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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:26:03 GMT -8
Puns about communism aren't funny, unless everyone gets them.
The Pope Steps In It
Russia has hit out at comments from the Pope that some minority groups of soldiers have behaved worse than others in the invasion of Ukraine.
The "cruellest" troops are generally Chechens and Buryats, Pope Francis told a US magazine.
He also labelled the Holodomor famine caused by the Kremlin in Ukraine in the 1930s a genocide.
Russia called the remarks a "perversion", and said national groups were "one family".
In an interview with America, a Jesuit magazine, Pope Francis was asked about his apparent reluctance to directly condemn Russia for the war.
In response he said he received "much information about the cruelty of the troops".
"Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryats and so on," he said.
The Pope added that "the one who invades is the Russian state".
Chechens, an ethnic group originating in Chechnya, in the south-west of Russia, are mostly Muslim.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:27:36 GMT -8
All The Monks Decided to Thai One On
Asmall Buddhist temple in Thailand has been left without any monks after they were all dismissed for failing drug tests, local officials have said.
Four monks, including the abbot, tested positive for methamphetamine in the northern province of Phetchabun, an official told news agency AFP.
Boonlert Thintapthai said the monks were subsequently sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation.
The raid comes amid a national campaign to tackle drug trafficking.
The monks were reportedly removed from the temple after police administered urine tests on Monday, which saw all four men fail. Officials did not say what had brought the temple to the attention of police.
Mr Thintapthai told AFP that the "temple is now empty of monks and nearby villagers are concerned they cannot do any merit-making".
Merit-making is an important Buddhist practice where worshippers gain a protective force through good deeds - in this case by giving food to monks.
But Mr Thintapthai said that regional officials had sought the assistance of the local monastic chief, who had promised to assign some new monks to the temple in the Bung Sam Phan district in a bid to address the concerns of worshippers.
They Shouldn't Have Monkeyed Around With Speed
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:28:59 GMT -8
Reunited and It Feels So Good
A Texas woman kidnapped as a baby 51 years ago was reunited with her family after they used a home DNA test kit to track her down.
Melissa Highsmith was 22 months old when she was allegedly abducted in August 1971 by a babysitter from her family's Fort Worth apartment, according to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
Her mother, Alta Apantenco, was reportedly accused by police of possibly killing her daughter and hiding the crime, the news station reported. The family, however, said Highsmith was taken from the home by a babysitter who answered Apantenco's newspaper advertisement seeking help.
They spent more than five decades looking for Highsmith before a DNA match on 23andMe provided a break in the case.
"Our finding Melissa was purely because of DNA, not because of any police / FBI involvement, podcast involvement, or even our family’s own private investigations or speculations," her family said in a Facebook post on Sunday on a page titled "We found Melissa!!!" "DNA WINS THIS SEARCH!"
Sister Victoria Highsmith told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that the DNA matched samples from Melissa Highsmith's children. The Highsmiths' parents then provided their own DNA samples.
Within three weeks, the family had found Melissa Highsmith.
"It was like, ‘Boom, boom, boom,’ we found her," Victoria Highsmith said.
A spokesperson for 23andMe said they have never heard of a case like this.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:30:13 GMT -8
The Presidency Is Like COVID. There is No Absolute Immunity.
A federal judge on Monday rejected former President Donald Trump’s argument that he has “absolute immunity” in response to a lawsuit alleging he committed civil rights violations in his attempts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results.
The lawsuit, filed by the NAACP, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and others, accuses the former president and the Republican National Committee of efforts to disenfranchise voters through targeted harassment, intimidation and efforts to prevent the complete counting and certification of ballots after the 2020 election.
The ruling notes that Trump’s lawyers previously argued that he is “absolutely immune” from damages for his actions within the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities as president.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington sided with the civil rights groups, writing that Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election was “purely political and therefore well beyond the contours of presidential immunity.”
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:33:16 GMT -8
The Hardest Part of Putting This Ad Together Is Deciding Which Insane Rants to Include.
When he launched his campaign for U.S. Senate in Georgia, Herschel Walker claimed his deep roots in the state didn’t end with his days as a football legend at the University of Georgia.
It was widely known at the time that the Republican hopeful had been living in Texas for decades, though he has claimed to maintain a residence in Atlanta for “17 years.” Less widely known, however, was that Walker’s wife collected tens of thousands of dollars in rental income for that residence, according to his 2021 financial disclosure forms.
The house doubled as the Walker campaign’s first official address when he launched his bid in August 2021. Fulton County tax and property records show the home is solely owned by Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, who also collected rental income from 2020 and 2021 ranging from $15,000 to $50,000, according to the disclosure—defining the asset as “Georgia residence.”
Blanchard’s company also received a previously unreported $49,997 in COVID relief loans over that same period, at Walker’s Texas address, according to federal data. On one since-revised financial disclosure, Walker claimed the company had generated rental income for Blanchard, suggesting the company had an operational stake in the Atlanta property.
The rental income, which was earned between 2020 and 2021, suggests the Walkers had not only not been living in Georgia before his campaign, but hadn’t used the home for anything but a passive cash stream. That further complicates the variegated story that Walker—a Georgia native and former Dallas Cowboy who has lived in Texas since stepping away from the NFL in the 1990s—has told about his relationship to the state he is now vying to represent in Washington.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:35:31 GMT -8
The War So Far.
No One is Mentioning Similarities to Korea.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:37:33 GMT -8
All Publicity Is Good for the Wack Jobs
Nick Fuentes is boasting about his dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago alongside Kanye West last Tuesday. Trump himself is claiming he had no idea who Fuentes is, but is refusing nonetheless to denounce him. And while a handful of Republicans have chastised Trump for dining with two notorious antisemites, the GOP members of Congress are all playing mum.
There’s a reason Fuentes and his white-nationalist cohorts are tickled pink: The whole fiasco is a huge propaganda victory for them. As Greg Sargent observes at The Washington Post: “It will be read by them as another sign that they are successfully infiltrating the far-right flank of mainstream GOP politics. So will the silence from many Republican leaders since Trump’s dinner with Fuentes.”
My Dinner with Angry
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:39:24 GMT -8
A QOP County in Arizona Has Refused to Certify the Election Results. They Are Sticking It to QOP Candidates.
Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused Monday to certify the 2022 election despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, a decision that was quickly challenged in court by the state’s top election official.
The refusal to certify by Cochise County in southeastern Arizona comes amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who narrowly won the race for governor, asked a judge to order county officials to canvass the election, which she said is an obligation under Arizona law. Lawyers representing a Cochise County voter and a group of retirees filed a similar lawsuit Monday, the deadline for counties to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass.
The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until Friday, when they want to hear once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick wrote in a letter last week that Hobbs is required by law to approve the statewide canvass by next week and will have to exclude Cochise County’s votes if they aren’t received in time.
That would threaten to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:43:12 GMT -8
It's Not Nice to Fool With Mother Nature
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:44:59 GMT -8
I'm Not Sure They Managed to Avoid Insulting Toddlers
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch warned that the House of Representatives needs “toddler-proofing” by Democrats before Republicans take control in January.
“No insult intended to toddlers,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial published Sunday.
The incoming GOP House majority is “a crowd that has literally announced its intention to threaten America’s fiscal stability, block election reforms and abandon Ukraine,” the paper noted.
Extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is among House Republicans who have promised to ax U.S. funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
“Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first. They don’t care about our border or our people,” Greene said earlier this month.
Potential GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has struck a more moderate tone, but has promised no more “blank check” for Ukraine.
“Democrats who still control Congress now have not just a right but a duty to ensure that the worst instincts of the incoming majority are reined in before they’re seated,” the editorial concluded. “Let’s cover those plug sockets.”
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:48:10 GMT -8
Congratulations Kevin McCarthy. She's All Yours!
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 29, 2022 9:49:41 GMT -8
All This So We Can Watch Tunisia Play France
From his home in Bangladesh, Emran Khan watches on his laptop as World Cup teams face off in Qatar's Lusail Stadium.
But he doesn’t think of the ball or the players or the tens of thousands of cheering fans.
Instead, he remembers heaving hundreds of 20-pound concrete blocks for up to 16 hours a day in the scorching sun. He remembers his colleagues vomiting and fainting when the temperature soared to 122 degrees. And he remembers those who died.
"We die for work," Khan said via video call from Dhaka, shaking his head. "We are human beings at the end of the day. We are not machines."
Khan, 34, is indebted and traumatized by his two years in the oil-rich emirate. He's just one of the millions of migrants who worked in the Gulf state in the lead-up to the World Cup. As teams enter the second week of play, he and other activists are continuing to call attention to the true human toll of the controversial tournament.
"There is a lot of pain behind this event," Anish Adhikari, 27, a migrant worker from Nepal, said through a translator. "We contributed to build the stadiums and make the event happen, but at the same time we faced challenges — from non-payment to deception and other sorts of abuses."
Some even lost their lives. While the Qatari government admits to dozens of deaths among migrants working on World Cup projects, human rights groups say thousands died to make the games possible.
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