progree
progree's JournalTexas Republicans pass resolution denying Biden won 2020 election
Source: CBS News by way of MSN
The Texas Republican Party officially rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election over the weekend, passing a resolution in its platform that falsely blames election fraud in five battleground states for President Joe Biden's victory over former President Donald Trump. The resolution refers to Mr. Biden as "acting" president.
...
It claims that the elections in five states violated Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution because "various secretaries of state illegally circumvented their state legislatures in conducting their elections in multiple ways, including by allowing ballots to be received after November 3, 2020."
Reviews of the vote tallies and various recounts did not change the outcome of any state's election. Officials including Attorney General William Barr have repeatedly rejected claims that there was widespread election fraud. The president and his allies waged dozens of unsuccessful legal battles and looked to the Supreme Court to help deliver Mr. Trump a second term in the White House after Mr. Biden was declared the winner, asking the justices to take up numerous disputes that sought to halt the certification of election results from key battleground states.
But the Supreme Court appeared not to have an appetite to wade into the disputes -- it rejected requests to fast-track cases that took aim at the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania and spurned other challenges to the outcome of the election in those four states.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/texas-republicans-pass-resolution-denying-biden-won-2020-election/ar-AAYFEFt?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=3fae966f50fd44e589d32b75677bf22a
I don't know how much of this nuttiness I can take, but unfortunately, I'm sure there is plenty more coming down the pike.
There is also a lot of stuff about a gun resolution in the article, but I barely skimmed it, as I can't take any more of this.
People who read LBN have probably seen this one --
Texas Could Vote to Secede From U.S. in 2023 as GOP Pushes for Referendum
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142932106
Iraq's 'pearl of the south' Lake Sawa dry amid water crisis,
This year, for the first time in its centuries-long history, the lake dried up. A combination of mismanagement by local investors, government neglect and climate change has ground down its azure shores to chunks of salt.
. . . Lake Sawa is only the latest casualty in this broad country-wide struggle with water shortages that experts say is induced by climate change, including record low rainfall and back-to-back drought.
. . . “The degradation of the water began over 10 years ago, but this summer was the first time we lost the entire wetland,” said Laith Ali al-Obeidi, an environmental activist in southern Iraq.
Experts said the lake has not dried up for good but its disappearance this year is a concerning consequence of the thousands of illegal wells dug by businessmen in nearby cement factories and manufacturing zones, a result of drought and decreasing waters along the nearby Euphrates.
By early June, some water began to reappear because farmers, done with the harvest season, stopped diverting underground water.
================================
It was apparently only 5 square miles in the good ol' days, so it wasn't a monster.
It is south of Baghdad -- about halfway between Baghdad and the Iraq-Saudi border.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawa_Lake
Map
I've been seeing several articles lately about how long and severe Iraq's drought has been.
Toronto Blames Woman Who Was Pushed Onto Subway Tracks: 'She Was Travelling Alone'
The TTC is the Toronto Transit Commission. See reply #2 for their Facebook page.
... According to the TTC’s statement, Al-Balushi “failed to take reasonable steps and precautions for her own safety and protection.” The statement says “she chose to stand close to the edge of the platform,” “failed to pay due care and attention to her surroundings,” and “was travelling alone and unassisted on public transit when she knew or ought to have known that it was unsafe for her to do so.”
More: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7be5a/toronto-woman-pushed-onto-ttc-subway
Since the TTC went ahead and let out their inner bigot, I'm surprised they didn't go all the way and suggest she is unwise to ever leave her house without an adult male escort, who is either a husband or blood relative. Otherwise, she is just "asking for it".
And it really is a thick yellow line - there are some pictures at the TTC's Facebook page (See #2 below). Maybe 2 feet thick.
Edited to Add Video --
Woman shoved onto Toronto subway tracks speaks out as video emerges of disturbing incident
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/disturbing-video-captures-moment-woman-is-pushed-onto-tracks-at-toronto-subway-station-1.5867608
the standing and pushing --- start at 0:48
And here are a couple of pictures the 2nd one just as she was about to be pushed.
Cross-linked to Women's Rights and Issues https://www.democraticunderground.com/113813582
Minnesota GOP chair Hann apologizes for antisemitic image - Soros manipulating two puppets with the
faces of two prominent Minnesota Jewish Democrats --
... The chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota apologized Thursday for an image that was projected at the party's state convention of George Soros manipulating the strings of puppets with the faces of two prominent Jewish Democrats. The image was contained in a video shown by secretary of state candidate Kim Crockett. The faces on the puppets were DFL elections attorney Marc Elias and Secretary of State Steve Simon. Soros is also Jewish.
... Crockett, who won the party endorsement at the convention, has not spoken publicly about the video, but [Minnesota GOP chair] Hann said he talked to her.
... “I have concluded after talking with Ms. Crockett that the depiction of Mr. Soros was not intended as antisemitic, and that neither Ms. Crockett nor her creative team were aware that the depiction of a puppet-master invokes an old but persistent antisemitic trope,” Hann said.
... [DFL Party Chair Ken] Martin also pointed to an earlier incident when Crockett was suspended from the think tank the Center of the American Experiment for making a racist remark about Somalis in Minnesota.
Crockett apologized for that remark at the time, but was captured on video during this year's campaign saying that she would say the same thing today.
More: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/05/19/gop-chair-hann-apologizes-for-antisemitic-image
the Center of the American Experiment is far right, so for them to be upset about a racist remark about Somalis, well it had to be pretty awful
Crossposting to Jewish Group
Picture from Behind the Aegis's Jewish Group posting:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122311413
There's a big hole in the Fed's theory of inflation --- incomes are falling at a record 10.9% rate
(that's after adjusting for inflation)
(no paywall, its an msn.com link -Progree)
The most concerning thing about Thursday’s report on U.S. gross domestic product for the first quarter wasn’t that the first line of the first table showed that real GDP fell at a 1.4% annual rate. It was the little-noticed news on line 34 showing that real disposable incomes fell for a fourth straight quarter.
Over the last four quarters, the purchasing power of after-tax household incomes plunged by $2.2 trillion (in 2021 dollars). That’s a 10.9% decline, by far the largest in the records dating back to 1947.
Of course, the decline in incomes is merely the unwinding of the massive support that households received from the government in 2020 and 2021 via direct pandemic stimulus payments, the child tax credit, and enhanced benefits for unemployment insurance, food stamps and Medicaid, and more.
. . . But the Fed is determined to quash demand. That’s what raising interest rates is all about: Slowing demand in an overheated economy by raising the costs of borrowing. ((the article argues that quashing demand when inflation-adjusted incomes are falling like this is only going to make incomes fall more -Progree))
. . . The prospect for stagflation—low growth with high inflation—is real. “The appropriate solution to inflation would be to work to alleviate supply-side constraints,” say Nersisyan and Wray. To do that, unfortunately, “we need more domestic investment, not less.”
More: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/there-s-a-big-hole-in-the-fed-s-theory-of-inflation-incomes-are-falling-at-a-record-10-9-rate/ar-AAWHEFQ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=15f1a5a79a714edd9e40436aeb6fdd32
The Personal Income Report he is referring to is at:
https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/personal-income-and-outlays-march-2022
The full release with all the tables is at: https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/pi0322.pdf
I can't find the Line 34 data he is talking about. But in Line 46 of Table 2 of pi0322.pdf, it has
Disposable Personal Income, Total, billions of chained (2012) dollars: quarterly,
2020 Q4: 15,443.0, 2021 Q1: 17,221.6, Q2: 15,805.6, Q3: 15,640.0, Q4: 15,418.0, 2022 Q1: 15,339.2
And yes, there are 4 straight quarters of decline, and 2022 Q1 over 2021 Q1 is a 10.9% decline:
(2022 Q1 / 2021 Q1 - 1) * 100% : (15,339.2 / 17,221.6 - 1) * 100 = -10.93%
Table 2 Line 22 "Government social benefits to persons" shows a huge amount in 2021 Q1 relative to the preceding and following quarters.
Future such comparions of quarterly real disposable income vs. the same quarter a year ago will likely be much less dramatic declines, with the unusual 2021 Q1 falling out of the comparison. For example, comparing 2022 Q1 to 2021 Q2 (that's the last 3 quarters) is
(2022 Q1 / 2021 Q2 - 1) * 100% : (15,339.2 / 15,805.6 - 1) * 100 = -2.95% (-3.91% annualized)
2022 Q1 vs. 2021 Q4 (one quarter) is a 0.51% decline (-2.07% annualized)
but its still in the wrong direction, just not so apocalyptic.
Edited to add the personal savings rate graph below (#7)
Film of Prince at age 11 discovered (known as "Skipper" then)
in WCCO's news archives, the CBS affiliate. They were researching the 1970 Minneapolis school strike, and guess what -- they asked this young boy about his views on the school strike. Cross-posted to GD
start at about 1:09
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2022/04/03/prince-rare-footage-1970/
Great pic:
?resize=620,349
Edited to Add:
Crickets in the GD forum added this:
I couldn't get the video to play at your link, but I found one on YouTube. At time of posting, there are two here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Film+Of+Prince+At+Age+11+
Here's one of them - skip to 1:34 for Prince and his childhood friends at 3:42:
Being spammed to death by one financial newsletter after another
For at least a decade I have had little trouble with spam. But for some strange reason I have started getting spammed to death, starting Dec 25 --
Inheritance Goals
Finance Trader Pro
Morning News Catcher
Wealth Optimizer
The Retirement Savers
Hedge Trader
Breaking Profit News
Breaking Tech Circle
Security Wealth,
Breakthrough Alerts
Rich Market Guru
Market Specialist
Fast Retirements
Market Collapse
AI Tech News
To most of them I immediately unsubscribe, and that's the end of it. But whack-a-mole style, I get a newsletter email from a different organization a day or two later.
For those that have run a day or longer before I unsubscribe, they are all daily or even more than that emails. So just ignoring them isn't an option.
I know the canned advice I've been hearing for decades to just ignore them because by unsubscribing, I'm just verifying that I'm an active email address. But had I maintained that philosophy from the beginning, I'd be getting literally thousands of email a day. I have found it works, in the past, to unsubscribe from anything semi-legitimate. (I do ignore the occasional ones from Russia offering to show dirty pictures though, Nigerian princes and so on ).
But now, for the first time in decades, unsubscribing isn't solving the problem.
They all seem to be using the same spamming service, e.g. when I unsubscribe, it says
"You've successfully been unsubscribed from (name of newsletter) Channel messages."
I've heard of forwarding to spam@uce.gov -- does that do any good?
Block doesn't work reliably on my Outlook 2010 email -- neither does rerouting by address to some other inbox --
Thanks for any ideas
Edited to add - I just sent one of each to spam@uce.gov anyway
Edited to add - All of the ones I sent to spam@uce.gov bounced. "Unable to deliver message after multiple retries, giving up."
I'm just baffled that for at least 10 years, I haven't had much of a spam problem. And then this. I guess I was really wondering if other people are experiencing a sudden huge increase in this in the past month or two -- in particular being put on various email subscription lists for email newsletters of different types. Most of mine have been financial newsletters that I enumerated above. But there have been a few others of different hues: Earth Overshoot, The Cogniciti Team, Conservative Top News.
I guess not.
I'm really focused on trying to cut it off at the source rather than routing an ever-increasing number to a junk folder, particularly given that this thing isn't working reliably in Outlook 2010.
Grocery store: I take an item or 2, remaining items way back & no longer visible .. do I move ..
Let's say I grab one or two of the same item from a low shelf, and there are still ones remaining, but they are far back and one would have to bend way over or get on the floor to see them. So, I think about others and move up one or two of the back items near the front of the shelf so it/they are easily visible (edit: and reachable).
(There are times when it's hard to find a certain item in a very busy shelf full of similar items, so even sometimes when all items are front and visible, it still can take a long time to find what I'm looking for. With the item I'm looking for being way back in the back of some narrow hole, on a lower shelf, well, I'm sure I've missed seeing something I had spent several minutes looking for that was there.)
But I keep wondering am I really doing others a favor? Do the grocery store shelf stockers clue off the empty spots (if I had not moved items forward) to know to put more items on the shelf or something? So I might be screwing up their system?
I assume computers keep track of what's been purchased and what's been put on the shelf... but ... is the system that good? It could be foiled by shoplifters for example. Edit: or idiots taking an item but then later putting it back on some shelf 3 aisles away.
I have been wondering about this almost every time that this situation arises. Thanks
Edited to change "every time I go to the grocery store" to "almost every time that this situation arises "
Netherlands imposes weeks-long nationwide lockdown amid omicron-fueled case surge
Source: The Hill via MSN.com
The Netherlands is imposing a weeks-long nationwide lockdown amid a surge of cases caused by the new omicron variant.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced Saturday that nonessential stores, bars and restaurants will be shut down from Sunday until Jan. 14 and that schools will be shut down until Jan. 9, The Associated Press reported.
On Christmas and New Year's, Dutch households will be allowed only four visitors. Only two visitors will permitted on all other days during the lockdown.
...
The Netherlands is now at the forefront of a number of European countries tightening restrictions as the omicron variant spreads across the continent and nations mark some of their highest daily COVID-19 case numbers since the pandemic began.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/netherlands-imposes-weeks-long-nationwide-lockdown-amid-omicron-fueled-case-surge/ar-AARX8Hn?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
"The Associated Press reported" --
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-europe-restrictions-reimposed-omicron-dcf7d5733163d3c851fa27f99edca92b
Some excerpts from that:
In the Netherlands, shoppers fearing the worst swarmed to commercial areas of Dutch cities earlier Saturday, thinking it might be their last chance to buy Christmas gifts.
Rotterdam municipality tweeted that it was “too busy in the center” of the port city and told people: “Don’t come to the city.” Amsterdam also warned that the city’s main shopping street was busy and urged people to stick to coronavirus rules.
... Scientists are warning the British government it needs to go further to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Leaked minutes from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies suggested a ban on indoor mixing and hospitality, the BBC reported.
MN Bar Owner Who Defied COVID Orders Sentenced To 90 Days In Jail (The Interchange, Albert Lea)
Bar Owner Who Defied COVID Orders Sentenced To 90 Days In Jail, 12/10/21
The owner of a bar in Albert Lea was found guilty of six criminal misdemeanor charges and sentenced to 90 days in jail for defying Gov. Tim Walz’s executive orders to close her business last winter.
The jury found Lisa Hanson, 57, guilty after deliberating for an hour, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.
Judge Joseph Bueltel gave her a 90-day jail sentence and a $1,000 fine. He says he wanted to send a message to people who violate executive orders.
Hanson had flaunted her defiance of an order to shut bars and restaurants to indoor dining late last year. She argued that Walz’s orders were unconstitutional.
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/12/10/bar-owner-who-defied-covid-orders-sentenced-to-90-days-in-jail/
==========================================
I used to monitor these Minnesota resistor bars' Facebook pages and carefully follow news stories about them during the winter shutdowns we had last winter.
It's hard to say who was the most obnoxious of them all. They all blathered Freedom and Constitution and American flags were everywhere. And glorifying veterans and the war dead for dying for our freedoms. And God of course, and our God-given freedoms. She was one of the most sickening, tiresome, and obnoxious.
https://www.facebook.com/theinterchange
Edited to add and God of course. Also the Facebook page. See left-side of page -- doesn't even have the decency to update that, one would think it's still open, despite a "The Interchange" comment on December 5 deep in one of the threads, "We’ve been closed since February 2021"
Edited to add This from MSN's version of the AP story --
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/minnesota-bar-owner-who-defied-virus-orders-found-guilty/ar-AARGUhX?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
“Liberty and freedom,” Hanson shouted as she was taken into custody by a sheriff's deputy.
Hanson has also been hit with fines totaling over $27,000 from separate legal actions brought after she left the state while facing the charges. Her business, The Interchange, closed in February.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Minnesota
Member since: Sat Jan 1, 2005, 04:45 AM
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