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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:33:16 GMT -8
I studied a long time to become a Doctor, but I didn't have any patience.
Israel Promises Another Thorough Investigation
Seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen were killed during an Israel Defense Forces attack in Gaza, the food-relief organization said, adding that it plans to pause its operations in the region.
"This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war," CEO Erin Gore said in a statement. "This is unforgivable."
The dead included Australian, Polish, British and Palestinian aid workers, WCK said. One worker was a dual American-Canadian citizen, the organization said.
It Will Be So Thorough We Will All Be Dead Before It Is Complete
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:36:06 GMT -8
Judge Expands the Gag Order
The judge presiding over Donald Trump's impending New York criminal trial expanded a partial gag order Monday night following the former president's online attacks against his daughter.
State Judge Juan Merchan said Trump is barred from attacking his family members and those of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in addition to the witnesses, prosecutors, court staff members and their relatives whom he was directed to "refrain" from talking about in a previous gag order issued last week.
Trump's "pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are 'fair game' for Defendant's vitriol," Merchan said Monday. "It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. The threat is very real."
Previous Guy Immediately Violates the New Order
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:38:08 GMT -8
Crooked Cancun Cruz Cashs In
Suspicion is swirling around the broadcaster of Ted Cruz's podcast after a $630,850 payment was made to a PAC that supports the Texas GOP Senator.
Federal Election Commission data shows the large sum was paid by iHeartMedia to the Truth and Courage PAC, making up a third of its revenue since the beginning of 2023. As Newsweek pointed out, critics are calling for an investigation to be launched, but Cruz says he's done nothing wrong.
Senate rules forbid Cruz from accepting gifts from any company that employs lobbyists, as iHeartMedia does, unless they are of "nominal value," the Houston Chronicle reported.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:41:01 GMT -8
Judge Ends Ballot Line Dance
A federal judge on Monday denied a request by county clerks to halt his own high-profile decision to eliminate New Jersey’s controversial “county line” ballot design in this year’s Democratic primary as the ruling faces an appeal.
U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi on Friday granted an emergency injunction against the system — the only of its kind in the country — as part of a lawsuit U.S. Rep. Andy Kim filed claiming the setup was unconstitutional as he runs for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.
Under the century-old design, candidates endorsed by county parties are given preferential placement on primary ballots, with opponents listed to the side — a system often criticized for giving power to party bosses. The injunction means the setup is blocked for the June 4 Democratic primary and clerks are required instead to group candidates together by office, as other states do.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:43:15 GMT -8
800 Miles is No Longer Behind the Front Lines
Ukraine has claimed responsibility for a drone attack in Russia's Tatarstan region - more than 1,300km (807 miles) from the Ukraine-Russia border.
The strikes, in which 12 people were injured, are the deepest into Russian territory since the start of the war.
Local authorities said that the strikes hit the town of Yelabuga, where drones are thought to be produced, and an oil refinery in nearby Nizhnekamsk.
The attacks occurred around 05:45 local time (02:45 GMT).
Yelabuga is located in the Alabuga "special economic zone" - an area with a special legal system aimed at attracting foreign investment. Iranian Shahed drones - which are frequently used by Russia to attack Ukraine - are thought to be assembled in Yelabuga.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:44:26 GMT -8
Abandon Ye, All Ye Who Enter
The artist Ye is accused of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories in front of staff and children at his troubled private Christian school during a meeting in which he also allegedly expressed wanting to shave students’ heads and lock them in cages, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a former employee.
In a text message to the former employee, Trevor Phillips, Ye compared himself to Hitler — “minus the gas chambers” — and appeared to simulate masturbation during a one-on-one meeting in a Southern California hotel room where the musician watched “The Batman” on mute, according to the 47-page suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The suit accuses Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, of calling out Black people in a discriminatory manner and praising the Nazi leader, pushing employees to do renovations without permits and telling employees they could be fired for being "fat," the suit says. He temporarily stiffed workers after Adidas cut ties with the rapper over his antisemitic comments, when bank accounts at the rapper's clothing brand, Yeezy, had been frozen, the suit says.
Ye “gloated” to staff at Yeezy, his fashion brand, and Donda Academy, the rapper’s Los Angeles-area school, about using $2 million of the school’s budget for a trip to Paris, according to the suit.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:46:44 GMT -8
Flori-Dumb Voters Will Have the Chance to do the Smart Thing
Apair of decisions by the Florida Supreme Court are poised to help Democrats keep abortion rights top of mind for voters heading into November, when the party will try to hold on to the White House, its narrow Senate majority and retake the House.
On Monday, the state’s highest court issued a ruling that clears the way for a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to take effect next month. In a separate decision, the state court approved a ballot measure that, if successful this fall, would undo that ruling and restore the broad abortion access the state had before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Florida isn’t considered one of the top presidential battleground states this fall, but it does have a Senate race and a handful of congressional races that could become competitive. And it will give Democrats nationally a chance to elevate an issue where they have a political advantage over Republicans, who have hoped to keep the public focused on the economy, immigration and President Biden’s general fitness for office.
So Will Arizona Voters
Groups working to put reproductive rights in Arizona’s state constitution say they have exceeded the signature threshold to put a constitutional amendment on abortion on the state’s ballot in November.
Arizona for Abortion Access, a coalition of reproductive rights organizations including the ACLU of Arizona and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, says it had gathered 506,892 petition signatures as of this past weekend, with more than three months to go until the July 3 deadline to submit the signatures to Arizona’s secretary of state. The threshold to put a measure on the ballot is 383,923 signatures, and while some typically get invalidated in the verification process, the amendment appears on track to go before voters this fall.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:47:49 GMT -8
In the Land of Plenty, There is Enough Hate to Go Around
The Council on American Islamic Relations said 2023 was the year it received the highest number of bias reports in its 30-year history.
A report released Tuesday from the Muslim civil rights organization CAIR shows it got 8,061 complaints nationally last year from Muslims who reported experiencing discrimination or hate incidents. It’s the largest number the group has ever gotten, the report said, and represents a 56% increase from 2022.
It’s also a larger number than it received in the aftermath of 9/11, when anti-Muslim sentiment was at a peak in the U.S., said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s research and advocacy director. But he notes CAIR was a smaller organization at the time, and fewer people may have known they could report.
Nearly half of all complaints came in the final three months of the year, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which the report cites as the primary driving force behind heightened Islamophobia.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:50:47 GMT -8
Trump Social Is a Big Slush FundTrump holds 57.3% of the company, valued at $8.84 billion as I write this. That means his stake is worth $5 billion. But … that’s just Monopoly money. If he tried to sell, the mass flooding of his shares into a market uninterested in hoovering them up would collapse the price. If he tried to sell, his eventual take would be substantial, but we don’t know what his holdings are really worth. Since Trump owns more than 50%, the filing notes that “a company of which more than 50% of the voting power for the election of directors is held by an individual, group or other company is a ‘controlled company’ and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance standards.” The filing helpfully explains what this means: “Accordingly, investors may not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the Nasdaq corporate governance requirements.” Conservative former Congressman Devin Nunes is paid $750,000 as CEO, despite having zero experience running a tech or media company, and that will go up to $1 million next year. Prior to serving in Congress, he was a farmer. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Gosh, that’s not a lot of money, and there’s no one more qualified at licking Trump’s boots than Nunes. What if he bolts?” Oh ye of little faith, you underestimate Trump’s grifting negotiating prowess! Nunes is also getting a $600,000 “retention bonus”! Keep that number in mind. The company’s chief financial officer Phillip Juhan and chief operating officer Andrew Northwall are getting $337,500 and $365,000, respectively. And you’ll be happy to learn that both of them are also getting $600,000 retention bonuses. So just to be clear, TMTG’s top three officers are making $3.252 million this year. Therefore, we can assume that the company’s revenues are commensurate with such compensation, right? MAGA suckers are about to lose a lot of money thanks to Truth Social
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 8:57:49 GMT -8
Transplant Racism
Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news: She should have been put on the transplant list in 2015 instead of 2019 — and a racially biased organ test was to blame.
At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.
Between January 2023 and mid-March, more than 14,300 Black kidney transplant candidates have had their wait times modified, by an average of two years, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the transplant system. So far more than 2,800 of them, including Evans, have received a transplant.
But it’s just one example of a larger problem permeating health care. Numerous formulas or “algorithms” used in medical decisions — treatment guidelines, diagnostic tests, risk calculators — adjust the answers according to race or ethnicity in a way that puts people of color at disadvantage.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 9:00:10 GMT -8
WTF is Quantum Superchemistry?More than two decades ago, scientists predicted that at ultra-low temperatures, many atoms could undergo 'quantum superchemistry' and chemically react as one. They've finally shown it's real. Chemistry depends on heat. Atoms or molecules bounce around randomly, collide, and form other molecules. At higher temperatures, atoms collide more and the rate at which atoms become molecules increases. Below a certain temperature, the reaction won't happen at all. But something very weird happens at the lowest temperatures. In this extreme cold, there is essentially no heat energy, yet chemical reactions happen faster than they do at high temperatures. The phenomenon is called quantum superchemistry. And it was finally demonstrated last year, more than 20 years after physicists first proposed it. In that experiment, University of Chicago physicist Cheng Chin and colleagues coaxed a group of cesium atoms at just a few nanokelvin into the same quantum state. Amazingly, each atom did not interact separately. Instead, 100,000 atoms reacted as one, almost instantaneously. The first demonstration of this weird process has opened a window for scientists to better understand how chemical reactions operate in the strange realm of quantum mechanics, which governs the behavior of subatomic particles. It also may help to simulate quantum phenomena that classic computers struggle to model accurately, such as superconductivity. But what happens after that, as with so many advances in research, is hard to predict. Chin, for one, has no plans to stop studying this strange form of chemistry. Inside the 20-year quest to unravel the bizarre realm of 'quantum superchemistry'
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 2, 2024 9:02:58 GMT -8
Texas Judges Are Open For Business. Sleazy Business.
Judge David Godbey, the chief judge of the Northern Texas federal district court division, told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on March 29 that his court would not follow new guidelines meant to curtail the practice of “judge shopping,” a strategy that conservatives have increasingly used to strike down the policies of President Joe Biden.
“It is unfortunate that Chief Judge Godbey and the district judges of the Northern District of Texas have decided to continue to allow the odious practice of judge shopping,” Schumer said in a statement on April 1. “In doing so, they are allowing plaintiffs to choose their judge — a practice that the Judicial Conference has issued guidance to try to curtail.”
The Northern Texas federal district courts have been a hotbed of judge shopping by conservative activists ever since Biden took office. Judge shopping is the practice of a plaintiff filing suit in a particular judicial division with the knowledge that the division’s cases are overseen by only one judge — a judge the plaintiff knows is favorable to their cause.
The most notable example of this comes from the Amarillo, Texas, courtroom of federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, where conservatives have repeatedly filed suits with little geographic relationship to Northern Texas, but large national ambitions to block Biden administration policies. Kacsmaryk, who previously worked as a lawyer for religious right groups, played his part by issuing controversial decisions that put in place national injunctions to block Biden’s policies from immigration to the approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.
After being criticized by national Democrats and even federal judges, the Judicial Conference, the 26-member oversight body that sets rules for the federal judiciary, issued new guidelines on March 12 meant to stem the increase in judge shopping. District courts were to randomly assign judges for cases seeking national injunctive relief, according to the new guidelines.
But after significant pushback from Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Judicial Conference clarified that the guidelines were voluntary. That left the decision about whether to abide by the new guidelines up to the chief judges of each regional district court. There are no penalties for courts that do not adopt the new guidelines.
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