Thu: Everybody (Almost) Hates the QOP

Hummus is Good. Hamas Continues to Be Evil

As U.N. officials say hospitals in Gaza are running dangerously low on fuel, Hamas is maintaining a stockpile of more than 200,000 gallons of fuel for the rockets it fires into Israel and the generators that provide clean air and electricity to its network of underground tunnels, according to U.S. officials, current and former Israeli officials and academics.

Hamas, meanwhile, has repeatedly demanded fuel deliveries to Gaza during negotiations to allow foreign nationals to leave the enclave and in talks about the release of 240 people it kidnapped.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday on CNN that Hamas has been blocking Americans from leaving Gaza. “Hamas has been preventing their departure and making a series of demands,” said Sullivan, who declined to describe the demands. Other U.S. officials said fuel deliveries were among the stumbling blocks.

The War On Journalism in Alabama

Publisher Sherry Digmon and reporter Don Fletcher of the Atmore News in southwestern Alabama were arrested last week after a story by Fletcher disclosed details of an investigation into the local school board’s payments to seven former school-system employees.

Digmon and Fletcher were charged by the Escambia County district attorney with revealing grand-jury proceedings, a felony under Alabama law. They face up to five years in jail.

While it’s illegal for a grand juror, witness or court officer to disclose grand-jury proceedings, it’s not a crime for a media outlet to publish such leaked material, provided the material was obtained by legal means, legal experts said.

Theodore J. Boutrous, an attorney who has represented media organizations, called the Alabama case “extraordinary, outrageous and flatly unconstitutional.”

He said the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment forbids punishing journalists for publishing information of public importance, even if the information came from a source who broke the law in leaking it. “And that applies to grand-jury information,” he said.

Oklahoma is not OK

Ever since Republicans started figuring out there's a cost to their racist and baseless attacks on incorporating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues in financial risk and value estimations and other fiduciary concerns, they've struggled to find messaging that lands.

For example, M. Scott Carter at the Oklahoman reported this week that the state's boycott of banks with ESG policies comes with a huge price tag—and buys them exactly nothing.

Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector and pension board member Cindy Byrd told Carter she considered it "political manipulation with our tax dollars" when banks are too environmentally conscious and (supposedly) defunding fossil fuels, or are anti-racist by having diversity-encouraging hiring practices, or that engage in trainings on “ever-changing and confusing gender and race ideologies." According to Byrd, “Their goal is to make us money not dictate our policies.”

Oh? Is it really? If it's making money and not "political manipulation" then why the boycott? Because it turns out, that's been expensive! "The city of Stillwater complained in May," Carter reported, "that the state's investment firm blacklist, which barred using Bank of America for an infrastructure bond issue, would cost it more than $1 million in higher interest."

And for the state? "The Oklahoma Public Employees Association countered that divesting the pension system from BlackRock would cost the state about $10 million." And apparently eight figures is just the start, with the OPEA noting “the potential for even greater losses.”

State Treasurer Todd Russ is serving someone, and OPEA doesn't think it's the state's pensioners: “Why else would he be so rigid in these attacks that will ultimately hurt the citizens of Oklahoma?”

Carter, to his credit as a reporter, had already answered that question, disclosing in the Oklahoman that the Republican anti-ESG shenanigans were "driven by the State Financial Officers Foundation, a nonprofit based in Kansas that pushes anti-ESG legislation."

Oh! Turns out that big national disinfo-laden push to turn ESG into the next CRT has real-world costs when acted upon, and those costs are millions of lost dollars for red state retirement funds.

And make no mistake, it's disinfo through and through. Even the core complaint that big Wall Street financial companies are avoiding fossil fuels is a farce, as target BlackRock "has over $15 billion invested in Oklahoma public energy companies." And yes, some 90% of those investments are in oil and gas, so safe to say BlackRock's not topping our list of climate champs any time soon.

Oklahoma's boycott of a company that's not doing the thing they're boycotting over will cost its retirement funds upwards of ten million dollars.

"HAWLEY SMOKES MAYORKAS"  “So what, burn? What? In the ovens, Josh? Is that what you’re saying? Seriously?!?

Then asked a stunned Scarborough, “After you learned that his mother survived a concentration camp and her family was burned in the ovens of Auschwitz, would you really say, ‘I smoked Mayorkas.’”

If You Are Still Wondering About Medicare Disadvantage