Thurs: We Could Learn Some Things From Britain, but We Won't

It Sounds Like They Fired the Wrong People

On the day a six-year-old pupil shot and wounded his teacher in the US state of Virginia, school leaders were warned three times that the boy might have a gun, a lawyer for the teacher said.

This included a request to search the boy and a report from another child who said the boy had shown him a gun.

The teacher - Abigail Zwerner, 25 - is recovering after being released from hospital last week.

In the fallout, the school's superintendent has now lost his job.

Board members of Richneck Elementary School voted five-to-one to sack George Parker.

The removal of Mr Parker happened only hours after Ms Zwerner's lawyer, Diane Toscano, announced plans to sue the district, saying the shooting was "entirely preventable".

Police have not announced any charges.

The 6 January shooting - which authorities have described as "intentional" - rocked the Virginia city of Newport News, and raised questions about what legal consequences may follow and for whom.

"On that day, over the course of a few hours, three different times - three times - school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at school and was threatening people," said Ms Toscano.

"But the administration could not be bothered."

This Would Be Funny If People Were Not Still Dying



Greene's contribution to the COVID-19 pandemic has been, near exclusively, the promotion of conspiracy theories, and among the most repulsive of them is the bizarre QAnon-laced hoax claiming that the pandemic isn't killing people: Doctors and the government are killing people with supposedly-"deadly" COVID-19 vaccines.

This is absolute bunk. We know the potential side effects of the vaccine quite well at this point—and we know that the risks involved are miniscule. We also know the effects of catching COVID-19, and those effects include permanent organ damage and, in nearly 7 million cases worldwide, death.

About one in six COVID-19 deaths worldwide are in the United States, putting this nation near the top of global deaths-per-capita statistics.

That is not enough to prove to Marjorie Taylor Greene that COVID-19 is, in fact, quite a dangerous disease. Instead, Greene has been promoting the hoax film "Died Suddenly," an off-the-wall, thoroughly bonkers conspiracy-o-rama premised on the notion that people around the nation are dropping dead because they got vaccinated and GoVeRnMeNT iS CoVEriNG iT UP.

We Could Learn Some Things From Britain, but We Probably Won't

Post-Brexit, both the outlook for Britain and the quality of its politics look very different, as everyone knows. But focusing on a single “Leave” vote risks confusing that one abrupt outburst of xenophobic populism with what in fact is a long-term story of manufactured decline. As Burn-Murdoch demonstrates in another in his series of data-rich analyses of the British plight, the country’s obvious struggles have a very obvious central cause: austerity. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and in the name of rebalancing budgets, the Tory-led government set about cutting annual public spending, as a proportion of G.D.P., to 39 percent from 46 percent.

The cuts were far larger and more consistent than nearly all of Britain’s peer countries managed to enact; spending on new physical and digital health infrastructure, for instance, fell by half over the decade. In the United States, political reversals and partisan hypocrisy put a check on deep austerity; in Britain, the party making the cuts has stayed steadily in power for 12 years.

The consequences have been remarkable: a very different Britain from the one that reached the turn of the millennium as Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia.” Real wages have actually declined, on average, over the last 15 years, making America’s wage stagnation over the same period seem appealing by comparison. As the political economist William Davies has written, the private sector is also behaving shortsightedly, skimping on long-term investments and extracting profits from financial speculation instead: “To put it bluntly, Britain’s capitalist class has effectively given up on the future.” Even the right-wing Daily Telegraph is now lamenting that England is “becoming a poor country.”

Of course, trends aside, in absolute terms Britain remains a wealthy place: the sixth-largest economy in the world, though its G.D.P. is now smaller than that of India, its former colony. And while the deluded promises of Brexit boosters obviously haven’t come to pass, neither have the bleakest projections: food shortages, crippling labor crunches or economic chaos.

What Is the QOP Want?  Austerity!

Treasurer Hunt

With a disclosure filing deadline approaching as questions swirl around his use of campaign funds, embattled Rep. George Santos' campaign appears to be left without a treasurer.

On Wednesday, several fundraising committees associated with the freshman congressman from New York filed amendments to their statements of organizations, notifying the Federal Election Commission of a new treasurer.

But the newly listed treasurer, Thomas Datwyler, a veteran campaign finance treasurer who has served on multiple other political organizations, says he does not work for the Santos campaign and that the filings were signed under his name without his consent.

"On Monday, we informed the Santos campaign that Mr. Datwyler would not be serving as treasurer," Datwyler's attorney Derek Ross told ABC News. "It appears that there's been a disconnect between that conversation and the filings today, which we did not authorize."

Putin Shows How Impotent He Is.  He Uses the Only Tool He Has Left.

Russia responds to major US-German tank deal with a massive missile attack on Ukraine

Would a Con Artist Cheat at Golf?  You Betcha'

Trump announced on his social media platform on Tuesday that he won the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club in unincorporated West Palm Beach last weekend, despite not playing the first round of the tournament.

Members arrived the second day surprised to see Trump with a five-point lead, according to the Daily Mail. But Trump never played the first round as he was attending a funeral in North Carolina of ardent supporter Lynette Hardaway, known by the moniker “Diamond” of the conservative political commentary duo Diamond and Silk.

Trump told tournament organizers he played a strong round on the course Thursday, two days before the tournament started, and decided that would count as his Saturday score for the club championship. That score was five points better than any competitor posted during Saturday's first round.

Or Let the Loser Tell It 

“Competed against many fine golfers and was hitting the ball long and straight. The reason that I announce this on fabulous TRUTH is that, in a very real way, it serves as a physical exam, only MUCH tougher. You need strength and stamina to WIN, & I have strength & stamina – most others don’t. You also need strength & stamina to GOVERN!”