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Former Teen Idol Bobby Rydell Dies At 79 Bobby Rydell, one of the biggest teen idols in the pre-Beatles era of rock ‘n’ roll, has died just weeks before his 80th birthday. Rydell, whose most famous songs include “Volare,” “Swinging School,” and “Wild One,” died Tuesday, according to numerous outlets. The cause of death was pneumonia, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Rydell’s wife, Linda Hoffman, was by his side at Jefferson Hospital when he died. Born Robert Louis Ridarelli, Rydell took to music at a young age and was performing in nightclubs in the Philly/South Jersey area when he was 7, according to Variety. The singer's hits included “Volare,” “Swinging School,” and “Wild One," and he inspired the name of the high school in "Grease." After changing his name, Rydell tried to make it in show business as a singer and drummer. One of his early bands, Rocco and the Saints, featured another future teen idol, Frankie Avalon, on trumpet.

No matter how often it is repeated or by how many, BS is BS.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Condemned For One Of Her Vilest Tweets Yet The extremist Republican's attack on three colleagues was beyond the pale to many critics on Twitter. Conspiracy theory-endorsing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) faced fierce backlash on Monday for a vile attack on three fellow Republicans. Greene used her congressional account to tweet the baseless accusation that GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah) are “pro-pedophile” because they said will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. During Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearings, GOP lawmakers falsely accused Brown of being lenient in cases involving photos of child sexual abuse. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marjorie-taylor-greene-republicans-vile-tweet_n_624bf8e4e4b0d8266ab091dd

(The Troglodytes are in power in Oklahoma) Oklahoma House Sends Aggressive Abortion Ban To Governor OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. With little discussion and no debate, the Republican-controlled House voted 70-14 to send the bill to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has previously said he’d sign any anti-abortion bill that comes to his desk. The bill is one of several anti-abortion measures still alive in Oklahoma’s Legislature this year, part of a trend of GOP-led states passing aggressive anti-abortion legislation as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court is considering ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years. The Oklahoma bill, which passed the Senate last year, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother, said GOP state Rep. Jim Olsen, of Roland, who sponsored the bill. Under the bill, a person convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. “The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Olsen said. Similar anti-abortion bills approved by the Oklahoma Legislature in recent years have been stopped by the courts as unconstitutional.

One of these times, they are gonna succeed in screwing up the oldest football league in the world. At that point, I'm done with the CFL.

And Gaetz should stay away from hookers, particularly underage ones.

As regards the allegations against Hillary Clinton, the sheer number of investigations by the GOP-dominated Congress (I believe 9 in all) turned up zero evidence that she had done anything wrong apart from poor judgement regarding her use of non-government cellphones and emails. But as the propaganda officer of Nazi Germany said, if you repeat a lie often enough and loudly enough, people will start to believe it, and the sexist bias against her was and is staggering- really pathological.

Sinclair Lewis is quoted as saying," When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"

Top Florida faith adviser dismissed after sexual assault history revealed A member of the Florida Governor’s Faith and Community-Based Initiative was recently dismissed from his role as a deacon of Clearwater’s Calvary Church after it was revealed he had a history of sexual misconduct when he was a teacher. Rev. Willy Rice told his congregation in a video that the deacon was stepping down over a past that involved “sexual sin that could also be described as abusive,” Religion News Service reports. “It did not involve criminal charges, and he has never been identified by law as a sexual offender,” Rice also said. “Religion News Service has confirmed that the former deacon is Jeff Ford, the executive director of Man Up and Go, a Christian nonprofit in the U.S. and overseas whose Authentic Masculinity Program ‘teaches men how to be protectors of and providers for their families,’ according to the biography of Ford posted on the website of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. According to that website, Ford is a member of the state’s Faith-Based and Community-Based Advisory Council.” In 2005, the Tampa Bay Times newspaper reported that Jeffrey Charles Ford, a 27-year-old coach and teacher at J.W. Mitchell High School, resigned after admitting to having sex with an 18-year-old student. Ford’s bio on the Florida Governor’s website calls Man Up and Go “a global non-profit organization that inspires men to fight for the fatherless as Jesus commands. The organization aims to break the cycle of generational fatherlessness,” and operates “in Uganda, Ethiopia, and the Dominican Republic.” https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/top-florida-faith-adviser-dismissed/

These people are smart enough to demand and get a seven-figure retainer in advance.

The lesser of two weasels?

Garland's reputation is that he is brilliant, but methodical and Trump is a very big fish that he is trying to land. Trump will have the best lawyers that money can buy, so the case against him has to be airtight. Moreover, having Trump and his abettors in the docket just before and during the pending mid-term elections would not harm the Democrats' election chances at all. It ought to be quite a spectacle.

(This Doesn't quite fit here, but interesting nonetheless) More than half of all American waterways are 'impaired by pollution': study A recent study commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act’s passage shows exactly how the U.S. is failing its commitment to eliminating pollution in the country’s navigable waterways, defined by the EPA as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” The report by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, titled “The Clean Water Act: Promises Half Kept at the Half-Century Mark,” delves into the millions of miles of rivers, streams, and creeks; millions of acres of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs; and thousands of square miles of bays, estuaries, and harbors that have been assessed based on the most recent Integrated Waters Report submitted to the EPA. Much of these waters are considered “impaired with pollution,” which means they fail “to meet standards for swimming and recreation, aquatic life, fish consumption, or as drinking water sources.” Of the 1,426,619 miles of rivers, streams, and creeks that have been assessed, 725,856 miles are considered impaired with pollution, accounting for 51%. More than half of the 20,432,238 acres of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs assessed similarly are considered impaired with pollution. Bays, estuaries, and harbors fared better, with about a quarter of the 76,555 square miles assessed considered impaired with pollution.

Putin Was Incensed Russian Troops Weren't Welcomed With Flowers In Ukraine, Says Oligarch. He went "insane," said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one-time CEO of Russian oil giant Yukos. Russian President Vladimir Putin was so out of touch with reality when he launched the Ukraine invasion that he was incensed his troops weren’t welcomed with flowers, an exiled Russian oligarch revealed Sunday. “At first he wanted to change the power in Kyiv ... and was expecting that this would be met with flowers thrown in the streets by Ukrainian people,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, onetime CEO of Russian oil giant Yukos, said on CNN. But when Ukrainians fought back as the invasion was launched, Putin went “insane,” said Khodorkovsky, an outspoken Putin critic who spent nine years in a Russian prison. “The fact that the people in Kharkiv [also failed to] meet him with flowers, it not only just angered him, I really think it drove him literally insane. That’s when he started bombing Kharkiv and Kyiv,” Khodorkovsky said. Former Russian Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov told CNN on Saturday that the surprising war in Ukraine has “devastated” top officials in the Kremlin and that many “Russian elites” may lose faith in Putin. That’s risky for Putin, who could be forced from power in a matter of months, he warned. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mikhail-khodorkovsky-putin-ukraine-troop-flowers_n_624a29c5e4b0587dee6aff1f

This is probably a commentary on the smarts of the workers.

Yesterday I posted a longish article by an American Political History professor that was an excellent description of the current US political climate- "A Blueprint For The Next American Civil War". Worth a read.

Ukraine Seizes Control of Key Northeastern Border Area From Russia The Ukrainian armed forces claimed a psychologically and strategically important victory in their counterattack against Russia Monday, saying the country’s northeastern border with Russia, in the Sumy region, is once again under Ukrainian control. According to Ukrainian website zn.ua, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odessa Military Administration, said: “The state border of Ukraine in the Sumy region is under the control of the Armed Forces!” Ukrainian officials have been saying for several days that “Russian invaders” were leaving the area, which some analysts believe marks a change of strategy by Russia as it seeks to concentrate its military might on the east of the country. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukraine-seizes-control-of-key-northeastern-border-area-from-russia?ref=home

Before the 1950's the GOP was the moderate, humane party, and friend to minorities. During the Kennedy era, the two parties switched allegiances and policies with the mutation becoming complete with the arrival of Ronald Reagan.

The Trump GOP has long abandoned shame, truth, guilt and ethics. All that they are interested in is "owning the libs" and gaining power at any cost. If it means the destruction of democracy and allying themselves with people like Putin, so be it.

A Blueprint For The Next American Civil War In the CIA's manual on insurgencies there are three stages. The United States is in the second stage. The CIA calls it the "incipient conflict stage," and it is marked by discrete acts of violence. Timothy McVeigh's attack in Oklahoma City was probably the very earliest instance. Here is what the CIA manual says, almost verbatim: "The insurgents' goal is to broadcast their mission to the world, build support and provoke a government overreaction to their violence so that more moderate citizens become radicalized and join the movement." The second stage is when the government becomes aware of the groups behind these attacks, but according to the CIA, the violence is often dismissed as the work of bandits, criminals or terrorists. What is so dangerous about the second stage is that citizens, politicians and law enforcement usually miss it. They don't connect the dots, they don't see that the movement is growing and that this is a precursor to open insurgency. Instead, these attacks are dismissed as idiosyncratic or the result of crazy people who have no connection to a larger movement. That's exactly where we are today. When you and other experts use the term "civil war," how is it defined? Experts use it as a type of umbrella term. Underneath that umbrella are all sorts of different forms of violence that can happen within a country. Civil wars mean violence that's fought by a domestic group within a country that targets the government for political purposes. It becomes a civil war or a major civil war if it kills a thousand people during the course of the war. Civil war can take different forms. There are social revolutions, such as the Russian Revolution or Mao's revolution in China. Social revolution is the most destructive type of civil war. It's a civil war where the rebels want complete political, economic and social change. There can also be a violent coup that kills a thousand people and is contained to a capital city. There is everything in between. What we tend to see frequently in countries with powerful militaries are insurgencies. These tend to be more decentralized and usually fought by multiple militias and paramilitary groups. These militias have political goals, but their methods are very different. They don't want to engage the military directly for the most part, don't want to target soldiers, because if they engage the U.S. military, for example, they're going to lose. They instead use unconventional methods, like guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run attacks, domestic terrorism, where they're targeting the soft underbelly of a society, such as civilian infrastructure. In the United States we are not going to see a civil war like we saw in the 1860s. What do we know about the public mood and emotion in a society that is about to experience a civil war or other mass violence? The groups that tend to start these civil wars and insurgencies are driven by resentment. As such, the groups who decide that violence is a justifiable means to try to create political and social change are those that are losing status and have a deep sense of resentment towards other groups who are perceived as rising or doing better. These are the "sons of the soil" groups. RELATED: America in 2021: From the end of empire to the prospect of a new civil war It is that resentment that motivates their leaders. Average citizens are motivated by a different emotion to follow such leaders. That emotion is fear, which is an incredible motivator for average citizens to pick up a gun and start fighting. Ethnic entrepreneurs, violence entrepreneurs — those individuals who want to start a civil war to catapult themselves to power — understand the power of fear. What they do is create propaganda and circulate it among average citizens. They tell them that their lives are under threat. In a given society, and most certainly here in the United States, most members of the general public, white Americans and privileged people in particular, are fence-sitters. They may know that something is deeply wrong in the country, but they will do nothing about it. What does that oft-discussed "silent majority" actually do when a society starts to fall apart and people are killing each other? Such people are going to hold on to hope as long as they can. They're going to plug their ears and cover their eyes and engage in wishful thinking as long as they can. And then, when something happens and they're forced to choose sides, their base instinct is to survive and to do whatever they need to do to survive. If there is a paramilitary group that is putting up roadblocks on their street, if there's a group of people wearing all black with no insignias controlling a roadblock in a neighborhood with machine guns, the average person is going to do whatever those people want them to do. Survival drives behavior. Those fence-sitters are going to hope they're not going to become the targets of the violence. RELATED: How white supremacy fuels the Republican love affair with Vladimir Putin Not all the far-right groups are white supremacists, but many of them are. What they want is for the United States to become a white "ethnostate," or at the very least for certain states like Michigan to become white ethnostates. These white supremacists understand that if they don't shoot at white people, then many white people are probably just going to keep their heads down and not do anything. It's exactly what happened in places like Germany, where if you see that the Germans are targeting Jews, you do everything possible to make sure that you aren't identified as a Jew. I believe that the average human who is trying to survive will do a whole lot of ugly things to keep themselves alive. How do we prepare the American people for this civil war or insurgency or other such right-wing violence? Will it be a series of escalating events? Isolated acts of violence? Something spectacular, like 9/11? Their ideal scenario is to coordinate, so that on a given day there would be multiple attacks. As I see it, it would almost feel like 9/11, where you wake up in the morning and you're watching TV and you know that something has happened and everything seems chaotic. You're not really sure who's in charge or what type of threat this is and what you should do about it. I see a scenario where there are bombings in multiple state capitals, or a series of assassinations, or maybe both at the same time. Suddenly the federal government is facing a leaderless resistance. The country's leaders are trying to figure out how to respond. In the meantime, the American people are watching this all happen and wondering: What the hell's going on, who's in charge, and what should we do? Some of these right-wing militias are going to want to capture territory in certain parts of the country and hold it. Some of them are going to pursue their own agendas. For example, I could imagine militias in Michigan saying, "We're never going to gain control of the federal government, but Michigan could be a white state — we just have to convince all the nonwhites to leave. We do that by bombing their churches and targeting their stores with attacks. Eventually, the nonwhites will be forced to move south and we'll ultimately get what we want." If the right-wing extremists are not able to coordinate their attacks, then we are just going to see a series of consistent attacks every few weeks. There will be a feeling that the country is under siege. Northern Ireland is a great example of this. The British military, as strong as it was, could not get rid of the IRA. The IRA continued to operate until the British government eventually negotiated with them. https://www.salon.com/2022/03/28/a-new-civil-war-maybe-so--but-it-wont-look-anything-like-the-first-one/

Trump supporters put faith in "Space Force" to overturn 2020 election Supporters of Donald Trump are voicing insane conspiracy theories ahead of his Saturday rally in Michigan. The "opening prayer" for the rally was delivered by a conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed Trump is the "current" president of the United States. One Trump supporter interviewed by Right Side Broadcasting Network said that the Space Force is part of efforts to return Trump to power in a bizarre QAnon rant caught on camera. "The election, I believe, was stolen," said a woman with an America flag draped over her shoulders. "But we know that, Space Force has it all, Trump has all the information, it's going to be overturned," the woman claimed. "What do you think Space Force has?" the interviewer asked. "Space Force is a military branch, you know, just like the Army, you know, all the military. And they literally...the night of the election they literally watched the election be stolen. They watermarked the ballots, they know exactly what happened with every ballot," she said. "They know what countries were involved, they followed the money, they know what every every politician that's been paid off." "There was 260,00 — 269,000 sealed indictments, but I think it might even be up to 500,000 sealed indictments. And I believe that we're going to have an emergency broadcast and the military is going to come in with martial law and we're going to be shown, 8-hours on, 8-hours off, of videos for seven days — the world. And they're going to be showing us taped tribunals, taped confessions, and the world is going to be awakened to what's really going on with the deep state," she claimed. https://www.salon.com/2022/04/03/supporter-puts-faith-in-space-force-to-overturn-2020_partner/

When the Ukrainian army retook the suburbs of Kharkiv, they found about 380 dead civilians who had their arms tied behind their backs and had been shot in the head. There have been several reports of Russian troops using children as human shields, even tying them to the front of armoured vehicles.

When we were living just south of Alberta, High River experienced its fourth catastrophic flood since 1950, each one worse than the last, with the last one creating horrendous property damage and taking the lives of three people immediately and many more later. Apparently each of the preceding floods was met with the identical response from the provincial government. First, politicians toured the area, wringing their hands and making promises to ensure this would never happen again. A committee was struck and disappeared from public view shortly thereafter. Months later, a report was issued detailing the causes and costs to correct them. The government made somber statements that the report would be given full consideration, and more months passed. Eventually, the minister responsible declared that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event , was terribly expensive to prevent it happening again but would be watched closely. Then the government shelved the report and retreated into a comatose state, refusing to answer any further questions as the whole thing was ancient history. We humans seem constitutionally incapable of learning from past mistakes.