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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:10:20 GMT -8
I attempted to be a Deli Worker, but any way I sliced it I couldn't cut the mustard. They Show Jesus Carrying Bud Lite?Why is Jesus often depicted with a six-pack?Have you ever wondered why so many images depicting the crucifixion show Jesus with a very defined, slender and toned body? Either slim, but with a six-pack, or displaying muscles and brawn. While these images are hardly a reflection of what little can be surmised about the historical Jesus, they certainly reflect social and cultural ideas about masculinity and idealised notions of manhood. |
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:12:33 GMT -8
The QOP Decides The Key Bridge is a Bridge Too Far
After a cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland — prompting it to collapse into the Chesapeake Bay — its restoration has become politicized by the far right.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), for example, suggested in a tweet that he may oppose federal funding to restore the Key Bridge by arguing that the shipping companies involved in the crash should first see if insurance would cover the damages — which could cost nearly $1 billion.
Likewise, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) recently complained to far-right network Newsmax that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law indirectly led to the bridge's collapse.
Her rationale was that it emphasized more energy-efficient infrastructure over traditional infrastructure like roads and bridges. Sargent noted that Mace nonetheless took credit for road and bridge projects in her district funded by the law she voted against.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:13:54 GMT -8
Where Are His Blacks?
Election experts called the notion that Black voters are poised to put former President Donald Trump back in the White House simply “absurd,” according to a new report released Saturday.
That’s the message Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz received from multiple political scientists when he asked about recent polls — from Quinnipiac, Economist-YouGov, New York Times/Siena and Marquette University Law School — that suggest Trump’s outreach to Black voters may be paying off.
“I don’t see it happening,” Cristopher Towler of the Black Voter Project, told the Post, casting doubt on any “magical shift” in Trump’s direction.
Why? According to Towler, the sample sizes are simply too small.
"He said the biggest concern about the recent polls is that the sample sizes for Black voters are often tiny, often no more than 100 or so, and thus with a big margin of error," writes Balz. "Political scientists and political strategists alike agree that samples of that size are less likely to be fully representative of the Black community and say that large-scale surveys of Black Americans, of which there are few, are more reliable."
Cornell Belcher, a onetime pollster for former President Barack Obama, agreed Trump isn’t likely to make Republican history with Black voters.
“I've been doing large sample size polls of Black voters … for four years and never in those four years has Donald Trump ever moved above 10 percent,” Belcher reportedly said.
Where Are His Exurbs?
Former President Donald Trump appears to be bleeding out critical support in typically redder suburban areas well outside of major cities, according to a new analysis.
Politico analyzed 2024 GOP presidential primary results across more than 1,000 counties across the US and determined that the former president may lose votes in traditionally Republican territory he carried in both 2016 and 2020. This could prove costly in November — particularly in must-win battleground states.
"You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again," Emmet County, Michigan GOP chair Parker Fairbairn told Politico. Fairbairn added that voters there are longing for "commonsense conservatism," as opposed to Trump's blustery retribution-focused rhetoric and his proposed radical restructuring of the federal government.
Politico reported that unlike suburbs on the outskirts of large, Democratic-leaning cities like Detroit where Republicans have already been losing significant ground to Democrats, jurisdictions like Emmet County — which is on the far northern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula and hours from any major city — have usually been reliable Republican strongholds. Trump won the county with 55% of the vote in 2020.
Swing states like Michigan, which voted for Trump in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, could be decided by a relatively small number of votes. And those isolated groups of votes could similarly decide who wins a majority of Electoral College votes and thus the White House. In 2016, for example, Trump carried Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by approximately 77,000 combined votes, with those three states putting him over the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the election. Likewise, Biden won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by less than 43,000 combined votes in 2020.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:15:51 GMT -8
Life in Flori-Dumb Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be.One of the first signs Barb Carter’s move to Florida wasn’t the postcard life she’d envisioned was the armadillo infestation in her home that caused $9,000 in damages. Then came a hurricane, ever present feuding over politics, and an inability to find a doctor to remove a tumor from her liver. After a year in the Sunshine State, Carter packed her car with whatever belongings she could fit and headed back to her home state of Kansas — selling her Florida home at a $40,000 loss and leaving behind the children and grandchildren she’d moved to be closer to. “So many people ask, ‘Why would you move back to Kansas?’ I tell them all the same thing — you’ve got to take your vacation goggles off,” Carter said. “For me, it was very falsely promoted. Once living there, I thought, you know, this isn’t all you guys have cracked this up to be, at all.” Florida has had a population boom over the past several years, with more than 700,000 people moving there in 2022, and it was the second-fastest-growing state as of July 2023, according to Census Bureau data. While there are some indications that migration to the state has slowed from its pandemic highs, only Texas saw more one-way U-Haul moves into the state than Florida last year. Mortgage application data indicated there were nearly two homebuyers moving to Florida in 2023 for every one leaving, according to data analytics firm CoreLogic. But while hundreds of thousands of new residents have flocked to the state on the promise of beautiful weather, no income tax and lower costs, nearly 500,000 left in 2022, according to the most recent census data. Contributing to their move was a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic and extreme weather, according to interviews with more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years. They came for Florida’s sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:17:18 GMT -8
The New Chinese Exclusion Act
A Florida law is prompting backlash from professors, students and advocates across university campuses in the state who say the measure could keep Chinese grad students out of their schools.
The measure, State Bill 846, restricts the state’s public universities from hiring graduate students for positions such as researchers and lab assistants, from “countries of concern,” including China, the largest contributor of international students in the state.
While the measure went into effect last July, schools typically issue offer letters in the spring, prompting the recent protests.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis’ has said that the legislation is part of an attempt to counter China’s “malign influence” in the state, critics say it’ll do more harm than good. From taking legal action to participating in rallies this week, students, faculty and others are calling for the measure to be reversed, arguing that the law could pose a threat to the state’s academics and impede scientific advancements and freedoms.
“It’s discriminatory,” Chenglong Li, a professor at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, told NBC News. “Individuals, they cannot decide where they are born. They’re only thinking of their educational opportunities.
“I think this kind of approach actually harms national security. A lot of people are actually STEM talents. They actively come here to do research and contribute to this country,” he added.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:18:42 GMT -8
I Wonder What the Percentage is in the QOP?
about half of Congressional senior staffers are tired of their working environment.
What’s driving this new bout of staff departures is the overall environment on Capitol Hill. That includes pandemic fallout, ranging from partisan battles over mask mandates to the long closure of the buildings to the public. It also accounts for the ongoing toxicity since the January 2021 attack on the Capitol. These factors have added to an institution that was already pretty partisan. [...]
Most congressional aides have gone to college and studied public policy or political science, and maybe have an advanced degree in law or some key issue area. They largely come to Washington to try to shape things toward their party’s ideological vision of things.
But now, too often, newer members of Congress show up without much concern about policy and instead focus on their communications staff and getting attention on social media and cable news.
Their collective ire also goes toward the representatives and senators themselves, who have amped up their bombast so much that it makes it harder for aides to secure the goodwill needed to do their jobs effectively. Almost half of senior aides strongly agreed that the tone taken by lawmakers “inhibits the ability of staffers to collaborate across party lines.”
Remember that it’s those Congressional staffers ranging from the chief of staff to the intern that do the overwhelming bulk of the work for Members.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:20:39 GMT -8
When They Go Low, We Go Low, Too.
American voters, and the country’s political class, are long used to Trump’s insult-laden and often crude rhetoric. “Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit,” Trump said in Georgia earlier this month, during a rally at which he also also mocked Biden’s stutter.
But recently Biden and his campaign team appear to have decided to fight fire with fire, after previously seeking to stay above the fray. It’s a shift that seems to accept that Trump has moved the standards of US politics and that it’s more effective to embrace that notion than remain out of the fight. [...]
In recent months, Biden has dubbed Trump “mentally unfit”, while this week his campaign declared that the US “deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump”.
The president’s campaign has dubbed Trump “weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for president”. They’ve also taken to calling Trump, who says he is a multibillionaire but was recently unable to pay a court-ordered $454m bond, “Broke Don”.
But He Can Always Go Lower
Donald Trump on Saturday put on display multiple photos of the daughter of the judge in his hush money criminal case, even as the prosecution argues that targeting her could violate an established gag order in the case over purported payments to an adult film star.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:24:14 GMT -8
How Do You Explain that Israelis Keep Electing Netanyahu?
The opposition to a ceasefire may seem strange to some. Many Israelis accept the claim that Netanyahu is continuing the war to further his political and personal interests. The families of the Israeli hostages, for instance, are growing more critical of Netanyahu’s “foot-dragging” and amplifying their calls for a “deal now.”
Even within the Israeli security establishment, more people are openly saying that “eliminating Hamas” is not an achievable goal. “[T]o say that one day there will be a complete victory in Gaza — this is a complete lie,” former IDF spokesman Ronen Manelis recently said. “Israel cannot completely eliminate Hamas in an operation that lasts only a few months.”
So if the view that Netanyahu is continuing the war for personal interests is growing; if the futility of continuing the war is becoming clearer, with regard to both toppling Hamas and releasing the hostages; if it is becoming obvious that continuing the war is liable to damage relations with the United States — how can one explain the consensus in Israel around the “danger” of a ceasefire?
How Do You Explain the Settlement Policy? How Do You Explain the Orthodox Exemption From Military Service? How Do You Explain Israelis?
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:26:17 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, whose path to a U.S. Senate seat became much easier after Democratic primary rival Tammy Murphy dropped out
The U.N. Security Council, for passing a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza
President Biden: deftly coordinates fed response to Baltimore bridge collapse; gets good news on GDP, jobs, and consumer confidence; is joined by #42 and #44 at fundraiser that nets $26M
The outpouring of outrage, led by livid MSNBC hosts, that got NBC News's catastrophic hiring of insurrection cheerleader and pathological liar Ronna McDaniel reversed
Democrat Marilyn Lands, who ran on women's reproductive rights to trounce her Republican rival in a landslide to flip an Alabama state House seat from red to blue
The first responders who saved lives by warning that the container ship was heading toward the Francis Scott Key Bridge piling so traffic could be stopped before impact
Montana voters, as the state Supreme Court permanently strikes down 4 MAGA-passed laws that would unfairly impact young voters, voters with disabilities, and Native American voters
Karma, as grifter and MAGA loon Mike Lindell gets kicked out of the warehouse storing his 'My Pillow' inventory for failure to pay his bills
Conservative U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, for publicly and harshly criticizing Trump's attacks on the judge (and his family) overseeing the Stormy Daniels hush money trial
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:28:08 GMT -8
Bomb 'Em Back to the Stone Age, Only With Fallout
A Republican member of Congress appeared to suggest that nuclear weapons should be dropped on Gaza, according to a video from a town hall circulating on social media, but his office maintains that he was speaking metaphorically “to show urgency to defeat these enemies swiftly.”
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) was answering a question from a constituent during a town hall in Dundee, Mich., on Monday, about the United States’ plan to build a floating pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.
“Why are we spending our money to build a port for them?” someone asks in the video.
Walberg, who is not seen in the video, responds by saying that the United States “shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid” and then references the two Japanese cities where the United States dropped atomic bombs during World War II.
“It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” Walberg said.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:31:36 GMT -8
$41,600: Want to Support a Family on That?
Most fast food workers in California will be paid at least $20 an hour beginning Monday when a new law is scheduled to kick in giving more financial security to an historically low-paying profession while threatening to raise prices in a state already known for its high cost of living.
Democrats in the state Legislature passed the law last year in part as an acknowledgement that many of the more than 500,000 people who work in fast food restaurants are not teenagers earning some spending money, but adults working to support their families.
That includes immigrants like Ingrid Vilorio, who said she started working at a McDonald's shortly after arriving in the United States in 2019. Fast food was her full-time job until last year. Now, she works about eight hours per week at a Jack in the Box while working other jobs.
“The $20 raise is great. I wish this would have come sooner,” Vilorio said through a translator. “Because I would not have been looking for so many other jobs in different places.”
The law was supported by the trade association representing fast food franchise owners. But since it passed, many franchise owners have bemoaned the impact the law is having on them, especially during California's slowing economy.
Want to Support Just Yourself on That?
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:34:22 GMT -8
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave
An American executive who lives in China went to Shanghai Pudong airport six years ago for a routine business trip to San Francisco. When he tried to cross the border, he was told he wasn’t permitted to leave China.
“You know what you did,” the border officer told him. He tried another airport and got a similar response.
The executive has been stuck in China ever since. He was the target of an exit ban, a legal tool used by Chinese courts that has left numerous foreign executives trapped inside the country—often with no idea when they will be allowed to leave.
The vast majority of exit bans aren’t applied to people accused of a crime but to those involved in civil litigation, usually business disputes. Even foreign nationals who aren’t personally liable or who left a company years before it got involved in a dispute have been subject to these bans.
China’s government is in the midst of a charm offensive to attract foreign companies and businesspeople after a series of company raids and detentions last year scared off executives and raised serious questions about the risks of doing business in the country.
But Beijing hasn’t attempted to address one of the big risks facing foreigners working in China: the chance they might not be allowed to leave.
The American executive’s story was a textbook case: He had been the general manager of the Shanghai subsidiary of a European company. In 2016, the company’s headquarters stopped sending money to its Shanghai unit, making it unable to pay monthly salaries. The executive tried and failed to raise money from inside China. Many of the company’s employees sued; at least one asked the court to impose an exit ban on him.
"Roaches check in, but they don't check out!"
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:37:14 GMT -8
Psst! Wanna' Buy An Expensive EV?
When the automotive industry started looking toward an electrified future, Detroit automakers decided to throw their hat in the ring with what they do best: Pickup trucks.
The first entrants to the electric-pickup market enjoyed some early success, particularly in the Ford F-150 Lightning. But sudden changes to the electric car shopper demographic mean that for the second time in the last 20 years, Detroit finds itself selling big, expensive cars nobody really wants.
Behemoths like the GMC Hummer EV and Lightning, with price tags that can reach six figures, aren't resonating with the current EV shopper, who prioritizes value and practicality.
Where the Lightning is concerned, the truck's early success doesn't appear to be carrying over past the first round of reservations when the truck first went on sale in 2022.
Ford dealers have started warning that the trucks are piling up on their lots. Starting Monday, Ford will dramatically reduce the workforce at the factory that builds the Lightning, according to the Associated Press, in a sign that demand for the truck may be slowing,
Expensive pickup trucks aren't just a Detroit problem. Electric pickup truck pioneer Rivian has also warned of slowing growth, and Elon Musk's Tesla already appears to be offering some purchase incentives for the Cybertruck.
A recent study from car-shopping website Edmunds shows that interest in electric pickup trucks only accounts for only 10% of current EV demand, while demand for electric cars (including wagons) accounts for 43% and demand for SUVs and crossovers comes in second at 42%.
This preference for smaller EVs aligns with the price point most EV customers are shopping in right now, according to the Edmunds data. The most desired price range for an EV right now is between $30,000 and $40,000, with a quarter of customers surveyed by Edmunds looking in that range.
"The electric vehicle market is growing, but consumers have enough reservations about the current options and charging infrastructure challenges to limit more significant growth in the short term," Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell wrote in the report.
Only four EVs sell in that range at the moment, according to Edmunds, and none of them are sold by Detroit automakers. The four models under $40,000 are the Mini Hardtop 2 Door, Nissan Leaf, Fiat 500e and Hyundai Kona Electric.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:38:19 GMT -8
Too Many Jobs, Not Enough Immigrants
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 31, 2024 8:40:55 GMT -8
They Steal Each Other's Stories, But This Is Different
Journalists have been told to stop stealing souvenirs from US President Joe Biden's official aircraft.
An inventory check on Air Force One after Mr Biden's visit to the US west coast in February found several items were missing from its press section.
Branded pillowcases, glasses and gold-rimmed plates are among the items that have allegedly vanished from the jet.
The White House Correspondents' Association warned that taking items from the plane was forbidden.
Last month, the association sent an email to reporters to say that such behaviour reflected poorly on the press pool - the group of journalists who travel with the president - and must stop.
Journalists are sometimes given small packages of M&Ms chocolates decorated with the presidential seal as a souvenir.
But taking items with an Air Force One logo - including cutlery and towels - has been commonplace for years, reports claim.
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