Tracker

Emerging COVID-19 crisis in China 'could shake the world': WaPo Editorial Board China is facing a new COVID-19 crisis that could severely affect the world after President Xi Jinping lifted the lockdown measures earlier this month, the Washington Post Editorial Board says. President Jinping originally lifted the “zero-covid” lockdown policy due to the negative impact it had on the economy – which triggered public protests throughout the country last month. He declared an end to the policy on December 7. China’s normally cool, calm and collected government, according to the Post, seems to be rattled by the new omicron variant that can potentially permeate throughout the nation. Residents have started to stay at home out of pure fear of its impact. The country traded the more powerful mRNA vaccines for “less-effective Chinese-made shots, and because the omicron variant hasn’t impacted much of the population, residents are less immune to the virus. The only possible saving grace to the outbreak is the CanSino Biologics aerosol vaccine, which is serving as a booster “in the form of an inhaled mist taking in through the mouth” in addition to imported mRNA shots. Of China’s 60-and-over population, only approximately 69 percent have had booster shots, and an even less percentage of residents over 80 have received theirs. The nation has already seen an uptick in deaths recently and is expected to see at least one million more in the next few months. In an attempt to mitigate this significant health crisis, China has enacted a campaign to attract more hesitant residents to vaccinate. Although vastly unpredictable, the current outbreak could continue to generate new variants over time on a global scale. https://www.alternet.org/covid-crisis-china-shake-world/

I think you are not seeing the forest for the trees. Right-wing politics in the US, Britain and Canada have swung sharply towards fascism but the center and center-left politics in Canada at least has remained static. British left-wingers have always been nutty and the US has no real concept of what European/Canadian left-wing politics are really like.

As easy as it is to succumb to fatalism and cynicism of the glacial progress of Garland's DOJ, I continue to believe that the mills of the gods grind exceeding slow but they grind exceeding fine. The fate of the American justice system, the trust that Americans have (perhaps naively) in their justice system and even their government may well hang on the next few months. This shattering of confidence serves the ends of fascism and may be what the GOP wants.

The rank and file Trump supporters have not realized that every dollar he has grifted from the US treasury/IRS is a dollar that has been taken from them.

Plus, Zelensky went home with a promise of an additional 2 billion in anti-aircraft systems.

Soooo....you would have them give the provinces a lump of money that they could use as they see fit without increasing health care? After provinces were wringing their hands and weeping that they did not have enough income to provide good healthcare after years/decades of cutting funding to there services?

Trump Secretly Paid For Lawyers And Then Tampered With 1/6 Witnesses CNN reported: Though the committee declined to identify the people, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources familiar with the committee’s work tell CNN. Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson, other sources tell CNN. The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services. Hutchinson dumped the secretly Trump-financed lawyer and hired her own counsel who supported her decision to tell the truth to the committee. Hutchinson’s testimony was a bombshell. She detailed Trump’s demand to go to the Capitol on 1/6 and his altercation with his Secret Service detail. The 1/6 Committee has referred Trump for prosecution by the DOJ on an obstruction charge. The committee has made references to Trump witness tampering since the summer. Donald Trump used funds from his super PAC from his donors to tamper with 1/6 witnesses. Trump’s super PAC should also be under investigation, and if the campaign finance laws in the United States were functional in any way, the PAC would be shut down, and it would become another area of criminal investigation focus. The 1/6 Committee was not deterred by Trump’s witness tampering. They have put the pieces together to tell a comprehensive picture of how Donald Trump led an insurrection to overturn a presidential election.

Trump May Have Committed Tens Of Millions Of Dollars In Tax Crimes Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) of the House Ways and Means Committee said that Trump’s tax returns suggest that he had tens of millions of dollars in unsubstantiated claims. Rep. Doggett said on CNN, “I think you will see tens of millions of dollars in these returns that were claimed without adequate substantiation. The extent to which the IRS made an effort to get that substantiation, I invite you to look at the reports. But I think you’ll be surprised by how little there is, and I have my doubts that another taxpayer could go into audit and provide as little as was provided here and expect to have a completed audit.

‘We’re Just Meat’: Russian Military Keeps Killing Its Own Troops Russian troops have also been caught venting openly to relatives about the dangers they face from their own men in Ukraine. In audio released by Ukrainian intelligence on Tuesday and said to capture a Russian soldier's phone conversation, a man identified only as Aleksei tells his mother the military just sent reinforcements. He explains that the reinforcements came because “20 people are gone.” “Our tank hit hard: It fired twice and 20 guys, ****. I’m telling you, what the **** kind of command is this, scumbags. They’re ******* killing their own,” Aleksei, who described himself as a commander, said. “I’m telling you, there are more losses from our own [guys],” than the Ukrainians, he said. Another purported soldier, heard complaining to a friend back home in audio released Monday, said it was clear the military leadership gives “zero fucks” if their soldiers come back alive. “It’s not a war, it’s a **** show. It’s complete bullshit,” he said. “That’s it, the entire response from leadership: There are 300,000 of you, basically, we don’t give a ****.” “Don’t you dare come here, and know that it’s complete ****,” he told his friend. “Only on [state-run] Channel One are there ******* tanks, here there’s ******* nothing, brother. Here there’s nothing, you have no food, you drink from puddles.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-military-keeps-killing-its-own-troops-in-ukraine-war-report-says?ref=home

The Cons are betting that people will have short memories and are willing to swallow more of the same crap they have been fed for the past few years.

Winter storms are back — and scientists say climate change is making them a lot worse As winter storms continue to pummel much of the United States, is climate change partially — or majorly — to blame? As with any natural disaster that relates to the weather, it is natural to wonder whether climate change plays a role. Certainly the weather this winter has been extreme, with Texans and Oklahomans being warned of potential tornadoes and Americans everywhere bracing for possible power outages (which on their own can be devastating). Winter storms mean blocked roads, damaged property, crumbling infrastructure and possibly even injuries and deaths. The big question for both policymakers and the public, therefore, is how much of the horrid weather can be definitively attributed to global warming. Climate change experts say that it's not merely a coincidence — climate change really is worsening our winter storms this year, as multiples experts told Salon. "Winter storms develop in a climate change environment: it is warmer and moister," Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) told Salon by email. "But it is plenty cold in winter over the continent. It means snow amounts can be much greater: e.g. see Buffalo recently. They may be more intense: not guaranteed, but more developments ensue. Watch for a bad nor-easter." While it may seem counterintuitive to attribute more snow to the planet warming, Trenberth observed that this only seems to be the case because the general public is insufficiently informed about how climate change works. "[People need] education that winter warming may mean more snow, not less," Trenberth added. This does not mean that scientists can precisely quantify the extent to which climate change has played a role. According to Dr. Michael E. Mann — a climate scientist and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania — it is "tricky" to figure these things out with precision. "There's still quite a bit of debate about whether we can expect more events like the Texas cold spell last year due to climate change," Mann wrote to Salon. "On the other hand, there is evidence that warming leads to more powerful, snowier nor'easters—something we've seen quite a bit of in the northeast in recent years." https://www.salon.com/2022/12/17/winter-storms-are-back-and-scientists-say-climate-change-is-making-them-a-lot-worse/

Shouldn't they change their name to "First Nations Motorcycles"?

The 1/6 Committee Has Big Bombshells To Drop Call records, with the exception of ones that the committee has found relevant to the probe, would likely remain secret as well, according to the chair. Even so, the panel’s introductory materials gave tantalizing clues about what’s to come. The committee’s executive summary referenced just over 80 of the panel’s interviews and documents collected from 34 agencies or witnesses; among them, Christoffer Guldbrandsen, a documentarian who captured footage of Trump ally Roger Stone, and Bernard Kerik, who advised Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in his bid to collect evidence to challenge the 2020 results. The summary also reflects voluminous contacts among key players in Trump’s alleged plot that were not previously known but could be of interest to federal prosecutors. For example, the document describes numerous contacts that then-DOJ officials Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski had with Trump campaign attorney John Eastman in the closing days of 2020 and into early 2021. The people who should be very nervous about the report are those who were involved in the operational commission of crimes to steal an election. Jeffrey Clark, Roger Stone, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), Rudy Guiliani, and Trump’s lawyers and members of his campaign team should expect that evidence of criminal activity will be in the report. https://www.politicususa.com/2022/12/20/the-1-6-committee-has-big-bombshells-to-drop.html

Jan. 6 Committee Says Donald Trump Associates Tried To Bribe Witnesses WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection said Monday that associates of former President Donald Trump tried to bribe at least one of the people it asked to testify. The committee has previously said Trump contacted witnesses prior to their testimony, but at the latest hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) detailed an apparent effort by associates of the former president to dissuade a witness from testifying with a cushy job. “We’ve learned that a [witness] was offered potential employment that would make her, quote, ‘financially very comfortable’ as the date of her testimony approached, by entities that were apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates,” Lofgren said. “These offers were withdrawn or didn’t materialize as reports of the content of her testimony circulated,” she added. “The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony, and we are concerned that these efforts may have been a strategy to prevent the committee from finding the truth.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jan-6-committee-donald-trump-witnesses_n_63a0b1f1e4b0aeb2ace65914

Usually quite the opposite.

I suspect that Maas' career as a HC will be on a death watch by Labour Day.

REVEALED: The Donors to Tucker Carlson’s News Org—and Their Ethical Conflicts The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows. The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for the first time a list of donors to the 501(c)(4) organization, a so-called “dark money” group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours. When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told The Wall Street Journal at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week. Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation, which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists. Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donors-to-tucker-carlsons-daily-caller-news-foundation-revealed?ref=home

In Israel, Netanyahu's extremist new government rips off the mask Benjamin Netanyahu's proposed coalition government of Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots represents a seismic change in Israel, one that will exacerbate Israel's pariah status, erode external support for Israel, fuel a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, and create irreconcilable political divides within the Jewish state. Alon Pinkas, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, calls the coalition government, scheduled to take power within the next week or so, "a kakistocracy extraordinaire: government by the worst and least suitable collection of ultra-nationalists, Jewish supremacists, anti-democrats, racists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, corrupt and allegedly corrupt politicians. A ruling coalition of 64 lawmakers, of whom 32 are either ultra-Orthodox or religious Zionist. Certainly not a coalition Zeev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, or Menachem Begin, the founder of Likud, could have ever imagined." Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit or "Jewish Power," party, will be the new minister for internal security. Otzma Yehudit is populated with former members of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party, which was banned from running for the Knesset in 1988 for espousing a "Nazi-like ideology" that included advocating the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as all Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. Ben-Gvir's appointment, along with that of other far-right ideologues, including Bezalel Smotrich, to be in charge of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, effectively jettisons the old tropes liberal Zionists used to defend Israel: It is the only democracy in the Middle East, it seeks a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians in a two-state solution, and while extremism and racism have no place in Israeli society, Israel must impose draconian forms of control on the Palestinians to prevent terrorism. https://www.salon.com/2022/12/17/in-israel-netanyahus-extremist-new-government-rips-off-the-mask/

Couldn't be worse than the recent season.