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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 9:54:57 GMT -8
Church Bulletin Bloopers Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
Donny Doesn't Know What Day It Is. He Doesn't Know Who Jesus Was and What Praying Is. How Can He Be Saved?
Donald Trump Friday was hit with a stream of criticism for several verbal slip-ups at an event for the NRA in Pennsylvania.
The former president slurred when saying the word "subsidies," said "dino-dollars" instead of "dollars," and even said he doesn't like being frontpage news every time he "said one word a little bit mispronunciation." He also said that three years ago things were great, despite that being when Joe Biden became president, and he claimed twice there were no terror attacks during his tenure as president. He also said that Biden hasn’t spoken in months despite him addressing the press last night.
The flubs drew wide criticism from online onlookers.
Democratic youth activist Harry Sisson, in response to the ex-president's "subsidies" flub, said, "Yikes."
"Trump is slurring his speech again claiming that 'Rich people are given $7,000 subsies.' Uh...subsies?" he asked. "I'm not sure what that is and I don't think anyone else does either. He can't say subsidies properly so he must have dementia. Right, Republicans?"
Regarding the "subsies," former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski said, "Dementia Trump is staring at the teleprompter, pauses to think about it, and still can't say it."
In yet another instance pointed out by the Biden-Harris HQ account on social media, Trump "gets distracted with bizarre story."
"I know all about the marbles. I can tell you every marble," Trump said.
This prompted former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega to say, "Well, he lost his marbles long ago."
Trump also appeared to mistake what day it was, saying, "If I wasn't here, I'd be having a nice Saturday afternoon." He said that, of course, on a Friday. This one was also picked up by Biden-Harris HQ.
"It is Friday night," the account wrote.
Huh?
During his speech Friday night in Harrisburg, the former president told the crowd that a President Joe Biden win in November would be bad news for the state.
"We’re not going to have Pennsylvania. They’ll change the name,” Trump stated. “They’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”
Your Child is Murdered? Get Over It!
"Every single time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he's confused, deranged, lying or worse," TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s 2024 presidential reelection campaign said in a statement following the 45th president's speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Friday night.
"Tonight he lied more than two dozen times, slurred his words, confused basic facts and placated the gun lobby weeks after telling parents to 'get over it' after their kids were gunned down at school," he wrote.
“During my four years nothing happened," he said. "And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” he said as he addressed the NRA’s.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 9:57:04 GMT -8
Witless Endangers Witnesses
She purportedly needs a shovel to help her out of the legal sandbox she has created.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, presiding over the Trump's federal classified documents obstruction case, is in a quandary that former Deputy Attorney General Harry Litman believes is by her own design.
"She is in a box of her own making because she accepted Trump's submission and said that in order to keep this information to be sealed, which Smith says will really endanger witnesses, you have to have the highest legal showing."
Trump was hit with 40 felony charges in the classified documents case, including 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information and violations of the Espionage Act.
Litman believes recently Special Counsel Jack Smith's team is doing everything short of sounding atomic bomb sirens in Miami to compel Cannon to safeguard witnesses and members of service.
"That discovery material, if publicly docketed in unredacted form as the Court has ordered, would disclose the identities of numerous potential witnesses, along with the substance of the statements they made to the FBI or the grand jury, exposing them to significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment,” Smith's 22-page filing reads.
There's already been threats that Smith says “happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved.”
Cannon claimed that the prosecution didn't provide enough legal basis for the documents to stay sealed or redacted, though she did permit national security information culled from the documents themselves to remain out of the public eye.
But Litman says the bar is very low for Smith's request.
And he noted that the 11th Circuit (which stands above her court) "has said so."
"Remember, we have this ongoing drama with her," said Litman. "She's been slow-walking the case and she had these early sort of debacles that the 11th Circuit reversed."
The 11th Circuit notably overruled Cannon's request to appoint a special master to sift through classified documents inventoried by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-lago residence back on Aug. 8, 2022.
Litman believes if Cannon messes up again, it could lead to her recusal.
"We've been wondering will she make another clear misstep that would give Smith the wherewithal to say maybe it's time to recuse her," he said.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:02:21 GMT -8
How Long Will it Take Molasses Merrick to Leave?
If President Joe Biden wins a second term in November, he's not likely to keep Attorney General Merrick Garland in his current role, according to a new report.
Politico reported Friday evening that sources close to Biden who spoke anonymously to protect their positions say the president is privately "grumbling" about Garland's leadership of the Department of Justice. He's reportedly particularly upset about Garland's oversight of special counsel Robert Hur's and his hands-off approach to Hur's report summarizing the classified documents probe. Even though Hur ultimately ruled that no criminal charges were warranted, the special counsel — who was initially appointed as US Attorney for the District of Maryland by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 — made several unflattering observations about Biden's mental faculties that Republicans have seized on.
"This has been building for a while," one of Politico's sources said. "No one is happy."
Get Rid of Louis DeJoy, While You Are At It.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:07:36 GMT -8
This is Dam Good News
All the rain that has led to swollen rivers and flooding in parts of San Diego and large portions of Southern California has coincided with multiple snowstorms that blew across the Sierra Nevada in the northern half of the state.
That may translate to a second consecutive year of robust output from the state's hydroelectric power plants, which would help bolster the electric grid this summer. But officials at the California Independent System Operator, which manages the power system for about 80 percent of the state, aren't celebrating yet.
"It's always encouraging to have a wet winter and a good snowpack," California ISO spokesperson Anne Gonzales said, "but it's too early to tell the full impact of the recent rains and snowfall on electricity supplies through the summer and into fall."
After a very slow start, rain and snowfall totals are growing in the wake of a series of atmospheric rivers — columns of condensed water vapor that produce significant amounts of precipitation.
The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, located at nearly 7,000 feet elevation at the Donner Pass in the Sierra, recorded more than 5 feet of snow from a series of storms in the past week.
What's called "snow water equivalent" is a critical metric that refers to the overall amount of water the snowpack contains and then releases when it evaporates. Five weeks ago, the statewide snow water equivalent stood at just 28%; as of Thursday morning it had grown to 75%.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:10:42 GMT -8
How Bad Are Things in Nepal If You Agree to Go Fight in Ukraine for the Money?On a bitterly cold morning in early January, somewhere near Tokmak city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Bimal Bhandari* began a risky journey to desert the Russian army he had been serving with. The 32-year-old Nepali national was with another compatriot who also was fighting for the Kremlin, in and against Ukraine. The two men knew that getting away from the Russians would be a dangerous task, but they concluded that the risk was worth it, when weighed against their chances of survival as soldiers in Moscow’s savage war. Bhandari was in touch with a Nepali agent in Russia through a relative. The agent and another people smuggler promised that they could design an escape plan: For $3000 each, the two Nepali soldiers would be out. Three days after Bhandari and his friend shared their location, a man who spoke Hindi came with a driver and vehicle at the crack of dawn, picked them up and dropped them at an unknown spot that the traffickers claimed was near the Russian-Ukraine border. The man who spoke Hindi told them that handlers would be waiting to help them once they crossed over to the “other side”. So Bhandari and his friend stomped through knee-deep snow in minus 19 degrees Celsius (minus 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature for 17km (11 miles) in about seven hours. Famished and cold at the end of that journey, they called the traffickers again – only to be told to wait for 40 minutes for someone to pick them up. It was three hours before a vehicle arrived. There were no rescuers inside. Instead, it had a Russian border patrol team that handcuffed them and took them in the vehicle. They were jailed for a day, their passports seized before Bhandari was taken to a health facility, suffering from hypothermia. “It was our one and only chance to escape this brutal war and we failed,” he told Al Jazeera, from his hospital bed. “I do not want to recover – as soon as I get better, I’ll be pushed to the front line.” It is a fear that’s gripping dozens, if not hundreds, of Nepali families. While Nepal’s government does not have exact numbers of the country’s nationals fighting as mercenaries for Russia, some analysts believe they may total as many as one thousand. At least 12 Nepalis have been killed in the fighting, and five others captured by Ukraine. ‘Want to go home’: Nepalis fighting for Russia in Ukraine describe horrors They were lured by the promise of $3,000 paycheques and Russian citizenship. Now they’re trapped, wounded or dead.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:12:42 GMT -8
No Place is SafeIllegal drugs have long flowed from Mexico to the more remote parts of the U.S. But with the rise of fentanyl, cartel associates have pushed more aggressively into Montana, where pills can be sold for 20 times the price they get in urban centers closer to the border, state and federal law enforcement officials said. Some areas of the state have become awash with drugs, particularly its Indian reservations, where tribal leaders say crime and overdoses are surging. On some reservations, cartel associates have formed relationships with Indigenous women as a way of establishing themselves within communities to sell drugs, law enforcement officials and tribal leaders said. More frequently, traffickers lure Native Americans into becoming dealers by giving away an initial supply of drugs and turning them into addicts indebted to the cartels. Mexican drug cartels are targeting America’s ‘last best place’
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:14:04 GMT -8
Lock It Up! While You Are At It, Lock Previous Guy Up.
A Michigan jury found Jennifer Crumbley guilty this week of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2021 mass shooting her son carried out at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit that left four students dead. The case largely focused on the ways in which Crumbley as a mother failed to respond to repeated warning signs that their son was dangerous. But another component of the case is that the semiautomatic handgun used in the shooting was purchased for the shooter by his parents, and then left unsecured in the home: The cable lock it came with was never used, the code for the gun safe the family purchased never changed from its 0-0-0 factory settings.
News of the verdict has called attention to a component of gun safety that advocates have long stressed, one that has garnered increased support from legislators nationwide, including from the White House: safe storage laws. The regulations — sometimes also called secure storage laws — create mandates for gun owners on how they store their weapons in order to prevent children and other unauthorized users from accessing them.
At the time of the Oxford shooting, Michigan had no safe storage law. Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a safe storage measure into law in April 2023; the new law takes effect on February 13. It requires all gun owners in the state who have children in their homes to store their firearms with either a cable lock or in a gun safe.
Approximately 4.6 million children live in homes with unsecured firearms in the United States; secure storage is widely regarded as a critical measure for reducing gun violence instances among this demographic — especially when it comes to self-inflicted harm, unintentional shootings and school shootings. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that households that lock up firearms and ammunition see at least 85 percent fewer unintentional injuries from guns experienced by children than those that don’t.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:15:43 GMT -8
All You Need to Know About the Election
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:18:39 GMT -8
Elise Wants the Worst Job in the World, and She Promises to Break the Law to Get It.
Several Republican women have recently telegraphed their unbridled desire to be Donald Trump’s running mate and they’re not exactly ebing subtle about it. So while Trump lawyer Alina Habba us apparently angling to be Melania, and Melania, if she has any sense, is angling to be Marla Maples, women like New York rep, Elisa Stefanik are clearly vying to be the Joker’s sidekick.
In a Thursday discussion with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Stefanik—who is, shockingly, the House Republican conference chair—would’ve done things differently on Jan. 6, 2021, if she’d been vice president. While that would have meant unilaterally disenfranchising tens of millions of voters, somehow Stefanik frames this hypothetical move as a courageous stand in defense of the Constitution.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:24:06 GMT -8
Enjoy the Wet Winter While It's Here. The Little Girl is Coming.
Storm-soaked California is still in the clutches of a wet El Niño winter, but in an unexpected plot twist, La Niña could be hot on its heels.
The El Niño-La Niña Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that can influence weather worldwide and across the Golden State, although its outcomes are never guaranteed.
Typically, El Niño is associated with warm, wet winters in Southern California, while La Niña is associated with cooler and drier conditions.
So far this year, El Niño has delivered on that promise. The pattern intensified in recent months, becoming what is now believed to be the fifth-strongest El Niño on record, according to an advisory the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued this week.
Since December, California has been pummeled by intense atmospheric rivers, including three storms that dropped record-breaking rainfall in Oxnard, San Diego and Los Angeles. The latest storm killed at least nine people and triggered landslides, debris flows and two tornadoes.
But California's wild weather ride may not be over yet, as there is now a 55% chance La Niña could develop sometime between June and August, the advisory says. There is a 77% chance it could develop between September and November.
"We look at a lot of very state-of-the-art climate models, and there's a lot of consensus among these models that we will potentially transition into a La Niña," said Michelle L'Heureux, a climate scientist with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. "Taken all together, that's why we issued the watch."
La Niña tends to favor the opposite pattern of El Niño, L'Heureux said. During La Niña, the central and eastern Pacific Ocean cools, and the jet stream — the river of air that moves storms eastward across the globe — shifts toward the north. The effect essentially creates a big ridge in the north Pacific Ocean, which "can help dry things out across the southern tier of the United States, and that is inclusive of California," she said.
L'Heureux cautioned that it is still very early in the year to make any predictions about how next winter could play out in California. ENSO is more like a "great nudger" that encourages weather systems to reoccur along a certain preferred pathway, as opposed to a guaranteed outcome.
"It's still not a slam dunk," she said of La Niña. "There's still a 1 in 4 chance that this won't happen, and seeing that progress will be important for saying something about the impacts. Because once it emerges, we can then be slightly more confident in certain impacts."
A rare three-year run of La Niña from 2020 to 2023 was a notable factor in California's most recent drought, which saw unprecedented water restrictions, shriveling groundwater supplies and record-low levels on the Colorado River.
Should the latest forecast manifest, the West Coast could once again experience a rapid swing from precipitation to dryness — a pattern sometimes referred to as "weather whiplash" that is becoming increasingly common in a warming world.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:26:43 GMT -8
A Trillion Here, A Trillion There. Pretty Soon You Are Talking About Real Money
The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has met with officials from the United Arab Emirates to pitch his plan to build lots and lots of new chip factories. The cost? $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
OpenAI needs more computing power (currently, it relies on Microsoft for this) — and this means it needs more silicon chip factories. A lot more. And chip plants ain't cheap.
According to the WSJ:
"As part of the talks [with the U.A.E.], Altman is pitching a partnership between OpenAI, various investors, chip makers and power providers, which together would put up money to build chip foundries that would then be run by existing chip makers, some of the people said. OpenAI would agree to be a significant customer of the new factories. Much of the effort could be funded by debt, one of the people said. The discussions are in their early stages, the full list of potential investors isn't known, and the effort could span years and ultimately might not succeed."
It's true that the world needs more silicon chip factories — President Joe Biden recently signed the CHIPS Act, which gives $52 billion in subsidies to build factories in the US (although the promise of many new good jobs is falling short). So Altman's ambitious plan to make more happen is great (I think?).
But ... whew … $5 trillion to $7 trillion is a whole lotta clams. That kind of number isn't typically something a relatively new company thinks about raising. In fact, there aren't very many things at all that cost in the trillions.
The Future Will Have More Chips and Less Fish
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:27:49 GMT -8
Powered by MAGA
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched billboards in Michigan on Friday, hitting independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his aligned Super PAC, American Values 2024, receiving donations from a former President Trump mega-donor, the committee first told The Hill.
The committee is launching four billboards in Grand Rapids, Mich., as Kennedy kickstarts his tour of the Great Lake State, a battleground in the 2024 contest, scrutinizing the independent challenger over his outside group getting a $15 million boost from Tim Mellon, a transportation executive.
The billboards feature a headshot of Kennedy on the left side and Trump on the other. In the middle, the sign reads “RFK Jr. powered by MAGA Trump. Same biggest donor Timothy Mellon.”
They are set to run throughout Saturday, Feb. 10.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:30:50 GMT -8
Friday Close: 5,026.61
For those obsessed with big, round numbers, the stock market has delivered another thrill: the S&P 500 index was on pace to close above 5,000 on Friday for the first time ever. Should the session’s gains hold, it would be its first close above the elusive threshold.
The S&P 500 briefly hit an intraday high of 5,000.40 on Thursday in the last minute of trading before closing at 4,997.91, its ninth record finish so far in 2024.
Professional investors don’t typically pay a lot of attention to 1,000-point thresholds. In themselves, they hold no technical significance for analysts.
However, they are often cited as “psychological” hurdles. As such, clearing them can be seen as adding to positive sentiment. Conversely, failure to convincingly move through them can sometimes be seen as a drag, or worse.
Than You President Biden! (He doesn't really control the market, but he should take credit anyway. He gets blamed for everything bad.)
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2024 10:32:43 GMT -8
For a Moment I Thought They Were Not in Kansas Anymore.
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s signature sits freshly inked on a bill that is meant to move Kansas employers away from paying employees with disabilities less than minimum wage.
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly announced on Thursday, Feb. 8, that she put her signature on Senate Bill 15 to help facilitate employment opportunities for Kansans with disabilities.
“Kansans with disabilities deserve a fair wage for the work they perform,” Gov. Kelly said. “I’m signing this bipartisan legislation to create more opportunities for people with disabilities, grow our workforce, and ensure every Kansan can work with dignity and respect.”
Kelly noted that the bill creates the Disability Employment Act to expand an income tax credit for goods and services bought from qualified businesses that employ disabled workers and that pay those workers at least the minimum wage.
The Governor indicated that the bill also creates the Sheltered Workshop Transition Grant Program, a matching grant program that helps move employers away from a federal policy that allows them to pay those with disabilities less than minimum wage. Those who do pay Kansans with disabilities less than minimum wage will not be eligible for the Disability Employment Act tax credit.
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hasben
Resident Member
Posts: 1,023
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Post by hasben on Feb 10, 2024 14:39:39 GMT -8
If President Joe Biden wins a second term in November, he's not likely to keep Attorney General Merrick Garland
I'm not so sure of that. Biden so far has been totally naive about dealing with any opposition and holds on to the belief that sanity in the gop will prevail. He's so paranoid about appearing neutral in nearly all of his decisions that he might well keep Garland who is either incompetent or a traitor to his boss simply for appearance sake.
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