|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 9:38:02 GMT -8
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
In Todays's Edition of "Who the Hell Cares?"
Marianne Williamson announced Wednesday that she was relaunching her presidential campaign just three weeks after calling it quits following poor performances in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
“As of today, I am unsuspending my campaign for the president of the United States,” Williamson said in a video posted to X. “I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race, but something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here, and we must respond.”
80,00 Financial Backers?
Texas pastor and long-shot Republican presidential candidate Ryan Binkley officially ended his race for the White House and endorsed his political party's favored candidate for the nomination, former President Donald Trump.
Binkley thanked his supporters and more than 80,000 financial backers -- "who helped share my vision" -- on social media before offering Trump his "unwavering support" as the election continues.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 9:40:05 GMT -8
He is Leaving for His Well-Deserved Place in Hell
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expected to step down from Senate leadership in November, The Associated Press reported.
The Kentucky Republican is the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 9:50:55 GMT -8
The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Billionaire
Texas billionaire hedge funder Kyle Bass took to the internet to complain about paying $14 for orange juice while having a room-service breakfast in a five-star hotel in New York City.
It didn't go down well.
"Terrible Inflation milestone reached," Bass complained on X. "My first $85 breakfast for one at a NYC hotel. After signing this bill, I have decided NEVER AGAIN. #Biden #Inflation @secyellen @federalreserve"
He tagged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve in the post.
Former Buzzfeed and Wall Street Journal writer Tom Gara unleashed an attack on social media soon after.
"A billionaire tagging the Treasury Secretary in their post about ordering a $14 room service orange juice at a five-star hotel in Manhattan is the kind of high-level posting you simply can't get on any other platform and likely never will," wrote Gara.
Meanwhile, orange juice at one New York City McDonald's is $3.89 for a small and $4.69 for a large.
"That this rich guy's outrage is fake is obvious to anyone who ever ordered room service on an expense-account at a nice NYC hotel. Multiple-item orders have been producing very large bills for a very long time," wrote journalist John Harwood.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Heidi N. Moore explained, "This isn't inflation, this is just what things cost at expensive hotels, man. You can walk outside and get a Diet Coke for $1.50 from a food cart."
"Don’t ever let these rich people pretend they just like you. He’s a billionaire at 5-star hotel complaining about 14-dollar OJ. That amount of money is nothing to him but they love to point out 'see inflation.' Go sit down somewhere," Courtney Anthony said of Bass.
Others were quick to knock Bass for being "lazy" and getting room service when there are several breakfast options within a block of him.
"President Biden’s economy must be doing well if Kyle Bass is ordering $26 waffles," quipped another critic named Evan.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 9:53:32 GMT -8
We Are All in Hot Water
While global policymakers continue to drag their feet on phasing out planet-heating fossil fuels, scientists around the world "are freaking out" about high ocean temperatures, as they toldThe New York Times in reporting published Tuesday.
A "super El Niño" has expectedly heated up the Pacific, but Times reporter David Gelles spoke with ocean experts from Miami to Cambridge to Sydney about record heat in the North Atlantic as well as conditions around the poles.
"The sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing," said Matthew England, a University of New South Wales professor who studies ocean currents. "The temperature's just going off the charts. It's like an omen of the future."
Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey who watches polar ice levels, told the paper that "we're used to having a fairly good handle on things. But the impression at the moment is that things have gone further and faster than we expected. That's an uncomfortable place as a scientist to be."
Last week, Jeff Berardelli, WFLA's chief meteorologist and climate specialist, also highlighted the warm North Atlantic and that "all signs are pointing to a busy hurricane season" later this year.
Noting that in the middle of this month, sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were around 2°F higher than the 1990-2020 normal and nearly 3°F above the 1980s, Berardelli explained:
That may not sound like a lot, but consider this is averaged over the majority of the basin shown in the red outline in the image above. A deviation like that is unheard of... until now.
To put it into more relatable terms, considering what's been normal for the most recent 30 years, the statistical chance that any February day would be as warm as it is right now is 1-in-280,000. That's not a typo. This is according to University of Miami researcher Brian McNoldy...
And that 1-in-280,000 is compared against a recent climate, which had already been warmed substantially by climate change. If you tried to compare it against a climate considered normal around the year 1900, the math would become nonsensical. Meaning an occurrence like this simply would not be possible.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 9:57:25 GMT -8
Google is Paying News Outlets to Steal From Other News Outlets
Google has created a new suite of AI tools—tools that have reportedly not yet been released to the public, but that are being provided to news outlets as part of the Google News Initiative. According to Adweek, small news outlets are being offered five-figure contracts in which Google pays them to use the tools for up to a year, so long as they publish a minimum amount of AI-generated content.
Nothing in the contract requires outlets to label the articles created with these tools to let readers know how they were produced.
As bad as that sounds, the details are worse. Because what Google appears to have created is a sophisticated “aggregation” engine, one that isn’t just trained on existing text but also incorporates “language taken almost verbatim from the source material,” according to Adweek. The tool makes it simple for outlets to create a “new” article by simply lifting content from outlets that put in the reporting legwork.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:01:04 GMT -8
The NYT Humiliates Themselves Again
NYT decided to characterize the Michigan primary as follows:
President Biden won Michigan’s Democratic primary election on Tuesday but was facing significant opposition over his support for Israel as it wages war in Gaza, with a substantial percentage of voters casting ballots for “uncommitted” as part of a protest movement against him.
Former President Donald J. Trump was also victorious in the Republican primary, coasting past former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina to continue his undefeated primary streak. The Associated Press called both races as final polls closed at 9 p.m.
Notice the difference? Biden is currently winning 80% of the vote, with “uncommitted” at a distant 2nd with just 15%. Meanwhile, Trump is sitting at 66%, with Haley with a more substantial minority of 29%. So, Biden is overperforming 538’s expectations and Trump is once again underperforming them. Every poll had Biden under 80% and every poll had Trump over 70%. The aggregate for Trump on 538 is a massive 78.7%. He’s underperforming the polls by more than 10%.
AND YET, according to the NYT, Biden “was facing significant opposition” while Trump was “coasting past” Haley.
Politico Humiliate Themselves Again
In 2012, When Obama was Running for Reelection, the Uncommitted Vote in the Michigan Primary was 10.7%.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:02:54 GMT -8
I Wonder What Percent of those Prosecuted Were Black Women?
For those of us following the Alabama Supreme Court closely, this is, while deeply disturbing, not surprising. Ten years ago, this court ruled that the definition of a “child” included fetuses at any point in gestation in the context of child abuse laws, meaning a pregnant person could abuse their “child” even as an embryo, ushering in the unprecedented mass criminalization of pregnant people in the state: more than 600 such cases from 2006 through 2022, outpacing every state in the nation in criminalizing pregnant people.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:04:53 GMT -8
It IS Really Creepy
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:07:08 GMT -8
He's Over His Head, and It Doesn't Feel Nice
Mike Johnson Is in Way Over His Head
Who’d have guessed a Trumpy backbencher would bungle the Speaker’s job?
Well, now you’ll even find Republicans pointing out that Johnson wasn’t the first draft pick. “We went through five choices and Mike Johnson’s the fifth choice,” Representative Patrick McHenry told CBS News last week. McHenry, who served as Speaker pro tempore last year after Kevin McCarthy, his ally, was ousted, may feel like he can finally speak freely since he’s not running for reelection.
He’s part of a wave of House GOP retirements that includes Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Mike Gallagher, and Ken Buck. (Notably, Gallagher and Buck both voted against the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.) In the CBS interview, McHenry continued to muse about Johnson: “He has not been around these leadership decisions. He’s had a really tough process.
We’ve thrown him into the deepest end of the pool with the heaviest weights around him and [we’re] trying to teach him how to learn to swim. It’s been a rough couple of months.” Sounds like McHenry has a little Speaker’s remorse! Or, as Punchbowl put it bluntly on Monday: “Johnson, quite frankly, has been hesitant to lead on any issue at all.”
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:10:16 GMT -8
I Don't Think the Court Has a Layaway Plan
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are seeking to pause the enforcement of the penalties in his civil fraud trial, telling the court that he intends to post a bond of only $100 million -- well short of the $464 million judgment ordered by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron.
Engoron's judgment ordered Trump to pay a $355 million fine, plus interest, and blocked him from running any New York-based company, including his own, for three years.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:14:05 GMT -8
Before You Fly, Put Your Airline's Customer Service Number in Your Phone
A version of a scam has hit panicky travelers over and over and over and over.
People searching Google for airline contact information when they have a problem occasionally find bogus customer service phone numbers listed at or near the top of Google.
If you call, crooks posing as airline reps try to persuade you to pay to rebook a flight or another task. Your money goes poof.
No one knows how often this scam happens. But this airline customer service misdirection is common knowledge in the travel industry and among people who know Google.
In researching this article, I found an apparent scam number highlighted by Google when I searched “JetBlue contact customer support.”
Google has the power to ensure that it shows the correct airline contact information, according to three experts in the inner workings of web searches. In their view, Google chooses not to fix the problem.
Google says that it’s “extremely rare” for airline customer service searches to show you scam phone numbers. A Google representative didn’t say what the company considers an acceptable number of people tricked out of their time or money.
The persistence of the airline scam shows that while we’re worried about a future of misleading AI, widely used sites such as Google are already pockmarked with scams and deceptions in plain sight.
Here’s my advice: If you’re searching for airline customer service contact information, DO NOT trust phone numbers you might see highlighted at the top or other prominent places on Google.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:15:02 GMT -8
How Many MAGAs Know What "Quandry" Means?
Senate Republicans are struggling to respond to an extreme Alabama Supreme Court ruling effectively halting in vitro fertilization in the state as Democrats plan a new effort this week to protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments nationwide.
On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with equal rights, a contradictory position that now has them on the defensive on an issue that is supported by over 80% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans.
“That’s really at the crux of the ethics of it,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday. “How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?”
“No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life,” he added. “Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then you’re now in a quandary.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said she supported access to IVF. When asked if she considered frozen embryos children, she said, “I don’t want to say they’re not children.”
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:16:06 GMT -8
The QOP Has a Funny Idea of "Spectacular"
In November, the National Republican Congressional Committee put out a memo dedicated in part to boasting about some of its new recruits, who, it said, would help expand the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House.
“Republicans are in a strong position to expand the map and compete in [President Joe] Biden-won districts because of spectacular GOP recruits,” said the memo from House Republicans’ campaign arm.
“Yet for the campaign arm of House Democrats, candidate recruitment paints a picture of doom and gloom. Plagued by retreads, progressive firebrands, and messy primaries, House Democratic recruitment is the polar opposite of GOP recruits.”
The dozen Republican candidates touted by the memo were notable for their diversity — the group included four women and two African Americans, as well as an Indian American competing for a seat in Kansas.
“Strong candidates with compelling backgrounds that match the life stories and experiences of voters are able to compete to win in tough districts where top-of-the-ticket Democrats will be presumed to be victorious,” the memo said.
But early in the election year, with still a long but quickly shrinking runway remaining, all of the dozen recruits the NRCC cited as “top GOP recruits running in target races” are well behind their Democratic opponents in terms of cash on hand, according to federal election filings.
As of Dec. 31, the latest data available, Democrats had an average cash-on-hand advantage of over $1 million in those races — $1,169,654, to be exact.
“The NRCC’s recruiting of far-right extremists to run for Congress has so far produced campaigns that are landing like lead balloons,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the NRCC’s competitor, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Feb 28, 2024 10:18:10 GMT -8
I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream at Fox Noise
Fox News host Jesse Watters is wracking his brains trying to find new things to hate about Joe Biden ― and his latest quibble with the president is a real head-scratcher.
Apparently he doesn’t like old guys eating ice cream.
Watters made the pearl-clutching observation on Tuesday in response to comments Biden made Monday, while getting ice cream, expressing his hope for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Although a reduction in hostilities in the Middle East might seem to be the important part of the story, Watters just couldn’t focus on it, preferring instead to make blanket assumptions about masculinity and food products.
“You know my rule about men eating soup in public? I don’t think it’s manly ... not a good look,” Watters explained to his fellow panelists. “I think the same thing for ice cream. You should save that for vacation. A grown man, especially the president, should not be licking ice cream in public.”
|
|
|
Post by sagobob on Feb 28, 2024 16:29:44 GMT -8
Google is Paying News Outlets to Steal From Other News OutletsGoogle has created a new suite of AI tools—tools that have reportedly not yet been released to the public, but that are being provided to news outlets as part of the Google News Initiative. According to Adweek, small news outlets are being offered five-figure contracts in which Google pays them to use the tools for up to a year, so long as they publish a minimum amount of AI-generated content. Nothing in the contract requires outlets to label the articles created with these tools to let readers know how they were produced. As bad as that sounds, the details are worse. Because what Google appears to have created is a sophisticated “aggregation” engine, one that isn’t just trained on existing text but also incorporates “language taken almost verbatim from the source material,” according to Adweek. The tool makes it simple for outlets to create a “new” article by simply lifting content from outlets that put in the reporting legwork. Limbo Journalism: How low can your go?
|
|