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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 7:53:39 GMT -8
Claustrophobic people are more productive thinking out of the box.
From the Man Who Sends Waves of Men to Die
The chief of Russia’s Wagner Group has accused a Russian military unit of fleeing positions near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, in his latest scathing attack against Russia’s military leadership.
“Today, everything is being done so that the front line crumbles. Today, one of the defence ministry’s units fled one of our flanks, abandoning their positions. Everyone fled,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had earlier threatened to pull his fighters out of Bakhmut on May 10 if he does not receive badly needed ammunition.
In a video released on Tuesday, Prigozhin said troops were fleeing because of the “stupidity” of Russian army commanders.
“A soldier shouldn’t die because of his leaders’ absolute stupidity,” he added. “The commands they receive from the top are absolutely criminal.”
Prigozhin has long been a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin but has accused Russia's top brass of cutting him off and blamed Putin for the death of his fighters in Ukraine.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 7:58:15 GMT -8
Idaho Continues to Redefine "Small Government"
It’s now a crime to help a teen under 18 leave the state for an abortion or obtain medication abortion pills without parental consent — including when the girl has been sexually assaulted or raped by a family member or parent. Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, in signing the bill, wrote that the law does not “limit an adult woman from obtaining an abortion in another state.”
Because Pregnant Teen Girls Is What Everyone Wants.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:00:47 GMT -8
McCarthy Made This Bed
Former aides noted the balancing act that McCarthy will have to pull off — and fast — to avert a debt limit crisis, given the House’s thin GOP majority and the number of hardline conservatives who would likely reject a negotiated agreement with more moderate deficit reduction measures.
Brendan Buck, who was a spokesman for then-Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, in 2011, said that McCarthy will have to weigh a need to keep his conference read in on talks so they don’t feel surprised or betrayed in the end with a need to avoid undermining negotiations that are typically kept quiet.
He said that McCarthy expended political capital uniting most of his conference behind the GOP debt limit bill and that it raised expectations among Republicans, even though any deal with Democrats will likely involve only modest deficit reduction.
“There’s no question that he is going to face some level of blowback on the final deal,” said Buck, who also worked for Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis. “The question is how much can he cut that off ahead of time and make people feel like this is a win rather than a loss.”
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:07:20 GMT -8
Would You Join a Club Devoted to Hating People Like You?
Accusations that the Texas mall shooter had neo-Nazi links left Donald Trump Jr. and Ann Coulter puzzled Monday – because the man who shot and killed eight people is Hispanic.
"Because the name Mauricio Garcia screams white supremacy," former President Donald Trump's son, Don Jr., posted on Truth Social, along with a puzzled face emoji.
And Ann Coulter shared the same puzzlement on Twitter.
"MEDIA: Texas shooter is Mauricio Garcia, 2d generation immigrant ... and white supremacist," she wrote.
"So we could have been spared this horror if only someone had told the shooter: 'Mauricio, you're not white!'"
Can't the QOP Get Their Lies Straight? Pick a Lie and Stick To It.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:09:01 GMT -8
Is Petermann Petering Out?
Petermann Glacier in the far north of Greenland was found to have a bad case of cheeseification in its ice as warm ocean tides have tunneled from the grounding line up towards the ice surface. One cavity was as tall as a sixty-seven-floor-high skyscraper between 2016 and 2022. Six freaking years! Gobsmacking damage to the ice in such a short period.
Petermann is a marine-terminating glacier that is 43 miles long and 9.3 miles wide. Despite heavy snowfall levels on top of the glacier, eighty percent of its mass loss results from meltwater at the bottom of the glacier from warm ocean tides. The glacier’s fjord and the nearby Nares Strait have been a mystery for decades. Still, a new study has found that warm deepwater upwelling and waves rapidly melt Petermann and likely other glaciers in Greenland and even Antarctica. The findings suggest that the sea level rise magnitude from the polar ice caps is seriously underestimated.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:10:22 GMT -8
No Wonder the QOP Wants to Defund the IRS
The pattern and practice of Supreme Court corruption has hidden for decades behind rich Americans’ code of silence regarding their shadowy control of national institutions. Public understanding of, and tolerance for, personal financial discretion ends, however, when that secrecy enables tax fraud.
You don't have to be Elliott Ness to understand how tax evasion charges can shatter the impunity of brazen public figures. Ness’ most prominent criminal target, Al Capone, exploited his celebrity to defy the law during a deadly career.
But even people who might tolerate Capone’s speakeasies, or Trump’s clownish antics, lose their sense of humor when it comes to tax fraud.
The breathtaking scale of MAGA Supreme Court corruption has emerged over the past six weeks, including:
----Justice Gorsuch’s sale of his share of a cabin in Colorado
-— Justice Kavanaugh’s undocumented cash received to pay off his credit card bills, among other suspect transactions
-— Chief Justice Roberts’ misreporting of millions of dollars in commissions paid to his wife for attorney recruitment
---Justice Thomas’ receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from Harlan Crow, and apparently secretive cash donations to Ginni Thomas
The Internal Revenue Service operates according to laws and rules that explicitly acknowledge human frailties, including greed and stupidity. That’s why they provide opportunities to reduce tax obligations, and waive penalties, for taxpayers who choose to cooperate with them, rather than defy the law.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:11:46 GMT -8
Hide and Seek and Shoot to Kill. It Sounds Like The Hunger Games.
A Louisiana man has been charged with aggravated assault and battery after shooting at children who had been playing hide and seek outside his home, striking a 14-year-old girl, officials said.
The girl suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head early Sunday, and was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement posted on social media Monday.
Investigators learned that several children were playing hide and seek in the Starks neighborhood and were hiding on the neighbor’s property.
David Doyle, 58, told detectives that he got his gun when he saw shadows outside his home and shot at people he saw running away, unknowingly hitting the girl, officials said.
Doyle was arrested and charged with aggravated battery, four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and illegal discharge of a firearm, the sheriff's office said. It's not known whether Doyle has an attorney to speak on his behalf.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:13:05 GMT -8
Somebody Has Some Sense
A union representing nearly 75,000 government employees wants federal courts to declare the “debt ceiling” unconstitutional.
In a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the National Association of Government Employees wants an injunction preventing the government from defaulting on its debts.
The complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, says the union’s workers are “at immediate and imminent risk of layoff or furlough” if congressional Republicans can’t reach a deal with Biden to increase the government’s borrowing limit.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:17:18 GMT -8
Will the Judge Be Able to Shut Him Up? Don't Hold Your Breath.
A New York judge has barred former President Donald Trump from posting evidence on social media about the criminal case in which he faces 34 felony charges related to falsifying records in a hush-money scheme.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Juan Merchan granted the protective order Monday -- requested by the Manhattan District Attorney's office -- that restricts what Trump can say online about any new information he gleans through his attorneys before his trial is expected to begin next spring.
The judge's order prohibits the former president from publicly disclosing "any news on social media platforms, including, but not limited to, Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat or YouTube, without prior approval from the court."
The order, which comes as state prosecutors were preparing to turn over new evidence in the case to the defense, restricts Trump's team from copying, disseminating or disclosing sensitive materials to any third parties.
Prosecutors also called for Trump to be allowed to review "Limited Dissemination Materials" from prosecutors only in the presence of his lawyers and "shall not be permitted to copy, photograph, transcribe, or otherwise independently possess the Limited Dissemination Materials."
As part of the order, Trump will be blocked from viewing "forensic images of witness cellphones." His lawyers can show him "approved portions" of the evidence but only after getting permission from the judge.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:18:18 GMT -8
A Billion Here. A Billion There. Pretty Soon You Are Talking About Some Real Money.
The US is set to announce a $1.2 billion aid package to Ukraine as early as Tuesday, according to a US official familiar with the package, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces looming.
The package will include drones, artillery ammunition and air defense missiles, the official said, as well as other capabilities.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:22:52 GMT -8
Every move you make, Every vow you break, Every smile you fake, Every claim you stake, Google's watching you
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, privacy advocates, including me, raised an alarm that data from smartphones could be used to help prosecute abortions. Google offered a partial solution: It would proactively delete its trove of location data when people visited “particularly personal” places, including abortion clinics, hospitals and shelters.
Nearly a year later, my investigation reveals Google isn’t doing that in any consistent way. And its response to me shows it isn’t taking accountability.
Misleading the public about data privacy practices is possibly illegal under the authority of the Federal Trade Commission. Google’s surveillance of our intimate affairs is not only creepy, it’s also a reminder we’ve left critical elements of our civil rights up to the whims of a giant corporation. (Below, I’ve got some steps you can take to limit Google’s surveillance of you.)
To test Google’s privacy promise, I’ve been running an experiment. Over the last few weeks, I visited a dozen abortion clinics, medical centers and fertility specialists around California, using Google Maps for directions. A colleague visited two more in Florida.
In about half of the visits, I watched Google retain a map of my activity that looked like it could have been made by a private investigator.
For example, last Monday I visited a Planned Parenthood clinic and two nearby hospitals in San Francisco. A week later, my travels to all three locations remained visible in one of my test phones’ location history. Looking back on the map, it clearly reads, “Planned Parenthood — San Francisco Health Center.”
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:26:45 GMT -8
The LAPD Exposes Themself.
The Los Angeles police department has made many mistakes during its tumultuous history, but few may compete with an administrative error its own union officials are calling “a blunder that is just epic”: the inadvertent exposure of dozens of officers working undercover to investigate national security breaches, drug cartels and other dangerous criminal enterprises.
The mistake arose when the city responded to a public records request by releasing the names, photographs and badge numbers of more than 9,000 officers – close to the entire force. The department assured the journalist who had fought and won a legal battle to obtain the records that “images of officers working in an undercover capacity … are not included”.
But that turned out not to be true.
None of the officers – undercover or otherwise – were given advance warning or offered an opportunity to raise objections to their information becoming public. Many of them have reported threats to themselves and their families and have told the police union they are so fearful for their safety they are considering quitting the force.
One source with detailed knowledge of the case, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information, said about 150 present and former undercover officers had been exposed. That has infuriated the force as a whole and shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the chief, Michel Moore, who was just appointed to a second term despite a slew of controversies surrounding his first five-year tenure and is managing a department that was already understaffed and low on morale.
Soon after the information appeared on an internet database in March, one social media troll issued a call for “clean head shots on these LAPD officers, A to Z”. Law enforcement experts also warn that drug cartels and other powerful criminal gangs are likely to run the photographs through sophisticated facial recognition software to help them root out police moles within their organizations – and, if they get the chance, to take revenge.
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Post by mhbruin on May 9, 2023 8:28:47 GMT -8
If the QOP Is So Wirried About Government Spending, Maybe They Should Talk to their Buddies in Big Pharma.
Some of the world’s biggest drugmakers are laying legal groundwork to fight the U.S. plan to negotiate drug prices for its Medicare health coverage, including the argument that a ban against speaking about these talks violates constitutional rights, according to six industry sources.
The Biden Administration’s signature drug pricing reform, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), aims to save $25 billion through price negotiations by 2031 for Americans who pay more for medicines than any other country.
The pharmaceutical industry says the law, passed last year, will result in a loss of profits that will force them to pull back on developing groundbreaking new treatments.
The first ever Medicare drug price reduction process begins in September, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) identifies its 10 most costly drugs. Following negotiations on that first wave of drugs, new prices will go into effect in 2026, when the agency could cut $4.8 billion in industry sales.
The blood thinner Eliquis from Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, Pfizer's breast cancer drug Ibrance and AbbVie's leukemia treatment Imbruvica are likely to be among 10 big-selling medicines subject to the negotiations.
The government released its roadmap for these negotiations in March. Three industry lobbyists and lawyers said that unless Medicare changes its proposals before it finalizes them in July, drugmakers will likely file lawsuits arguing that the agency is not complying with Biden’s legislation nor the U.S. Constitution.
“I would be shocked if there wasn’t litigation,” said the head of government affairs at one big drugmaker, who was not authorized to discuss the issue.
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