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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 8:56:15 GMT -8
These are things people actually said in court.
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ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
This Makes Me Question the Mental Soundness of the American People
A Fox News poll found that 56% of Americans do not believe former President Donald Trump has the "mental soundness" to be president.
A survey conducted by the conservative outlet gave Trump a 33-point lead over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
The survey also compared President Joe Biden's character to Trump.
Biden had a 9-point advantage over Trump regarding honesty and an 8-point lead for empathy. 11% fewer people also believe that Biden is corrupt.
RELATED: Proof that Trump shared Mar-a-Lago docs 'changes the game' for Jack Smith indictment: Guardian reporter
When it came to mental soundness, 56% said that Trump should not be president. As for Biden, 60% of those Fox News polled agreed he did not have the mental soundness to do the job.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 8:58:22 GMT -8
Finger Painting Won't Stop Climate Change Two climate activists were taken into custody on Friday for an attack last month on a sculpture by the French artist Edgar Degas at the National Gallery of Art, US officials said. Timothy Martin, 53, turned himself in to the authorities in North Carolina while Joanna Smith, also 53, surrendered in Washington, the US Attorney's Office said. Martin and Smith are charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and injury to a National Gallery of Art exhibit, the US Attorney said in a statement. Martin and Smith were accused in an indictment of smearing paint on the Plexiglas case and base of Edgar Degas' "La petite danseuse de quatorze ans" ("Little Dancer, Age Fourteen") on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The April attack was claimed by a group called "Declare Emergency," which the US Attorney said has also blocked roadways in the Washington area to draw attention to climate concerns. The US Attorney said the attack caused approximately $2,400 in damage and the exhibit had to be removed from public display for 10 days. Martin and Smith face up to five years in prison for each offense and a fine of up to $250,000.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:00:47 GMT -8
He Clearly Doesn't Give a Dam About Anyone Else
A government official in India has been suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained to retrieve his phone.
It took three days to pump millions of litres of water out of the dam, after Rajesh Vishwas dropped the device while taking a selfie.
By the time it was found, the phone was too water-logged to work.
Mr Vishwas claimed it contained sensitive government data and needed retrieving, but he has been accused of misusing his position.
The food inspector dropped his Samsung phone, worth about $1,200 (100,000 rupees), into Kherkatta Dam, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, on Sunday.
After local divers failed to find it, he paid for a diesel pump to be brought in, Mr Vishwas said in a video statement quoted in Indian media.
He said he had verbal permission from an official to drain "some water into a nearby canal", adding that the official said it "would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water".
The pump ran for several days, emptying out roughly two million litres (440,000 gallons) of water - reportedly enough to irrigate 6 sq km (600 hectares) of farmland.
His mission was stopped when another official, from the water resource department, arrived following a complaint.
"He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National newspaper.
Will His Defense Be "It Is All Water Under the Bridge"?
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:03:28 GMT -8
There is a Deal on the Debt Ceiling. Everybody Hates it.
Here are the known details:
-Non-defense discretionary spending only goes up 1% this year. Non-enforceable limits on appropriations after 2024. .
-IRS funding to go after tax cheats redirected toward domestic programs to avert cuts. This affects $10 billion of the original $80 billion appropriation. Republicans had tried to gut the entire program in their original debt bill. [Update: Republican Rep. Chip Roy says it’s only $1.9 billion in cuts, so might be even better for us.]
-New work requirements for food assistance (a GOP demand), raising the age of non-dependent recipients to 54, from 49, exempting veterans and the homeless. Republicans had tried to extend these requirements to -ther programs as part of McCarthy’s “red lines.”
-Medicaid left untouched. The GOP budget recently passed added work requirements to that program (and others) as well
-Student loan debt relief left untouched. That had been a huge Republican priority, because hurting people is their entire reason to exist
-Also beats back Republican cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, and, surprising to me, the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (Republicans really wanted to gut those)
-Deal last for two years, beyond next presidential election. This is a huge deal, undermining Republican efforts to crash the economy right before the 2024 election, allowing them to try and blame President Joe Biden for the chaos
Oh, and one other thing—this deal supersedes the appropriations process for this year and next, removing yet another hostage from the Republican Party’s toolbox. For a House caucus with dreams of austere and severe government cutbacks, this is a devastating fizzle.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:09:52 GMT -8
Paxton Won't Be Packing Up His Office Until the Texas Senates Holds a Trial
The other big story yesterday was the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton becoming the first second Attorney General in United States history to be impeached.
After slightly more than four hours of debate, the final bipartisan vote – 121 to impeach, 23 in opposition – was both shocking and almost anti-climactic. Shocking that the GOP itself finally collared the long-indicted Paxton after tolerating his blatant misdeeds for years; anticlimactic that the splash of green that lit up the voting board left no doubt about the outcome. (Texas Republicans on Saturday showed what their national counterparts could have done a couple of years ago had they had the fortitude under similar circumstances,) [...]
On Saturday afternoon, Paxton’s fellow Republicans did the right thing, and yet they can’t take too much credit. They’ve known for years what Paxton was up to, and yet they were happy to look the other way while his scandalous behavior embarrassed his fellow Texans.
We’re glad he’s gone, and yet we have to acknowledge that we Texans have much to answer for. We elected the man, then re-elected him twice more, despite the fact that his opponents in the Republican primary – former Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman – were credible candidates and would have been capable AGs. For citizens of a self-governing democracy, that’s called dereliction of duty.
Paxton has survived so long in part because of his ability to frame his opposition as a liberal mob, and to frame himself as the nation’s foremost warrior for conservative values. That view still has real support among the Republican base. On Thursday night, right-wing representative Steve Toth, from the Woodlands, recorded a live stream in which he said Paxton’s impeachment would set back the conservative cause and let the Biden administration, which Paxton sues regularly, off the hook at a critical moment in the nation’s history. That’s still a pretty common sentiment among conservatives.
It’s also exactly backward, 100 percent wrong. As attorney general, Paxton has two responsibilities to perform for his party. He can take the fight to the Democrats in the White House and big Texas cities, and he can prosecute criminals to win positive headlines. But he’s extremely bad at both of those things. He can’t even keep the office of the attorney general staffed anymore. After he fired the whistleblowers, he had to bring in whomever would agree to work for him. As the AP reported, one of those B-team legal experts was quietly fired after he intentionally showed child pornography at a meeting.
You Can Judge a Man By Who His Friends Are
Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has received 11th hour support from Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz as he faces 20 counts of impeachment in the Texas House.
Both Trump and Cruz defended the long-indicted Paxton by pointing to his recent reelection and attacking his attackers. Both cited his opposition to Biden and MAGA credentials without addressing any of the allegations against him.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:11:15 GMT -8
BREXITer's Remorse
Even in those constituencies that recorded the highest votes to leave the EU in 2016, more than twice as many voters now believe the best route forward is to move in the opposite direction – and forge closer ties with Brussels.
The survey of more than 10,000 voters, for the internationalist campaign group Best for Britain, accompanied by detailed MRP (multilevel regression and poststratification) analysis based on new constituency boundaries, will provide sobering reading for Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit as a route to greater economic success.
The poll by Focaldata found that three times as many adults (63%) now believe Brexit has created more problems than it has solved, compared with just 21% who believe it has solved more than it has created.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:12:48 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Judge Amit Mehta, for sentencing MAGA terrorist leader Stewart Rhodes to nearly 20 years in prison for helping Donald Trump organize his Jan. 6, 2021 plot to overthrow the government
E. Jean Carroll, for adding more defamation charges against Trump to the tune of $10 million after he defamed her again during his CNN-sponsored tongue bath
President Biden: wraps up successful G-7 summit; unveils National Strategy to Counter Anti-Semitism; trolls DeSantis after Florida Man's failed campaign launch
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, for telling MAGA loon Kari Lake, for the last time, that she did not win the governor's race and to go pound some of that fine Arizona sand
House Democrats, as all 213 members of their caucus sign a discharge petition aimed at forcing a vote to raise the debt ceiling
Karma, as Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott botch their rollouts with disastrous technical glitches and vocal cord malfunctions
The employees at Mar-a-Lago who have given the feds valuable evidence that Trump was, in fact, moving around classified materials in knowing violation of the law
The great state of Maine, whose unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in history: 2.4 percent
Anyone who's happy to see the arrival of the unofficial start of summer
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:15:05 GMT -8
Who Said "Crime Doesn't Pay"?
Less than two months after he pleaded guilty to storming the U.S. Capitol, Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s then-Fox News show and promoted a website where supporters could donate money to Goodwyn and other rioters whom the site called “political prisoners.”
The Justice Department now wants Goodwyn to give up more than $25,000 he raised — a clawback that is part of a growing effort by the government to prevent rioters from being able to personally profit from participating in the attack that shook the foundations of American democracy.
An Associated Press review of court records shows that prosecutors in the more than 1,000 criminal cases from Jan. 6, 2021, are increasingly asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters of the Capitol rioters.
Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there’s nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation.
Most of the fundraising efforts appear on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has become a haven for Jan. 6 defendants barred from using mainstream crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe, to raise money. The rioters often proclaim their innocence and portray themselves as victims of government oppression, even as they cut deals to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:17:21 GMT -8
Science it Too Woke for DeathSentence
Ron DeSantis has been accused of a “catastrophic” approach to the climate crisis after he launched his campaign for US president by saying he rejects the “politicization of the weather” and questioning whether hurricanes hitting his home state of Florida have been worsened by climate change.
DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor who announced his bid for the White House via a glitch-heavy Twitter stream on Wednesday, has previously dismissed concerns about global heating as “leftwing stuff” and he expanded upon this theme during a Fox News interview following his campaign launch.
“People tried to say when we had [Hurricane] Ian that it was because of climate change but if you look at the first 60 years from 1900 to 1960 we had more major hurricanes hit Florida than the 60 years since then,” DeSantis told his interlocutor, the former Republican congressman Trey Gowdy.
“This is something that is a fact of life in the Sunshine state. I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”
Climate scientists have said that while it is true that hurricanes have not become significantly more frequent due to climate change, there is good evidence that the heating of the ocean, now at record levels, as well as the atmosphere is causing storms to rapidly intensify and become more powerful.
A study in the wake of Hurricane Ian, which pulverized roads and buildings in Florida last year, causing $112bn in damages and around 150 deaths in total in the US, found that climate change worsened the storm’s extreme rainfall by around 10%.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that DeSantis’s stance towards climate science is “classic projection”.
“It is Ron DeSantis who is engaged in the ‘politicization of the weather’ by denying basic, established science – the intensification of tropical storms with human-caused warming of the oceans.”
Mann added that DeSantis has favored fossil fuel interests over Florida’s, a state acutely vulnerable to sea level rise and more powerful storms that has “been placed directly in harm’s way by the devastating consequences of fossil fuel burning and the resulting warming of our planet”.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:20:18 GMT -8
The White BuffaloA rare white bison calf has been born at a Wyoming state park, officials reported. A 2-year-old white bison gave birth to the calf at Bear River State Park near Evanston, park officials said May 16 on Facebook. The National Bison Association told KUTV the birth of a white bison is normally a “1 in 10 million” occurrence. In this case, it wasn’t entirely chance, park officials said. “As the coloration is a result of a very small amount of cattle genetics mixed in rather than a fluke like albinism or leucism, it isn’t unusual that the calf is white too,” the park said. 
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:22:52 GMT -8
Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There, But Not For Your House
State Farm is stopping new home insurance sales in California, citing wildfire risks and skyrocketing construction costs, the company announced Friday.
The insurance giant stopped accepting applications for all business and personal lines property and casualty insurance in California on May 27. However, State Farm’s decision does not affect existing auto insurance.
“State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market,” the company said in a statement.
California has seen an average of more than 7,000 wildfires each year, consuming an average of over 2 million acres, over the past five years, according to data from the governor’s office. Scientists and California authorities blame the climate crisis for the intensity of the fire seasons.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:25:41 GMT -8
Why Do We Have a "Border Crisis">
When you hear Republicans and right-wing media blame President Joe Biden for the so-called “border crisis” and target the growing number of Venezuelan migrants, it’s important to look at the bigger picture.
It’s not a pretty one: Since the country’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro took power a decade ago, more than 7.2 million people have left Venezuela as the country’s political, economic, and humanitarian crisis has worsened. That means we’re looking at a mass migration crisis on a scale with that of Syria and Ukraine.
Two decades ago, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in South America, its economy buoyed by high oil prices. If you go all the way back to 1950, at a time when many countries were struggling to recover from World War II, Venezuela had the fourth-richest GDP per capita in the world, 12 times richer than China, according to the World Economic Forum. So what happened?
“Unlike other forced displacement crises around the world, which are the result of armed conflicts, in the case of Venezuela, multiple factors — including insecurity and violence, lack of access to food, medicine and essential services, as well as loss of income, aggravated by the impact of the covid-19 pandemic — continue to figure into Venezuelans’ decision to leave,” William Spindler, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Washington Post in an email last September.
Venezuela still boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves at more than 300 billion barrels, concentrated in the Orinoco Belt, edging out Saudi Arabia. But former President Hugo Chavez kicked most international oil companies out of the country and fired many experienced workers from the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) after they went on strike. He then replaced them with government loyalists. Chavez relied on oil revenues to pay for ambitious social programs to reduce poverty and inequality.
Of Course, Previous Guy Made It Worse
The situation was made worse when the Trump administration tightened economic sanctions on Venezuela between 2017 and 2019 with the aim of ousting Chavez’s authoritarian successor, Nicolas Maduro, in favor of bringing the U.S.-backed government led by Juan Guaido to power. The sanctions barred the government’s access to the U.S. financial system and blocked PDVSA from exporting oil to the U.S.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:27:34 GMT -8
He Was Dying For More Followers
Asocial media influencer died soon after live-streaming himself drinking several bottles of strong alcohol on China’s version of TikTok, state-run media in the country are reporting, in a development likely to renew debate about how to regulate the industry.
The influencer “Sanqiange” (or “Brother Three Thousand”) was found dead just hours after broadcasting himself taking part in a competition with a fellow influencer which involved drinking Baijiu, a Chinese spirit with a typical alcohol content of between 30% to 60%, Shangyou News reported.
One of his friends told the outlet that Sanqiange – identified by his real-life surname of Wang – had taken part in an online challenge known as “PK” against another influencer in the early hours of May 16 and live-streamed the results on his Douyin channel.
“PK” challenges involve one-on-one battles in which influencers compete with each other to win rewards and gifts from viewers, and often involve punishments for the loser – apparently in this case, drinking Baijiu.
“I don’t know how much he had consumed before I tuned in. But in the latter part of the video, I saw him finish three bottles before starting on a fourth,” the friend, identified only as Zhao, told Shangyou News.
“The PK games ended at around 1 a.m. and by 1 p.m., (when his family found him) he was gone,” he added.
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Post by mhbruin on May 28, 2023 9:31:18 GMT -8
DeathSentence Will Solve the Ukraine War by Going After Trans People
If you can get past the first minute, which DeSantis devotes to attacking the “woke” American military, you can finally reach that ray of hope on which Putin must currently hang his future dreams. DeSantis calls the illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine “what’s going on in Eastern Europe.” Then says he wants a “settlement,” says he worries about “a wider war,” and the only time he says the word “Ukraine” is when expressing how he doesn’t want to get involved there.
Right now, as most of the world waits for Ukraine’s next move, Putin has one hope—the Republican counteroffensive against democracy.
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