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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:41:03 GMT -8
Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.
Dozens of Pundits Have Commented on Dozens of Your People
Dozens of young Americans have posted videos on TikTok this week expressing sympathy with Osama bin Laden, the notorious terrorist who orchestrated the September 11 attacks, for a two-decade-old letter he wrote critiquing the United States, including its government and support of Israel.
The letter, which attempts to justify the targeting and killing of American civilians, was first published in 2002. It began to recirculate this week on the social media platform, and videos on the topic had garnered at least 14 million views by Thursday. Many of the videos, which supported some of Bin Laden’s assertions and urged other users to read the letter, were shared in the wider context of criticism of American support for Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas.
TikTok said on Thursday that videos promoting the letter violate its rules against “supporting any form of terrorism.” The company said the number of videos promoting the letter were “small” and added “reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate.”
No Comment on the Millions of Young People Who Didn't Post Videos, But Lots of Discussions about "What's Wrong With Young People".
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:43:57 GMT -8
This Story Doesn't Mention that the "Centrist" Group is Funded by Right-Wing BillionairesThe centrist group No Labels raised a staggering $21.2 million last year, compared to $11.3 million the previous one, and aims to be an active influence on the 2024 race — but tax filings show much of it is going to massive salaries for its leadership team. No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson didn't receive a salary in 2021, according to the 990 tax form from that year, but the group's latest federal tax form shows she made $300,000 last year, while disgraced political journalist turned No Labels chief strategist Mark Halperin got a nearly $100,000 raise to bring his salary to $336,879 in 2022, reported The Daily Beast. “This 990 shows a striking jump in revenue for No Labels last year, and with it, substantial raises for No Labels officials,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy director of the watchdog group Documented. Co-executive directors Margaret White and Elizabeth Morrison took home $315,440 and $203,975, respectively, last year, while vice president of development Megan Shannon made $160,833 and deputy director McKinley Scholtz made $134,723. ALSO READ: Sudden sunlight: GOP House hopeful reveals personal finances after Raw Story investigation "All told, No Labels’ top six officials pulled in $1.5 million in salary — averaging just over $240,000 per person — amounting to about half what the group spent on efforts for its candidate to qualify for the ballot next year," The Daily Beast reported. No Labels Exposed: Here’s a List of Donors Funding Its Effort To Disrupt the 2024 RaceAmong the No Labels backers are donors who contributed millions of dollars to Republican causes, such as past GOP presidential candidates and super-PACS connected to Republican congressional leadership, and several who have poured money into the Democratic presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. One donor provided a big chunk of political cash to Donald Trump. Generally, these No Labels supporters, who mostly made contributions of $5,600 to its 2024 project, appear to favor conservative candidates, though many have played both sides of the aisle, financing Republican and Democratic politicians.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:46:45 GMT -8
MAGA Mike Joins the Growing List of Failed QOP Speakers.
This week should have proved once and for all to Republicans everywhere that the MAGA minority in Congress is ungovernable and, worse, opposed to having a government at all. New House Speaker Mike Johnson faces the same reality that every recent GOP speaker has faced, but it looks like it might get worse than what even former Speaker Kevin McCarthy dealt with.
Once again, the only way Johnson could get a continuing resolution to keep the government running was with Democratic votes—the same way McCarthy did it (though with a hint more grace and far less drama). And once again, the minority of Republican maniacs who run the show hit back. In McCarthy’s case, the rebellion led to his ouster. But so far, they aren’t threatening that for Johnson. However, they did grind the House to a legislative halt, again, preventing it from passing appropriations bills that they should have loved, larded down as the bills were with the MAGA maniacs’ own poison-pill provisions.
You can lay this situation at McCarthy’s feet. He gave the place away to the maniacs in exchange for holding the gavel for nine months. That included putting three of the most extreme members in the GOP conference—Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—on the powerful House Rules Committee. They’re the ones responsible for making sure every extreme amendment from the likes of Andy Biggs, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert gets a vote on the floor.
Those amendments are why the “moderates” in the GOP joined the hard-liners in shutting down the latest appropriations bill, voting against a procedural rule to advance it.
Rep. Nick LaLota, a Republican from New York, voted against it in protest of having to keep taking disastrous votes on far-right amendments that are doomed to fail. “The amendments are going to fail, the bill is going to fail, it won’t get sent to the Senate, it won’t be signed by the president,” LaLota said.
By the way, that trick of blocking a motion to proceed to a bill hadn’t been used by majority members in the House since 2002, and back then, it was used just once. It’s been deployed several times by Republicans just since June. This is how broken the House is since “regular” Republicans folded and let the small group of extremists run the show.
I'll Bet the QOP Wish they Had a Nancy Pelosi
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:48:33 GMT -8
Your Tax Dollars at Work Play
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:49:30 GMT -8
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 8:51:09 GMT -8
Most Jews Are Smart
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:02:21 GMT -8
Feeling Hot, Hot, HotMore than a hundred million people in Brazil endure extraordinary and lethal temperatures. The heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, shattered records in Rio de Janeiro with 108.5 degrees and a feel-like temperature of 137.3 F. The gobsmacking temperatures are a November heat record for the sprawling city of Rio de Janeiro, which has approximately fourteen million people. Red health alerts have been posted for thousands of cities across the nation. There was no cooling relief for the bodies of wildlife and humans during the night as temperatures hovered around 90 degrees F. It is spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and all signs point to a brutal summer for South America, Australia, South Asia, and Africa. Meanwhile, heat records remain set in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Ocean sea surface temperatures are at record highs for the seventh straight month, while Antarctic sea ice records are at record lows for the sixth month. How hot is too hot for the human body?A wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C, or around 95 °F, is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance, says Zach Schlader, a physiologist at Indiana University Bloomington. Above that, your body won’t be able to lose heat to the environment efficiently enough to maintain its core temperature. That doesn’t mean the heat will kill you right away, but if you can’t cool down quickly, brain and organ damage will start.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:13:23 GMT -8
Why Was IBM Advertiising There in the First Place?
IBM has stopped advertising on social media platform X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis — a fresh setback as the site formerly known as Twitter tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars.
The U.S. tech company made the decision after a report Thursday by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads from IBM, Apple, Oracle, NBCUniversal's Bravo network and Comcast were placed next to antisemitic material on X.
“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation," the company said in a terse statement.
Billionaire owner Elon Musk sparked outcry this week with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jews of hating white people and professing indifference to antisemitism. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in a reply Wednesday.
Musk has faced accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform since purchasing it last year, and the content on X has gained increased scrutiny since the war between Israel and Hamas began.
“X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board — I think that’s something we can and should all agree on,” CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a tweet.
Does "Everyone" Include Elon Musk?
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:14:53 GMT -8
The Bottom of the Potato Barrel
When a recent federal report published last week showed routine childhood vaccination rates had fallen among kindergartners for the 2022-23 school year, public health experts were disheartened to see the drop.
However, there was one state that lagged behind the rest: Idaho.
For all four major vaccines -- measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); poliovirus (polio) and varicella (chickenpox) -- Idaho had the lowest percentage of kindergartners who met school requirements for vaccinations, all around 81% compared to a nationwide rate of 93%.
What's more, Idaho was the state with the highest percentage of exemptions from one or more required vaccines at 12.1%. Comparatively, the rate of exemptions across the U.S. was about 3%.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:16:54 GMT -8
First They came for the Car Horns, and I Did not Speak Out Because I was not a Car Horn.
Susan Porter remembers the shock she felt when the sheriff's deputy finally explained why he pulled her over.
"He said, 'illegal use of horn' and gave me the ticket," the 69-year-old Californian recalled.
"I said, 'There’s a law for that?'"
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Porter had been driving by a rally outside her congressman's office in 2017 and her honks were a sign of support – in the same way drivers beep for a political candidate waving a sign at rush hour, or to celebrate a sports team after a game.
Porter has challenged a California traffic law that bans honking – other than to warn another driver – all the way to the Supreme Court. Her argument: Since the dawn of the automobile, car horns have sometimes served as a form of expression. Because of that, Porter says, beeping is protected under the First Amendment.
"The car horn is the sound of democracy in action," her lawyers wrote in their appeal.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:19:32 GMT -8
Congrats, Your House Made You Rich. Now Sell It.Forget the old slogan about there never being a better time to buy a home. For baby boomers, there might never be a better time to sell. The kids are gone, the stairs aren’t going to get easier to climb, and downsizing with home prices up so sharply since the pandemic could pad out those retirement savings. Many boomers have little or no debt on their current homes and, as an added bonus, it is easy to find ready buyers with so few homes on the market. The key is beating the crowd. If boomers decided to sell en masse, the prices they would get would be a lot lower than what their home appears to be worth on paper today. Even if they can avoid it now, most are going to have to sell in the years ahead. That could put downward pressure on the prices of the types of homes they live in. Then it might not be a good time to sell anymore.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:23:45 GMT -8
The Incredible Growing Shrink
If you listen to major retailers talk about theft, one word comes up again and again: shrink.
Retailers include losses due to theft as a part of "shrink," an industry term for the difference between the inventory a store has on hand and the amount of inventory it's supposed to have according to its balance sheet. Shrink includes customer theft, but it also accounts lost or destroyed inventory and employee theft, to name a couple of other examples.
Target, for example, previously told Insider that missing inventory at its stores had doubled since 2019. But the big-box chain hasn't broken down the exact causes of that increase. Still, the company mentioned shrink in the run-up to the company's decision in September to close nine Target stores across the US.
When Rite Aid closed stores, its chief financial officer, Matthew Schroeder, said it targeted "stores in high-shrink areas."
In August, a Home Depot executive responded to an analyst's question about shrink on an earnings call by referencing "organized retail crime" and calling for congressional action on a bill that would curb the sale of stolen goods online.
Talking about shrink like that overstates the impact of theft on retailers — and hides other problems that the companies might be less willing to discuss with investors.
"Theft as a reason for shrinkage is a tale as old as time," said Melodie van der Baan, the CEO and a cofounder of Max Retail, a company that sources excess inventory from retailers and resells it. "It will always be a thing, but it's everything else that you have to manage in your business to offset it."
Retailers measure theft as part of shrink, but that's just one of the factors that can influence their bottom lines
External theft accounted for 36% of shrink in 2022, the report said. That figure includes the impact of organized retail crime.
That means other factors make up the majority of the problem.
Employee theft accounted for 29% of shrink, the report said. Another 27% came from "process, control failures and errors," it added — in other words, a retailer's shortcomings in tracking inventory.
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:26:11 GMT -8
Caged WildcatsNorthwestern University's Prison Education Program welcomed its inaugural graduating class of incarcerated students on Wednesday, marking the first time a top-ranked U.S. university has awarded degrees to students in prison. Evanston, Illinois-based Northwestern, which U.S. News & World Report ranks ninth for national universities, runs the program in partnership with Oakton College and the Illinois Department of Corrections. It was a moving commencement ceremony for the 16 graduating men and their loved ones at the Stateville correctional facility in Crest Hill. "I have no words for this, (it's) otherworldly. Coming from where I came from, the things that I've been through and to be here is indescribable," said graduate Michael Broadway after the ceremony. Broadway attained his degree despite several setbacks, including battling stage 4 prostate cancer. 
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Post by mhbruin on Nov 17, 2023 9:27:29 GMT -8
Even the QOP Has Had Enough of Tommy Potatotown.
A handful of Republicans kept the Senate in session into the early hours of Thursday morning, making sure Sen. Tommy Tuberville started his long Thanksgiving break on a sour note. The Alabama Republican is under increasing pressure from all sides to end his tantrum and lift his blanket hold on more than 400 officer promotions.
The same group of senators, all veterans, who confronted Tuberville last month faced Tuberville down again Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. “I made a commitment to the men and women in uniform that I would continue to try to move them. I keep my commitments,” Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan told Politico.
Since February, Tuberville has been protesting the Pentagon’s policy of providing paid leave for service members who are forced to travel out of state to obtain an abortion. None of the officers he is preventing from advancing had anything to do with formulating or implementing that policy, which apparently makes no difference to Tuberville. "Why punish people who have seriously sacrificed for America—more than probably anyone else here on the floor certainly—over a policy they had nothing to do with?" Sullivan asked on the floor.
This happened against the backdrop of the resolution passed by the Senate Rules Committee this week to create a temporary bypass of Tuberville for the remainder of this congressional term. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Senate—and Tuberville—that the resolution will come to the floor if Republicans fail in their efforts to stop the blockade.
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