Sat: The Unreported Epidemic Sweeping the US

Vanessa is Not in a Relationship With You

For over a decade, stolen images of a former adult star have been used to scam victims out of thousands of dollars. How does it feel to be the unwitting face of so many romance scams?

Almost every day, Vanessa gets messages from men who believe they are in a relationship with her - some even think she's their wife. They are angry, confused and some want their money back - which they say they sent her to pay for daily expenses, hospital bills, or to help relatives.

But it is all a lie. Vanessa doesn't know these men. Instead, her pictures and videos - lifted from her past life in adult entertainment - have been used as the bait in online romance scams dating back to the mid-2000s. Victims had money extorted through fake online profiles using Vanessa's name or likeness, in a type of romance scam called catfishing.

More Hungry Poor People 

When pandemic aid that has boosted food-stamp benefits gets cut next week, millions of low-income Americans will confront smaller balances in the accounts they use to pay for groceries, leaving food banks bracing for a spike in demand.

As of March 1, the emergency allotment for individuals and households enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will end in 32 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

That means recipient households will see their monthly grocery allocations reduced by at least $95, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research and policy think tank. In daily terms, that equates to trimming the roughly $9 per-person average to about $6.10. And the change comes when food prices in January were had increased 10% over the same month last year.

Imhofe Doesn't Have a Snowball's Chance in Hell of Telling the Truth

Oklahoma’s Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe’s retirement announcement was met by most people around here with a great deal of joy. Inhofe was a terrible senator with a terrible record. Maybe the only worthwhile highlight from Inhofe’s career was his pulling out a snowball on the Senate floor in some bizarre attempt to prove that climate change was not real.

One of his many hack-conservative positions was voting against a series of COVID-19 pandemic aid packages, including the Families First Coronavirus Response in March 2020. The bill was the least our elected officials could do—the least, and Sen. Jim Inhofe couldn’t even do that. This vote came toward the end of his terrifying reign, which ended abruptly when reports came out in February 2022 that he would be resigning from his position.

About a year after his retirement, Inhofe decided to do a little interview with the Tulsa World, where he admitted that the real reason he retired was due to continuing long-term COVID-19 effects. But there’s more.

According to Inhofe, “Five or six others have (long COVID), but I’m the only one who admits it.” Whatever Inhofe means in the grand scheme of things, this is a far more believable statement than his stances and statements as a climate science-denier “numbskull.”

And as HuffPost reports, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine has been pretty open about dealing with the lasting ill effects of COVID-19. Meanwhile, even when he’s bragging about what a dunderhead hypocrite he is, Jim Inhofe is sort of a liar.

Part of what makes this news is that in February 2022, when he announced his retirement, Sen. Inhofe claimed that he had just tested positive for “a very mild case” of COVID-19. But if he had just gotten a mild case of COVID-19, how would he have long-term effects? Clearly, that “very mild case” was either the long-term effect surfacing, or a new case, or a case from the past that he was pretending was happening now that he was announcing his retirement.

Previos Guy, Buttigieg, and His Boots

During his train wreck, water-distribution tour of East Palestine, OH, Trump said he was not responsible for what happened during his administration. When a reporter asked him about his “pulling back rail regulations," Trump replied, “I had nothing to do with it.” Not much of a profile in courage. Apparently, during Trump’s one term, the buck stopped somewhere else.

Trump continued by attacking Pete Buttigieg. He blamed the Transport Secretary for America’s “third world nation” airports. It was his usual fact-free shtick. The Biden administration has provided $15 billion for airport repair and upgrades in its Infrastructure bill. During Trump's time, infrastructure got “a week” but no funding. The man is still incapable of shame.

In response, Buttigieg challenged Trump to do the right thing. During his trip to the crash site on Thursday, a reporter asked Pete:

“You mentioned the national political figures decided to get involved, it sounds like you’re talking about Trump. And then you said, ‘I need your help.’ How can he help?”

“Well, one thing he could do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had ‘nothing to do with it,’ even though it was in his administration. So if he had nothing to do with it, and they did it in his administration against his will, maybe he could come out and say that, that he supports us moving in a different direction.”
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Now that Buttigieg has visited the crash site, Fox News has had to move on from its “where is Secretary Pete?” hysteria. And it landed on Buttigieg’s footwear. Still smarting from Ron DeSantis’s white boot follies after Hurricane Ian, Fox snarked that Buttigieg was wearing “dress boots.”

Under the banner headline “Buttigieg mocked for appearing to wear dress boots while on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio,” reporter Houston Keene wrote,

"Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg appeared to wear dress boots while surveying the train derailment on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio.”

And in case you missed the boots, two sentences later he adds: “The secretary appeared to be wearing leather dress boots, instead of heavy-duty shoes like work boots, while surveying damage in the city.”

The Unreported Epidemic Sweeping the US

Revealed: the US is averaging one chemical accident every two days

Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, recently lamented the toll taken on the residents of East Palestine after the toxic train derailment there, saying “no other community should have to go through this”.

But such accidents are happening with striking regularity. A Guardian analysis of data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by non-profit groups that track chemical accidents in the US shows that accidental releases – be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills – are happening consistently across the country.

By one estimate these incidents are occurring, on average, every two days.

“These kinds of hidden disasters happen far too frequently,” Mathy Stanislaus, who served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s office of land and emergency management during the Obama administration, told the Guardian. Stanislaus led programs focused on the cleanup of contaminated hazardous waste sites, chemical plant safety, oil spill prevention and emergency response.

In the first seven weeks of 2023 alone, there were more than 30 incidents recorded by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, roughly one every day and a half. Last year the coalition recorded 188, up from 177 in 2021. The group has tallied more than 470 incidents since it started counting in April 2020.

This is good news.  Let's see how little Kevie responds.  Maybe his strings will start to show, and he'll be revealed for the puppet he is.