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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:36:55 GMT -8
I saw a baguette at the zoo. It was bread in captivity.
Somehow, I Don't Think Russia is Close to Running Out of Convicts
Fighters from Russia's mercenary Wagner Group have ballooned from 1,000 to nearly 20,000 in Ukraine, British government officials say, a sign of Russia's growing reliance on the military contractor in support of its invasion.
Russia is widely believed to be struggling to recruit soldiers and maintain morale. The West estimates Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers and President Vladimir Putin launched a recruitment drive in September to boost numbers.
Meanwhile, Russia has suffered a series of setbacks on the battlefield and UK officials believe Russia is turning to the Wagner group as a consequence. The private military company is now actively promoting its role in the war. As is its main backer, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man once known as Putin's chef. But, so far, Wagner's bark seems to be proving worse than its bite.
The BBC has been briefed by UK officials who've been tracking the activities of the Wagner Group. They say the group is now playing a much higher profile role in the war in Ukraine. But officials add that Wagner has also traded "quality for quantity" and is now facing the same challenges and losses on the battlefield as the wider Russian military.
Wagner's inflated ranks are linked to its targeted recruitment of convicts in Russian prisons. UK officials say open source estimates suggest that the numbers of convicts in Russian prisons fell by over 23,000 in the two months leading up to November 2022 - the period in which it was recruiting.
Many convicts are believed to have joined Wagner - though there are no precise numbers. In return they have been told they'll get paid and have their sentences commuted after serving six months on the front line. Whilst Wagner claims to pay compensation to the families of those killed in action, there are reports some receive nothing.
As of this morning, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that over 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:38:18 GMT -8
I Haven't Stopped Believing. I Never Believed.
A member of the band Journey has served a bandmate with a cease and desist order after he performed their hit Don't Stop Believin' for Donald Trump.
Guitarist Neal Schon said keyboardist Jonathan Cain "has no right to use Journey for politics".
Cain, whose wife Paula White is an advisor to the former president, played the group's anthem at an event at Mr Trump's estate in Florida last month.
The pair are already in a legal battle over spending on the band credit card.
Their current acrimony may make for frosty relations when they go back on tour in January.
Don't Stop Believin' was first released in 1981 but enjoyed a resurgence after being used in TV shows The Sopranos and Glee.
It was written by Cain and Schon in collaboration with singer Steve Perry, who left the band in 1998.
Last month, it was revealed to be the most-streamed song from 1981 in the UK.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:40:48 GMT -8
This May Not Be Admissible In Court, But We All Know They Are Guilty As Sin
Five seemed to be their favourite number.
Key allies of former US President Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any substantive questions when they appeared before the congressional committee The panel released the transcripts of 35 interviews with witnesses on Wednesday as it prepares to make public the final report of its January 6 probe.
Close Trump allies – including right-wing operative Roger Stone, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and lawyer John Eastman – spent almost the entirety of their interviews with the panel invoking the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.
The amendment, part of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, shields people from being compelled to be witnesses against themselves.
While some former officials in Trump’s orbit and the former president himself defied the committee’s subpoenas, risking criminal charges, others appeared before the committee but effectively offered no information.
If You Are the Feds and Someone Takes the Fifth, Won't You Investigate Them a Lot Harder?
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:42:20 GMT -8
Is This the Pro-Putin Caucus?
Only 86 out of 213 Republican members of the US House of Representatives showed up to hear Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky address Congress in Washington on Wednesday, according to The Hill. The snub occurred after the House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly rejected the proposal for an audit of military and other aid to Ukraine earlier this month.
We Know TucKGBer Likes Russia. He Said So.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went on a bizarre tirade against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, complaining that the Ukrainian president was “dressed like the manager of a strip club” when he addressed Congress on Wednesday.
In a historic in-person appeal to a rare joint session of Congress, Zelenskyy thanked the U.S. for helping his country fight back against the Russian invasion. As Ukraine enters a brutal winter, Zelenskyy, dressed in battle fatigues, highlighted the importance of U.S. aid to the country’s ongoing resistance.
Carlson was concerned with the wartime leader’s choice of outfit.
“As far as we know, no one’s ever addressed the United States Congress in a sweatshirt before, but they love him much more than they love you,” he told viewers.
Throughout the war, Carlson has repeatedly parroted Russian propaganda and elevated conspiratorial claims about U.S. assistance to Ukraine.
Unsurprisingly, he was outraged by Zelenskyy’s request for more money and weapons, and used the opportunity to attack him on multiple fronts.
“The point was to fawn over the Ukrainian strip club manager and hand him billions more dollars from our own crumbling economy,” Carlson said. “It is hard, in fact it may be impossible, to imagine a more humiliating scenario for the greatest country on Earth.”
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:43:59 GMT -8
Why Would They Ever End This? Are They Afraid Their Drivers Might Earn a Decent Living?
Amazon is extending its program that allows customers to send their delivery drivers a $5 tip, following unprecedented demand in the program's initial rollout.
The program allows Amazon customers to use Alexa-enabled devices like Echo or Echo Show, and Amazon’s mobile app, to tip their most recent delivery driver. When a customer says, “Alexa, Thank My Driver” into the device, the driver will receive the $5.
Amazon initially launched the program Dec. 7, but ended it after one day after receiving more than one million thank-my-driver requests.
"After extraordinary participation by the community, starting December 21, we are extending the 'Alexa, Thank My Driver' $5 appreciation program by an additional one million 'thank yous'!" the company said on its website. "Drivers will receive a notification of when the $5 promotion has ended."
In a separate emailed statement, the company said it had already reached nearly five million thank-yous.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:49:47 GMT -8
So Much Tax Fraud. So Little Time.The new material, obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee after a years-long legal battle, raised a multitude of questions about the methods Trump had employed while president to lower his income taxes, and about failures by the Internal Revenue Service to fully investigate those deductions. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan panel that is known for reviewing the impact of tax legislation and has a staff with deep tax law expertise, reviewed the Trump returns and found dozens of red flags that it believed required further investigation. One involved transactions with his children. According to the tax data, Trump annually received tens of thousands of dollars in interest income from three of his grown children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — money that stemmed from what his returns described as personal loans to them. The committee questioned whether the loans actually “were disguised gifts” to evade gift taxes and allow the children to write off interest payments to their father. Donald Trump’s taxes: Red flags, big losses and a windfall from his father
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:53:37 GMT -8
They shall fight on the beaches, they shall fight on the landing grounds, they shall fight in the fields and in the streets, they shall fight in the hills; they shall never surrender.
It takes a lot to impress long-in-the-tooth politicians but the Time magazine person of the year’s combination of star quality and steel core was enough. As every member rose to their feet, applauding and hollering, even Zelenskiy was overwhelmed for a moment. “It’s too much for me,” he said.
He stood at the same spot that American presidents do when delivering the State of the Union address but cut a very different figure with short dark hair, a moustache and beard. The House waived a rule that requires men to wear a jacket and tie inside the chamber, allowing him to wear a sweater in his trademark wartime olive. He read his speech from pages placed on the lectern before him, tracing the words with his index finger as he spoke English in a raspy, accented voice. [...]
More than one historian compared the visit to Winston Churchill sailing to America soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill held a press conference with President Franklin Roosevelt and joined him in the ceremonial lighting of the National Christmas Tree. He also addressed Congress in the Senate chamber on 26 December 1941. At the end of his half-hour speech, the chief justice gave a “V” for victory sign and one reporter observed: “The effect was instantaneous, electric. The cheers swelled into a roar.”
Cheers turned to roars again for Zelenskiy when, in a nod to Churchill, he declared: “Ukraine holds its lines and will never surrender.”
Yes, Ukraine Does Have Beaches
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:56:30 GMT -8
Does Anyone Really Care About Hunter Biden's Laptop?
The latest batch from the "Twitter Files" trash heap (Part 7) continued in the tradition of the previous six. This episode's author, Michael Shellenberger, promised that he would "present evidence" that the FBI sought to "discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden." Not only did he present no such evidence, he actually presented evidence of the opposite. Such as one email wherein "Twitter debunked false claims" of foreign influence. And another wherein "Twitter's [Yoel] Roth has pushed back against the FBI."
Despite that demonstration of fairness and good judgement, Fox News ran with a particularly deviated narrative. The headline for their "reporting" said that the "FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story."
To the surprise of no one who has watched Fox News for more than a few minutes, that headline - and the accompanying story - was just plain untrue. What Fox News used to craft their false framing was one of Shellenberger's points where he claimed that "The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time." He elaborated with a quote from an unnamed Twitter staffer who reported that "we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019."
Fox News is deliberately misinterpreting that as the FBI paying Twitter to get them to suppress a story about Hunter Biden. In reality, the FBI is reimbursing Twitter for the time they spent working on requests for information by the FBI. That is a legally mandated payment that requires that "a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information ... shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary."
As if that weren't enough, there isn't even any connection in the emails that were released between the FBI reimbursements and any story about Hunter Biden. Musk and Fox News just totally manufactured that.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 10:58:21 GMT -8
Polls 2 Years Out: What Are They Good For? Absolutely Nothing!
Today, Public Policy Polling released a survey of Arizonans, showing that headed into the 2024 election, Senator Sinema is broadly unpopular and trails Rep. Ruben Gallego significantly in a three-way race. The poll shows Gallego at 40% and Republican Kari Lake at 41%, with Sinema in a distant third at 13%.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 11:02:57 GMT -8
Kari Flake's Flakey Case Takes a Hit
An expert witness for Kari Lake on Wednesday got frustrated in court, ducked around questions and made admissions that contradicted Lake’s case.
Lake, the election-denying Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, started a two-day trial on Wednesday as she seeks to have her election loss overturned. A judge has already dismissed eight of the 10 claims she raised in her lawsuit. She is being allowed to make her case on the remaining two.
She is trying to prove that, one, a Maricopa County official deliberately caused a printer malfunction that lost enough votes to cost her the election; and, two, that ballots were improperly added by a contractor that handles mail ballots.
A witness called by Lake to serve as a cybersecurity expert, Clay Parikh, got into a testy exchange with Maricopa County’s attorney, Tom Liddy, as Parikh was questioned on the first claim.
Parikh ― who has spoken at election denial events organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an election conspiracy theorist ― said he had viewed ballots that were printed in the wrong size and believes there’s no way the printer settings could have been changed by accident.
The county has acknowledged there were printer issues but has said no one was unable to vote as a result. Parikh testified that misprinted ballots that could not be read by a tabulator would be duplicated and ultimately counted anyway.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 11:05:20 GMT -8
Tonight We're Gonna' Die Like It's 1996
Average American life expectancy fell from 77 to 76.4 years last year, bringing U.S. figures back to where they were in 1996, according to federal data released Thursday.
That means all the medical advances over the past quarter century have been erased, said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University, who was not involved in the new study.
For American men, life expectancy fell by more than eight months, and for women the loss was about seven months, the study found. Life expectancy, which is actually a measure of death rates, dropped in every age category over age 1.
Though the rate of decline in life expectancy wasn't as dramatic as in 2020, Woolf said, the fall-off in 2021 was actually worse because it came on top of that year's 17% decline.
The latest decline came as other wealthy countries saw a rebound after the first year of the pandemic, Woolf said. He blames a variety of factors, including low COVID-19 vaccination rates and the general poor health of Americans.
"The fact that the United States in 2020 and 2021 did so much worse than other countries is a warning sign that this health disadvantage that America has had for many years is really getting pretty bad," he said.
Causes of death remained largely the same between 2020 and 2021, led by heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, all three of which occurred more often last year.
Eight of the top 10 causes of death saw statistically significant increases in 2021 over 2020, including unintentional injury and stroke. Only Alzheimer's disease and chronic lower respiratory diseases declined among the leading causes of death.
Death rates from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, which are often alcohol-related, also rose during the pandemic, the data showed. Woolf said people might have turned to alcohol to reduce economic, social and other stresses of the previous two years.
Drug overdoses increased during the pandemic, but Woolf doesn't like the common term "deaths of despair" because many people start taking addictive painkillers on a doctor's orders after a surgery.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 11:07:26 GMT -8
How Much Money Did He Waste on This?
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will take down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers at the Mexico border, settling a lawsuit and political tussle with the U.S. government over trespassing on federal lands.
The Biden administration and the Republican governor entered into an agreement that Arizona will cease installing the containers in any national forest, according to court documents filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
The agreement also calls for Arizona to remove the containers that were already installed in the remote San Rafael Valley, in southeastern Cochise County, by Jan. 4 without damaging any natural resources. State agencies will have to consult with U.S. Forest Service representatives.
QOP Governors Love Their Wasteful Border Stunts
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 22, 2022 11:10:39 GMT -8
Remember President Fred? President Wesley? President Rick? President Scott? President Rudy?They were all front-runners. Then stuff happened. I’m going out on a limb here, I know: but J.B. Pritzker is not going to be the next Democratic nominee for president. And the odds are that it won’t be Gavin Newsom either…. The same thing is happening in the GOP, where there is a good deal of post-Trump wish-casting. The cool kid betting has Florida’s Ron DeSantis in the pole position. But don’t count on it, because these things always look better in the perfervid imaginings of pundits and consultants. History suggests — actually it shouts at us — that there is many a slip twixt the hype and an actual candidacy. Just ask President Fred Thompson. Or Rick Perry. Or Gary Hart. Or Jeb (!) Bush, Ed Muskie, Wesley Clark, Scott Walker, or America’s Freaking Mayor. It’s worth remembering that, at one time, they were not just contenders — they were front-runners. And then stuff happened. Cautionary Pundit Tales
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