Tuesday, January 31, 2023
US renewable energy farms outstrip 99% of coal plants economically – study | US news | The Guardian
The plummeting cost of renewable energy, which has been supercharged by last year's Inflation Reduction Act, means that it is cheaper to build an array of solar panels or a cluster of new wind turbines and connect them to the grid than it is to keep operating all of the 210 coal plants in the contiguous US, bar one, according to the study…
Iran plant: Israel was behind drone attacks, US media report | CNN
US officials believe drone attacks at a military plant in Iran's central city of Isfahan were carried out by Israel, according to US media reports...
Covid-19 is a leading cause of death for children in the US, despite relatively low mortality rate | CNN
"Everyone knows that Covid is the most severe in the elderly and immunocompromised and that it's less severe in children, but that does not mean it's a benign disease in children. Just because the numbers are so much lower in children doesn't mean that they're not impactful."…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/health/covid-deaths-children/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/health/covid-deaths-children/index.html
71 Commands in 13 Minutes: Officers Gave Tyre Nichols Impossible Orders - The New York Times
Police officers unleashed a barrage of commands that were confusing, conflicting and sometimes even impossible to obey, a Times analysis of footage from Tyre Nichols's fatal traffic stop found. When Mr. Nichols could not comply — and even when he managed to — the officers responded with escalating force.…
‘Trolls’ and ‘Liars’: The definitive debunking of Trump AG Bill Barr
MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber debunks Bill Barr’s defense of his conduct handling the Mueller Report, and draws on legal precedent and MSNBC's real-time reporting to fact-check Barr's claims.
The US still exists. Biden didn’t sign away the country’s sovereignty with North American agreement - PolitiFact
Does the United States no longer exist? Are you reading this from a defunct country?
No, but that's what one viral video spreading across the internet claims…
Senate Judiciary mulls action amid fallout from Durham probe | The Hill
"These reports about abuses in Special Counsel Durham's investigation — so outrageous that even his longtime colleagues quit in protest — are but one of many instances where former President Trump and his allies weaponized the Justice Department," committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement...
BREAKING: Donald Trump’s WORST NIGHTMARE finally comes true in New York ...
Michael Popok of LegalAF reports on today's dramatic escalation of the Manhattan DA's prosecution of Donald Trump with the announcement of a new special grand jury empaneled to investigate Trump's paying stormy Daniels 130k in hush money during the 2016 campaign...
‘Republicans, Show Us Your Plan’: Chuck Schumer Hammers GOP Over Debt Ceiling Fight
During Senate Floor remarks on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke about the death of Tyre Nichols, the debt ceiling and bipartisan infrastructure law.
Republican DEMOLISHED In Tense Debate With Chuck Todd
Chuck Todd threw down with Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan in a tense debate over Jordan's continued scrutiny of President Joe Biden for his mishandling of classified documents, while neglecting to criticize former President Donald Trump for doing the same. Richard Ojeda breaks it down on Rebel HQ...
Opinion | The Medics Are Also to Blame for Tyre Nichols’ Death - POLITICO
As a former paramedic of 25 years, an EMS educator and author, and a former law enforcement officer, I see these cases through a different lens than most. When looking at these videos, as difficult as it is, I try to look past the violence and assess the actions of the first responders that did not intercede to prevent the act from occurring.
The case of Tyre Nichols is rife with instances of both EMS and police failing to attempt to save the dying man's life. The video shows several figures off to the side for long stretches, not actively engaging — simply watching, meandering and occasionally talking with the victim who is clearly in distress...
Videos Contradict Initial Police Report on Tyre Nichols Arrest - The New York Times
…But in an official account written up by a police officer only hours after the beating, Mr. Nichols, 29, is described as an irate suspect who refused to comply with police officers' directions and "started to fight" with them, even reaching for one of their guns.
The videos that were released on Friday do not show Mr. Nichols fighting with officers, let alone reaching for any of their guns…
To Understand Why Republicans Are Divided on the Debt Ceiling, Consider Dr. Seuss - The New York Times
Just a dozen years earlier, a much smaller stimulus package sparked the Tea Party movement that helped propel Republicans to a landslide victory in the 2010 midterm election. But in 2021 the right was so consumed by the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss that it could barely muster any outrage about big government spending...
Monday, January 30, 2023
Here's Why Grocery Store Prices Are So High Right Now | Time
Although overall inflation is starting to cool, grocery prices were up 11.8% in December compared with a year earlier…
Israeli settlers attack Palestinians across West Bank - The Washington Post
Wafa said at least 144 Israeli settler attacks were reported on Saturday across the West Bank, the occupied territory that Palestinians envision as part of their future state. In Masafer Yatta, in the south, settlers assaulted a Palestinian man; in two villages near Ramallah, masked attackers torched a house and a car and threw stones; in Nablus, settlers uprooted nearly 200 trees. Outside of the northern village of Akraba, dozens of settlers established a new, unauthorized outpost, then attacked the Palestinian landowners who arrived at the scene and injured a medic who came to assist the injured, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group. The report added that the Israeli military did not intervene.
There has been an "unprecedented increase in the frequency of terror attacks against Palestinian citizens and their property," said Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official...
Florida officers charged with battery after allegedly beating homeless man | Florida | The Guardian
Two officers allegedly handcuffed Jose Ortega Gutierrez and took him to an 'isolated' location where they beat him unconscious…
‘Systemic crisis’: Tyre Nichols beating fuels calls for broad police reforms
"At the end of the day, that final video shows someone being beaten and abused like he's in a pinball game. It's like the ball is just being knocked from one end to the other," said Randolph McLaughlin, professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and co-chair of the Newman Ferrara civil rights practice.
"What's most shocking about it all is the brutality and then at the end, the complete dehumanization of this man. He's not even human to them – he's not even a person," McLaughlin said. "It's as if they just went and played a baseball game and they talked about what happened afterward. There's absolutely no excuse for this."
Amid Spasm of Violence, Israel’s Far-Right Government Raises Risk of Escalation - The New York Times
Israel and the West Bank were gripped by violence this week. Its roots predate Israel's new far-right government, but the government's ministers and goals are fueling tensions...
Finland hints at Russia’s involvement in Quran-burning protest in Sweden | Al Arabiya English
Finland's foreign minister hinted that Russia may have been involved in last week's Quran-burning protest that threatens to derail Sweden's accession to NATO…
‘I use it because it’s better’: why chefs are embracing the electric stove
"There was no altruistic intent in my decision to adopt induction. I use it because it's better," he said. "Induction stovetops are easier to clean, they're more responsive, and they are just as powerful, if not more powerful, than gas. My induction burner can boil eight quarts of water within 11 minutes – it's super fast."…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/29/why-electric-stoves-are-better-chefs
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/29/why-electric-stoves-are-better-chefs
Why police training in the US falls short compared to the rest of the world: Report - ABC News
According to the report, titled "Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles," training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief -- with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day.
"Almost every major aspect of policing has fundamentally changed in recent decades, except for one: how we train officers," the report states.
Police training in the U.S. is most often measured in weeks, while in many other countries it is measured in months or years…Lost Boys: The Violent Narcissism of Angry Young Men - The Atlantic
These attacks are not merely "violence" in some general sense, nor are they similar to other gun crimes classified as "mass shootings" beyond the number of victims. Drug-war shoot-outs and gang vendettas are awful, but they are better-understood problems, in both their origins and possible remedies. The Lost Boys, however, are the perpetrators of out-of-the-blue massacres of innocents. Their actions are not driven by criminal gain, but instead are meant to shock us, to make us grieve, and finally, to force us to acknowledge the miserable existence of the young men behind the triggers...
Opinion | The War Between the Catholic Cardinals - The New York Times
Beginning with a bald declaration that the Francis pontificate has been a "catastrophe," the memorandum depicts a church falling into theological confusion, losing ground to evangelicalism and Pentecostalism as well as secularism, and weakened by financial losses, corruption and lawless papal governance. (On the climate within the Vatican, Pell writes: "Phone tapping is regularly practised. I am not sure how often it is authorized.")
The other is a long essay by Pell's fellow cardinal, Robert McElroy of San Diego, that ran this week in America, the Jesuit magazine. It shares with Pell's memo a premise that the church faces debilitating internal divisions, but it argues that division should be resolved through the completion of the revolution sought by the church's liberals. In particular, McElroy urges the church to shelve any meaningful judgment on sexual relationships and to open communion to "all of the baptized," presumably including Protestants. Only this kind of radical inclusion, he suggests, has "any hope of attracting the next generation to life in the church."
Trump vs. DeSantis in 2024? Republican litmus test is brutality
Speaking to supporters at Mar-a-Lago in November, Trump threatened that, as president, he would send the military into American cities, even if local officials objected, and repeatedly stressed his eagerness for executing drug dealers and human traffickers after quick, summary trials.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Trump and Barr lose as ‘deep state’ bomb goes off: Failed DOJ plot revealed in exposé
A New York Times bombshell investigation exposes new details and "ethical" breaches in the failed effort by Trump Attorney General Bill Barr to tarr the DOJ, and find a "deep state" bias against Donald Trump. Barr's handpicked prosecutor failed to find supporting evidence or win the few cases he filed, and the Times reports intelligence agencies contradicted Barr's theories -- and ultimately his "strained justification" for the probe fell apart. MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber analyzes the story on the day it broke, and, while carefully noting there were no alleged crimes, the account raises other questions of ethics and abuse of power by Barr.
Myth America review: superb group history of the lies that built a nation
Republican strategy shifted so quickly that by the time the party gathered in 1964 to nominate Barry Goldwater for president, for the first time in 50 years there were no Black delegates in any southern delegation. One of the few Black delegates who did attend "had his suit set on fire". The Black baseball star Jackie Robinson, a longtime Republican, declared that he knew "how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany"...
Jim Jordan's Fearmongering Question Prompts Withering 1-Word Reply From Stephen King | HuffPost Latest News
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Friday doubled down on his previous fearmongering over what freedoms "they" are apparently coming for next…
‘There Is a Real Sense That the Apocalypse Is Coming’ - POLITICO
"They're taking God out of the schools," has persisted as a rallying cry among conservative Christians, but you point out in the book that that was really only half the equation. The other half was captured in a quotation from George Andrews, a congressman from Alabama, who responded to the Supreme Court decisions on prayer in schools by saying, "They put the Negroes in the schools and now they've driven God out."…
APPALLING MISCONDUCT in Durham investigation EXPOSED
The New York Times released a long exposé yesterday examining the John Durham special counsel investigation looking into the investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Harry gives his take on the various salacious revelations, including the unusually close relationship between John Durham and AG Bill Barr and countless misleading public statements from Barr, from the standpoint of a former DOJ official...
Sold an American Dream, these workers from India wound up living a nightmare (Dave Davies; Fresh Air podcast)
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2006, hundreds of welders and pipefitters were recruited from India to come to the Gulf Coast to repair oil rigs. But when they arrived in the U.S., it was nothing like what they were promised.
Interview:
Juliet Jeske exposes MAGA Brainwashing Techniques and how to DEPROGRAM (Anthony Davis; The Weekend Show Episode #48)
Journalist who decodes Fox News, Juliet Jeske, exposes the deranged techniques and propaganda used by the right to brainwash voters.
Five Minute News with Anthony Davis is an Evergreen Podcast, covering politics, inequality, health and climate - delivering independent, unbiased and essential world news, daily.
Five Minute News with Anthony Davis is an Evergreen Podcast, covering politics, inequality, health and climate - delivering independent, unbiased and essential world news, daily.
Interview:
Does God Exist? 4 New Arguments (@PragerU response)
Science tells us that the universe came into being via The Big Bang. But how do you get from energy and matter to a self-aware human being? Frank Pastore thinks that takes three additional Big Bangs that science can't explain and poses the ultimate question that every thinking person must face.
Interview:
Saturday, January 28, 2023
The News Roundup – Domestic and International (The 1A) 2023-01-27
Domestic
This week, newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy blocked Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from keeping their seats on the House Intelligence Committee.California is still reeling after three mass shootings – including two that happened within three days. On Saturday, eleven people were killed in a Monterey Park dance hall. A twelfth victim died later in the hospital. On Monday, seven people were killed at and around a farm in Half Moon Bay. And both shootings came less than a week after six people were killed at a home in the Central Valley – including a teenage mother and her baby.
Five former Memphis police officers were indicted on murder charges in the death of Tyree Nichols on Thursday. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis fired the five Black officers for violating department policy after Nichols’ arrest earlier this month.
Interview:
International
President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that the U.S. will send 31 M-1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine for its fight against Russia. This was a U-turn by the federal government after months of saying it would not send tanks.Some 80 percent of China’s population has supposedly contracted COVID-19, that’s according to a prominent Chinese government scientist. For context, that’s more than one billion people. Last weekend there were 13,000 COVID deaths in less than a week, in addition to the 60,000 deaths that have been reported since December.
On Thursday, United States Africa Command said in a news release that the U.S. military had “conducted a successful counterterrorism operation in Somalia.” The raid is believed to have killed Bilal al-Sudani, an Islamic State leader along with 10 other Sudanese Islamic State associates.
Interview:
The New Republican House Rules Are… Yikes. (Opening Arguments podcast OA681)
Action packed show today! The House Jan 6 Committee still has effects from beyond the grave. Fireball whiskey is making knockoffs of itself? And yeah, those new Republican House Rules are garbage and should feel like garbage.
Interview:
Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’
"What I have a problem with is an audit that is undertaken with a goal in mind, and that is literally being funded by one of the candidates. This is absolutely what we do not want to happen."
Gates pointed out that under Arizona law, electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars. Though the Cyber Ninjas review was technically not a recount, it served a similar purpose.
"At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion," Gates said.
Concerns over escalating violence after Israeli forces kill nine Palestinians during West Bank raid
The recent election of the most rightwing government in Israeli history is expected to inflame an already volatile situation. Members of the new Israeli coalition have pledged to accelerate the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank – a practice that negates the possibility of a two-state solution – and loosen the rules of engagement for soldiers and police...
Barr Pressed Durham to Find Flaws in the Trump-Russia Investigation - The New York Times
The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry...
Google let Daily Wire advertise to climate crisis deniers, research shows
Data shared by the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that Ben Shapiro's news site paid for climate crisis denial search term ads…
The ugly truth EXPOSED about the Durham/Barr investigation of those who investigated Trump-Russia
The New York Times just published a remarkable deep-dive piece ,pulling back the curtain on the John Durham investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, exposing the ugliness and lack of ethics that apparently ran rampant through the Durham investigation.
This video surveys some of the most troubling aspect of the Durham probe revealed in The New York Times reporting.
Man Who Shot Pepper Spray at Officer on Jan. 6 Gets Nearly 7 Years in Prison - The New York Times
"All of you bear responsibility for the injuries sustained by Brian's fellow officers — the broken bones, head trauma and the continuing mental anguish they suffer and will endure for the rest of their lives," she said. "Imagine the emotional pain that would cause someone to take his own life. Four officers committed suicide. You and your 'movement' caused their deaths."…
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/us/politics/brian-sicknick-julian-khater-george-tanios-jan-6.html
Friday, January 27, 2023
The challenge of slicing the federal budget, visualized - The Washington Post
If you exclude defense or veterans programs from cuts, you need to eliminate a third of what's left. Take out Social Security and Medicare, too, and suddenly you have to cut basically everything...
Rick Scott’s line on taxes manages to become even less coherent
This idea has been tested repeatedly in the real world, and it's failed every time. Most recently, Scott and other Republicans slashed taxes during the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, and budget deficits predictably soared. In fact, GOP policymakers added trillions of dollars to the national debt, even before the Covid pandemic, thanks in large part to the tax breaks they handed the wealthy and big corporations. The stream of new revenue that the party assumed would flow into the treasury never materialized...
Rose Wakefield awarded $1 million over gas station allegations: ‘I don’t serve Black people’ - The Washington Post
"The message the jury sent is that big corporations should take big racist complaints seriously," Jason Kafoury, Greg Kafoury's son and another attorney representing Wakefield, told The Post. "They need to document them and investigate them and not sweep them under the rug. If they don't do that, juries are going to make them pay — and that's what this one did."…
Ex-Kremlin Aide Abbas Gallyamov Predicts Military Сoup Against Putin
The Russian public has largely begun to realize that the Kremlin's dream of toppling the Kyiv "regime" is not going to happen, Gallyamov notes, and the consolation prize of new "Russian" territories is not winning anybody over.
Discord is also growing in the military, he argues, where "[Wagner boss Yevgeny] Prigozhin has completely discredited the regime in the eyes of service members with his rhetoric, and anger at the authorities allowing a criminal to walk all over them is growing stronger."…
Trump unveils new education policy loaded with culture war proposals - POLITICO
Now running for office again, Trump is calling for a certification program for teachers who "embrace patriotic values" and "funding preferences and favorable treatment" for states and school districts that follow his calls for abolishing teacher tenure. He also calls for cutting administrative roles, and adopting a "parental bill of rights." Trump said he would also remove "the radical zealots and Marxists" he claims have "infiltrated" the Department of Education…
Hive ransomware gang shut down by FBI, AG Merrick Garland says - The Washington Post
Garland, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and their top deputies described the dismantling of Hive as a major victory in the government's efforts to fight ransomware with novel methods. Law enforcement was able to hack Hive and infiltrate its networks for seven months, officials said, stealing the decryption keys and quietly giving them to 336 victims before taking full control of Hive servers in the United States and Europe, knocking them offline and preventing new infections...
Another altered video appears to show an outburst during a Biden speech, but that didn’t happen - PolitiFact
The audio of the people chanting was layered over the authentic video clip…
Bible study and work without pay: the shadowy world of sober living homes
In a largely unregulated industry, some residents trying to get sober are made to work 40 hours a week at restaurants – but don't receive a paycheck…
$18 a dozen: how did America’s eggs get absurdly expensive?
Farm Action's investigation began with an analysis by the USDA, which noted that the industry had not taken the proper steps to increase flock sizes and replace birds lost to avian flu...
"The only answer is that companies are working together to capitalize on these convenient excuses, using avian flu and inflation to set higher prices for the consumer," said Huffman.
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Backlash grows against DeSantis decision to block AP African American Studies class - The Washington Post
"These are the issues that's being ignored because we have to deal with the promotion of Jim Crow 3.0 by people who don't know and don't care about what's happening in Black communities, but they desire to referee how you teach our history," Jones said...
Six lifestyle choices to slow memory decline named in 10-year study | Memory | The Guardian
Overall, people with four to six healthy behaviours or two to three were almost 90% and almost 30% respectively less likely to develop dementia or mild cognitive impairment relative to those who were the least healthy, the BMJ reported...
The number of immigrants crossing the southwest border unlawfully has decreased under expanded parole program - The Washington Post
"These expanded border enforcement measures are working," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. "It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border."
Senior administration officials said in a news conference Wednesday that the number of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela attempting to cross the border illegally had dropped from a seven-day average of 3,367 migrants a day on Dec. 11 to a seven-day average of 115 per day, a 97 percent drop…
Pope Francis says 'being homosexual is not a crime' - The Washington Post
He said the church must work to end such laws, while Catholic bishops who support them "have to have a process of conversion." Instead, the clergy should offer "tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us," the pontiff told the Associated Press...
Fabricated story falsely claims Vladimir Putin destroyed an adrenochrome lab in Ukraine - PolitiFact
The Jan. 20 story came from Real Raw News, a website with a history of publishing false, fantastical stories. This time, it drew from a false QAnon cornerstone belief that powerful elites are killing children to harvest the chemical compound adrenochrome. According to the story, Putin struck back…
Newsmax Hosts Beg Viewers to Get Congress to Help the Network
Newsmax hosts have spent all day whining about DirecTV dropping the pro-Trump channel, going so far as to urge viewers to get the government involved...
Debt-Ceiling Talks: McCarthy's Moderate Republican Allies Have Own Ideas - Bloomberg
Republican moderates are looking for bipartisan solutions to the debt-ceiling dilemma that would avoid the massive cuts to federal spending — including popular Social Security and Medicare programs — that some GOP members have demanded...
One state wants to cut food-stamp spending. Their plan: Ban fresh meat, flour and butter. - CBS News
"SNAP recipients could no longer purchase meat, other than certain varieties of canned tuna and salmon," the Iowa Hunger Coalition said in a statement criticizing the bill. The group said people on food stamps spend about $1 of every $5 on meat, poultry and seafood, making it the top food category purchased by SNAP recipients…
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