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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:23:23 GMT -8
If you suck at playing the trumpet, that's probably why.
Notice a Pattern?
Man is found slain in the District on Tuesday, police say
A man was shot and killed Tuesday morning in Northeast Washington, the D.C. police said.
3 SWAT officers shot, injured; police call level of gun violence 'ridiculous'
Three members of a Philadelphia SWAT team were shot while serving a warrant Wednesday morning, according to police, who again pleaded for an end to the city's gun violence.
1 dead in south Sacramento shooting near 65th Street and Sky Parkway
SACRAMENTO COUNTY – An investigation is underway after a shooting left one person dead in south Sacramento early Wednesday morning.
Man arrested in Georgia confesses to murdering 5 in South Carolina
Upon arrival, deputies discovered four people who had been shot to death -- identified as Thomas Ellis Anderson, 37, Adam Daniel Morley, 32, Mark Allen Hewitt, 59, and Roman Christean Megael Rocha, 19.
Greenville police officer killed in ‘shootout,’ suspect in custody
GREENVILLE, Miss. (WLBT) - A Greenville police officer has died in the line of duty after what’s being described as a “big shootout.”
4-door sedan involved in triple shooting in southwest Houston being sought by police
A silver-greyish sedan involved in a triple shooting in southwest Houston Wednesday morning is being sought by Houston police.
Suspect arrested in Westminster CO shooting death; the suspect and victim were known to each other
Police have arrested a suspect in a woman’s shooting death at a Westminster self-storage facility, where the victim worked. The victim was dating the suspect’s husband, according to an arrest affidavit.
Gun shots fired in Denver hit two vehicles during evening commute; no passersby injured
Gun shots were fired on Tuesday in Denver during the evening commute, in the bustling area of Colfax Avenue and Broadway, hitting two vehicles but no passersby, police said.
Two men exchanged gunfire with a third man and all three fled the scene, police said on Twitter
When I Search for "Top Stories" Here are 8 of the First 16 Listed.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:40:50 GMT -8
The Election Was Almost Stolen From Him. Where Was "Stop the Steal"?
After a six-day battle and vast amounts of salmon, Fat Bear Week has a winner.
Brown bear 747, tipping the scales at an estimated 1,400lbs (635kg), won 68,105 votes, beating Bear 901 with 56,876 votes.
The result marks an end to Fat Bear Week 2022, which saw people from around the world vote for the fattest bruin at Alaska's Katmai National Park.
The chow-down spotlights the park's famous brown bears as they feed in preparation for winter hibernation.
But Bear 747 nearly didn't make it to the final because of an unprecedented case of voter fraud in the semi-finals that was quickly corrected by officials.
"It appears someone has decided to spam the Fat Bear Week poll, but fortunately it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent," tweeted Katmai National Park on Sunday.
Since that minor hiccup, it's been smooth sailing for the eighth annual Fat Bear Week - an extravaganza that celebrates the fearsome creatures as they prowl Katmai National Park's eight million acre reserve.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:42:36 GMT -8
To Bee, Or Not to BeeIt's a manic moment as male cactus bees envelop a single female. But who in this amorous scrum will emerge lucky and get to mate with her? This remarkable picture, captured by Karine Aigner, is the grand title winner in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. On one level it's quite a technical image. It required the use of a macro probe lens to get in close to the very heart of the action. "I had to spend quite a bit of time on my belly in the dirt," Karine joked. 
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:46:42 GMT -8
It Beggars the Imagination How Much TikTok Takes
Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation found.
Children are livestreaming on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value.
The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found the people in the camps received only a tiny fraction of that.
TikTok said it would take prompt action against "exploitative begging".
The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount.
Earlier this year, TikTok users saw their feeds fill with livestreams of families in Syrian camps, drawing support from some viewers and concerns about scams from others.
In the camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being facilitated by so-called "TikTok middlemen", who provided families with the phones and equipment to go live.
The middlemen said they worked with agencies affiliated to TikTok in China and the Middle East, who gave the families access to TikTok accounts. These agencies are part of TikTok's global strategy to recruit livestreamers and encourage users to spend more time on the app.
Since the TikTok algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of a user's phone number, the middlemen said they prefer to use British SIM cards. They say people from the UK are the most generous gifters.
Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters are among the families who go live on TikTok every day, sitting on the floor of their tent for hours, repeating the few English phrases they know: "Please like, please share, please gift."
Mona's husband was killed in an airstrike and she is using the livestreams to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.
The gifts they're asking for are virtual, but they cost the viewers real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash. Livestream viewers send the gifts - ranging from digital roses, costing a few cents, to virtual lions costing around $500 - to reward or tip creators for content.
For five months, the BBC followed 30 TikTok accounts broadcasting live from Syrian camps for displaced people and built a computer program to scrape information from them, showing that viewers were often donating digital gifts worth up to $1,000 an hour to each account.
Families in the camps said they were receiving only a tiny fraction of these sums, however.
With TikTok declining to say how much it takes from gifts, the BBC ran an experiment to track where the money goes.
A reporter in Syria contacted one of the TikTok-affiliated agencies saying he was living in the camps. He obtained an account and went live, while BBC staff in London sent TikTok gifts worth $106 from another account.
At the end of the livestream, the balance of the Syrian test account was $33. TikTok had taken 69% of the value of the gifts.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:48:38 GMT -8
They Didn't Stop Child Abuse. They Abused the Poor
More than a decade before the Penn State University child sex abuse scandal broke, an assistant football coach told his supervisors that he had seen Jerry Sandusky molesting a young boy in the shower. When this was revealed during Sandusky’s criminal trial in 2012, it prompted public outcry: Why hadn’t anyone reported the abuse sooner?
In response, Pennsylvania lawmakers enacted sweeping reforms to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.
Most notably, they expanded the list of professionals required to report it when they suspect a child might be in danger, broadened the definition for what constitutes abuse and increased the criminal penalties for those who fail to report.
A flood of unfounded reports followed, overwhelming state and local child protection agencies. The vast expansion of the child protection dragnet ensnared tens of thousands of innocent parents, disproportionately affecting families of color living in poverty. While the unintended and costly consequences are clear, there’s no proof that the reforms have prevented the most serious abuse cases, an NBC News and ProPublica investigation found.
Instead, data and child welfare experts suggest the changes may have done the opposite.
The number of Pennsylvania children found to have been abused so severely that they died or were nearly killed has gone up almost every year since — from 96 in 2014 to 194 in 2021, according to state data. State child welfare officials say more vigilance in documenting severe cases of abuse likely contributed to the increase. But child safety advocates and researchers raised concerns that the surge of unfounded reports has overburdened the system, making it harder to identify and protect children who are truly in danger.
In the five years after the reforms took effect, the state’s child abuse hotline was inundated with more than 1 million reports of child maltreatment, state data shows. More than 800,000 of these calls were related not to abuse or serious neglect, but to lower-level neglect allegations often stemming from poverty, most of which were later dismissed as invalid by caseworkers.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:53:22 GMT -8
Herschel Lie-Walker's Christian Charity Greed
To combat the news that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion, conservative Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker has launched what’s been called a “religious counterattack,” shielding himself with a Christian prayer group and a public assertion that he’s “been redeemed” while also maintaining that the woman is lying.
But court records reveal that, in 2007, when a Georgia family appealed to Walker’s Christianity by asking him not to sue their restaurant, Walker still went forward with the legal proceedings.
The records detail a quiet fight in federal court 15 years ago where Walker filed a lawsuit to stop a World War II veteran with his same name running a restaurant on the western outskirts of Savannah.
The former football star now running for Congress had a line of frozen foods—and he maintained that his trademark was threatened by the existence of a new restaurant being opened by 84-year-old Herschel Earl Walker, his son and grandson. It was called “Herschel Walker’s Smokehouse & Pizzeria.”
The football star player wasn’t having it.
The famous Walker had his attorneys at Greenberg Traurig, one of the largest law firms in the country, send the family a cease-and-desist letter demanding that they stop using their grandfather’s name—and turn over any profits they made at the restaurant. They cited the family barbecue joint’s decision to sell “foods which are highly similar to Mr. Walker's food products,” such as “wings, ribs and chicken.” They had 10 days to comply.
Walker sued the next month in January 2007, filing a nine-count complaint citing unjust enrichment and unfair competition.
Meanwhile, the family—which didn’t even spend money on a lawyer for themselves—wrote back a letter pleading for mercy.
“Our Herschel Walker is now 84 years old and a veteran of World War II having served in both North Africa and in Europe during World War II. Now he is told that he can’t even use his own name on his own restaurant. What kind of Justice is this? Is this what he fought for during World War II? We hope not,” they wrote.
“Our entire family have always been great fans of Herschel’s. We have followed his career from Johnson County High School [in] Wrightsville, Ga. to the University of Ga. and throughout his professional football career. We are still interested in Herschel and believe him to be a great Christian athlete. Our Herschel Walker is also a Christian. Therefore, they are brothers in Christ,” they continued.
All three men seemed convinced they could change the football star’s mind—if only he would read their letter.
“If we are forced to take down the Herschel Walker signs we don’t have the money to replace them, the signs cost $4,000.00 which is a great deal of money for us. If Herschel wants us to remove the signs it will cause a great hardship. We have only one request that Herschel read and somehow let us know that he has read our response,” they wrote.
The letter was signed by Hershel Earl Walker, his son John Walker, and the grandson David Timothy Walker.
The entreaty failed.
Less than a month later, the family agreed to stop using their grandfather’s name in any way. A federal judge issued an order granting the football star “valid, exclusive and enforceable rights” to the term “Herschel Walker.” The family was “immediately, permanently and perpetually restrained and enjoined” from using the name in their business again.
The Daily Beast could not find Georgia business records for the family operation, which appears to have ceased to exist shortly thereafter. The building where it was once listed has been torn down and replaced by a four-story hotel.
Herschel Walker the World War II veteran died in 2018 at 95 years old. John and David Walker did not respond to calls and messages on Tuesday. A woman claiming to be related to David Walker said he declined to comment.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:55:33 GMT -8
A Swing and a Missile
Russia may be running low on sophisticated missiles.
Many of Russia’s attacks — increasingly aimed at civilian targets — have been long-range strikes that used outdated, unguided and imprecise missiles, including some from the Soviet era. Ukrainian, Western and Russian analysts have said that the attacks appear to suggest that Russia is running low on its most sophisticated weapons.
Western intelligence officials say that Russia used up many of its most accurate weapons, including cruise missiles and certain ballistic missiles, in the early days of the invasion. Russia’s arms industry has long relied heavily on imported electronic parts. As a result, analysts say, sanctions and export controls appear to have limited the Kremlin’s ability to restock its supplies, leaving it to rely more on unguided munitions.
Experts said that by using dozens of precision missiles against civilian targets, Russia would have fewer to use on the battlefield as it faces Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and south.
Russia has been buying military drones from Iran and, according to intelligence sources, artillery shells and rockets from North Korea. Analysts see both developments as a further sign that sanctions have hampered Russia’s military supply lines.
And for those who say that Russia is “retaliating” for the Kerch bridge attack, 1) retaliation would be hitting a bridge or rail station Ukraine uses to move its equipment, and 2) Russia has been hitting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure literally every single day since February 24. Even playgrounds, in the morning, when kids might’ve been playing there (thank heavens for air raid sirens).
The silver lining to Russia’s murderous terrorirsm, and it’s a shitty one but real, is that every munition expended against a civilian target is one less munition used against the Ukrainian armed forces that are, at this moment, pushing Russia back all across Ukraine.
There are lots of reasons Russia is losing this war, and amongst them, the unimaginably cruel prioritization of civilian targets over military ones. Russia has a limited number of long-range precision-guided missiles and rockets. Using up the last ones to take out playgrounds, rather than HIMARS or other high-value targets, only hastens the end of the war.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:57:23 GMT -8
"We'll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you."
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 9:59:50 GMT -8
How Many Casualties?
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 10:01:03 GMT -8
While Russia Has "Lost" 1.5 Million Winter Uniforms, ...
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 12, 2022 10:09:44 GMT -8
Biden on Track to Reduce the Deficit by $1.8 Trillion
Federal
Year Deficit Change (current yr-previous Year)
2016 $600 Billion
2017 $700 Billion $100 Billion
2018 $800 Billion $100 Billion
2019 $1,000 Billion $200 Billion
2020 $3,200 Billion $2,200 Billion
2021 $2.800 Billion - 400 Billion
2021 (11 Mo) $2.720 Billion
2022 (11 Mo) $945 Billion -1,775 Billion
Trump took control of the budget in 2017, and increased deficits during each of his years, from 600 billion in 2016 to 1 trillion in 2019. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, the deficit rose to the unprecedented level of $3.2 trillion. By 2021, the deficit had fallen slightly to $2.8 trillion, but as 2022 has progressed, the U.S. has seen the largest deficit reduction in history – down $1.8 trillion to about $1 trillion dollars, or about where Trump left it during his third year. Despite the talk of uncontrolled spending and the profligate president, Biden has achieved by far the biggest deficit reduction in the nation’s history. To understand the massive proportions of this reduction, the next largest deficit reduction was about 500 billion during 2013. How could this have happened with COVID-19 relief spending, a massive infrastructure bill, incentives for climate change, and parts of the Build Back Better initiative? The answer is in how dollars are spent. In 2017, Republicans used their supply-side logic to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, promising tax economic growth that would offset these tax cuts. Corporate taxes were supposedly too high and lowering them would make the United States a magnet for investment and growth. The ensuing boom would raise the salaries of employees, setting off massive growth in GDP of five or even six percent. Even Jamie Diamond went on TV to tell us of the boom coming to America. But of course, none of this happened. In fact, foreign investment went down slightly in 2018. Corporations did not share their good fortune with their employees, but instead raised dividends and stock buybacks that benefit the very rich. We never saw the promised growth, and by 2019, GDP growth was about where it was during President Obama’s administration, despite Trump’s derision of those rates. So, the Republican’s initiative failed miserably, increasing our deficit by 70 percent during the first three years of Trump and by several hundred percent during his last year. But no one apologized for destroying our tax base and further increasing income disparity. Politicians spoke of the Trump economic miracle, which is still part of the Trump mythology. The Trump “miracle” never happened. It was a scam. Although if you are in the top 1 percent of wealth and income, you may have considered those tax reductions a miracle. But there was no miracle for middle class Americans. Biden, on the other hand, targeted federal relief to the millions of Americans who actually needed relief. The Child tax credit lifted two thirds of poor children out of poverty. Federal unemployment assistance targeted those who lost their jobs with a meaningful level of unemployment relief. Both policies targeted lower- and middle-class families, and those families actually spent the funds to get out of debt and pursue a secure future. The result was a 5.9 percent increase in U.S. GDP during 2021. Since the growth from one year tends to show up in the next year’s taxes, that 5.9 percent increase explains a large part of the deficit reduction we have seen in 2022. For the first eleven months of fiscal 2022, federal revenues increased by $822 billion, from a 2021 base of $3,600 billion – an increase of more than 22 percent. Much of this increase was driven by personal income tax payments. In effect, the Biden Administration policies have a paid for themselves and left the U.S. at the 2019 deficit levels. The evidence shows that the criticism so many on the right, is completely unfounded. Democrats are no longer the source of our deficit. It is the supply- side Republicans that continue to drive the deficit with their ineffective tax cuts. Somebody Tell Joe Manchin
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