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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:40:10 GMT -8
Church Bulletin Bloopers Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help. On the Battlefield It's Your Duty. Off the Battlefield It is Still Murder.Russia has been releasing prisoners to fight in Ukraine for more than a year, originally offering them a pardon and freedom after six months, even if they have been convicted of a violent crime. But the BBC has discovered this deal is a thing of the past. Now, they no longer get a pardon, face tougher conditions and instead of going home early, they must fight until the end of the war. "If you sign up now, be ready to die," writes a man called Sergei in a chatroom for former Russian prisoners fighting in Ukraine. He says that since October he's been part of a new type of army unit with the name "Storm V" which convicts are now being assigned to. "Before you could wing it for six months. But now, you have to make it until the end of the war," he writes. When the mass recruitment of Russian prisoners started in the summer of 2022, it was led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, once the head of the Wagner private military group. Prisoners were offered a clean record, full pardon and allowed to go home after six months on the battlefield. Before he died in a plane crash in August, Prigozhin said that almost 50,000 Russian prisoners had been dispatched to the front line under this deal - similar figures have been cited by human rights activists. Thousands of those prisoners died, but others, including dozens convicted of violent crimes returned home, with some going on to re-offend and even commit murder. ... The BBC has reviewed many posts in chatrooms from men who say they have been on the front line in these units. "The conditions are sort of better. You get full pay, like in the military, and all the other benefits and allowances," one convict writes. "Your chances of survival are about 25%. I've been a stormtrooper for five months. Out of our platoon of about 100 men, only 38 are still alive," another says. Ukraine war: No more easy deals for Russian convicts freed to fight |
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:45:24 GMT -8
A Concerned South Carolina Voter
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:47:23 GMT -8
MAGA is Bliss
YouGov presented American adults with eight legal scenarios to judge the extent of the public’s awareness. Two were invented: that Trump faces charges related to emoluments or related to drug trafficking. Happily, less than a quarter of respondents said those legal threats actually existed.
The other six were real. The one that was familiar to the most people was the federal classified-documents case that is moving forward in Florida; 6 in 10 Americans said they were aware of that case. The one that had the least awareness was the civil suit in New York in which a judge determined that he’d fraudulently inflated the value of his assets. Just under 50 percent of Americans knew about that.
But the pattern among Republicans is clear. At most, 45 percent of Republicans said they knew about legal issues: specifically, the documents case and his being found liable for assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. Only a quarter knew about the value-inflation suit, and only 4 in 10 knew about the criminal charges in Manhattan related to the hush money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:51:03 GMT -8
Shed a Tear for Fox Noise
On Second Thought, Don't Waste Your Tears
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:51:45 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, for ruling that access to abortion services is a right guaranteed by the state constitution
House Democrats, for once again stepping in to get an important bill---re-authorization of the poverty-reducing child tax credit---over the finish line
The Federal Reserve, for doing what everyone's been waiting for: deeming the economy strong while leaving interest rates unchanged
The Delaware Chancery Court that struck down Elon Musk’s ridiculously-undeserved $56 billion Tesla compensation package
President Biden: polls up, inflation down; visits autoworkers in Michigan; finds way to bypass Congress to send Ukraine more aid
The Oregon Supreme Court, for ruling that MAGA state senators who staged a weeks-long unauthorized walkout can't run in 2024 or 2026
The Mars helicopter "Ingenuity," for performing 72 flawless flights before retiring with rotor damage
Workin' stiffs, as employers add 353,000 new jobs in January, wages exceed inflation, and the unemployment rate marks 2 years under 4%
Elmo, for asking us how we're all doing
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:54:18 GMT -8
The WSJ Issue is the Real National Security Issue
The Wall Street Journal is facing outrage on social media over “Islamophobic” rhetoric in an opinion piece about a Michigan city.
The Friday op-ed referred to Dearborn — a suburb of Detroit with the largest Muslim population per capita in the U.S. — as “America’s Jihad Capital,” saying that people there “side with Hamas” amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group.
Since the war broke out last year, people in Dearborn have gathered to protest Israel and condemn the violence against Palestinians, calling for their liberation. An Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas killed around 1,200 people, according to the country, while Israel’s retaliation in Gaza has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians and wounded 66,000, per the territory’s Health Ministry.
The op-ed described the city’s protests as “in support of Hamas” and its allies, and framed the sentiment there as a potential national security issue.
Criticism quickly emerged from countless users on X (formerly Twitter) following the article’s publication, with many suggesting that the op-ed engaged in fearmongering and could perpetuate prejudice against Muslims in Dearborn.
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Dearborn police will increase patrols across the city as residents face an influx of "Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city," Mayor Abdullah Hammoud announced Saturday.
The headline of an opinion piece published Friday in The Wall Street Journal called Dearborn “America’s Jihad Capital” and it aimed criticisms at residents for pro-Palestine demonstrations.
In an X post published Saturday, Hammoud announced police would ramp up presence at places of worship and major infrastructure points "as a direct result" of the opinion piece.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:56:42 GMT -8
Don't Mess with the Voice of God
Auburn’s Johni Broome met one of his favorite movie stars — and apologized to Morgan Freeman for how it happened.
Broome, who scored 15 points in the 16th-ranked Tigers’ 91-77 victory over Mississippi on Saturday night, tried to save a ball from going out of bounds in the second half when someone in the front row grabbed his jersey.
Thinking it was an Ole Miss fan trying to rattle him, Broome brushed the person’s arm away. (Broome brushed his hand away? Maybe he swept it away.)
It turned out it was Freeman, the Academy Award-winning actor who is a big Mississippi fan and attends many Rebels games.
“I kind of got his hand off,” Broome told reporters. “I saw who it was and I’m a big movie guy. I probably watched one of his movies on the plane coming here.
“But I realized it was him and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a big fan. I’m sorry.’ He said, ‘Just keep playing.’”
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 8:58:58 GMT -8
It's Not Easy Being GreenAcross America’s power grid, there’s a growing gap between what we need and what we’ll allow. As the planet warms and climate disasters grow more costly, the U.S. has set a target to reach 100% clean energy by 2035, a goal that depends on building large-scale solar and wind power. A nationwide analysis by USA TODAY shows local governments are banning green energy faster than they’re building it. Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning. At least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both, USA TODAY found. These limits come through outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build. The impediments come as a gigantic effort to build green energy also is under way. U.S. energy from commercial wind and solar is expected to hit 19% by 2025, and those sources are expected to surpass the amount of electricity made from coal this year. But green energy must increase radically over the next 11 years to meet U.S. goals. And those projects are becoming harder to build. In the past decade, about 180 counties got their first commercial wind-power project. But in the same period, more than twice as many blocked wind development. And while solar power has found more broad acceptance, 2023 was the first year to see almost as many individual counties block new solar projects as the ones adding their first project. The result: Some of the nation’s areas with the best sources of wind and solar power have now been boxed out. Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 9:01:59 GMT -8
Some Wellness Influencer are Not WellWhen wildfire ripped through Hawaii’s Maui last August, the impact was devastating: a whole town reduced to ashes, more than 100 lives lost. The inferno was described as the “largest natural disaster in state history.” But some on Instagram suggested, without evidence, there was something much more nefarious at play. Wellness influencer @truth_crunchy_mama told her 37,000 followers to “stop blaming things on nature that were actually caused by the government.” They’re “going to keep setting wildfires until we all submit to their climate change agenda,” she said in another post. Health influencer @drmercola suggested to his 504,000 followers whether, while the media focused on climate change, the fires might have been deliberately set to “to facilitate a land grab” to make the area a “smart city” — referring to a technology-focused urban design idea. A natural parenting influencer, whose Instagram page is filled with soft-focus pictures of herself against pretty pastel backgrounds, inferred to her 76,000-strong community that Hawaii’s wildfires were started by “directed energy weapons” — systems which use energy such as laser beams. These posters are all wellness influencers — a loosely-defined umbrella term for a wide range of accounts including yoga, lifestyle, fitness, alternative health and new age spirituality. While conspiracy theories about the Hawaii wildfires spread across the internet last year, it may seem surprising they were also seized upon by part of the wellness community. Wellness influencers fueled pandemic misinformation. Now they have another big conspiracy in their sights
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