Tracker

Confirmation of the dearth of new ideas in Hollywood. Lasers and aliens. Gotta have lasers and aliens plus hot female aliens.

That would require him to have a moral compass, which he has never had. Apparently he an Ted Cruz are in a dead heat for the most disliked republican -by the rest of the GOP. There is jubilation in the GOP that Gaetz has self-destructed. Another of Trump's mindless thralls come to a bad end. Flies are always drawn to manure.

Fox News made Matt Gaetz a GOP star. Now he's trying to take Fox News' Tucker Carlson down with him. I'm not a fan of pro wrestling so I have never watched two grown men simultaneously try to throw each other out of the ring. But having watched the entire interview Fox News host Tucker Carlson held with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Tuesday night, I now see the appeal. No one grabbed anyone by the shoulders — the two were not even in the same room — but it was nonetheless a riveting pas de deux of insinuation and attempted blackmail. It was a rare moment of comeuppance for two of the most ridiculous, yet sinister, figures in American politics, and impossible to look away from. But, as Carlson learned — with a chagrin he struggled to hide under his standard furrowed-brow fake concern face — the problem with prizing sociopathy in the people you elevate as figureheads is that often they turn their predatory gaze upon you. This is exactly what happened last night, when Gaetz, who the New York Times reports is under investigation in a federal sex trafficking probe involving a 17-year-old girl, decided that if he's going down, his buddy Tucker was coming with him. "You and I went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, you'll remember her," Gaetz said, rambling on about how his female friend was now supposedly being "threatened" by the FBI in a "pay-for-play scheme." Carlson quickly denied remembering any such female friend and acted confused. The audience, however, picked up on what Gaetz was laying down. Fox News made Matt Gaetz a GOP star. Now he's trying to take Fox News' Tucker Carlson down with him | Salon.com

Capitol Police officers sue Donald Trump over injuries sustained at Jan. 6 riot As a result of the Jan.6 insurrection, two U.S. Capitol Police officers say they suffered serious physical and emotional injuries and are now suing former President Donald Trump over his role in inciting the mob of his supporters who attacked officers during the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building. Officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby filed the lawsuit on Tuesday arguing that Trump "inflamed, encouraged, incited, directed and aided and abetted" the insurrection. Both officers claim that they have suffered "physical and emotional injuries" as a result of the Capitol riots. Capitol Police officers sue Donald Trump over injuries sustained at Jan. 6 riot | Salon.com Joe Scarborough Slams Fox News By Airing ‘Deeply Offensive’ Clip MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Wednesday tore into Fox News for allowing former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to push a conspiracy theory about Dr. Anthony Fauci on the air without any pushback whatsoever. Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy just smiled on Tuesday as Navarro ranted and raved about Fauci, calling the nation’s top infectious diseases expert a “sociopath” and the “father” of the coronavirus. Scarborough aired the offending segment on Wednesday’s episode of “Morning Joe.” Afterward, he said: It’s sickening that we had to play that, and I hardly ever play garbage that other networks show. But that was so offensive, deeply offensive, that they just need to be called out. “The fact that they allowed somebody without any pushback [to] call Anthony Fauci the father of the virus, talking about the communist Chinese and genetically this, that and the other from a lab that Anthony Fauci funded is just so deeply offensive,” he added. Joe Scarborough Slams Fox News By Airing ‘Deeply Offensive’ Clip | HuffPost

Kansas City paper slams 'loony' Missouri GOP after state rep says he's 'proud to stand against the will of the people' In Missouri, Republicans in the state legislature have rejected Medicaid expansion at a time when the medical community is still battling the deadly COVID-19 pandemic — and the Kansas City's editorial board, in a blistering editorial published on March 31, slams them for being so clueless. In 2020, Missouri residents voted in favor of Medicaid expansion. But this week, Missouri State Rep. Justin Hill, a far-right Republican, declared that he would defy the will of Missouri's voters for their own good. "Even though my constituents voted for this lie," Hill told fellow lawmakers, "I'm going to protect them. I am proud to stand against the will of the people." The Kansas City Star's editorial board slams Hill for that remark but argues that he is hardly the only clueless Republican in the Missouri State Legislature when it comes to Medicaid expansion. "The competition for the looniest argument against expanding Medicaid in Missouri was stiff Tuesday, but state Rep. Justin Hill, a Republican, took the prize," the Star's editorial board argues. "Hill, from Lake St. Louis, wandered away from the outer edges of sanity some time ago. He skipped his own swearing-in to attend the insurrectionist rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6. He has repeatedly questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election…. Tuesday, during the House debate on Medicaid expansion, Hill slapped his voters in the face." Kansas City paper slams 'loony' Missouri GOP after state rep says he's 'proud to stand against the will of the people' - Alternet.org

If a pilot does not want to be found, s/he can usually do that. Turn off the transponder and dip below the radar horizon and voila!

She projected a very unhealthy body image that many young women emulated. It is to be hoped that she has healed.

Wab Kinew's popularity and that of the NDP has risen in critical groups: women, voters under 35 and lower-income people.

Pallister's approval continues to plummet and the NDP's continues to rise. Expect a flurry of personal attacks on Wab Kinew.

As a footnote, three pieces of debris that have been positively identified as coming from an aircraft consistent with the type that disappeared have washed up on the Seychelles. Not conclusive evidence, but strongly suggestive that the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia. The plane's transponder was turned off just before it went off course. Had the crew been incapacitated, the plane would have continued on a straight course until it ran out of fuel or was shot down. The plane made four course changes before going completely dark, and when you factor all the evidence in, it was human intent and action that was responsible.

'These numbers are incredibly encouraging': Vaccines show major success in protecting nursing homes Jacksonville, Fla. - Barbara Bufano gets the COVID-19 vaccine at Naval Hospital Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021. Vaccines are currently being offered to on-base health care personnel and first responders assigned to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Naval Station Mayport and critical national capabilities forces, deploying forces, frontline essential workers, and beneficiaries age 75 and older. COVID-19 vaccines are not available by walk-in for non-hospital personnel. New Covid-19 cases have plummeted by 96% in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities since late December, a report published Tuesday by the industry group American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living revealed. AHCA/NCAL reports (pdf) a decline in new U.S. weekly nursing home cases from 33,540 on December 20 to 1,349 on March 7, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Widespread coronavirus vaccinations began in early January, when new nursing home cases dropped precipitously. The industry groups also said there has been a 91% decline in coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes, dropping from over 6,000 in December to 547 this month.

It would be nice to think that these suits will bankrupt Faux News, Julliani and the Faux talking heads, but who knows....?

And so it begins- the inexorable weight of the American judicial system turning against Trump at last. He has the money to weather the civil cases and even pay off the plaintiffs, but each successful lawsuit chips away at his self-image of the untouchable "genius" who is anointed by fate to ride roughshod over anyone who dares to oppose him in any measure. He will always have his core of fanatics who will support him regardless of proof, choosing the willing suspension of belief over sanity, but that will dwindle over time.

The flight pattern strongly suggested that it was being deliberately piloted to an area where survival and retrieval would be very difficult if not impossible, and that points to pilot involvement for unknown reasons.

Do you think that Kenny and O'Toole want to know this sort of thing? "Plausible deniability" and all that.

Sad, but inevitable under the circumstances. This is gonna be a make or break year for the oldest football league in the world.

Ammon Bundy has amassed an army of over 50,000 as he looks for his next battle in a religious war Ammon Bundy, right-wing malcontent behind the 2016 armed takeover of Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge and now a western anti-mask movement, believes he's doing God's work. Coming from a long line of religiously inspired men who have been "called" to defend the US Constitution, Bundy has varied in his focus, from rebelling against public land ranching regulations to protesting COVID-19 safety protocols. But in his view, these are all forms of government tyranny and affronts to constitutional rights. Arrested for the fourth time on March 15, 2021, Bundy was taken into custody for failing to appear at his hearing on past trespassing charges. Because he refused to wear a mask into the courtroom, thereby missing his trial, he was apprehended outside amid of a throng of other protesters. Bundy's crusade has been a long time in the making, but in the last year he successfully established a coalition of supporters that is broad, diverse, and a serious threat to federal law. His group is called the People's Rights Network. Like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, it includes members who see the current government as a threat to perceived rights and are committed to defend their ideas of personal liberty, by force if necessary. So what has taken Ammon Bundy, who first came to prominence during the 2014 armed standoff in Nevada over his father's unpaid grazing fees and trespassing cattle, into a life of an anti-government militant? The answer is a libertarian worldview and his take on Mormonism. Bundy's ideology parallels the thinking of certain leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who've had a history of government cynicism. He also shares with them a tradition of theo-constitutionalism--venerating the Constitution as a sacred document. The paradox here is that Bundy believes he is upholding the Constitution and fulfilling his religious duties in his acts of lawlessness. Ammon Bundy has amassed an army of over 50,000 as he looks for his next battle in a religious war - Alternet.org

‘I'm Scared’: CDC Director Warns of ‘Impending Doom’ as COVID-19 Cases Climb -Reuters Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Rochelle Walensky said she feels a sense of “impending doom” as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations tick back up, and pleaded with the public to continue masking up until a majority of the population is vaccinated, NBC News reported. “I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” an emotional Walensky said at a Monday press conference. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared. I know what it’s like, as a physician, to stand in that patient room gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else’s loved ones, because their loved ones couldn’t be there.” The recent increase in COVID infections comes as roughly 2.5 million Americans a day are being inoculated against the coronavirus. Walensky pointed to the emergence of more contagious variants, more people traveling, and governors reopening their states too quickly. “We are not powerless,” said Walensky. “We can change this trajectory of the pandemic, but it will take all of us recommitting to following the public health prevention strategies consistently, while we work to get the American public vaccinated.”

Here's the ridiculous reason the MyPillow guy thinks 'Trump will be back in office in August' MyPillow founder and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell appeared on former top Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon's streaming TV show promising he has information that will convince the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the 2020 presidential election and return Donald Trump to the Oval Office. "What I'm talking about Steve is what I've been doing since January," Lindell said on Real America's Voice. "All the evidence I have – everything is going to go before the Supreme Court and the election of 2020 is going bye-bye." "It was an attack by other countries, communism coming in, I don't know what they're going to do after they pull it down but –" Lindell rambled. "Hang on," Bannon pleaded repeatedly, but Lindell kept going. "Donald Trump will be back in office in August," he declared. Here's the ridiculous reason the MyPillow guy thinks 'Trump will be back in office in August' - Alternet.org Right-wing donors terrified by conservative support for bill to prevent billionaires from buying elections: leaked recording A newly surfaced recording shows a senior adviser to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell conspiring with the Koch brothers' network and other conservative groups to torpedo sweeping voting rights legislation. The Jan. 8 recording obtained by The New Yorker reveals leading conservative activists are alarmed by public support for House Resolution 1 and Senate Bill 1, commonly known as the For The People Act, and they privately admitted they had no effective way to counter the argument that billionaires should be able to buy elections. "When presented with a very neutral description" of the bill, "people were generally supportive," Kyle McKenzie, the research director for the Koch-run advocacy group Stand Together. "The most worrisome part . . . is that conservatives were actually as supportive as the general public was when they read the neutral description." "There's a large, very large, chunk of conservatives who are supportive of these types of efforts," he added. The election reform bill, which would ban large, anonymous political donations, enjoys broad public support, and McKenzie told participants that Senate Republicans would need to use "under-the-dome" legislative tactics to stop the bill because generally everyone but them agreed billionaires should not be able to buy elections behind the scenes. "Unfortunately, we've found that that is a winning message, for both the general public and also conservatives," McKenzie said. Right-wing donors terrified by conservative support for bill to prevent billionaires from buying elections: leaked recording - Alternet.org The Koch-funded group had spent a lot of money to find persuasive arguments against the bill, but found that even claiming it would allow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to hold Trump administration officials accountable wasn't particularly effective.

Dr. Birx is on her absolution tour. She has said that had Trump and his administration responded appropriately, the US death toll from COVID would not be the 550,000 it is now, but close to 100,000. That means the GOP under Trump has the deaths of 450,000 on their hands and are untroubled by it. Sad.