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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 7:41:34 GMT -8
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home.
I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt'.
So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too'
And then the fight started.....
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Uncle Vlad Wants You and You and Even You!
Russia is drafting up obviously unsuitable candidates in a scramble to bulk up its army in Ukraine, according to multiple reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization on Wednesday, pledging to call up 300,000 people, but only from Russia's existing pool of military reservists.
Conscripts and students would not be drafted and the new decree would affect only those with previous combat experience, Russian officials added.
However, evidence is emerging that these standards are being ignored in practice.
A 26-year-old PhD student and lecturer at a prominent Russian university told the BBC this week that two men turned up at his house to draft him, despite his student status.
The student, identified only as Sergei, told the BBC he was confused by the call-up because he has no military experience.
A 63-year-old man from the Volgograd region was also drafted as part of the mobilization, the independent Russian news site The Insider reported. (The outlet has no relation to Insider.)
The man, identified only as Yermolaev, has second-degree diabetes and a brain condition known as cerebral ischemia, The Insider reported. Yermolaev had previously served in the army is retired.
On Thursday, he was still summoned to a medical examination center where he was told by doctors that he was "fit to go to the front." (How Fit Do You Have to Be To Die?)
While Russian officials have promised that only those with military experience would be called up, a clause in Putin's mobilization decree means that it is possible to ignore that norm at any time, experts said.
One man from Buryatia, a mountainous region in eastern Siberia, told The Insider that recruitment officers are "combing through the villages."
"People say a lot of men are being taken away, regardless of the criteria. There are 400 people in our village, and they took 20 men," the man, who was not named, told The Insider.
A BBC reporter tweeted on Friday that a 17-year-old boy was conscripted after being arrested at an anti-war protest in Moscow, and shared a document saying so. The minimum age to be drafted into the Russian army is 18 .
Uncle Vlad Wants You! (But Not You)
Russia's defence ministry has revealed a host of occupations it says will be exempted from conscription aimed at boosting its war effort in Ukraine.
IT workers, bankers and journalists working for state media will escape the "partial mobilisation" announced by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
And one paragraph remains entirely classified. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday this referred to the total number of Russians that could be conscripted, which he said could not be disclosed.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 7:48:47 GMT -8
Previous Guy Finds Dearie is Not a Darling
The special master appointed to review documents federal agents seized at Donald Trump’s Florida estate has given the former president until Friday of next week to back up his allegation that the FBI planted evidence in the search on Aug. 8.
After the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Trump and his lawyers have publicly insinuated on multiple occasions without providing evidence that agents planted evidence during the search. “Planting information anyone?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Aug. 12.
In a filing Thursday, Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Dearie of New York, the court-appointed special master, ordered the government to turn over copies of all non-classified items seized in the case to Trump's lawyers by Monday.
He then ordered Trump's team to submit a "declaration or affidavit" of any items in the inventory that were removed from Mar-a-Lago that the "Plaintiff asserts were not seized from the Premises," meaning items that were put there by someone else.
Why Did He Nominate Dearie?
Which brings us back to the mystery of how Trump’s legal team undermined its own litigation strategy with the Dearie recommendation. A recent Axios article offers a possible explanation that if true, only underscores the problematic nature of their selection analysis. According to Axios sources, the Trump lawyers picked Judge Dearie because years ago, in his FISA Court role, he approved search warrants in the Carter Page investigation unaware that the FBI statements he relied upon were both materially false and incomplete.
As a result, per this analysis, they believed Judge Dearie became “a deep skeptic of the FBI” and would perform his special master role with that jaundiced perspective. So, if this information is accurate, these lawyers concluded that a judge known for his integrity, objectivity, and career-long determination to follow the law, who served on the FISA Court for seven years and, thus, regularly came face to face with the enormous task our intelligence services have in keeping the country safe, would be influenced by a years-old grudge he very likely never had, to conduct himself in a manner completely antithetical to experience and, most importantly, to his very core.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 7:52:51 GMT -8
The QOP Surrenders One House Seat
● OH-09: The NRCC on Thursday canceled its entire $960,000 reservation it had booked in Ohio's 9th District to defeat Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a development that was first reported by the Republican firm Medium Buying and confirmed by Politico and the Democratic firm Amplify Media. The committee's pullout came one day after the Associated Press reported that Kaptur's Republican opponent, QAnon-aligned activist J.R. Majewski, had lied about serving in Afghanistan. The NRCC has not yet commented on the move, though the committee is still touting Majewski as a featured candidate on its website.
While Senate Republicans have scaled back, or outright canceled, their planned spending in a number of battlegrounds, this appears to be the first time this cycle that either party has retreated in a House contest.
Until the May primary, Kaptur, who is the longest-serving congresswoman in history, very much looked like one of the GOP's top targets in the nation, since Republicans had radically transformed her Toledo-area constituency from a 59-40 Biden district to one that Trump would have taken 51-48. But everything changed in the spring when Majewski, who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the attack on Congress and later went to the Capitol grounds, defeated two Republican state legislators to win the nod to take on the 20-term incumbent.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 7:54:30 GMT -8
Fixing the Electoral Count Act
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 7:57:52 GMT -8
Who Does She Want in Congress? I'll Ask 'Er
Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat who defeated the Republican Sarah Palin in a special House election and became the first Alaska Native in Congress, is on track to do it again in November. A new poll by the Anchorage-based pollster Dittman Research puts Peltola at 50 percent, Palin at 27 percent and the Republican Nick Begich III at 20 percent in the first round of ranked-choice voting.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 8:09:53 GMT -8
It's a Twofer. DeathSentence Sends Cash to His Buddies, While Using State Money to Promote Himself
The air charter company Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration hired for his controversial migrant-moving program has contributed big money to some top allies of the governor and was once legally represented by Rep. Matt Gaetz and his former partner, who is now Florida's “public safety czar” in charge of immigration policy.
DeSantis’ administration has refused to release a copy of the $12 million contract with Vertol Systems Company Inc. for its role in administering the “unauthorized alien” program — which state Democrats want to block with a lawsuit Thursday — nor will the governor’s office comment on the nearly $1.6 million the company has received to send migrants to so-called “sanctuary” cities that welcome immigrants.
Gaetz, who managed DeSantis' transition team in 2018, would not comment for this story, nor would the congressman's former law partner — Florida’s current public safety coordinator Larry Keefe -- who represented Vertol in at least one civil lawsuit in 2017, according to court records from Okaloosa County, Florida.
In Vertol's only known case of relocating migrants, the company received an initial $615,000 last week and recruited almost 50 destitute asylum-seeking Venezuelan migrants in San Antonio, Texas, gave them food and at least one night’s hotel stay, and then flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of DeSantis’s effort to highlight the toll of illegal immigration. Lawyers for the migrants say they were tricked by false promises and are suing.
On Tuesday, the company was planning to fly migrants to a Delaware airport near President Joe Biden’s beach home, but the flight was inexplicably scrapped after the state gave Vertol another $950,000.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 8:18:03 GMT -8
You're Fired!
Executive directors of the Inter-American Development Bank voted unanimously Thursday to recommend firing a former Trump official as president of the Washington-based institution, a person familiar with the vote said.
The move came after an investigation conducted at the bank board’s request determined that Mauricio Claver-Carone violated ethics rules by favoring a top aide with whom he had a romantic relationship, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.
The recommendation to remove Claver-Carone came in a closed-door meeting of the bank’s 14 executive directors, according to the person, who insisted on not being quoted by name. The ultimate decision to fire Claver-Carone now rests with the finance officials who sit on the Board of Governors representing all 48 of the bank’s member nations.
Among those pushing for Claver-Carone’s removal is the Biden administration, which said it was troubled by Claver-Carone’s refusal to fully cooperate with an independent probe.
“His creation of a climate of fear of retaliation among staff and borrowing countries has forfeited the confidence of the Bank’s staff and shareholders and necessitates a change in leadership,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 8:20:41 GMT -8
Kanye West Doesn’t Read, So Why Would Anyone Pay $15,000 For Their Kid To Go To His School?
In promotion of a 52-page book he co-authored, Kanye West told Reuters in 2009 he was “a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”
His Mother was an English professor.
Then there are the comments Kanye made just a week ago about reading.
On a recent episode of “Alo Mind Full” podcast that aired last Friday, Kanye told hosts Danny Harris and Alyson Wilson that he’s never read any literature and prefers speaking instead.
“I actually haven’t read any book,” he said. “Reading is like eating Brussels sprouts for me. And talking is like getting the Giorgio Baldi corn ravioli.”
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 9:02:01 GMT -8
Dearie Doesn't Dawdle
In a court filing on Thursday, the federal judge tasked with reviewing the FBI-seized materials from Mar-a-Lago directed federal prosecutors to begin producing the approximately 11,000 documents that were recovered last month from former President Donald Trump's Florida home.
The plan and timeline laid out by U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie states that by Monday, the Department of Justice must provide electronic copies of the materials not labeled classified to both Dearie and Trump's team.
For each document, Trump's attorneys must then say whether he is asserting attorney-client privilege or executive privilege or whether the document is a personal or presidential record, according to Dearie's latest directions.
For any document that Trump and his team mark as privileged and/or personal, they need to include a statement explaining the reasoning for the particular declaration.
The government has provided Trump and his lawyers with the documents that DOJ's "filter team" had found could potentially be privileged and Dearie said in Thursday's filing that Trump must then provide a log of his designations for the materials -- as to whether he is asserting privilege over something and whether it is personal or presidential -- to the government by Monday.
Trump's team has to submit a final and complete review of all the documents to the government by Oct. 14, according to the special master.
Both parties must submit a log of any disputed designations to the Dearie by Oct. 21. (Dearie said he needs the help of a retired federal magistrate, James Orenstein, to help with his review.)
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 9:04:09 GMT -8
Why No Criminal Charges?
New York’s attorney general says her three-year investigation of former President Donald Trump uncovered potential crimes in the way he ran his real estate empire, including allegations of bank and insurance fraud.
So why isn’t Trump being prosecuted?
Attorney General Letitia James didn’t seek to slap handcuffs on the Republican this week, as some of his critics hoped. Instead, she announced a civil lawsuit seeking $250 million and his permanent banishment from doing business in the state.
For one, even if she did want to prosecute Trump, she doesn’t have jurisdiction under state law to bring a criminal case against him or any of the lawsuit's other defendants, including the Trump Organization and his three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump.
In New York, the state attorney general’s office is only allowed to prosecute a limited range of offenses on its own, like bid rigging and payroll violations.
Otherwise, the office must partner with a county district attorney on a prosecution — as James' office did with the Manhattan district attorney's office in a case against Trump's longtime finance chief — or obtain what’s known as a criminal referral from the governor or a state agency that has jurisdiction over the alleged wrongdoing.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 9:06:38 GMT -8
If We Really Want to Protect the Unborn and the Already Born, ...
Toxic PFAS chemicals were detected in every umbilical cord blood sample across 40 studies conducted over the last five years, a new review of scientific literature from around the world has found.
The studies collectively examined nearly 30,000 samples, and many linked fetal PFAS exposure to health complications in unborn babies, young children and later in life. The studies’ findings are “disturbing”, said Uloma Uche, an environmental health science fellow with the Environmental Working Group, which analyzed the peer-reviewed studies’ data.
“Even before you’ve come into the world, you’re already exposed to PFAS,” she said.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 12,000 chemicals commonly used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and accumulate in human bodies and the environment.
The federal government estimates that they are found in 98% of Americans’ blood. The chemicals are linked to birth defects, cancer, kidney disease, liver problems and other health issues, and the EPA recently found effectively no level of exposure to some kinds of PFAS in water is safe.
Humans are exposed to the ubiquitous chemicals via multiple routes. PFAS are estimated to be contaminating drinking water for over 200 million people in the US, and have been found at alarming levels in meat, fish, dairy, crops and processed foods. They are also in a range of everyday consumer products, like nonstick cookware, food packaging, waterproof clothing, stainguards like Scotchgard and some dental floss.
PFAS in products can be absorbed through the skin, swallowed or breathed in as they break off from products and move through the air.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 23, 2022 9:11:00 GMT -8
A Scandal Grows
A decade-old scandal at a Massachusetts crime lab — which led authorities to dismiss tens of thousands of drug convictions — may involve wrongdoing by more people than was previously known, according to a recent court order.
A state Superior Court judge said in a ruling related to the release of a trove of state investigative materials that there is evidence that other employees at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute — beyond disgraced former chemist Annie Dookhan — may have engaged in misconduct. At least one person was referred to the state attorney general’s office in 2015 for potential prosecution, Judge John T. Lu wrote last week.
The ruling stokes lingering doubts about statements by the state inspector general’s office over the past eight years that Dookhan was the “sole bad actor” at the Hinton lab. And it means the vast scandal could grow.
“This is a significant development. It justifiably raises questions about the criminal convictions that the lab helped to produce with or without Annie Dookhan’s involvement,” said Matthew Segal, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who has led the fight by defense lawyers to unearth the massive misconduct at a pair of government-run Massachusetts labs that prompted the state’s highest court to dismiss 61,000 drug charges.
Dookhan’s misconduct at the Hinton lab was exposed in 2012, after she had worked there for nearly a decade. She admitted to tampering with evidence, forging test results and lying about it, according to court records. She served three years in prison and was released in 2016. Most of the people she helped convict of low-level drug offenses pleaded guilty and finished their sentences long before she was prosecuted, according to defense lawyers. More than 21,000 cases she worked on have been dismissed.
Lu’s ruling Sept. 16 is connected to cases in Middlesex County in which defendants are challenging drug convictions based on evidence that defense attorneys say was processed at the Hinton lab — not by Dookhan, but by other chemists, including Sonja Farak.
Farak worked at the Hinton lab from 2002 to August 2004 before she moved to a state lab in Amherst, where she fed a drug addiction by using samples (Isn't that one way of testing the samples?) she was supposed to be analyzing in criminal cases, according to court records. She pleaded guilty in 2014 to tampering with evidence and drug theft charges and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. More than 16,000 cases she worked on have been dismissed.
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hasben
Resident Member
Posts: 1,047
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Post by hasben on Sept 23, 2022 11:52:33 GMT -8
What the hell is wrong with NY letting trump skate? James couldn't find a single county DA, or state agency, or the governor to help prosecute trump??? In NY the atty gen. can't prosecute crime? Makes no sense.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 25, 2022 8:44:35 GMT -8
What the hell is wrong with NY letting trump skate? James couldn't find a single county DA, or state agency, or the governor to help prosecute trump??? In NY the atty gen. can't prosecute crime? Makes no sense. She is sending criminal referrals to DOJ and the IRS, but those are federal agencies. She explicitly says Trump committed multiple state crimes. It doesn't really make sense that no one is willing to indict. But then again, I could never figure out why Garland never followed up on the crimes detailed in the Mueller Report. No guts. No glory |
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