Tim Ryan Really Win Ohio's Senate Race?
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:58:37 GMT -8
A Rush-die to Judgement
Why did the Ayatollah Khomeini issue a fatwa over a book that he did not read, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
Not for any theological reasons but for purely political expediency following the incessant political lobbying of two fanatical British Muslims. With a swish of his pen, Khomeini gained significant political capital in the long-standing cultural war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, diplomatic relations between which had worsened significantly since the Islamic revolution in Iran a decade earlier. It also helped the ayatollah to shore up support and silence dissent following the disastrous and costly war with neighboring Iraq, which had ended in September 1988, the month Rushdie’s novel was published. And it aided him in deflecting concerns about his unstable mental state, which manifested itself in another, less-famous but deadlier Khomeini fatwa, issued in the summer of before the release of “The Satanic Verses,” that led to the execution by “death committees” of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, mostly leftists and communists.
There was also a potential personal motive informing Khomeini’s decision: the short section of the novel pillorying a Khomeini-like character, referred to as “the imam,” who, like the ayatollah, was exiled from his homeland.
Before Khomeini’s fatwa, Rushdie had actually been a popular figure in Iran for his unflinching criticism of the hated shah as well as for his opposition to and criticism of Europe’s colonial legacy and U.S. militarism and foreign policy, including a book he published condemning U.S. involvement in Nicaragua. An unofficial Persian translation of Rushdie’s novel “Shame,” which was a stinging allegory of post-Partition Pakistan, won a prize in Iran, and, surprisingly, “The Satanic Verses” was also available in Persian prior to the fatwa.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 8:59:50 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Salmon Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," which raced to the top of multiple Amazon bestseller lists after the author was attacked. (Rushdie survived and is recovering.)
California's kids, as the state becomes the first to offer free lunches to students in all public schools
The vise of justice, as Trump's numbers guy Weisselberg pleads guilty to larceny and tax fraud, Rudy testifies in Georgia, and Feds sift through top-secret national security docs #45 stole from the federal government in DC
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, for his executive order discouraging the practice of "ex-gay conversion therapy" in the commonwealth because it's "a traumatic practice based on junk science"
President Biden: signs the massive Climate/Health/Tax-the-rich bill into law; cancels $4 billion in student loan debt owed to fraudsters at ITT Tech; court rules he can stop oil/gas leasing on public lands/waters; and poll #s move up!
The FDA, for finally approving over-the-counter sale of hearing aids, dealing a blow to Big Earpiece
New South Wales, for banning the display of Nazi flags or memorabilia with swastikas, punishable by jail time and/or fines
Drivers' wallets, as more than half the gas pumps in America are now at $3.75 or lower, and diesel drops below $5
Truth in health information, as RFK Jr.'s anti-vax "Children's Health Defense" cesspool is erased from Facebook & Instagram for spreading bullshit that "that could cause physical harm."
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 9:02:52 GMT -8
I Don't Know How You Reach This Conclusion
A Japanese court ruled Friday that a transgender woman cannot legally be regarded as a parent of one of her own children.
The woman, assigned male at birth, used sperm obtained before her transition to have two daughters with her female partner, reported Kyodo News and public broadcaster NHK.
The court said that one daughter — born before the woman underwent her legal and surgical transition — is legally hers, while the daughter born after her transition is not.
A family court determined earlier this year that the woman’s partner was the legal mother of the two girls because she gave birth to them, but it did not recognize the trans woman as a parent of the two.
Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven — a coalition of leading industrial nations that also includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the U.S. — not to recognize same-sex marriage.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 9:05:00 GMT -8
If the QOP Takes the House, and the Dems Keep the Senate, Can't the Jan 6th Committee Just Hand Off It's Work to a Senate Committee?
A clear majority of American voters believe that the various investigations into alleged wrongdoing by former President Donald Trump should continue, according to a national NBC News poll conducted after the FBI searched Trump’s Florida home and recovered “Top Secret” documents earlier this month.
The poll also shows a dissatisfied public, with three quarters of voters saying the county is headed in the wrong direction, a record 58% who say that America’s best years are behind it and 61% who said that they’re willing to carry a protest sign for a day because they’re so upset.
And it paints a mixed picture of the 2022 midterm landscape, with President Joe Biden’s job rating mired in the low 40s and with Republicans narrowly leading on congressional preference — but with Democrats nearly tying Republicans on voter enthusiasm and with “threats to democracy” overtaking the cost of living as the top issue facing the country for voters.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 9:06:42 GMT -8
I Think It's Time to Defund the QOP
A Florida Republican candidate for Congress threatened that FBI agents would go “home in a body bag” if they ever try to search his house the way they did Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
In a shocking video he posted to YouTube on Saturday, Sarasota businessman Martin Hyde said, “I wish they’d turn up at my home ’cause they’d have gone home in a body bag.”
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 21, 2022 9:12:43 GMT -8
It's Wilt Chamberlain's Birthday Today. Also the Voice of Sponge Bob. But the Big One Is ...
A huge birthday honor for beloved Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt. The Loyola men's basketball team chaplain is 103 years old.
Sister Jean is always courtside at Loyola Ramblers games and became a worldwide celebrity during Loyola's Final Four run in 2018.
The plaza outside the Loyola CTA Red Line stop will be dedicated to her Sunday.
Both Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot will be there to wish sister jean a happy birthday.
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