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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:39:19 GMT -8
The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium, at large.
When They Are Fighting Among Themselves, That's a Good Sign That the War is Going Badly
The head of Russia's Wagner private army says it is not getting the ammunition it needs from Moscow, as it seeks to gain control of Bakhmut.
The eastern city has seen months of intense fighting, as Wagner and regular Russian troops try to seize it.
But Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says his army's lack of ammunition could be "ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal".
Yevgeny Prigozhin said Russia’s front lines near Bakhmut could collapse if his forces did not get the shells and rounds promised by Moscow in late February – the latest sign of tension between the Kremlin and the militia chief.
Ukraine's president and military commanders have agreed to strengthen their defence of Bakhmut.
Russia has appeared determined to capture the city for months, but many analysts say it has become a symbolic prize in the war and has little strategic value.
An apparent rivalry between the mercenaries and the regular Russian army seems to have intensified in recent weeks, and this is not the first time Mr Prigozhin has accused the Russian defence ministry of withholding the ammunition it needs.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:41:49 GMT -8
Is it Clean Hydrogen or REALLY Clean Hydrogen?
In August, the White House passed a historic piece of legislation with $369 billion in spending to address climate change. One of the most significant tax credits in that historic law was a tax credit to make hydrogen in climate-conscious ways.
Hydrogen is currently used for many purposes, including making ammonia-based fertilizer, which the world depends on for growing crops, and for refining crude oil into useful petroleum products. But it’s also likened to a “Swiss Army Knife of decarbonization,” because it could be used as a power source in industries that are particularly hard to wean off fossil fuels, like airplanes and heavy shipping.
The impact of the tax credit on emissions reductions depends on how federal agencies implement it. And, as with most things in accounting, the devil lies in the details.
On one side of the debate, some energy providers say that making the rules too strict could kill the clean hydrogen industry before it ever gets off the ground.
“Our view is that if you put too onerous of regulations in place ... the price to produce green hydrogen will be uneconomic and the industry won’t scale, effectively making it dead on arrival,” said a spokesperson for NextEra Energy, which produces clean energy from wind, solar and nuclear sources and owns a major utility in Florida.
On the other side, environmental policy groups argue the rules could end up being so lax that the new “clean” hydrogen industry could actually end up increasing, rather than decreasing, carbon emissions.
“Weak guidance could ... force Treasury to spend more than $100 billion in subsidies for hydrogen projects that result in increased net emissions, in direct conflict with statutory requirements and tarnishing the reputation of the nascent ‘clean’ hydrogen industry,” according to an open letter sent from 18 organizations to federal agencies.
“With loose rules and weak life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions analyses for hydrogen production, the hydrogen tax credit could end up going to producers whose hydrogen is not actually lower-emissions than the alternatives, and could even end up having the indirect effect of increasing emissions from the electricity grid,” explained Emily Kent, who covers fuel sources for the Clean Air Task Force, a climate policy shop that signed on to the letter.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:44:46 GMT -8
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
The Smear Heard Round the World
In the weeks after the 2020 election, Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News talk show became an open mike for Trump’s self-serving conspiracy theories
Confessions from Rupert Murdoch, regret-tinged e-mails from his underlings, expletive-laden texts from Fox stars. Dominion v. Fox News is putting Succession to shame. And as the case careens toward trial, the main character is not Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. It’s Maria Bartiromo.
Bartiromo is named 95 times in the plaintiff’s recent legal brief and 69 times in Fox’s recent response, exceeding the mentions of her better-known colleagues. Dominion is alleging that Bartiromo was present at the creation of a malicious myth that warrants $1.6 billion in damages. Fox, citing the same TV segments, is arguing that Bartiromo did her job responsibly.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:46:26 GMT -8
Boy, Oh Boycott
Dems want to cut Fox off after lawsuit revelations
The icing of Fox News — the ratings-leading network — would include starving the company of advertising dollars and pulling the biggest Democratic stars from the airwaves.
For years, Democrats have been engaged in a debate over whether the party should shun the cable news giant or grudgingly use its airwaves to run counterprogramming. But in the midst of the latest saga, a newer type of reaction has emerged: that they should sever all ties, including any money spent advertising on the network.
“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:48:20 GMT -8
What's Wisconsin Waiting For?
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:54:35 GMT -8
Is Kevin Making Sure the Insurrection Works Next Time?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said he has “no indication” police have gone through the Jan. 6, 2021, footage that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) shared with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.
McCarthy has defended his decision to hand Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, saying he has taken action to ensure lawmakers’ safety won’t be risked by the release of the material.
But Jeffries said there are no signs the video has been screened by authorities.
“It’s not clear to me yet that any material footage that any news personality at another network may have has been vetted, but it must be vetted before anything is released into the public domain,” Jeffries told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
McCarthy has said Carlson pledged to not show “any exits” used by lawmakers and staff at the Capitol, but didn’t specify anything he’s done to ensure the safety of lawmakers and staff won’t be jeopardized by the release of the material.
“There are serious security concerns with releasing footage into the public domain in an era where political violence is on the rise, and there are people, including the former president, who fan the flames of extremism,” the Democratic leader said.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:56:14 GMT -8
Biden Is Still Getting Things Done.
Facing a divided Congress unlikely to pass major legislation, President Joe Biden’s administration is now cajoling or working with private companies to advance an otherwise stymied policy agenda on everything from prescription drug costs to expanding child care options.
On Wednesday, Biden celebrated pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s announcement that it would slash and cap the cost of insulin. Earlier in the week, the Commerce Department announced it would require chipmakers to offer plans for affordable child care to qualify for more than $50 billion in subsidies. And three major airlines responded to Biden’s call in the State of the Union to eliminate fees for parents and children to sit together by doing just that.
All three announcements advance the administration’s long-standing policy goals — to lower prescription drug costs, to expand affordable child care options and to eliminate so-called “junk fees” — in ways Congress has so far been unable to. It shows how the administration is turning to public pressure and regulations to enact its agenda.
“The president’s bully pulpit is a really important tool that he’s using to reduce costs for families in a number of ways,” Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, told HuffPost in a phone interview. “It’s not meant to substitute for getting things through Congress, or for getting something done in rulemaking.”
Key to the efforts is the underlying popularity of the ideas: Lowering prescription drug costs has long been one of the public’s biggest priorities, and public surveys show Biden’s push against junk fees is broadly popular.
“We pick these issues where there is something fundamentally unfair and unreasonable that is happening, and you shine the presidential spotlight on it,” Ramamurti continued. “The president must have talked about lowering the price of insulin 100 times over the last year and a half as he’s been pushing for this, and this week you saw a pharmaceutical company respond to his call to act.”
The tactic is not a new one for the White House. Shortly after Biden unveiled his antitrust agenda with a sweeping executive order in 2021 including a push for “right to repair,” Apple announced it would sell repair kits to the public for the first time.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 8:58:04 GMT -8
Another Mistake By the Lake
Kari Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona last year, said she wouldn’t be the Republican nominee for vice president in 2024 for the most absurd reason.
“We’re flattered, but unfortunately our legal team says the Constitution won’t allow for her to serve as Governor and VP at the same time,” the election-denying Republican’s campaign tweeted over the weekend.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:00:46 GMT -8
Are All QOP Politicians Creeps?
John Oliver looked at DeSantis’ relentless attacks on the LGBTQ community, the media, voters and more. But the strangest item he uncovered involves what Oliver called “the most bizarre dating tactic I have ever heard.”
DeSantis, according to a former classmate cited in the Financial Times, used to take dates for Thai food, but would pronounce it “thigh food” to see if his date would correct him.
If she did, the article claimed, he’d make an excuse and leave because “he didn’t want a girlfriend who corrected him.”
“If that is true: WOW!” said Oliver. “Just imagine being on that date.”
Oliver launched into a detailed description of just how that date might unfold, right up to the point of DeSantis taking off “leaving you both with the check and the single greatest first-date disaster story of all time.”
Oliver ultimately summed up DeSantis as “a petty autocrat and a bully ― a man with no interest in hearing dissent, questions or indeed the correct pronunciation of Thai food.”
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:03:51 GMT -8
The Bots are Back in Town
Someone has created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump over the past 11 months, an Israeli tech firm has discovered.
Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump's critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested, couldn't beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to influence them, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter's algorithms to maximize their reach.
The sprawling bot network was uncovered by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli firm that shared its findings with The Associated Press. While the identify of those behind the network of fake accounts is unknown, Cyabra's analysts determined that it was likely created within the U.S.
"One account will say, 'Biden is trying to take our guns; Trump was the best,' and another will say, 'Jan. 6 was a lie and Trump was innocent,'" said Jules Gross, the Cyabra engineer who first discovered the network. "Those voices are not people. For the sake of democracy I want people to know this is happening."
Bots, as they are commonly called, are fake, automated accounts that became notoriously well-known after Russia employed them in an effort to meddle in the 2016 election. While big tech companies have improved their detection of fake accounts, the network identified by Cyabra shows they remain a potent force in shaping online political discussion.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:13:54 GMT -8
Isn't It Ironic? Israel's Biggest US Supporter is an Anti-Semetic Evangelical Christian.
When Israel’s former ambassador to the US said his country should worry less about what American Jews think and concentrate on Christian evangelicals as the “backbone” of support for the Jewish state, he had in mind the Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee.
Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members, who have had a significant influence on Republican party politics and in hardening Washington’s already strong support for Israel.
Related: ‘It’s an onslaught right now’: film details US battle against anti-boycott bills
President Donald Trump made no secret of his desire to keep Hagee and Christian Zionist voters happy as a key part of his base by abandoning even the pretense that the US was a neutral player in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Former South Carolina governor and current White House hopeful Nikki Haley recognised Hagee’s power within the most important religious bloc of Republican voters and their influence over political priorities, from anti-abortion laws to Israel policy, when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch last month.
“Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up,” she enthused.
Left largely unmentioned by Haley and Hagee’s Israeli allies were his antisemitic views, including calling Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.
None of that discouraged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from addressing a CUFI summit in Washington in 2019.
“Pastor Hagee, I want to thank you for your enduring, tremendous support. For decades you’ve been leading the effort to strengthen support for Israel from within the Christian community,” he said.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, was not alone in his view about the significance of Christian evangelical support as American Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s drift ever further to the right.
Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said that evangelical Christians “support Israel with much greater fervour and devotion than many in the Jewish community”. Christian Zionists also overwhelmingly vote Republican whereas polls show that most American Jews do not.
The result of that support, and its impact on Republican primary elections in particular, can be seen in major policy shifts including Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a political statement Christian Zionists spent years agitating for. Hagee gave a benediction at the opening in 2018.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:17:56 GMT -8
Todnight They're Gonna Party Like It 1969
Russia's military is fighting with 60-year-old T-62 tanks, having been forced to bring the retired vehicles out of storage to the frontlines in Ukraine in response to heavy armored vehicle losses, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
The MOD said in an intelligence update on Monday that even the 1st Guards Tank Army, which has long been considered an elite Russian unit, is being reequipped with dated Soviet-era T-62s.
The 1st Guards Tank Army was due to receive next-generation T-14 Armata main battle tanks – Russia's newest and most powerful tanks – starting from 2021, the intelligence update said. The T-14 is a high-tech vehicle with defense systems that have the means to shoot down anti-tank rockets, as well as sophisticated sensors, onboard drones, and a high level of automation, as Insider's Sophia Ankel previously reported.
19fortyfive reported that T-62s would be at a "grave disadvantage" in a head-to-head fight against Ukrainian tanks due to inferior sensors, fire control, armor, and armor penetration. The UK Ministry of Defence also noted the absence of modern explosive reactive armor as a potential vulnerability.
Some of Russia's T-62s have been retrofitted with sighting system upgrades, per the UK Ministry of Defence.
Russia's tank force, which consists of several powerful divisions, has suffered heavy losses during the war in Ukraine. Across the board, it's lost at least 1,780 tanks since the outset of the conflict in February 2022, according to an analysis by open-source intelligence platform Oryx.
Insider's Jake Epstein reported that Russia's tank force, once seen as formidable, is being torn apart by the Ukrainian military. US officials have said on more than one occasion that Russia has likely lost as many as half its main battle tanks while fighting in Ukraine, if not more.
Russian tanks have fallen prey to Ukrainian soldiers using anti-tank Javelin missiles, with military experts telling Insider that Russia is experiencing heavy losses because it doesn't know how to use its tanks properly.
Since the summer of 2022, approximately 800 T-62 tanks have been retrieved from Russian storage, the MOD intelligence update said. Speculation that Moscow has tapped into its reserve of T-62s has been around since last spring, with video sightings apparently showing the armored vehicles in Ukraine.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:20:32 GMT -8
You May Have Heard that SCOTUS Has Stopped Biden's College Debt Relief Program. Not So Fast, My Friend.
Sara Diaz was feeling emotional when she checked her email Tuesday. She was among the hundreds of Neiman Marcus employees laid off last month and had just finished a stressful phone call about her health insurance.
As she went through her inbox, she noticed an email from the Department of Education. Diaz had applied to have the government cancel $69,314 in federal student loan debt she took on to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, a for-profit school that closed in 2019.
Two and half years, two Education secretaries and one class-action lawsuit later, her application had finally been approved.
“I almost couldn't believe it,” she said. “I reread it probably five times.”
For decades, a lesser-known program for federal student loan recipients has allowed borrowers to assert a defense to repayment if a school misled them or broke state law. Since the Education Department introduced a formal application in 2015, more than 770,000 people have applied. Nearly half a million applications were still pending at the end of January.
After a modest start at the tail end of the Obama administration, the program stagnated under former President Trump. But under President Biden, the Education Department has ramped up processing borrower defense applications, overhauled the regulations governing the program and used it to cancel billions in debt for people who attended for-profit schools accused of defrauding students.
It’s part of a broader strategy the Biden administration has used to offer debt relief to the borrowers struggling the most with their loans. At a time when Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for some borrowers is a nonstarter in Congress and at risk of being blocked by the Supreme Court, his administration has tried to bolster the existing web of programs, policies and regulations meant to protect student loan borrowers.
The Education Department has forgiven more than $18 billion for borrower defense applicants and people whose schools closed before they finished their degrees, including $5.8 billion for 560,000 Corinthian College students and $3.9 billion for 200,000 borrowers who were enrolled at ITT Technical Institutes.
It's Only a Partial Failure
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 6, 2023 9:25:53 GMT -8
You May Have Heard that Oil Sales are Keeping Russia's Economy Healthy. Not So Fast, My Friend."Russian oil is being traded at around $50 (£40) per barrel. That has been driven by the embargo because Russia now has to try to sell elsewhere." Moscow is losing out on about $175m (£140m) a day from fossil fuel exports due to these measures, according to a study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). EU oil ban and price cap are costing Russia EUR 160 mn/day, but further measures can multiply the impact
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