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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 8:46:09 GMT -8
Church Bulletin Bloopers
Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
Previous Guy's Lament
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:02:06 GMT -8
The Real Story Out of Previous Guy's Civil Trial is Shoes
Hair Jordans
As he closes in on the Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump made a highly unusual stop Saturday, hawking new Trump-branded sneakers at “Sneaker Con,” a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show On Earth!”
Trump was met with loud boos as well as cheers at the Philadelphia Convention Center as he unveiled what he touted as the first official Trump footwear. The shoes, gold lame high tops with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold as “The Never Surrender High-Tops” for $399 on a new website that also sells Trump-branded “Victory47” cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle.
A Big Day for Shoe News
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:10:40 GMT -8
Rotten ApplesAt least one person has been arrested and more are wanted after a company scammed people out of tens of millions of dollars, promising cheap iPhones after a ban on them in Iran. A division of Iranian law enforcement tasked with economic crimes said on Friday that the main suspect in the case of a firm called Kourosh Company had fled the country, but a “main member” of the company was arrested and two more are wanted. It said that, in coordination with the judiciary, “all the assets of the main suspect of the case were confiscated” without saying how much the assets were worth. Starting last year, Iran banned official registration of all new iPhone models made by United States tech giant Apple. The ban was extended this year, affecting all iPhone 15 models. All phones imported into Iran must be registered upon entry – even those belonging to tourists – or else they are considered contraband and only have network coverage for one month on any local SIM card. All new iPhone 14 and 15 handsets are being smuggled into Iran and can readily be found in shops in Tehran and across the country, but the ban has caused chaos. People have found temporary workarounds to circumvent the ban with spoofing methods, but the phones could still get disconnected after a while. Arrests after Iran’s iPhone ban paves way for multimillion-dollar scamJust Get An Android Phone
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:12:46 GMT -8
You Can Learn How to Get Sentenced to Jail on YouTube.Larry Vickers, a popular creator of YouTube gun videos, may get a prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in October to two federal crimes including a conspiracy to import illegal machine guns. But his admissions of guilt have done relatively little to dent his profile on YouTube, Facebook or any of the other internet platforms that helped make Vickers famous within the online gun community. He’s still posting updates to his fan base of 415,000 followers on Facebook while he awaits sentencing, and the hundreds of videos featuring him using various machine guns are still available on YouTube. The criminal case is intertwined with what Vickers has posted on YouTube, where he has over 1 million subscribers. In several YouTube videos, Vickers showed off machine guns that match the descriptions of weapons mentioned in court documents as illegally imported before he made the videos, according to a review by NBC News. It’s not known if they were the same weapons. If they were, Vickers was in effect exhibiting evidence of the conspiracy on YouTube. A popular gun influencer conspired to illegally import machine guns. He still has a home on YouTube.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:14:17 GMT -8
There is One Way He Was Not Outstanding. Returning to Russia Was Dumb. He Accomplished Nothing Except Going to Prison and Dying.
Navalny was outstanding in every sense. Head and shoulders above all Russian and likely all contemporary European politicians in terms of charisma and bravery, he was a figure of hopewhot exuded immense optimism and displayed an irresistible sense of humour until his very last days in prison in the Arctic.
He was a character akin to the Hummingbird in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, a charismatic politician trying to prevent the spilt of the newly independent India. Navalny was a highly inspiring and unifying personality that was capable of bringing together what was breaking apart in this current epoch of conflict and polarisation.
With his anticorruption crusade that exposed the illicit riches of top regime figures in a series of brilliantly produced YouTube videos, he built a vast support base and Russia’s biggest regional opposition network. He brought together liberals, nationalists and left-wingers – everyone who was tired of the corrupt securitocracy that has ruled Russia for a quarter-century.
Navalny took opposition politics out of Moscow and St Petersburg into distant regions and small towns. Internet-savvy and very well versed in contemporary culture, he brought about a generational shift in the ranks of Russian opposition. His following to a large extent comprised 20-somethings or even teens who have never experienced any other political regime than Putin’s.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:16:01 GMT -8
I Wonder Who Previous Guy Is Endorsing
Fulton County DA Fani Willis will be on the ballot in November.
Until this moment, Willis looked like an unbeatable shoo-in for re-election. She is, arguably, the highest-profile district attorney in the US today, and she’s as recognizable to a Fulton county voter as the president, the governor or Georgia’s senators. In a game of name recognition … well, people have stopped mispronouncing her first name in Atlanta now.
Her challenge here was to remind voters why they voted for her in the first place: to aggressively confront crime in Atlanta. Willis beat a 20-year incumbent in 2020 amid sharply rising crime and issues with prosecutions by her predecessor. She won in part by arguing that she would get the job done where her previous boss could not.
Willis has to make her case to the Fulton county voters that she’s still their best choice. That’s where the sharp elbows and Black cultural callbacks on the stand come from: she’s speaking to the second audience – the primarily Black, majority-female, predominantly Democratic Fulton county electorate who is watching all of this unfold and dreading the possibility that the county’s chance to impose justice on the powerful may be slipping through her fingers.
By showing her grief and rage, she humanizes herself before this audience, which is likely to be sympathetic to the horrors of a Black professional’s love life aired like a reality television show before the American public as a Trump defendant’s legal ploy.
In the Meantime, She Should Keep Her Shoes On.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:19:30 GMT -8
Is It OK to Freeze Your Children?
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic are children.
In a case originating from Mobile, LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., the Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic when an intruder tampered with an IVF freezer may proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic for alleged negligence.
The Court also held that the Alabama Constitution's Sanctity of Life Amendment, ratified by Alabama voters and made law in 2018, would require the Court to interpret the law in favor of protecting the unborn. Alabama’s Sanctity of Life Amendment declares in the state Constitution that it is “the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”
The cases arose when three couples, who had already become parents through IVF, sued the Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., claiming that the clinic's negligence in leaving the IVF clinic and freezer room unlocked and vulnerable to an intruder resulted in the deaths of their frozen embryos, which the clinic conceded were human. The Mobile County trial judge dismissed the cases, reasoning that a frozen embryo is not a “child” under Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
What Are Couples to Do With Frozen Embryos they Don't Want to Use? They are Routinely Discarded. Is That Murder?
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:21:10 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Democrat Jim Prokopaik, for defeating Republican Candace Cabanas in the special election in
Pennsylvania House District 140, once again securing Dem control of the PA State House
Michigan, for becoming the first state to repeal its union-busting "right to work" law
Democrat Tom Suozzi, for destroying his MAGA opponent in the NY-03 special election and giving House Speaker Mike Pornapp even less wiggle room for votes
Immigrants, as a CBO report reveals that the surge in immigration will lead to an extra $7 trillion pumped into the U.S. economy and $1 trillion in federal revenue by 2034
Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes, for setting an NCAA hoops scoring record---3,528 points (and scoring a career-high and Iowa record 49 points last night)
Greece's parliament, for legalizing same-sex marriage…the 16th EU country to approve marriage equality
Karma, as the FBI informant the House MAGA cult was relying on to impeach Joe Biden is indicted for lying about everything related to the president and his son
New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Judge Arthur Engoron, for doling out the punishment the Trump crime syndicate deserves for tax fraud: $364 million and a ban on doing business in New York for 2-3 years
The Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs…and the libs, for feasting on every paranoid delusion of the MAGA cult to own them outright before, during, and after the game
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 18, 2024 9:23:47 GMT -8
Guess Who Anti-Immigration Policies Hurt
Marlene Carrasco takes care of aging adults in their homes, a job she has done for nearly 30 years.
The challenging and low-paid work often falls to immigrants like Carrasco, who play an outsize role in caring for older Arizonans, an analysis by The Arizona Republic and the Migration Policy Institute shows.
But unlike workers employed in other immigrant-heavy industries such as construction and hospitality, immigrant workers who care for aging Arizonans remain largely invisible.
The workers who care for aging adults are already in short supply. The need for workers like Carrasco will become more critical as Arizona's already large population of older adults soars in the coming years, the analysis found. But with Arizona's immigrant population as a share of the total population shrinking, there may not be enough immigrants to help fill the gap without action by local, state and federal officials, experts say.
"The U.S. population is aging. People live longer. And the population in need of these services is growing. Hence, the projections show that the workforce needed" to care for the aging population "will be growing much faster," said Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute who assisted with the data.
That is especially true in Arizona, where the share of people over 65 is growing faster than in the U.S., Batalova said.
Without enough immigrants to help care for the growing aging population, family members may have to shoulder more of the responsibility.
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