|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:39:28 GMT -8
The Roman emperor's wife hates playing hide and seek because wherever she goes, Julius Caesar.
I Wish Them a Miserable Life Together. He has Made All of Our Lives Worse.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has announced his engagement to his partner Ann Lesley Smith, a former police chaplain.
Mr Murdoch, 92, and Ms Smith, 66, met in September at an event at his vineyard in California.
The businessman told the New York Post, one of his own publications: "I dreaded falling in love - but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I'm happy."
He split with fourth wife Jerry Hall last year.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:41:31 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:42:38 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Nebraska state senator Machaela Cavanaugh, now in her third week of a filibuster to prevent passage of a MAGA cult bill promoting hate and violence against transgender residents and their parents
The North Dakota state Supreme Court, for nixing a total abortion ban law by ruling that under the state constitution "a pregnant woman has a fundamental right to obtain an abortion to preserve her life or health."
The EPA, for announcing it will impose strict limits on toxic PFAS---aka "forever chemicals"---in drinking water
The North Carolina state Senate, for voting 44-2 to expand Medicaid, a move supported by nearly 80 percent of residents there
Maine and Minnesota: as the final turnout numbers are reported, they're deemed the states who had the highest voter participation in last year's midterm elections
President Biden's crusade for lower drug prices, as Sanofi announces the cost of insulin will be capped at $35---the last of the Big Three drugmakers to stop their price gouging
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for signing the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act that expands basic protections for the LGBTQ community
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, for continuing to block the Florida MAGA cult's white-supremacist anti-education law known as the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" from taking effect
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:45:38 GMT -8
Did You Miss a Bakhmut Update?The T0504 road is Ukraine’s lifeline to Bakhmut. Without it, Ukraine has no choice but to retreat. Ukraine’s Bakhmut salient remains tenuous, as Russian forces hold positions all around Bakhmut:
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:47:28 GMT -8
If You Like Watching Tanks Burn, You'll Love This Video!
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:52:16 GMT -8
Maybe the Banking Situation Really is BadAt the end of last year U.S. banks were facing more than $600 billion of unrealized losses because of rising rates, federal regulators estimated. Those losses had the potential to chew through more than one-third of banks’ so-called capital buffers, which are meant to protect depositors from losses, according to Fitch Ratings. The thinner a bank’s capital buffers, the greater its customers’ risk of losing money and the more likely investors and customers are to flee. But the $600 billion figure, which accounted for a limited set of a bank’s assets, might understate the severity of the industry’s potential losses. This week alone, two separate groups of academics released papers estimating that banks were facing at least $1.7 trillion in potential losses. Monetary Tightening and U.S. Bank Fragility in 2023: Mark-to-Market Losses and Uninsured Depositor Runs?Why do banks invest in MBS?
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:55:11 GMT -8
Is It Too Eary to Declare the Death of DeathSentence?
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:56:28 GMT -8
The Drought is Over, Unless You Look Beneath the Surface
The winter of 2023 has made a big dent in improving the drought and potentially eliminating the water shortage problems of the last few summers.
I say “potentially” because in many areas, a lot of the impacts of drought tend to show up in summer, once the winter rain and snow stop and the West starts relying on reservoirs and streams for water. Spring heat waves like the ones we saw in 2021 or rain in the mountains could melt the snowpack faster than normal.
In California, the state’s three-year precipitation deficit was just about erased by the atmospheric rivers that caused so much flooding in December and January. By early March, the snowpack across the Sierra Nevada was well above the historical averages – and more than 200% of average in some areas. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced it was ending emergency water restrictions for nearly 7 million people on March 15.
It seems as though most of the surface water drought – drought involving streams and reservoirs – could be eliminated by summer in California and the Great Basin, across Nevada and western Utah.
But that’s only surface water. Drought also affects groundwater, and those effects will take longer to alleviate.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 7:57:22 GMT -8
Is This a QOP Attempt at Humor?
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:00:35 GMT -8
This Will Be a Waste of Time But I Guess That's the Point.
Former President Donald Trump in new court filings Monday sought to block being potentially prosecuted for crimes
Trump asked a judge to quash the report of a special grand jury in Atlanta, and to bar any evidence from that panel being used to prosecute individuals.
His court filing also sought to disqualify the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, which has been conducting the criminal probe, from being involved in the case.
Trump’s 483-page court filing argues that the grand jury “was conducted under an unconstitutional statute, through an illegal and unconstitutional process.”
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:02:33 GMT -8
Only Steve Bannon Would Look Forward to Something Like This.
Former President Donald Trump is “very anxious” ahead of a possible indictment over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, according to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.
Haberman made the comments as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg signaled his office may be close to filing charges against the former president, a historic moment linked to a $130,000 payment made to Daniels in the final days of Trump’s 2016 campaign. If he is indicted, it would be the first time a former president has been criminally charged.
The investigation is just one of several Trump faces: Others are probing his effort to overturn 2020 election results in Georgia and his absconding with classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“He’s very anxious about the prospect of being indicted for a couple of reasons,” Haberman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “Two things can be true at once. He is aware that there are reasons to believe this could help him politically. … But he does not want to face getting arrested, which is what happens when you get indicted. You get fingerprinted. You get brought in. You have to ask for bail. None of that is something that he is excited about.”
But He Will Still Try to Raise Money Off Of It
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:04:08 GMT -8
So Who Are Those People You Are Pushing Out of Their Homes to Build More Settlements?
A firebrand Israeli minister claimed there’s “no such thing” as a Palestinian people as Israel’s new coalition government, its most hard-line ever, plowed ahead on Monday with a part of its plan to overhaul the judiciary.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:04:58 GMT -8
Be It Ever Such BS, There's No Place Like Home ... and Home ... and Home
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year, is getting roasted on social media for a new claim about his background.
DeSantis wrote in his bestselling but poorly reviewed new memoir that he was “geographically raised in Tampa Bay,” referring to his upbringing largely in the Pinellas County community of Dunedin.
But he claimed his “cultural” background was quite different from his “geographical” one.
″[C]ulturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep,” he wrote. “This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.”
NBC News notes that DeSantis’ claim stems from his parents’ “geographical” background: His father was raised in Pennsylvania, and his parents met while attending Youngstown State University in Ohio.
But the governor himself never lived in either place. Pennsylvania and Ohio just so happen to be key to any presidential ambitions.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:06:07 GMT -8
This Isn't News
Now or never: One of the biggest climate reports ever shows time is running out
The chance to secure a liveable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.
That was the dire message from a United Nations report released Monday, the culmination of more than six years of work by thousands of climate scientists contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report’s authors wrote.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 20, 2023 8:08:32 GMT -8
Stupid QOP Tricks
Georgia county said it was too costly to spend $10,000 a year on health cover for trans employees. It spent $1.2 million fighting it, lost, and has to pay anyway.
Local Georgia officials refused to change a department's health insurance plan to cover the gender-affirming surgery of a trans employee, citing cost as a reason.
But Georgia's Houston County ended up paying a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight the employee in federal court, far more than the estimated $10,000 a year it would have cost to add transition-related care to the health plan, ProPublica reported.
And this month a federal judge ordered it to cover transition care for its employees.
"It was a slap in the face, really, to find out how much they had spent," Anna Lange, the sheriff's deputy who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit, said.
"They're treating it like a political issue, obviously, when it's a medical issue," she said.
|
|