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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:10:41 GMT -8
I worked in the woods as a Lumberjack, but I just couldn't hack it, so they gave me the axe.
He's Selling Bible to Pay for His Legal Fees In a Case About Lying About An Affair with a Porn Star While His Wife was Giving Birth
Before he turned to politics, former President Donald J. Trump lent his star power and celebrity endorsement to a slew of consumer products — steaks, vodka and even for-profit education, to name just a few.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added a new item to the list: a $60 Bible.
Days before Easter, Mr. Trump posted a video on his social media platform in which he encouraged his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” named after the ballad by the country singer Lee Greenwood, which Mr. Trump plays as he takes the stage at his rallies.
“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” said Mr. Trump, who before entering politics was not overtly religious and who notably stumbled while referencing a book of the Bible during his 2016 campaign. “It’s a lot of people’s favorite book.”
Though Mr. Trump is not selling the Bible, he is getting royalties from purchases, according to a person familiar with the details of the business arrangement.
Priced at $59.99, plus shipping and tax, the “God Bless the USA Bible” includes a King James Bible and a handwritten version of the chorus of Mr. Greenwood’s song, and copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance.
How Many of the 10 Commandments Does This Break?
6 or 7
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:12:10 GMT -8
Aren't Jokes Supposed to Be Funny?
A Republican is being slammed for making jokes about the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse.
On Tuesday, the Francis Scott Key Bridge tumbled into the water after being struck by a cargo ship that was passing through on its way to Sri Lanka. As of Wednesday, six people are presumed dead.
Some Republicans used the collapse to promote conspiracy theories or attack the Biden Administration and Democrats. And far-right Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) joked about the tragedy on X, formerly Twitter.
The MAGA congressman tweeted, "Baltimore obviously won't rename the new bridge after Francis Scott Key again. So, any guesses on the new bridge name?"
Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier responded "George Floyd Fentanyl Memorial Bridge."
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:15:24 GMT -8
I Thought Flori-Dumb and Tex-Ass Wanted to Close Their Borders
Haiti: US guns pour into Port-au-Prince, fuelling surge in violence
"All the guns here are from the US, everybody knows it. If the US wants to stop this, they could easily do it one month!" He pleads: "We are asking the US to give us a chance to live, just give us a chance."
For a country that does not manufacture weapons, a UN report in January found every type of gun was flooding Port-au-Prince: high-powered rifles such as AK47s, 9mm pistols, sniper rifles and machine guns.
The weapons are fuelling the staggering surge in Haiti's gang-related violence.
There is no exact number for how many trafficked firearms are currently in Haiti.
The UN report said some estimates put it at half a million legal and illegal weapons here as of 2020.
It reported that guns and ammunition were being smuggled in from land, air and sea from US states such as Florida, Texas and Georgia.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:17:00 GMT -8
Here's One Way to Get More Time Every Day
Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time.
A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.
The author of the study, Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, said that as ice at the poles melts, it changes where the Earth’s mass is concentrated. The change, in turn, affects the planet’s angular velocity.
Agnew compared the dynamic to a figure skater twirling on ice: “If you have a skater who starts spinning, if she lowers her arms or stretches out her legs, she will slow down,” he said. But if a skater’s arms are drawn inward, the skater will twirl faster.
Less solid ice at the poles, then, means more mass around the equator — Earth’s waist.
“What you’re doing with the ice melt is you’re taking water that’s frozen solid in places like Antarctica and Greenland, and that frozen water is melting, and you move the fluids to other places on the planet,” said Thomas Herring, a professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new study. “The water flows off towards the equator.”
He Wants Even Longer Days. More Time to Watch TV.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:19:13 GMT -8
Nobody Wants Ronna
Ronna McDaniel out at NBC News following backlash
State of play: [NBCU News Group Chair Cesar Conde] apologized in the memo NBC News staff for hiring the ex-RNC chair saying, "it has become clear that this appointment undermines" the goal of a "cohesive and aligned" newsroom.
Conde wrote that the decision to drop McDaniel was made after "listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you." Carrie Budoff Brown, who leads NBC News' politics and elections reporting, had previously announced McDaniel would offer an "insider's perspective" on national politics and the Republican Party.
However, NBC journalists were "uncomfortable" with the hiring because their interactions with the RNC while McDaniel was chair were "met with gaslighting" and "character assassination," NBC News Chief Political Analyst Chuck Todd said on Sunday's "Meet The Press."
They Were Not Uncomfortable. They Were Pissed!
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:23:10 GMT -8
Polls This Early Don't Mean Much. Results Like This Do.
Democrat Marilyn Lands defeated Republican Teddy Powell on Tuesday in a 62-37 landslide, easily prevailing in a nationally watched special election for a GOP-held seat in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Lands outperformed the 10th District's normal lean by wide margins: Donald Trump carried the district by a 49-48 spread in 2020, according to Dave's Redistricting App, while voters favored Republican David Cole over Lands 52-45 two years later.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:27:50 GMT -8
The Climate Disaster You Have Never Heard About
In Mongolia, where nearly a third of the population still lives as nomadic herders, a winter so cold that livestock either freeze to death or starve as snow and ice make grazing impossible is called a “dzud.” These extreme seasons used to come once a decade. With climate change destabilizing the landlocked Asian country’s weather pattern, the dzud has haunted Mongolia for six of the last 10 years.
In 2018, when a dzud wiped out roughly 700,000 livestock, it was a devastating record. Last month, the death toll for this winter eclipsed 2 million, as HuffPost reported at the time. Weeks later, that figure has nearly tripled.
As of this week, at least 5.2 million animals have died since winter began, a particularly brutal event that combined the effects of two different types of dzud.
This is still just the start of the catastrophe, as the die-off is expected to reach its peak sometime in early May. The final death toll could reach 20 million, the United Nations told HuffPost on Tuesday.
It’s the worst winter in at least 50 years, according to the International Foundation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which warned last week that at least 75% of herding families were affected.
More than 7,000 families now lack enough food, and heavy snow has buried more than 1,000 households’ traditional ger homes, the round, white tents sometimes called “yurts” in English. At least 2,257 herder families have lost over 70% of their livestock — akin to complete financial ruin for nomads whose entire livelihoods in an increasingly capitalistic country are tied up animals.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:29:31 GMT -8
When You Have a Skeleton Operation, It's Not Enough That the Bones are Good.
In his bid to retake the White House, few states hold as much promise for Donald Trump as Michigan.
The former president has already won the state once and President Joe Biden, who reclaimed it for Democrats in 2020, is confronting vulnerabilities there as he seeks reelection. Trump's campaign promises an aggressive play for Michigan as part of a robust swing-state strategy.
But, at least for now, those promises appear to be mostly talk. The Trump campaign and its partners at the Republican National Committee haven't yet made significant general election investments in the state, according to Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra. The national committee, he said, hasn't transferred any money to the state party to help bolster its operations heading into the general election. There are no specific programs in place to court voters of color. And there's no general election field staff in place.
“We’ve got the skeleton right now," Hoekstra said. “We’re going to have to put more meat on it.”
It’s much the same in presidential battleground states across the country, according to Republican operatives and party officials involved in campaign planning elsewhere.
Widely praised for its professionalism and effectiveness throughout the primary phase of the 2024 election, Trump’s political operation has been slow to pivot toward the general election in the weeks after executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party's national political machinery. In fact, the former president's team has rolled back plans under previous leaders to add hundreds of staff and dozens of new minority-outreach centers in key states without offering a clear alternative.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:31:22 GMT -8
Eat Everything on Your Plate. Children are Starving in Gaza and Mongolia.
The world wasted an estimated 19% of the food produced globally in 2022, or about 1.05 billion metric tons, according to a new United Nations report.
The U.N. Environment Programme's Food Waste Index Report, published Wednesday, tracks the progress of countries to halve food waste by 2030.
The U.N. said the number of countries reporting for the index nearly doubled from the first report in 2021. The 2021 report estimated that 17% of the food produced globally in 2019, or 931 million metric tons (1.03 billion tons), was wasted, but authors warned against direct comparisons because of the lack of sufficient data from many countries.
The report is co-authored by UNEP and Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), an international charity.
Researchers analyzed country data on households, food service and retailers. They found that each person wastes about 79 kilograms (about 174 pounds) of food annually, equal to at least 1 billion meals wasted worldwide daily.
Most of the waste — 60% — came in households. About 28% came from food service, or restaurants, with about 12% from retailers.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:33:56 GMT -8
China Lost 155 Billionaires. Nice Work, Xi!
Move over, Beijing.
Mumbai is now the Asian capital with the most number of billionaires, according to the Hurun Research Institute’s global rich list.
This is the first time that India’s most populous city has taken the top spot in Asia.
Topping the 2024 global rich list for cities is New York (119), followed by London (97). In Asia, Mumbai — India’s financial capital — moved ahead with 92 billionaires, according to Hurun. Following close behind are Beijing (91) and Shanghai (87).
There are currently 3,279 billionaires globally, a 5% increase from 2023, the report showed.
According to the country ranking, China still tops the list with 814 billionaires even though the country lost 155 billionaires from a year ago. The U.S. came in second with 800 billionaires while India came in third with 271.
“China had a bad year,” the research firm noted. “Wealth creation in China has gone through deep changes these last few years, with the wealth of billionaires from real estate and renewables down.”
There are a Few American Billionaires We Can Afford to Lose.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 27, 2024 8:37:21 GMT -8
It's the Age Old Story: Ship Meets Bridge. Ship Collapses Bridge. Bridge Says "Hello DALI"
A deadly bridge collapse in Baltimore. A bridge in southern China sliced in half. Parts of a bridge cutting through the hull of a massive ship in Argentina.
These events all happened within the first three months of this year – and all after collisions with large commercial ships.
These incidents, and the toll – with at least five killed in China, and six still missing in Baltimore – have highlighted what experts say is the urgent need to improve or protect old bridges to accommodate larger modern vessels.
The Baltimore collapse on Tuesday focused national attention on the issue, after a large container ship lost power and crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, sending people and vehicles into the frigid Patapsco River.
“We need to remember this bridge was built 50 years ago, and the ships at the time were a fraction of the size of what DALI (the ship that crashed) is today,” said Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and maritime expert.
“And DALI isn’t even a big container ship, there are much larger vessels that are out there,” he added. “So in many ways we have infrastructure that was built for another time.”
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