Tracker

Indicted Matt Gaetz Pal Paid Former Teen’s Legal Fees While Under Investigation: Politico The indicted ex-tax collector friend of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) paid for a lawyer for the underage teenager at the heart of sex trafficking charges against him, according to a bombshell WhatsApp chat obtained by Politico. Politico reported that Joel Greenberg was in a “panic” just days before the federal indictment on 33 different charges including identity theft, financial crimes and sex trafficking. In a chat with a friend who later discussed the messages with Politico, the former Seminole County tax collector referred to the unidentified young woman as “Vintage 99,” a name with her birth year that she reportedly used online. “I’m having to pay for vintage 99 to retain [a] lawyer,” Greenberg wrote in the chat, saying federal agents “contacted her and are wanting her to talk,” Politico reported. “She doesn’t want to talk to them,” he added. Indicted Matt Gaetz Pal Paid Former Teen's Legal Fees While Under Investigation: Politico | HuffPost

But climate change is not real.

I have long thought that these horrible, inexcusable events along with the massive payouts to victims and victims' families would go way down if the payouts came out of the police pension funds.

'Accidental discharge': Minnesota police chief offers defense of cop who killed Daunte Wright as department releases bodycam footage A Minnesota police chief says the officer who shot and killed 20-year old Daunte Wright following a traffic stop allegedly for expired plates thought she was pulling out and firing her Taser, not her handgun. "I'm believing it to be an accidental discharge," Brooklyn Center, MN Police Chief Tim Gannon told reporters Monday, after Sunday's shooting. "It is my belief that the officer had the intention to employ their taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet."

Ex-Australian PM: Murdoch and Trump Did Putin’s Job For Him Australia’s ex-prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, has long accused Rupert Murdoch of bringing his prime ministership down—and, at a parliamentary hearing on Monday, it was very clear that he’s out for revenge. Turnbull, a former journalist who has known Murdoch for over four decades, delivered a furious takedown of one of his country’s most notorious sons during Monday’s evidence session. He accused Murdoch of doing more to divide America than Vladimir Putin, and blamed his media empire for causing the presidency of Donald Trump as well as the Capitol riot that marked the disgraceful climax of his time in power. “What does Vladimir Putin want to do with his operations in America? He wants to divide America and turn Americans against each other,” said the ex-prime minister, who first met Murdoch in 1974. “That is exactly what Murdoch has done: divided Americans against each other and so undermined their faith in political institutions that a mob of thousands of people, many of them armed, stormed the Capitol.” Strong words from Malcolm Turnbull about Murdoch's attacks on Australian Muslims. He says Murdoch is "essentially doing the work of the terrorists" by reinforcing their message that Muslims aren't accepted in our society. The former Australian PM was invited to give evidence to the inquiry that was launched after a petition calling for a probe into Murdoch’s media empire was signed by half a million Australians. Turnbull is the second former prime minister to rip into Murdoch in front of the inquiry.

This sort of attitude demonstrated here is why it is so difficult to change things for the better.

Now MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims he hired "investigators" to look into Fox News MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of Fox News' largest advertisers, announced on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast on Friday that he has hired a team of "private investigators" to dig into Fox News over the burning issue of why the conservative channel won't let him appear on-air to tout groundless election conspiracy theories. "I don't remember seeing you on Fox recently. Why are the Murdochs afraid of Dominion?" Bannon began, referring to Dominion Voting Systems, which has filed a massive defamation suit against Lindell, Fox News and various of the network's prominent hosts. "Why is Mike Lindell not on Fox, and why do they seem to say, 'Hey, when Dominion says something, we're just gonna shut up about it and talk about Biden's tax bill'?" Lindell responded by telling Bannon he has hired private investigators to look into everything from Facebook to Fox News, although the scope of the supposed investigation seemed amorphous. "You know, I'm gonna have those answers soon cause I've hired private investigators, and I've spent a lot of money on them to investigate everything. Why are the bots and trolls, who's behind them? Why is Facebook involved, Wikipedia involved?" Lindell asked. "And then the big question: Why isn't Fox having people on? Why isn't Fox on there talking about Dominion and Smartmatic and the election fraud?" Now MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims he hired "investigators" to look into Fox News | Salon.com

Trump officials bragged about blocking scientists from accurately reporting on COVID-19 It's not certain that Donald Trump did everything wrong when it comes to handling COVID-19, but he certainly tried. Not only did Trump promote false cures and downplay effective strategies, he deliberately avoided creating a national testing plan because he thought this would lead to a greater number of deaths in Democratically controlled states. That action alone meets the U.N. definition for genocide, and researchers have set the number of unnecessary deaths in the U.S. at 400,000. But Trump didn't do it alone. At every step, he had the assistance of Republicans inside and outside the White House who worked with Trump downplay the threat, misdirect public concerns, and mock serious efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19. That included not just sidelining serious officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and inserting unqualified Trump supporters like Scott Atlas, but forcing officials within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other agencies to either suppress information or alter statements. A year later the House select subcommittee on the pandemic and its handling is finally getting a look at some of those internal calculations and decisions. The Washington Post has acquired copies of documents before that committee showing Trump officials pressured agencies and scientists to change their reporting to the public. Then those officials celebrated the fact that the nation had been duped. In particular, the emails between former Health and Human Services (HHS) Public Affairs Chief Michael Caputo and former Science Adviser Paul Alexander show these officials working to force the CDC to make changes in reports on how COVID-19 spread. Then they celebrated their victory with a "yippee." Alexander also managed to make changes in the "sacrosanct" Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) to tone down the apparent damage done by COVID-19. Even then, the changes to some reports—in particular one about how the disease was spread among young people—weren't enough to make Alexander and Caputo happy. So they worked with Atlas to create op-eds to "preempt the story" and promote the idea that schools could be opened safely. That included a fishing expedition in which they sought to throw out unfounded numbers about how closing schools was causing more death than it was preventing. Trump officials bragged about blocking scientists from accurately reporting on COVID-19 - Alternet.org Minnesota police shoot and kill Daunte Wright, 20, after traffic stop involving air fresheners Another Black man was shot and killed by police on Sunday during what should have been a minor interaction, or one that shouldn't have happened at all. What makes it especially horrifying, beyond the needless loss of life at the hands of the state, is that 20-year-old Daunte Wright was killed in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, just miles from where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for murder in the killing of George Floyd less than a year ago. As a picture of the problem of police violence toward Black people in the United States of America, 2021, "Black man shot and killed at questionable traffic stop 10 miles from the trial of a police officer for killing another Black man during an arrest for a minor alleged offense" says a lot. Daunte Wright was apparently pulled over for an air freshener blocking his rearview window, though his father notes that his car had tinted windows, so it's surprising police could see that much. In either case, as the ACLU of Minnesota tweeted, "We have concerns that police appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do too often to target Black people." After Wright was pulled over, police found he had an outstanding warrant and tried to arrest him. Wright tried to get back in his car and police shot him. He then drove for several blocks before the car crashed and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Minnesota police shoot and kill Daunte Wright, 20, after traffic stop involving air fresheners - Alternet.org

And how realistic is that when many of the religious services that try to evangelize the poor advocate against contraception? Education is the antidote to both poverty and unwanted pregnancies.

Not even a lollipop or happyface stamp.

Life is filled with unending tragedies.

Trump Curses Out ‘Son of a B*tch’ McConnell at GOP Donor Event for Not Completely Destroying Democracy -Getty During this weekend’s Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida, attendees headed to Donald Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago on Saturday evening to hear prepared remarks from the twice-impeached former president on the future of his party. Predictably, Trump at times veered wildly off-script from his prewritten speech, the text of which was reviewed by The Daily Beast earlier in the day. While at the private event, he inveighed against Republican, Democratic, and celebrity enemies, and again denounced the 2020 presidential election outcome as “bullshit,” according to those in the audience. “[Trump began] swearing and telling everyone about the stolen election,” according to one such attendee. The 2020 election, of course, was not stolen from Trump, and President Joe Biden decisively beat the GOP incumbent in both the Electoral College and popular vote counts. Trump’s anti-democratic blitz following Election Day and the lies he and much of the mainstream GOP spread about the election culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which Trump is now accused in court papers of inciting. The source noted that the ex-president dinged his former VP Mike Pence for not fighting harder to subvert American democracy to keep Trump in power, but in particular went after Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This source did not immediately respond to questions about specific phrasing but, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump alleged that “a real leader" would not have bowed to the outcome and certification of Biden’s 2020 victory. Another source familiar with the event told The Daily Beast the former president trashed McConnell as a “dumb son of a *****” in a non-scripted portion of his Saturday night address to GOP donors. And according to Washington Post journalist Josh Dawsey, Trump also made time to vent pet grievances about “Oprah Winfrey and Barack Hussein Obama,” and to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci of being “so full of crap.”

China Finally Admits Its COVID-19 Vaccine Isn't Working So Well -Reuters In a somewhat unusual moment of transparency, China has finally admitted its COVID—19 vaccines don't all provide much protection. China's Sinovac previously said trials in Brazil showed around 50 percent efficacy in preventing infection and Sinopharm's vaccines have efficacy rates of 79.34 percent, while the efficacy for CanSino is 65. Pfizer and Moderna have efficacy rates of 95 and 94 percent, respectively. Speaking at a medical conference Saturday, Gao Fu, the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, admitted that Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” and questioned whether it was time to pair them with other vaccines. “It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” he added, according to the Associated Press. Beijing has not approved any foreign-made vaccines for use in China, where the pandemic started in late 2019.

Busted: Mike Pence quietly adds hate group leader to advisory board for his new organization Former Vice President Mike Pence launched his new organization, Advancing American Freedom, on Wednesday. Since then, one name has quietly been added to the advisory boardthat was announced at launch. Pence's advisory board now includes Mike Farris, the president and CEO of the group Alliance Defending Freedom. In 2016, Alliance Defending Freedom was declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "The SPLC lists ADF as a hate group because it has supported the idea that being LGBTQ+ should be a crime in the U.S. and abroad and believes that is OK to put LGBTQ+ people in prison for engaging in consensual sex," SPLC explained. "It has also supported laws that required the forced sterilization of transgender Europeans." "ADF has spread lies about the LGBTQ+ community. It has, for example, linked being LGBTQ+ to pedophilia and claimed that a "homosexual agenda" will destroy society. ADF tries to couch its rhetoric in benign-sounding phrases, but the truth is that it works to dehumanize LGBTQ+ people and restrict their rights for being who they are," SPLC explained. Busted: Mike Pence quietly adds hate group leader to advisory board for his new organization - Alternet.org

That Cuba is an relatively isolated island helps, but their infant mortality, maternal morbidity and life expectancy is better than the USA. And they do not have access to the drugs, MRIs and so forth that Americans do.

How Cuba beat the pandemic: From developing new vaccines to sending doctors overseas to help others Since last year, approximately 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving Cuba one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Cuba is also developing five COVID-19 vaccines, including two which have entered stage 3 trials. Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system for decades, in part because of the six-decade U.S. embargo that has made it harder for Cuba to import equipment and raw materials from other countries. That investment, coupled with the country's free, universal healthcare system, has helped Cuba keep the virus under control and quickly develop vaccines against it, says Dr. Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, the director of science and innovation at BioCubaFarma, which oversees Cuba's medicine development. "We have long experience with these kinds of technologies," he says. We also speak with Reed Lindsay, journalist and founder of the independent, Cuba-focused media organization Belly of the Beast, who says U.S. sanctions on Cuba continue to cripple the country. "Cuba is going through an unbelievable economic crisis, and the sanctions have been absolutely devastating," says Lindsay. How Cuba beat the pandemic: From developing new vaccines to sending doctors overseas to help others - Alternet.org

Yup. Pure economics and the slave-breeding records are still extant. The owners/breeders deliberately often moved the men from one woman to another to prevent the formation of family ties. This phenomenon of absent fathers has persisted to this day and is used by racists to mock black men and families. It takes generations for nuclear families to form and survive.

We have a week, maybe two to curtail the spread before we experience what Ontario is going through.

A sad commentary is that there is a small but vocal segment of Judaism that has been actively supporting Trump and ignoring all the racist rhetoric he and his followers have been spouting- some of it overtly anti-Semitic. A rabbi was even involved in the January 6th insurrection.

Texas Republican Caught on Video Organizing 'Brigade' of Volunteers to Watch Voters in Mostly Black and Latinx Houston Precincts A Republican official in Harris County, Texas, was heard on a video presentation saying that 10,000 volunteers were needed to form an “election integrity brigade” in Houston to fight against election fraud, the Washington Post reports. We know that there is no evidence of election fraud in Harris County, but the person in the video insists that there is. In the video, the unnamed official pulls up a map of the county’s voting locations—basically, the diverse areas where people of color vote—and said the GOP needed volunteers with “the confidence and courage to come down here” to look out for irregularities. “This is where the fraud is occurring,” the official added. Common Cause Texas, a government accountability group, which published the video Thursday, is rightfully claiming that the video is a warning that Republicans are planning to intimidate and suppress voters in metro Houston, where large numbers of people of color live. “It’s very clear that we’re talking about recruiting people from the predominantly Anglo parts of town to go to Black and brown neighborhoods,” Anthony Gutierrez, the group’s executive director, told the Washington Post. Video Catches Texas Republicans' Calling for 'Election Integrity' Brigade in Diverse Harris County (theroot.com)

Tucker Carlson: ‘Obedient Voters From Third World’ Are Replacing Me Tucker Carlson on Thursday served up a blatantly racist hot take on immigration at the border, saying Democrats are trying to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” (Watch the video below.) “That’s what’s actually happening,” the Fox News host insisted, dismissing suggestions he’s preaching “white replacement theory.” “Everybody wants to make a racial issue out of it,” he said. “This is a voting rights question.” (Sure sounds like a rephrase of the Nazi "we will not be replaced")

The right-wing extremists will fracture and implode, but not before doing a lot of damage and the real concern is whether the damage will be permanent. Newly revealed Trump administration emails show depravity and conspiracy against the country The select subcommittee in the United States House of Representatives that is now investigating how the federal government managed the country's response to the covid pandemic released emails Thursday showing top officials in the Trump administration knowingly, carefully and deliberately sabotaged public understanding of the disease. According to the Post's Dan Diamond, "The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year's explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees were attempting to blunt the scientists' messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points." Diamond's story is about "political interference" in what should have been the neutral administration of public health policy in the face of a once-a-century plague. That framing of the issue will likely be adopted by the Washington pundit corps. That framing has been adopted by the House investigators, too. "Our investigation has shown that Trump Administration officials engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference in the nation's public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions that allowed the virus to spread more rapidly," said House Whip James Clyburn, the subcommittee chair. But while the press and investigators are right to be careful with language, the court of public opinion, which may be the only court demanding justice in the end, need not be so careful. Let's not obscure the body-count reality of what Michael Caputo and Paul Alexander have done with gauzy abstractions like "political interference." As of this writing, the covid has killed over 573,000 Americans. These men, along with others, including the former president, were engaged in crimes. The question shouldn't be whether this was "political interference." It should be whether this was homicide. Newly revealed Trump administration emails show depravity and conspiracy against the country - Alternet.org

I think that the GOP has become a wing of Fox News and both cater to the worst that human beings can demonstrate. Fox and many of the GOP have sold their souls in exchange for wealth and power. In exchange, the faces of Fox and the GOP validate and empower the racism, sexism and intolerance of their troglodyte followers.