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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:27:12 GMT -8
An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
A man walks into the doctor's office and tells the receptionist that he is invisible. She tells this to the doctor, who replies, "Tell him I can't see him."
Her Hair Was Visible. How Long Before She Disappears into an Iranian Jail?
A large crowd at Tehran airport greeted an Iranian sport climber who competed without a headscarf at a competition in South Korea, calling her a "heroine".
Elnaz Rekabi, 33, broke Iran's strict dress code - but later said her hijab had fallen off "inadvertently".
Many are sceptical about the reason she gave in an Instagram post and repeated in a state TV interview at the airport, believing it was made under duress.
Iran is gripped by protests against the hijab laws and its clerical leaders.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:29:54 GMT -8
Ferry Cross the Dnieper
Tens of thousands of civilians and Russian-appointed officials are being moved out of Ukraine's southern Kherson region ahead of a Ukrainian offensive, says the Russia-installed local leader.
Vladimir Saldo said all Russian-appointed departments and ministries would cross the Dnieper river.
Some 50-60,000 civilians would also leave in an "organised, gradual displacement", he said earlier.
Ukraine has called on residents to ignore the Russian move.
The head of Kherson's regional administration said Russia wanted to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields. The transfer or deportation of civilians by an occupying power from occupied territory is considered a war crime.
In a separate development, Russia's Vladimir Putin said he had signed a decree imposing martial law on four Ukrainian regions, including Kherson, which Moscow annexed last month in a move rejected as illegal by the international community.
He told Russia's Security Council that it would give regional leaders additional powers to maintain social order and safeguard important facilities.
On Tuesday night, residents in Kherson started receiving text messages, urging them to evacuate immediately to avoid shelling of residential areas by Ukrainian forces.
Over the last three days, what started as a trickle of Telegram statements hinting at Russian units being reassigned out of the Kherson area has turned into a flood of evacuation orders instructing people to leave the city immediately. On Wednesday morning, Russian soldiers, local officials, and civilians were all visible along the west bank of the wide Dnipro River, waiting for barges and ferries that will take them away to the east.
Some Russian spokesmen, like Kirill Stremousov, who serves as the head of Russia’s occupation government in Kherson, are stating that “the battle of Kherson is about to begin.” Others, like the commander of the Russian army group “South,” Gen. Sergei Surovikin, seemed to be sending every possible signal that Russia is preparing to withdraw from the entire area. Overnight, Vladimir Putin formally declared martial law in all four of the oblasts now claimed by Russia. Something is definitely changing.
Local officials have issued evacuation orders giving every possible excuse people might need to leave the city—from warnings that the dam at Nova Kakhovka is in danger of failure, to claims that Ukraine is about to use some “illegal,” but unspecified, weapon on the city.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:30:39 GMT -8
I Imagine They'd Rather Have More Weapons
The European Parliament has awarded the people of Ukraine the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:34:12 GMT -8
Putin Does Something or Other Nasty
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared martial law in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, four regions of Ukraine that Russia proclaimed as annexed last month.
Putin did not immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law, but said the measures were intended to increase the stability of the economy, industry and production in support of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:35:55 GMT -8
How Long, Mario?
Any Chance We Can Say, "So Long Mario"?
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:37:41 GMT -8
Welcome to Russia
This is the Russian authority telling the people of Berdyansk that it’s okay to collect deadwood without applying for a permit. Which is causing a bit of confusion. Berdyansk is a city with a population over over 110,000. It’s not exactly the deep forest. People are used to having electricity and gas to heat their homes.
Welcome to Russia, Berdyansk.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:41:31 GMT -8
Georgia on My Mind
The stakes in the Peach State couldn’t be higher for Democrats. But according to early data, the number of folks casting ballots on the first day of early voting was nearly double the number four years ago, and Black Georgians turned out in record numbers—despite ongoing efforts by the governor to suppress their vote.
Black voters in Georgia accounted for 39% of the nearly 123,000 people who voted in person on the first day of early voting—10% higher than their share of the state’s registered voters, the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) reports.
According to the AJC’s analysis, 50% of early voters identified as white, about 1% identified as Asian or Hispanic, and 9% opted out of choosing a race or chose “other.”
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:48:09 GMT -8
Follow the Money
We'll start with the Senate, where Democratic candidates outraised their GOP opponents $193 million to $104 million among donors—that is, excluding any self-funding—for a margin of 64-35; the balance went to Utah independent Evan McMullin, who hauled in $2.5 million for the quarter. That's down from the 71-29 advantage Team Blue enjoyed at the same point in the 2020 cycle, but it's still left many Republican contenders relying on super PACs to get their message out.
However, as we frequently emphasize, candidates for federal office get considerably more bang for their buck because FCC regulations give them—but not outside groups—discounted rates on TV and radio. That's had a profound impact on the air wars this year.
Does the Money Matter?
Democrats approached the American elections of 2020 hoping to make Joe Biden a president with a big congressional majority. The party’s Senate candidates in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Montana and South Carolina all raised far more money than their opponents did. Yet all five lost.
At first glance, this suggests that campaign donations fail to predict electoral outcomes. Most studies show that, in general elections for federal offices, money buys few votes directly: once the airwaves are saturated with ads, further spots make little difference. But in the past, data on some contributions—those by individuals, which are limited to $2,900 per candidate-donor pair—have offered precious insight.
When a party’s share of these donations in a state or district has risen from one election to the next, its vote share has tended to increase too. The best explanation is that these funds, unlike those from parties or bundling groups, tend to flow to campaigns with hard-to-measure strengths like candidate quality or voter enthusiasm.
Any weakening of this pattern could explain Democratic Senate candidates’ losses in 2020. In recent years, political-donation websites like ActBlue and WinRed have nationalised campaign finance. In 2020 out-of-state donors accounted for 68% of contributions by individuals, up from 31% in 2012. Such benefactors may never have heard of the recipients of their gifts, and are not eligible to vote for them.
In theory, this could make financial data less useful in revealing a candidate’s strength or weakness. However, if you strip out the impact of other factors that affect donations and voting, the numbers remain informative—even in the ActBlue era.
Most incumbents out-raise their opponents. So do Democrats running in liberal states, and Republicans in conservative ones. Using these trends, we calculated the expected shares of votes and individual donations in each Senate race since 2008. For example, a Republican facing a Democratic incumbent in Florida in 2018 should get 20% of contributions and 46% of votes.
Compared with such benchmarks, good fundraisers have had unusual success. In 2018-20, candidates with donation shares at least 15 percentage points above expectations beat their predicted vote shares by three points on average. In Florida in 2018, Rick Scott, the Republican nominee, got an impressive 40% of donations, and won.
The finding that money still matters should please Democrats, who are once again winning the fundraising wars. It implies that the party’s financial edge reflects real strengths, which were just too small to win the red states it targeted in 2020. This year, Democrats are competing on friendlier terrain: Republican senators are retiring in North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Flipping just one of them would make Democrats likely to hold the Senate.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:51:34 GMT -8
Previous Guy Responds to Defamation Lawsuit With More Defamation
One of the roughly 26 sexual misconduct accusations that have been leveled against Trump involves journalist E. Jean Carroll, who claims Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-’90s. Carroll has sued Trump, saying that his denial of the alleged rape—which included Trump’s standard, and totally depraved, “she’s not attractive enough to rape” defense—amounted to defamation.
Well, it looked for a time like Trump might squirm out of this one, in part because his allegedly defamatory statements were made while he was cosplaying as president. It was an absurd argument, but it appeared to be the best defense he had.
A Tuesday report from VICE News suggests Trump really stepped in it when he repeated the denial at the heart of Carroll’s defamation suit. After a judge ruled last week that Trump must answer questions under oath on Oct. 19 in connection with the lawsuit, Trump freaked out, writing, in part, “[Carroll] completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”
Trump’s lawyers have argued for months that he can’t be held personally responsible in the suit because his denial took place during his presidency, and therefore fell under his official duties as president. But by repeating his denial last week in an online tirade posted on his social media site, Truth Social, and blasted out in an emailed statement, Trump essentially re-upped the activity at the heart of the lawsuit—at a moment when he’s not the president anymore.
In other words, Trump may have just kicked the legs out from under one of his strongest legal defenses, according to Barbara McQuade, who previously served as Detroit’s top federal prosecutor.
“She [Carroll] should amend her complaint to include an additional count based on the new statement,” McQuade told VICE News. “Because Trump is no longer president, this statement was most certainly not made in the scope of his federal employment.”
Stable Genius Alert
GEORGE CONWAY: “So a woman accuses you of rape. You make a bunch of statements accusing her of lying. She sues you for defamation. Your defense (such as it is) was that you were POTUS when you made the statements so you can't be sued personally.
“You litigate that FOR YEARS. You still have a chance at winning that argument. Meanwhile, the judge orders you to be deposed anyway. YOU GET BIG MAD. SO WHAT DO YOU DO??
“You issue a BRAND NEW statement REPEATING all the earlier defamatory statements, but since you're no longer POTUS, you NO LONGER HAVE THAT DEFENSE you've been pushing for years that you made the statements while you were president!!!
ABSOLUTELY
BRILLIANT!!”
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:55:57 GMT -8
What's the Big Source of Inflation? Russia? Nope! Gas Prices? Nope! Low Interest Rates? Nope!
A Drop in the Bucket Gas Tank
President Joe Biden will announce the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve Wednesday as part of a response to recent production cuts announced by OPEC+ nations, and he will say more oil sales are possible this winter, as his administration rushes to be seen as pulling out all the stops ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
.................
United States Oil Consumption was reported at 18.7 million Barrels / Day in Dec 2021
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 8:58:49 GMT -8
What is the QOP Plan If They Win Congress? Less Ukraine Aid. Investigations and Impeachment. Social Security and Medicare Cuts. A National Abortion Ban.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans will not hand a “blank check” to Ukraine if his party wins next month’s elections, apparently confirming that bipartisan congressional support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia is wavering.
McCarthy, speaking to Punchbowl News, acknowledged the significance of the conflict, but said Americans are dealing with economic problems at home and can’t afford to prioritize helping Ukraine.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “They just won’t do it.”
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 9:00:23 GMT -8
This Really Was a Witch Hunt
A jury on Tuesday acquitted on all counts a think tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.
The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by Special Counsel John Durham as part of his probe into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The first two cases ended in an acquittal and a guilty plea with a sentence of probation.
Danchenko betrayed no emotion as the verdict was read. His wife wiped away tears after the fourth and final “not guilty” was read by the clerk.
The acquittal marked a significant setback for Durham, who declined to comment after the hearing, as did several jurors.
Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, and then his presidency, the investigation over the course of more than three years failed to produce evidence that met those expectations. The sole conviction — an FBI agent admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump aide — was for conduct uncovered not by Durham but by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the two cases that Durham took to trials ended in across-the-board acquittals.
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 9:03:03 GMT -8
The Truth About the Lie
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 9:05:19 GMT -8
We've All Had Those Thoughts
Call a Crackhead!
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Post by mhbruin on Oct 19, 2022 9:11:33 GMT -8
Where's the Beef?
The special master appointed to review the documents former President Trump stored at his Florida home expressed hesitation during a Tuesday conference that they should be shielded from Justice Department investigators.
Judge Raymond Dearie asked attorneys for Trump to offer up more details about why an initial batch of documents already set aside by the Justice Department would be subject to privilege.
“It’s a little perplexing as I go through the log,” Dearie said. “What’s the expression — ‘Where’s the beef?’ I need some beef.”
The batch of documents in question includes a log where recommendations on pardons were among the materials Trump had in his home, a detail known only after a court filing was accidentally briefly unsealed before being removed from the public docket.
The conference comes as attorneys on behalf of Trump as well as the Justice Department are reviewing 11,000 unclassified records stored at Mar-a-Lago totaling 21,792 pages — much lower than the 200,000 initial estimate by the company hired to scan them.
Dearie also questioned why Trump’s team had claimed one of the documents was his personal property but also protected by executive privilege — one dealing with presidential records.
“Unless I’m wrong, and I’ve been wrong before, there’s certainly an incongruity there,” Dearie said.
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