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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:22:49 GMT -8
I asked my date to meet me at the gym today. She didn't show up. That's when I knew we weren't gonna work out.
Netanyahu Continues to be a Yahoo.
Netanyahu gives Israelis ‘green light to shoot Palestinians’
Israeli PM’s plan to expedite gun permits for Israelis gives the go-ahead to inflict more violence on Palestinians, analysts say.
A rise in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is feared following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to make it easier for Israelis to acquire firearms.
On Saturday, Netanyahu said he would expedite gun permits for Israeli citizens and to step up efforts to collect “illegal weapons”.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:26:30 GMT -8
Driving a Tesla Over a CliffMore than a decade ago, investment experts James Altucher and Douglas Sease wrote a book for the Wall Street Journal called Investing in the Apocalypse. They argued that the end of the world is a profitable opportunity for those who know how to “fade the fear”, as everyone else panics. They maintained that when disaster strikes, investors should approach it with the rationale that “no matter how bad things seem, they really aren’t that bad”. Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, they advised investing in big pharmaceutical companies as a strategy to reap dividends from global pandemics. They also encouraged putting money into renewable energy systems while ramping up oil production. Today, it seems many have followed Althucher and Sease’s advice. Under the guise of taking action on the pandemic, billions of dollars have been poured into big pharma, instead of public health and policies aimed at preventing another global outbreak. The supposed energy transition that has been undertaken has seen renewable energy production expanded, but there has been no indication that oil and gas are being substituted and ultimately phased out. What is worse, governments and corporations have teamed up to turn the apocalypse into a money-making opportunity. They have rushed to put forward false solutions to the climate crisis: from the push to replace fuel-engine vehicles with electric ones, to so-called climate-smart agriculture, to protected areas for nature conservation and massive tree planting projects for carbon offsets. All this trickery is called “greening” and it is designed to profit off of climate fears, not stop climate change. While guaranteeing high returns, this deception is tantamount to the genocide of the hundreds of millions of people who will perish from the effects of climate change within the next century because things are that bad. We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:27:22 GMT -8
No Good News Goes Unpunished
Anti-vaccine activists who believe without evidence that a Covid vaccine caused Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest this month have pivoted to a new conspiracy theory to explain his swift recovery: that the Buffalo Bills safety has been replaced by a body double.
Though outlandish, the theory has gained enough attention to draw a response from Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who responded on a podcast this week.
“That’s stupid,” he said.
This most recent conspiracy theory about Hamlin underscores the lengths to which anti-vaccine activists will go to further the false narrative that Covid vaccines cause widespread injury and death, and highlights a widening audience susceptible to even the most absurd misinformation that powers the anti-vaccine movement.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:28:09 GMT -8
Tick, Tick, Boom!
This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.
The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake. Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks.
And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:31:37 GMT -8
Judge Shopping: The Texas Two-Step
As soon as President Joe Biden entered the White House, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an unprecedented campaign of obstruction to block his agenda in the courts. Paxton took advantage of a quirk—really, a loophole—in the federal judiciary: A state can pick the specific judge who will oversee its case by filing in a small division where only one judge sits. Using this strategy, Paxton has positioned his cases before a rotating cast of the same conservative judges, most of them nominated by Donald Trump. They have dutifully played their role in this pantomime of litigation, issuing an unending series of sweeping injunctions that block Biden administration policies nationwide for months or years.
On Thursday, the administration finally said: enough. In response to yet another Texas lawsuit exploiting this loophole, Biden’s Justice Department called out Paxton—and, implicitly, the judges playing along with his scheme. The DOJ highlighted Texas’ “blatant” and shameless “judge-shopping,” urging a transfer to another court “in the interests of justice.” Naturally, Trump-nominated Judge Drew Tipton is unlikely to oblige; that is, after all, why Paxton hand-picked him for this lawsuit. But the DOJ’s filing marks a new phase of battle against Republicans’ judicial gamesmanship: The Justice Department is playing hardball in the lower courts, forcing compromised judges to address their own complicity in a cynical partisan chicanery.
For nearly two years, the Justice Department largely held its tongue about this abuse of the system. Over the past few months, however, its tone shifted. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar’s invective against nationwide injunctions at the Supreme Court in December was inflected with a criticism of states shopping cases to “one single district judge in a forum of their choosing.” And in October, the DOJ fought back when Oklahoma filed a complaint in Texas about a prisoner in Louisiana—even though the case had literally no connection to Texas. There, the DOJ filed a motion to transfer for the obvious reason that no party had any business litigating in the state. (The judge ultimately skirted the issue by denying jurisdiction.)
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:38:23 GMT -8
Turning to Our Antarctic Correspondent, ... (Notice That No Media Outlet Has an Antarctic Correspondent.)
Conditions at the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers in West Antarctica appear to be rapidly deteriorating. Satellite imagery shared by Kris Can Steenbergen and Chris Cartwright on Twitter show massive cracks and iceberg calving along with the breakup of sea ice that has accelerated since Iceberg B22A lifted off its sea mount and entered the open ocean.
The oceans are now the hottest they have ever been. Ever!
The predicted fracturing of the marine extensions of the two enormous marine-terminating ice streams reported last year that will occur in three to five years is now happening. Faster than expected.
All pinning points are simultaneously collapsing. We are in unchartered territory.
Come On Up For the Rising
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:41:32 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Oregonian Rose Wakefield, 63, and the jury that awarded her a million dollars in damages after a gas station attendant worker told her "I don’t serve Black people."
Ukraine, as both the U.S. & Germany agree to give the country their 800-pound gorillas of battle tanks on President Zelenskyy's 45th birthday to turn Russia's military hardware into mashed potato
The wheels of justice, as brainwashed MAGA cultist Richard Barnett, who propped his feet on Speaker Pelosi’s desk Jan. 6, 2021, is convicted on multiple charges by a federal jury
A&W Root Beer, for deliberately goading clothing-on-candy-obsessed Fox News into a puritan on-air hissy fit by putting pants on their bear mascot "Rooty"
President Biden: 2.9% GDP in Q4; poll numbers up, jobless numbers down; restores protections to Alaska's Tongass National Forest; unveils Welcome Corps refugee sponsorship program
The Justice Department, for suing Google over digital ad monopolizing, and smashing the Hive ransomware ring that extorted millions from schools, hospitals and infrastructure providers
The Florida high school students threatening to sue white-supremacist Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state over their ban on a new AP course on African-American history
Virginia Senate Democrats, for defeating MAGA Gov. Glenn Youngkin's precious abortion-ban bills
The beavers helping Ukraine defend itself by building dams and creating impassibly-marshy conditions along its border with Putin ally Belarus
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:43:49 GMT -8
Never Again!In 2011, after faltering debt limit negotiations with House Republicans brought the U.S. to the brink of economic calamity, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sat by the fireplace in the Oval Office, with their top aides on the couch. While relieved at having narrowly averted disaster, they were stunned by what had transpired. Obama and Biden made a vow: Never again. They agreed that going forward, “Nobody can use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool,” said a former Obama official involved in the fiscal discussions, who recounted the Oval Office meeting and the “lesson of 2011” they all discussed. “It made you hold your stomach. You couldn’t believe you were at this situation," the official said. The U.S. had just suffered its first credit downgrade. Markets were rattled. Consumer and business confidence was shaken. Stocks took a hit. And the recovery from the Great Recession was in question. Democrats averted the cliff — by acceding to $2 trillion in spending cuts the GOP had demanded after negotiations on a “grand bargain” broke down — but Obama and Biden agreed that the mere threat of default had taken a serious toll. Never again: How a 'lesson of 2011' shaped Biden's no-negotiation stance on debt limit
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:48:47 GMT -8
Crimea and Punishment: The Critical Battlefield
The war in Ukraine is poised to become even more violent this year with a major Russian offensive expected and more advanced Western-made weapons pouring in to bolster Ukrainian forces. Along these lines, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg recently warned that the war has entered a "decisive phase."
This new stage of the war could bring the fight to a territory vital to Russia's military capabilities in Ukraine and cherished by Russian President Vladimir Putin: Crimea.
The Black Sea peninsula, which was invaded by Russian forces and illegally annexed by Putin in 2014, served as a launchpad for Russia's invasion last February and helped pave the way for Russian forces to occupy a significant chunk of southern Ukraine. Crimea continues to be a base of attack for Russian aircraft and warships striking Ukraine.
"The decisive terrain for this war is Crimea. The Ukrainian government knows that they cannot settle for Russia retaining control of Crimea," retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army Europe, told Insider.
"The next few months will see Ukraine setting the conditions for the eventual liberation of Crimea," he added, emphasizing that the country will "never be safe or secure or able to rebuild their economy so long as Russia retains Crimea."
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2023 9:53:16 GMT -8
This Isn't News, But It's Fun
You Give Us 42 Minutes, We'll Give You the Sixites
"Turn, Turn, Turn" is by the Byrds, Not the Yardbirds
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Post by gr8lurburt on Jan 29, 2023 18:39:39 GMT -8
Another conspiracy theorist sheds his sheep's clothing.
Are you Marjorie or Lauren?..............Gomert? Sheesh...
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