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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:16:41 GMT -8
What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?
Why is the Stock Market Doing So Well? Because Profits are High. Why are Profits so High?
From The Economist
"In America the difference in profit growth between the 1962-1989 period and the 1989-2019 period is “entirely due to the decline in interest and corporate-tax rates”. Extending this analysis to the rich world as a whole, we find similar trends. The surge in net profits is really an artefact of lower taxes and interest bills. Measures of underlying profits have grown less impressively."
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:19:09 GMT -8
The QOP Has Figured Out How to Beat Biden. With a Bat. Kansas Republicans have condemned a fundraiser Friday night where attendees paid to kick and beat an effigy of President Joe Biden, distancing themselves from extremists who have seized control of the party. The Biden-bashing antics were part of a Kansas GOP event in Johnson County, where rocker Ted Nugent and disgraced former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline were the main attractions. A video posted by “MolonLabeTruth” to the far-right social media platform Rumble shows “highlights” from the event, which also included karate chops to blocks that read “Let’s Go, Brandon,” code for a profane insult of Biden. The video shows several people at the event attempting a roundhouse kick to a mannequin bust with a Biden mask and “Let’s Go, Brandon” T-shirt. Another woman is seen beating the president’s face with a foam bat. Biden beaten in effigy at Kansas GOP fundraiser
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:21:18 GMT -8
Lara Screws the Pooch
Former President Donald Trump had his claim of presidential immunity undercut by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
In an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo told RNC co-chair Lara Trump that the government was paying people to help register voters.
"Remember what Kamala Harris, the vice president, said the other day?" Bartiromo asked. "She says now they're going to pay people to come out and get engaged into voting."
"She said government, and this is all taxpayer dollars," she continued. "People should understand this is your money being used to pay college students to register voters."
"They'll receive money through the Work Study, a federal program that pays most of students' wages while employed at a part-time job. Taxpayer money."
Lara Trump called the effort to register voters "unbelievable."
"Imagine Donald Trump using taxpayer money to influence the outcome of an election when he was president," she said. "People would have gone berserk over it. But this is very, very problematic."
The former president has claimed immunity from prosecution for an insurrection because his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, allegedly were on the outer perimeter of the scope of his official duties.
Legal expert Marcy Wheeler pointed out that Lara Trump's admission could be problematic for her father-in-law.
"Lara Trump offers to be a witness attesting that none of Trump's actions in the January 6 indictment -- not a single one -- is an official act," she wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "Glad this is on video. Now get her before a grand jury!"
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:24:06 GMT -8
It's Too Late Baby, Now It's Too Late
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:26:10 GMT -8
Most American Movies are America-Centric
"Oppenheimer" had a glittering night at the Oscars but in Hiroshima, devastated by the first nuclear bomb in 1945, the film about the weapon's creator is harder to stomach.
"Is this really a movie that people in Hiroshima can bear to watch?" said Kyoko Heya, president of the Japanese city's international film festival, on Monday after the blockbuster won seven Academy Awards including best picture.
Christopher Nolan also picked up best director for the biopic, which was a huge hit worldwide last summer -- except in Japan, where it was absent from cinemas.
There was no official statement at the time, fueling speculation that sensitivities around the subject matter had kept the film off Japanese screens.
Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities, days before the end of World War II.
The mega-budget "Oppenheimer" will finally be released in Japan on March 29, but Heya has organised a special screening on Tuesday for high school students.
The 69-year-old told AFP in the city's Peace Memorial Park near the bomb's hypocenter that she had found Nolan's movie "very America-centric".
Japan Did Start the War and Was Brutal About Their Treatment of Civilians
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:30:22 GMT -8
Today's Quiz: What Major Religions are Missing from This List?
The Indian government has notified the rules for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government.
The controversial law passed in 2019 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government allowed Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from India’s neighbouring countries.
It declared that Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from mainly Muslim Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31, 2014, were eligible for citizenship.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:33:47 GMT -8
Katie Britt Almost Succeeded. She Almost Shut These People Up.
Here's What's Really Bad About Her Lying Rape Story
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:37:06 GMT -8
When You are Already Starving, What is the Point of Fasting?
Palestinians began fasting for Ramadan on Monday as the Muslim holy month arrived with cease-fire talks at a standstill, hunger worsening across the Gaza Strip and no end in sight to the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.
Prayers were held outside amid the rubble of demolished buildings late Sunday. Some people hung fairy lights and decorations in packed tent camps, and a video from a U.N.-school-turned-shelter showed children dancing and spraying foam as a man sang into a loudspeaker.
But there was little to celebrate after five months of war that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins. Families would ordinarily break the daily fast with holiday feasts, but even where food is available, there is little beyond canned goods and the prices are too high for many.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:39:53 GMT -8
They Don't Want Diversity, Unless You Have a Great Jump Shot.
The head of the NAACP is calling on Black student-athletes to reconsider their decisions to attend public colleges and universities in Florida, challenging a new state policy that bars those institutions from using government funds on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
In a letter sent Monday to current and future student-athletes of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NAACP leader Derrick Johnson implored college-bound Black athletes to “choose wisely.”
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are paramount to ensuring equitable and effective educational outcomes,” Johnson said in a statement accompanying the letter, which was first reported by NBC News. “The value Black and other college athletes bring to large universities is unmatched.”
“If these institutions are unable to completely invest in those athletes, it’s time they take their talents elsewhere,” said Johnson, the civil rights organization’s president and chief executive.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:43:07 GMT -8
Buying on Credit. Looting their Retirement Funds. Americans Continue to Act Dumb
The 401(k) is doing double duty as both a retirement account and a source of emergency funds for more Americans. (Is the emergency a trip to Maui?)
A record share of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals from their accounts last year for financial emergencies, according to internal data from Vanguard Group. Overall, 3.6% of its plan participants did so last year, up from 2.8% in 2022 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.
Retirement plans such as the 401(k) are designed to keep Americans’ nest eggs out of reach until later in life. And values in these accounts have risen substantially, in part because of a strong stock market and programs that automatically funnel money from people’s paychecks into their 401(k) accounts.
These surging balances, however, have helped make more people comfortable dipping into their accounts when needed.
Americans are dealing with conflicting financial forces. While hiring has been strong and workers’ earnings keep rising, the cost of groceries, child care and car insurance keeps climbing. More people are carrying heftier balances on their credit cards.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:44:33 GMT -8
In Memoriam
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 11, 2024 8:47:27 GMT -8
Are America's Hospitals Sick?
In community after community, the hospitals keep closing. In 2018, it was Northside Regional Medical Center in Youngstown, Ohio. In 2019, it was Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling, West Virginia, along with East Ohio Regional Hospital across the river in Martins Ferry, Ohio. That November, St. Luke's Medical Center, which had treated patients in Phoenix for more than a century, shut its doors. In 2020, as the pandemic hit, it was one in Massachusetts and another in West Virginia. Followed by four more — in California, Pennsylvania, and Texas — over the next three years. Other hospitals are teetering on the brink. In 2022, Conemaugh Nason Medical Center in Pennsylvania announced it was ending OB-GYN deliveries, leaving some mothers-to-be to travel almost an hour to give birth. Last year, Glenwood Regional Medical Center in Louisiana was ordered by the state to turn away patients because of inadequate supplies and staffing levels. In addition to their financial struggles, all of the hospitals shared three things in common. They all served low-income communities that suffered from a lack of access to healthcare. They were all owned at various points by for-profit investors, including leading private-equity firms like Cerberus, Leonard Green, and Apollo. And in a move that stripped the hospitals of one of their prime assets, the owners had sold the land beneath the facilities to a little-known real-estate investor called Medical Properties Trust. MPT, which has purchased some $16 billion of hospital real estate over the past two decades, now bills itself as one of the world's largest owners of hospital beds. For many of the hospitals, the deals proved disastrous. Once their real estate was sold to MPT, they were forced to pay rent on what had always been their own property. That added to the massive debt burdens already placed on the hospitals by their for-profit owners, deepening their financial woes. It also deprived Americans of desperately needed healthcare and put lives at risk — all while enriching some of the world's wealthiest investors. "It's the biggest scam that almost no one knows about," says Rob Simone, a researcher at the risk-management firm Hedgeye who has spent hundreds of hours digging through MPT's financial filings and business dealings. Or Is It Just Sick, Greedy People?Why America's hospitals are on life support
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