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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:17:05 GMT -8
I’m only familiar with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know Y.
Kevin Can't Wait ... To Get Richer. Meanwhile QOP Gets Poorer.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the speakership earlier this year when eight Republicans joined with all House Democrats to vacate his chair, and this week he announced he would be leaving Congress entirely at the end of the year.
According to a new report from Politico about McCarthy's home district, his supporters aren't shocked about the sudden resignation, leaving the GOP with an even smaller margin than McCarthy managed through most of 2023.
"He’s the hometown boy who made good, but then he had a tragic end,” Bakersfield City Council member Mark Salvaggio told the site. “The reaction here locally is sadness, disappointment … but people understand. They respect his decision.”
McCarthy's real skill is raising money to help his fellow members, though it's unclear if that's what he'll do once he leaves. It puts the Republican House Caucus at another disadvantage, losing their strongest fundraiser.
“It’s going to be hard for them to replicate the operation that Kevin had,” said top GOP operative Rob Stutzman said from California, who has known McCarthy since the early days of the statehouse. “They won’t be able to. [Rep. Mike] Johnson doesn’t have the relationships and fundraising prowess.”
The money issue is a big one, the New York Times wrote Thursday. New Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) isn't a fundraiser, and he never has been, even for his own campaigns. Now, he must raise enough cash to help save the endangered 18 Republicans sitting in districts won by Joe Biden in 2020.
Punchbowl's Jake Sherman suggested that McCarthy could start a super PAC and raise money to go after Republicans who voted to get rid of him. It wouldn't necessarily be a form of payback, but instead a cleansing of the troublemakers who continue to hold the party hostage.
"He's going to make a lot of money — is what he really wants to do," Sherman told MSNBC on Thursday. "McCarthy has been in public office for 20 years, and I think he's going to dive head first into the private sector. The interesting thing to me is McCarthy now is not a federal official, he could go out and raise unlimited sums of money."
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:20:08 GMT -8
Urkaine Takes the War to Siberia
The past week of Russia’s war in Ukraine was remarkable, chiefly for something that happened thousands of kilometres to the east of a hardened battlefront.
In an apparent sabotage operation of breathtaking audacity, Ukrainian operatives blew up two freight trains in east Siberia travelling on a track believed to be used to shuttle North Korean-made ordnance to the Russian front lines in Ukraine.
Details were sketchy, but some facts have emerged.
A freight train caught fire in the 15km-long (9.3-mile) Severomuysky Tunnel in the Republic of Buryatia on the night of November 29, the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor’s office reported.
Ukrainian media cited intelligence sources as saying four explosive devices had been planted on the railway, one of two rail links between Russia and China, reportedly also used for ferrying ammunition.
“During the movement of the freight train, four explosive devices went off,” the Ukrainian intelligence source was quoted as saying.
“Now the [Russian Federal Security Service] FSB is working on the spot, railway workers are unsuccessfully trying to minimise the consequences of the SBU special operation,” the source said, referring to the Security Service of Ukraine by its acronym.
The train in question was believed to be carrying 44 cars of refined fuel. At least three were destroyed. A successful detonation might have disabled the tunnel, and that indeed appeared to be the goal of the saboteurs, who told Ukrainian media the route was “paralysed”.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:22:51 GMT -8
Just What the World Needs. More Fake Starbucks.
McDonald's has announced the details of its new retro-style restaurant idea, CosMc's, which would operate in the same market segment as Starbucks.
Its pilot, focusing on hot and cold speciality drinks, will open this month near Chicago, and it aims to be in 10 locations by the end of 2024.
Meanwhile, the fast food giant plans to open about 10,000 McDonald's sites globally by 2027, with many in China.
The expansion would boost the number of its stores to about 50,000.
The first CosMc's is due to open in Bolingbrook, Illinois, near the fast food giant's headquarters, later this week, with about 10 more to open in Texas next year.
It will serve a menu that seems to be squarely aimed at people with a very sweet tooth, selling items such as Churro Frappe - a kind of Spanish doughnut - and S'Mores Cold Brew - s'mores are biscuits, chocolate and marshmallows.
There will also be a small number of McDonald's staple food items on the menu such as Egg McMuffins.
The concept is the fast food chain's latest effort to crack the lucrative coffee market, especially in the US, where more than 60% of the country drinks at least one cup a day.
In 2008, with an eye on Starbucks, it announced a plan to bring baristas and espresso machines to its US restaurants, which never caught on. Another push about a decade ago also faltered.
The Should Have Called it McStarbucks
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:25:37 GMT -8
Why the Hell Are You So Sad?
In fishing for causes for economic pessimism, an obvious contributor is often overlooked: the pandemic itself. It not only killed more than a million Americans but also threw much of daily life and economic activity and public confidence into profound disarray for several years, scarring a lot of people and their perceptions of the country, its capacities and its future.
When Americans are asked whether the country is on the right track, or whether they themselves are optimistic or pessimistic, they don’t treat the query like a trivia quiz about the last quarter’s G.D.P. growth or the Black unemployment rate or even the size of their own paychecks or stock portfolios. They are effectively responding to the therapist’s query: How are things? They answered that question according to one set of patterns, stretching back decades. And the pattern did not begin to shift only when inflation peaked in late spring 2022, or when pandemic relief was relaxed in fall 2021, or when supply-chain issues first arose earlier that year. They began answering differently in 2020, as the scale and duration of the pandemic came into view.
For decades, surveys about the economy were an accurate gauge of economic fundamentals that, practically speaking, there was little need to distinguish between the two.
That all changed in early 2020, when a significant gap opened between economic conditions and public perception
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:32:05 GMT -8
Texas Wants to Require a Woman to Watch Her Newborn Baby Die, and Possibly Lose Her Chance at Ever Having Another. The Judge Says "No" to Texas.
For the first time in at least 50 years, a judge has intervened to allow an adult Texas woman to terminate her pregnancy.
When Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble handed down the temporary restraining order Thursday, Kate Cox, 31, of Dallas burst into tears. Cox and her husband desperately wanted to have this baby, but her doctors said continuing the nonviable pregnancy posed a risk to her health and future fertility, according to a historic lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Texas Office of the Attorney General, which challenged Cox’s claims at Thursday’s hearing, may try to ask a higher court to intervene.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said.
At 20 weeks pregnant, Cox learned her fetus had full trisomy 18, a chromosomal abnormality that is almost always fatal before birth or soon after. Before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Texas law allowed doctors to terminate pregnancies due to lethal fetal anomalies at any point during the pregnancy. But now, Cox’s doctors said their hands were tied by Texas’ abortion laws, which prohibit abortion except to save the life of the pregnant patient.
A week after she first received the diagnosis, Cox and her husband, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, filed a lawsuit asking a judge to grant a temporary restraining order, allowing them to terminate this pregnancy.
“It is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye to my baby, but when,” Cox said in a statement. “I’m trying to do what is best for my baby and myself, but the state of Texas is making us both suffer.”
After a 45 minute Zoom hearing Thursday, Gamble ruled that Cox should be allowed to terminate the pregnancy, and that Dr. Damla Karsan, a Houston OB/GYN, should be protected from civil and criminal penalties if she performs the procedure.
Another district judge, Jessica Mangrum, previously ruled that the state’s abortion bans should not apply to people with complicated pregnancies, including those facing lethal fetal diagnoses. The state appealed that ruling, putting it on hold; the case is before the Texas Supreme Court.
The state cannot directly appeal Thursday’s order, since it is a temporary restraining order. Instead, the Office of the Attorney General would have to file a writ of mandamus petition, asking a higher court to take the extraordinary measure of overturning the emergency order.
“For mandamus relief, you're supposed to go to the Court of Appeals first, and then to the Texas Supreme Court,” said Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “But the Texas Supreme Court has recognized a somewhat flexible standard, that if there's not enough time, you can go straight to them.”
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:34:26 GMT -8
The House Shows It Can Slap Another Wrist and Not Move on Funding the Government at the Same Time
House members voted again Thursday to punish one of their own, targeting Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in one of the U.S. Capitol office buildings in September when the chamber was in session.
The Republican censure resolution passed with some Democratic votes, but most Democrats stood by Bowman in opposition of an effort they said lacked credibility and integrity. The prominent progressive now becomes the third Democratic House member to be admonished this year through the censure process, which is a punishment one step below expulsion from the House.
“It’s painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate,” Bowman said Wednesday as he defended himself during floor debate. “Their censure resolution against me today continues to demonstrate their inability to govern and serve the American people.”
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:36:38 GMT -8
The Bird is the Word
BBC News anchor Maryam Moshiri flipped the bird during a live telecast on Wednesday, attributing the crude gesture to a “private joke” with staff that accidentally went public.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:38:25 GMT -8
Apparently the QOP Has a Problem with Strong, Successful Women
Taylor Swift is Time Magazine’s person of the year, a choice that makes perfect sense. Swift’s Eras Tour is on track to break global records for tour earnings. A concert film also smashed records for that genre and provided the AMC movie theater chain with its highest single-day ticket sales ever. She was Spotify's most-streamed artist globally for 2023, following three years in which Bad Bunny took that title. Swift’s romance with NFL player Travis Kelce has increased ratings for Kansas City Chiefs football games while sales of his jersey spiked by 400%. She is as dominant a figure as they come these days—exactly what Time’s person of the year is supposed to recognize.
Prominent far-right influencers are very unhappy. “And just like clockwork, @taylorswift13 (as I warned you all about) is being further activated by the media and the Democrats to interfere in the 2024 election,” Laura Loomer tweeted, tying it back to her earlier just-asking-questions conspiracy theory: “Has @taylorswift13 made a deal with George Soros and Alex Soros to get the rights to her music back in exchange for getting Zoomers registered to vote Democrat against President Trump ahead of the 2024 Presidential election?” (This is a particularly odd theory given that Swift has spent years rerecording her early albums to reclaim ownership.)
Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec also weighed in. “The Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated. From her hand-selected vaccine shill boyfriend to her DINK lifestyle to her upcoming 2024 voter operation for Democrats on abortion rights,” he tweeted. “It’s all coming.”
Posobiec also offered up the Soros conspiracy theory: “Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020.”
Time’s person of the year interview with Swift makes clear just how ridiculous this idea is of her as a Soros puppet—or anyone’s puppet. Swift is forceful and direct. She is very much a person who knows her own mind and is charting her own course. Again, this is someone who responded to the loss of control of her artistic product by rerecording it over a period of years while continuing to put out new music and then launching one of the biggest, if not the biggest, tours of all time.
I Am Sure Taylor Will Shake It Off
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 7, 2023 9:40:21 GMT -8
US research advances on alternative to bomb-grade uranium in Navy vessels
U.S. research is advancing on the potential to change fuel for nuclear reactors on Navy submarines and aircraft carriers from bomb-grade uranium to a safer option, documents showed Wednesday, even as the program's funding is at risk in Congress.
In order to lower proliferation risks of keeping stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, the U.S. government has been exploring since 2018 how to use low-enriched fuel that cannot be used as fissile material in weapons.
The U.S. research program progressed from a planning phase into an "iterative experimental campaign phase" in fiscal year 2021 and early findings represent progress in what could be a 20-to 25- year design effort, said a report to Congress last year from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The report, seen by Reuters, had not been revealed previously.
The issue of highly-enriched fuel in naval vessels is heightened by the $245 billion AUKUS defense technology partnership with Australia and Britain that provides for the sale of U.S. nuclear-powered submarines and sharing of nuclear-propulsion technology with Australia in response to China's growing power in the Indo-Pacific.
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