|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:13:58 GMT -8
Church Bulletin Bloopers
Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.
Trouble Bridge over Baltimore Waters
A major bridge in the US city of Baltimore has collapsed into the Patapsco River after a container ship crashed into it
The bridge snapped and plunged into the water at around 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT) along with vehicles and people
A huge search operation is under way for six missing people, authorities say, while two others have been pulled from the water
All of them are believed to be part of a construction crew that was repairing potholes at the time the bridge collapsed
The ship is now wedged into debris from the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is 3km (1.6 miles) long and part of a major highway
It suffered a "power issue" and issued a distress call moments before the crash, officials say, but was travelling too quickly to change course
Maryland Governor Wes Moore says the bridge will be rebuilt "in a way that remembers the people this tragedy has impacted, and honours the community it serves"
And the Crazies Are Already Out
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reacted to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore with completely apocalyptic and fact-free speculation.
The bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning when a shipping vessel apparently lost power and crashed into it. Law enforcement officials are still investigating the cause of the incident but they have said at this time they do not have any evidence that this was a terrorist attack.
However, this did not stop Jones from claiming that the bridge collapse was part of something far more nefarious.
"Looks deliberate to me," Jones wrote. "A cyber-attack is probable. WW3 has already started."
Jones' comments came in response to a post by accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate, who also claimed that the "ship was cyber-attacked" to force it to crash into the bridge.
"Nothing is safe," Tate commented. "Black Swan event imminent."
It Must Be Immigrants
During a segment on Fox Business Tuesday morning during an interview with Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott, host Maria Bartiromo wondered if there was "foul play" involved.
"Let me also get your take in terms of what's going on in world affairs," she told Scott. "The White House has issued a statement on [the bridge collapse], saying there's no indication of nefarious intent in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge ... You've been talking a lot about the potential for wrongdoing or the potential for foul play given the wide-open border ... Why have the Republicans had such a hard time securing this border?"
Even duct tape can't fix stupid
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:16:18 GMT -8
We Need Guns To Protect Us From Cows
A Minnesota Republican justified his opposition to new gun safety legislation this week by raising the specter of cows trampling unarmed Americans "into dust."
Heartland Signal reports that Republican Minnesota State Sen. Warren Limmer recently said that he could not in good conscience support a bill that would create statewide standards for the safe storage of firearms due to the impact it could have on farmers.
"There's another segment of our population that often requires guns in their occupation," he said. "I'm talking about rural farm people that are living out in rural areas. They not only have to have concerns about predation, but they also have concerns about their own domestic farm animals."
He then went into detail about the purported bovine menace that heartland farmers must cope with on a daily basis.
"Farm animals can at times be very dangerous," he said. "Take, for example, a cow who had just recently had a calf. You even walk too close to a cow, and it'll take you down and trample you into dust. And many farmers have a readily available gun just for those emergencies. Fumbling around with a lock while a cow or a bull or any other animal is going after your daughter or your son, you can't fumble around with a key or try and find a lockbox or put your thumb on a biometric key of some sort in your home while the danger is outside."
The Law is About Gun STORAGE, Dumbass! It Doesn't Say You Can't Carry One When Walking Around Your Cows.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:19:14 GMT -8
Pillow Guys Say Something About God, Voting Machines, and the End of Times.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell this week said God could initiate the End Times if he is unable to abolish voting machines.
On his FrankSpeech platform, Lindell referred to a Georgia court case about voting machines.
"And you'd think that would be the number one story in the world," Lindell said. "Because what's happened in our country, and I told our real president [Donald Trump] this, here's a bucket. Call this the bucket of common sense."
"Everybody is jumping into this bucket of common sense," he continued. "They look for Jesus when things are going bad. They're praying, and they're jumping in this bucket, and they never get out."
Lindell called his voting machine crusade "the greatest revival in history for Jesus Christ."
"And I tell people, we're in a win-win situation," he explained. "If everything I'm fighting for, if we don't save our country, it's the End Times, we all go to heaven as believers. It's a win-win. Everybody's got to embrace it."
Lindell said that he had received a solution from God to election fraud.
"God gave me a download of a plan and I announced it in August, this plan to secure our elections and that they turned up the heat," he opined. "They've attacked MyPillow worse than they've ever been attacked."
"They don't want these machines gone, everybody," he added. "They want these computers to stay in place. The uni-party, deep state globalists, the evil that's out there. This is where it's at."
"There's no other reason that they would be attacking me now."
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:20:53 GMT -8
The Drain on Ukraine is Due Mainly to the Insane
While the speaker has remained noncommittal about any one option, he has repeatedly expressed a personal desire to send aid to Ukraine — something he has voted against repeatedly in the past — and now appears to be in search of the least politically damaging way to do it.
The challenge for Mr. Johnson is that any combination of aid measures he puts to a vote will likely infuriate the growing isolationist wing of his party, which considers the issue toxic. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who has repeatedly said she would call a snap vote to unseat the speaker if he allowed a vote for Ukraine aid before imposing restrictive immigration measures, filed a resolution on Friday calling for his removal, saying she wanted to send him “a warning.”
Even if Ms. Greene follows through on the threat, Mr. Johnson could still hold onto his job. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, has said he believed “a reasonable number” of Democrats would vote to save the speaker were he to face a Republican mutiny for acting on the Senate-passed aid package, though on Friday Mr. Jeffries said that had been “an observation, not a declaration.”
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:25:03 GMT -8
Previous Guy Says That SOME Presidents Don't Have Absolute Immunity
"At what point are the actions of a sitting President, using LAWFARE against his opponent for purposes of Election Interference, considered ILLEGAL? I believe, as do various highly respected legal scholars, that Crooked Joe Biden has long since crossed over that very sacred threshold!!!"
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:29:35 GMT -8
He's a Rambling, Gambling Bumbling Man
President Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday released an unusually blunt statement tearing into Donald Trump as “feeble, confused, and tired” after an appearance marked by verbal stumbles as well as a bizarre social media post in which he likened himself to Christ.
“He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have,” the statement said.
There was a rambling appearance by Trump, which included several gaffes, including an odd moment when the former president insisted that “you can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.”
The former president added: “We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”
Trump also vowed to “bring crime back to law and order.”
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:32:04 GMT -8
All This to Go From 2% to 1.96%??
Visa, Mastercard and the largest U.S. credit-card issuing banks have agreed to a settlement with merchants that have been suing them for nearly two decades over the fees they charge for swiping credit cards.
In the deal, the credit-card networks and banks will lower the fees that merchants pay to accept credit cards. There is a range of these fees, typically referred to as swipe fees or interchange fees, but the average is about 2%.
The pact would lower the rates by 0.04 percentage point and keep them there for five years.
The proposed settlement would create some changes to give merchants more choice on accepting cards, allowing them to guide consumers to cards that have lower fees.
It would also give small businesses the ability to form groups to negotiate swipe fees, similar to what large retailers already do today.
The settlement requires approval from a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y. Earlier deals have dragged through years of rulings and appeals, which could happen again with this pact given the wide range of merchants involved and their varying opinions.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:36:37 GMT -8
Tax the Rich, Feed the Poor, Till There Are No Poor No More
The progressive rallying cry of “tax the rich” has morphed into a popular policy stance with voters in the key states that will decide the 2024 election, enjoying support even among those who prefer billionaire Donald Trump, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
Fully 69% of registered voters in seven swing states say they favor higher taxes on billionaires, and they support higher income taxes on people who make more than $400,000 a year by the same margin, a potential boon to Democratic President Joe Biden’s economic agenda if he wins a second term.
Biden is proposing a new tax to squeeze more from America’s richest families. That’s in addition to his plan to raise the 21% corporate rate, which 51% of swing-state voters backed in the poll conducted March 8-15.
The strong support for more taxes on billionaires shows up across party lines in the survey with 58% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 66% of independents approving of the idea.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:38:27 GMT -8
More Meaningless Poll News
President Joe Biden has gained ground against Republican Donald Trump in six of seven key swing states, and significantly so in at least two of them. The results make for the Democrat’s strongest position yet in a monthly Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
The move in the president's direction comes after five months of mostly consistent Trump leads, and follows a State of the Union address that rallied Democrats and seemed to mitigate concerns about Biden’s age.
The shift was significant in Wisconsin, where Biden leads Trump by one point after trailing him by four points in February, and in Pennsylvania, where the candidates are tied after Trump held a six-point lead last month. They are also tied in Michigan.
It's too soon to know whether the improved showing is a one-time bump or the beginning of a more durable change in the race, and Biden continues to lag the presumptive GOP nominee in four crucial states. But November victories in so-called “Blue Wall” northern battlegrounds would all but vault Biden to a second term.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:40:11 GMT -8
Grease and Sugar: The Perfect Meal
Krispy Kreme announced Tuesday it would partner with McDonald's to sell their fresh doughnuts daily.
The new partnership is set to roll out starting later in 2024, with nationwide availability expected by the end of 2026. The move will allow Krispy Kreme to more than double the locations where their donuts are currently served, it said in a statement.
The rollout follows an earlier test run at 160 McDonald's restaurants in the Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky areas where "consumer demand exceeded expectations."
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 26, 2024 8:44:05 GMT -8
Are These Two Stories Related?
Search for birth control on TikTok or Instagram and a cascade of misleading videos vilifying hormonal contraception appear: Young women blaming their weight gain on the pill. Right-wing commentators claiming that some birth control can lead to infertility. Testimonials complaining of depression and anxiety.
Instead, many social media influencers recommend “natural” alternatives, such as timing sex to menstrual cycles — a less effective birth-control method that doctors warn could result in unwanted pregnancies in a country where abortion is now banned or restricted in nearly half the states.
Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception — which includes birth-control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) — is safe and effective, they worry the profession’s long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects has left many patients seeking information from unqualified online communities.
The backlash to birth control comes at a time of rampant misinformation about basic health tenets amid poor digital literacy and a wider political debate over reproductive rights, in which far-right conservatives argue that broad acceptance of birth control has altered traditional gender roles and weakened the family.
Physicians and researchers say little data is available about the scale of this new phenomenon, but anecdotally, more patients are coming in with misconceptions about birth control fueled by influencers and conservative commentators.
------------------
Rachel M. Cohen of Vox looks at some the factors that may explain why abortions increased in 2023.
The first underlying factor is that travel out of state for abortion has gone up, offsetting some of the newer restrictions in states with bans. More than 160,000 people crossed state lines to end pregnancies in 2023, per Guttmacher, almost double the number who did so in 2020.
This isn’t to say the burden of state restrictions has been offset.
Another factor explaining the overall increase is that more residents living in states without restrictions are getting abortions.
This seems to have been driven primarily by improved access policies in those states, like expansion of telehealth medicine, more sliding-scale payment options, and wider Medicaid coverage. Some of these efforts began before 2022, though many picked up steam after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Another factor likely driving the increase is that more people are choosing to end pregnancies through medication abortion — the two-drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol.
Use of these pills has been trending up over time, but Guttmacher found a particularly big jump over the last three years, where medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all US abortions in the formal health care system in 2023, up from 53 percent in 2020.
|
|
