cdarwin

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

The helicopter crash that claimed the lives of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others
has introduced a new crisis for Iran amid regional turmoil and continued severe U.S. sanctions.

This event raises questions about the Islamic Republic’s ability to navigate the transition of its presidency at a time of widespread public discontent and a struggling economy.
The reaction to Raisi’s death within Iran has been deeply polarized,
reflecting the country’s divisions across social and political ideologies as well as levels of religiosity.

Many Iranians do not mourn his passing, viewing him as a symbol of repression
due to his long tenure in the judiciary, his involvement in the mass executions of the Mujahedin-e Khalq and leftist political prisoners in 1988, and his harsh crackdown on the “Women, Life, Freedom” demonstrations in 2022.

Conversely, there are many who genuinely grieve his death, and the funeral processions have seen massive crowds in Tabriz, Qom, Tehran, and Mashhad.
Government supporters and conservative newspapers have been quick to interpret the large crowds at Raisi’s funeral processions as a testament to the political system’s legitimacy and popular support.

One conservative analyst emphasized, in this regard, that “[p]articipation in marches; ceremonies honoring the esteemed martyrs of the system;
and political, religious, and social events such as Friday prayers has always been considered one of the prominent indicators of the revolutionaries and the devout people of the country

However, while the public sphere is tightly controlled by the government, only allowing open and free demonstrations in its favor, a different reality exists in private. Many Iranians, who have endured decades of government repression, welcomed Raisi’s death.

Many recalled the mourning mothers waiting to hear the execution verdicts of their children, or the executions themselves in the 1980s and Raisi’s role in them,
and the bodies of loved ones that were never returned to their families after those executions.
Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his wife and daughter when the Iranian military shot down Ukrainian airliner 752 over Tehran in 2020
and is now a Canada-based political activist,
echoed this sentiment in a post on X, saying,
“It was deserved for Ebrahim Raise and other criminals of the Islamic government to be tried in a fair court for committing crimes against humanity.”

Meanwhile, Mohammad Zakaei, a professor at the Qom Seminary, explained these reactions by saying,
“If we look closely, we realize that people’s joy is not from the death of a person;
their joy comes from the death of an ideology and a radical thought,
which manifests itself as joy over the death of a symbol of that ideology.”
The opposing sentiments of these groups
—both the mourning crowds and the indifferent or even celebratory population
—must be taken into account to understand contemporary Iran.

The latter group represents a widespread form of passive protest.
If this segment of society continues to be ignored and repressed, it is likely that collective protests, similar to the ones that broke out in November 2019 and 2022-23, will break out again.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/24/raisis-funeral-has-exposed-the-two-irans/

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

On the bench, #Alito is the Supreme Court’s most unrelenting Republican partisan
— a reliable vote for whatever outcome is preferred by the GOP’s right wing,
regardless of whether there is any legal support for that position.

Alito isn’t simply a bad judge; he is the negation of law, frequently embracing claims that even intellectual leaders within the conservative movement find risible.

The morning before the Times published its flag scoop, for example,
Alito published a dissenting opinion claiming that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was unconstitutional.

The opinion was so poorly reasoned that Justice Clarence Thomas, ordinarily an ally of far-right causes,
mocked Alito’s opinion for “winding its way through English, Colonial, and early American history” without ever connecting that history to anything that’s actually in the Constitution.

Off the bench, meanwhile, Alito has a long history of making partisan statements that are just ambiguous enough that he can deny he was bemoaning a Republican defeat in a recent election.

A little more than a week after Democratic President Barack Obama won his 2012 reelection race, Alito spoke to the conservative Federalist Society, where,
quoting from one of his least favorite law professors, he warned that America is caught in a “moment of utmost sterility, darkest night, most extreme peril.”

Alito has long been the justice most skeptical of free speech arguments
— he was the sole dissenter in two Obama-era decisions establishing that even extraordinarily offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment
— but this skepticism evaporates the minute a Republican claims that they are being censored.

Among other things, Alito voted to let Texas’s Republican legislature seize control over content moderation at sites like Twitter and YouTube,
then tried to prohibit the Biden administration from asking those same sites to voluntarily remove content from anti-vaxxers and election deniers.

Alito frequently mocks his colleagues, even fellow Republicans, when they attribute government policies to anti-Black racism.

After Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a 2020 opinion that the states of Louisiana and Oregon allowed non-unanimous juries to convict felony defendants more than a century ago to dilute the influence of Black jurors,
Alito was livid, ranting in dissent:
“To add insult to injury, the Court tars Louisiana and Oregon with the charge of racism.”

Yet while Alito denies that racism might have motivated Louisiana’s Jim Crow lawmakers in the late 19th century,
he brims with empathy for white plaintiffs who claim to be victims of racism.

Empirical data shows that Alito is the most pro-prosecution justice on the Supreme Court,
voting in favor of criminal defendants only 20 percent of the time.

But he’s tripped over himself to protect one criminal defendant in particular:
Donald Trump.

An empirical analysis of the Court’s “standing” decisions
— cases asking whether the federal courts have jurisdiction over a particular dispute
— found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100 percent of the time,
and against liberal litigants in every single case.

Though Alito, who turned 74 last month, is probably in the twilight of his career,
his unapologetically partisan approach to judging could very well be the judiciary’s future,
at least if Trump secures another term in the White House.

Today’s headlines are peppered with names like
Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Trump’s stolen documents trial who has also behaved like a member of Trump’s defense team,
or Matthew Kacsmaryk, the former Christian right litigator who’s been willing to rubber stamp virtually any request for a court order filed by a Republican.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,
the powerful federal court that oversees appeals out of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas,
is now a bastion of Alito-like partisans who treat laws and precedents that undermine the GOP’s policy goals as mere inconveniences to be struck down or ignored.

These are the sorts of judicial appointees who would likely appeal to a second-term Trump,
as the instigator of the January 6 insurrection looks to fill the bench with judges who will not interfere with his ambitions in the same way that many judges did in his first term.

Alito — a judge with no theory of the Constitution,
and no insight into how judges should read ambiguous laws,
beyond his driving belief that his team should always win
— is the perfect fit, in other words, for what the Republican Party has become in the age of Trump.
https://www.vox.com/scotus/350339/samuel-alito-republican-party-scotus

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

According to Freedomforum.org,
“A First Amendment audit occurs when people film public officials or employees to hold them accountable
or ‘test’ their right to film in public spaces like town halls, libraries, police stations, parking lots, or state and local agencies.
The public space ‘passes’ the test if the audit is uneventful.
It fails the test if a public employee confronts the person filming
— or ‘auditor’
— attempts to stop them from filming, threatens them with arrest, or removes them from the public space.”

https://www.dailydot.com/news/what-are-first-amendment-auditors/

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

Federal prosecutors on Friday asked the judge overseeing the classified documents case against Donald Trump
to bar the former president from public statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” participating in the prosecution.

The request to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon
follows a distorted claim by Trump earlier this week that the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022 were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was referring to the disclosure in a court document that the FBI, during the search, followed a standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-fbi-d52b7468d93712dd86cbb8fe304d4b64

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998.

The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews.

The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan
“access to tools.”

https://wholeearth.info/

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp
A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business,
blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water!
But – as David Dayen wrote at the time – the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, #StarboardValue, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks.
They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") 🔸with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company.
They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings
and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars,
while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden,
converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.
In other words they wanted to asset-strip the company
("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos)
@pluralistic
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

cdarwin, 15 days ago to meta

Uvalde parents are suing gunmaker, Meta and ‘Call of Duty’ manufacturer

The lawyer who won a record-setting settlement for #SandyHook families announced
💪two new lawsuits Friday on behalf of
#Uvalde school shooting victims
targeting
⭐️the manufacturer of the AR-15 style weapon used in the attack,
⭐️as well as the publisher of “Call of Duty"
⭐️and social media giant Meta.

The lawsuits against
🔥#DanielDefense, known for their high-end rifles,
🔥#Activision, the manufacturer of first-person shooter game “Call of Duty,” and
🔥#Meta, the parent company of Facebook,
may be the first of their kind to
👍connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter.💪🏽

The complaints contend the three companies 💥are responsible for “grooming” a generation of “socially vulnerable” young men 💥radicalized to live out violent video game fantasies in the real world with easily accessible weapons of war.
One of those men, the legal team argues, was Robb Elementary shooter Salvador Ramos.

The lawsuits allege
👉 Meta and Activision "knowingly exposed the Shooter to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/24/uvalde-lawsuits-daniel-defense-meta-activision/

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Russian jamming leaves some high-tech U.S. weapons ineffective in Ukraine

Many U.S.-made satellite-guided ammunitions in Ukraine have failed to withstand Russian jamming technology,
🌟prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted, 🌟according to senior Ukrainian military officials and confidential internal Ukrainian assessments obtained by The Washington Post.
Russia’s jamming of the guidance systems of modern Western weapons, including
🔸Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shells and the
🔸High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS,
which can fire some U.S.-made rockets with a range of up to 50 miles,
🔥has eroded Ukraine’s ability to defend its territory and has left officials in Kyiv urgently seeking help from the Pentagon to obtain upgrades from arms manufacturers.

Russia’s ability to combat the high-tech munitions has far-reaching implications for Ukraine and its Western supporters
— potentially providing a blueprint for adversaries such as China and Iran
— and it is a key reason Moscow’s forces have regained the initiative and are advancing on the battlefield.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/24/russia-jamming-us-weapons-ukraine/

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Hi — it’s Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Did you see me on MSNBC?

In case you missed it, here’s what you need to know about the Florida Senate race and my campaign to defeat Rick Scott:

FIRST — A dangerous six-week abortion ban in Florida went into effect earlier this month.

THEN — Rick Scott, an extremist who co-sponsored a nationwide abortion ban, endorsed this latest attack on reproductive freedom.

NOW — He’s taking things a step further and officially running for Senate GOP Leader. Ted, this changes everything.

Everything is on the line this November: access to reproductive care, control of the Senate, AND leadership of the GOP. I know it, but so does my opponent.

Last time around, Rick Scott spent $64 million of his personal fortune to buy this seat by just 10,001 votes, and he’s prepared to do it again.

We must ensure Rick Scott can’t buy another six years in Washington and amplify his horrific anti-choice agenda as Senate GOP Leader. But unlike my opponent, I’m relying on support from grassroots donors like you, Ted.

That’s why I’m personally asking: can you please chip in $10, $20, or whatever you can spare to join me in the fight to flip Florida blue, restore reproductive rights, and defend Democrats’ Senate majority?

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mw_dmp_2024_may_p2p

With gratitude and resolve,
-Debbie

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Suicide attempt
Perez was so distraught that he tried to hang himself with the drawstring from his shorts after being left alone in the interrogation room.
Perez was arrested, handcuffed and transported to a mental hospital for 72-hour observation.
But later that day, the truth derailed the detectives’ theory and their prized confession.
💥Perez’s father wasn’t dead 💥
— or even missing.
Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California.
👉But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
“Mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police,” said Jerry Steering, Perez’s attorney in Newport Beach, California
https://www.sbsun.com/2024/05/23/fontana-pays-nearly-900000-for-psychological-torture-inflicted-by-police-to-get-false-confession/

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Lately, Republicans have been getting one simple question:

“Will you accept the results of the 2024 election, regardless of its outcome?”

Their responses keep exposing that election denialism has taken over the party.

The very fact journalists feel it necessary to ask this question
is alarming and would’ve been unheard of less than a decade ago.

A stable democracy relies on free and fair elections
where candidates and their supporters accept and abide by the outcome,
even when they lose.

If this becomes negotiable,
then our republic is no longer sustainable.

But Republicans have almost collectively refused to accept a Joe Biden victory in November.

They insist they won’t engage in “hypotheticals,”
but in a healthy democracy,
politicians acknowledge that they can lose
and, most importantly, the results were fair.

It’s why John McCain said in 2008 that
“the American people have spoken,”

and Mitt Romney in 2012 affirmed that
“the nation chose another leader.”

Such declarations of unity are beyond Donald Trump,
and the Republicans most eager to succeed Mike Pence as his running mate
are now getting in on the act.

The cancer of election denial:
Recent TV interviews of prominent Trumpers have made very clear
they aren’t planning to accept any result in November
other than a Trump victory.

For instance, on May 12,
Sen. JD #Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash,
“I totally plan to accept the results of 2024.
I think that Donald Trump will be the victor.
I think those results will show that Donald Trump was elected.”

Vance’s line is the standard one.

Sen. Tim Scott invoked it during a recent appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press,
robotically repeating the words
“at the end of the day,
the 47th president will be Donald Trump.”

Sen. Marco Rubio went on the same show last Sunday and,
when asked if he’d accept the results,
tried to change the topic to Hillary Clinton.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/election-denial-marco-rubio-lara-trump-burgum

cdarwin, 15 days ago to random

Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA)
called out his Republican colleagues on the floor of the House today
for offering “stunts instead of solutions, extremism over bipartisanship.”

It’s a shame, he said, because the Republicans’ narrow majority “could have given us a chance to work together in a bipartisan way.”
Instead, Republicans have caved to their most extreme members, who have been “skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to New York to try to undermine Donald Trump's criminal trial.”
McGovern suggested that perhaps they were
trying “to distract from the fact that their candidate for president has been indicted more times than he's been elected”
and “is on trial for covering up hush money payments to a porn star for political gain
not to mention three other criminal felony prosecutions.”

Representative Jerry Carl (R-AL), the temporary chair at the time, rebuked McGovern,
who noted that the fact that the former president is in a court of law is the truth.

Just last week, McGovern pointed out,
a Republican member of the House was not admonished when he complained about
“the former president of the United States being hauled into court day after day with a sham trial.”

Carl reminded McGovern that members “must avoid personalities in debates.”

McGovern replied:
🔥“[A]t some point,
it's time for this body to recognize
that there is no precedent for this situation.
💥We have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts,
and we're being prevented from even acknowledging it. 💥

These are not alternative facts.

These are real facts.

A candidate for president of the United States is on trial
for sending a hush money payment to a porn star
to avoid a sex scandal
during his 2016 campaign
and then fraudulently disguising those payments
in violation of the law.

He's also charged with conspiring to overturn the election.

He's also charged with stealing classified information,

and a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court.

And yet, in this Republican-controlled house,
it's okay to talk about the trial,
but you have to call it a sham.”
🔥

👉Representative Erin Houchin (R-IN) demanded McGovern’s words be stricken from the record.

👉The chair agreed to do so, saying that “it is a breach of order to refer to the candidate in terms personally offensive,
whether by actually accusing or merely insulting.”

🫵 Republicans banned McGovern from speaking on the floor for the rest of the day.

McGovern observed:
🔸“You can only talk about the trial on the House Floor if you're using it to defend Donald Trump.”🔸

It was curious timing for extremists to silence a Massachusetts lawmaker.

In 1836, Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a resolution to table,
or put aside without action or discussion,
all petitions relating to slavery.

Repeatedly thereafter, former president John Quincy Adams,
now representing Massachusetts in the House,
rose to read a petition and was silenced.

But the First Amendment protects the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances
—King George III had pointedly rejected the colonists’ 1775 Olive Branch Petition trying to avoid war,

and the framers of the new government wanted to be clear that people had a right to be heard
—and people in the North increasingly understood the silencing of those who were determined to stop debate over slavery as an attack on their constitutional rights.

The House got rid of the “gag rule” in 1844,
but just twelve years later, on May 22, 1856
—exactly 168 years ago today
—South Carolina representative Preston Brooks
beat Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner
nearly to death
on the floor of the Senate
after Sumner criticized southern enslavers,
particularly Brooks’s relative
South Carolina senator Andrew Butler.

The gist of Sumner’s speech
was that a small minority of men
were trying to impose their will
on the majority of the American people
by forcing enslavement on the territory of Kansas,
much as enslavers like Butler forced themselves on the women they enslaved.

Sumner’s speech was insulting,
but beating him into a welter of blood
while he sat at his Senate desk
for representing his constituents
suggested that enslavers would tolerate no dissent.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-22-2024-ac2

cdarwin, 16 days ago to random

Some might confuse the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) with charismatics or Pentecostals, but NAR is distinct.

While NAR leaders embrace miraculous gifts like prophesying, healing, and speaking in tongues, they emphasize modern-day prophets and apostles as ultimate divine spokespersons.

Unlike typical pastors, NAR apostles and prophets claim authority over multiple churches, workplaces, cities, and nations, often leading to power abuses and spiritual harm.

This controversial approach has sparked significant debate within the Christian community.

cdarwin, 16 days ago to random

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has entertained a host of defense arguments that would likely have been dismissed by others
– including that Trump had the right to take any documents he wished and post-facto claiming them as presidential records
– and recently decided to
💥indefinitely postpone 💥
a trial, some 11 months after she was assigned the case.

She also unsealed Howell’s ruling because it was cited by the defense team as part of an effort to assert prosecutorial misconduct.
👉“If the classified documents case had been indicted in DC ... and Judge Howell was the assigned judge, it would be on an entirely different, more appropriate track, that would have protected speedy trial rights,” Vance argued.

Bradley Moss, a criminal defense attorney specializing in national security issues, likewise argued that Howell’s ruling showed how relatively simple the case against Trump is compared to the others he faces, including another brought by special counsel Jack Smith related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The classified documents case “was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president,” Moss wrote on social media.
⭐️“That the public won’t see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system.”⭐️

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/22/stain-on-the-judicial-system-legal-experts-slam-cannon-after-damning-ruling-released/

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another #Alito Home

Last summer,
two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.,
another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the
♦️ “Appeal to Heaven” flag, ♦️
which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Also known as the
💥Pine Tree flag, 💥
it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is
👉 now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023.
A Google Street View image from late August also shows the flag.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/justice-alito-flag-appeal-to-heaven.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

An international fascist movement
— led by Russia, Hungary, and China
— is on the march worldwide, and America is in its crosshairs.

Case in point: Ohio Republican Senator and maximally rich dude J.D. Vance,
who dresses up his Trump/Putin toadyism in elegant garb

In an article for the m Financial Times, Vance recently wrote:

“We owe it to our European partners to be honest:
Our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end.
Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. ...
And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.”

The watershed moment in American history that led to this was when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in #CitizensUnited (and three other decisions) that bribing US politicians is no longer bribery or political corruption
but, instead, is merely
“First Amendment-protected free speech.”

The cash that rightwing billionaires, foreign governments, and corporations are stuffing into corrupt politicians’ pockets isn’t “money,”
the rightwing majority on the Court ruled:
it’s First Amendment protected “free speech.”

Those corporations aren’t (to paraphrase John Marshall) lifeless, soulless creations of the law:
they are, Republicans on the Court said,
“persons” with a constitutional right to free speech.

All this made us ripe for the picking by foreign governments that see the very ongoing existence of American democracy as a threat to the legitimacy of their own oligarchies.

To the point of Vance and Greene, Justice John Paul Stevens,
in his Citizens United dissent,
warned us that his five conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court had not only thrown the door open to American billionaires and corporations corrupting our politicians and political process:
they also, he wrote, rolled out the welcome mat to foreign governments.

“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions.

“Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.”

https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-trump-americas-new-tokyo-rose-331?r=3b1sh&triedRedirect=true

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

Mike Johnson attacks Biden for deal the speaker himself approved

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) took to X on Wednesday to slam President Joe Biden for liquidating the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR), a regional reserve of 1 million barrels intended to be an emergency supply of fuel for northeastern states.

"It’s clear that the Biden Administration only cares about the American people’s concerns when it’s time to beg for their votes. Disgraceful," wrote Johnson.

There's just one problem, as a lot of people pointed out: Johnson himself approved this selloff of the NGSR, as part of one of the recent bipartisan appropriations deal.

This plan was detailed in March by Newsweek: "Under a bill providing funding for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the fiscal year, a million barrels of the government's strategic reserve of petroleum would be sold off — the same amount as in the NGSR, which is located in New York Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts and South Portland, Maine," after which the NGSR would be shut down, and the bill was "the result of cross-party negotiations

https://www.rawstory.com/mike-johnson-deal-he-approved/

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

House Democrat calls for censure of supreme court justice Alito over upside-down flag at his home

Democratic congressman Steve Cohen has introduced a resolution to 🔥censure the conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito 🔥over the flag flown outside his house that was associated with Donald Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.

Alito has said the banner was raised after his wife got into a dispute with their neighbor. 💥Cohen’s resolution demands Alito recuse himself from considering cases dealing with the January 6 insurrection or 2020 election.💥

👉 It also #censures him “for knowingly violating the federal recusal statute and binding ethics standards and calling the impartiality of the Supreme Court of the United States into question 💥by continuing to participate in cases in which his prior public conduct could be reasonably interpreted to demonstrate bias”.💥

In a statement, Cohen, of Tennessee, accused Alito of showing support for those who attacked the Capitol:
"Beyond poor judgment, Justice Alito’s misuse of the American flag is a knowing and shameless demonstration of his political bias.
He literally flew a flag in front of his house showing the world he supported the January 6th insurrectionists.
What’s more, he continues to participate in litigation directly related to the 2020 election and the Insurrection, in direct violation of the federal recusal statute and the Supreme Court’s own ethics rules."
-- As Republicans control the House, and it is unlikely they will allow Cohen’s resolution to pass.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/live/2024/may/22/biden-trump-latest-alito-flag-supreme-court?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden

💥Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, 💥and the majority blame the Biden administration,
according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian.

The survey found 🔹persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.👀
The poll highlighted many #misconceptions people have about the economy, including:

🔸55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, -- though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.

🔸49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, -- though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.

🔸49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, -- though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.

👉Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with ⭐️58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.

The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation.
🔥The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing.
🔥In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 17 days ago to random

Many Republicans vehemently argued against calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump- and election-related cases.

“I don’t think he should be recused,” Graham told Raju.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee who is running to be GOP leader, said, “there are more important things to worry about.”

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, said news of the flag is the “latest attempt by the left to attack and question the Supreme Court.” He said calls by Democrats for Alito to recuse himself from some cases involving Trump is “an idiotic thing to think that has nothing to do with what’s going on.”

GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said, “This is America and Mrs. Alito is entitled to her opinion, but I don’t see any proof whatsoever that Justice Alito had anything to do with it.”

Kennedy also weighed in on the role and obligations of Supreme Court spouses.

“Should they be discreet and judicious in the way they articulate their point of view? Sure. But they don’t have to be,” Kennedy said.

Another GOP senator seemed to downplay the issue as a dispute between neighbors.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/republican-senators-alito-upside-down-flag/index.html

cdarwin, 18 days ago to random

Donald Trump has deleted a video from his social media page that featured hypothetical article headlines
about him ushering in
🔥“a unified Reich” 🔥if he wins.

It was posted yesterday and was deleted sometime Tuesday morning.

cdarwin, 18 days ago to random

Who is on trial over Germany coup plot?

A self-styled aristocrat, his Russian girlfriend, retired military officers and a former judge have gone on trial in Frankfurt on charges of plotting to violently overthrow the German state.

The defendants were among nine alleged conspirators
– seven men and two women
– who were led into the purpose-built court flanked by armed police officers on Tuesday for what has been described as
the most important of three trials of suspected members of the anti-constitutional Reichsbürger scene.

Some of the defendants, variously dressed in hunting jackets, suits, hoodies and Burberry scarfs, waved and smiled at each other and chatted with their lawyers after being led to their seats.

One woman covered her face with a grey folder as cameras captured the defendants’ walking into court.

Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, whose seat was marked with the sign “Prinz Reuss” and who is alleged to have been the group’s ringleader, appeared relaxed, nodding as his lawyer spoke to him.

Dressed in a dark jacket and trousers, navy pullover and open-necked shirt, the 72-year-old estate agent greeted fellow defendants before taking his place in court.

The group, referred to as the #Patriotic #Union, stands accused of high treason after plotting to storm the Reichstag.

It allegedly aimed to take MPs hostage and show a shackled chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on television in expectation of winning over ordinary Germans.

Had the alleged coup succeeded, Reuss was to have become Germany’s new chancellor.

The defendants were arrested in December 2022, when heavily armed forces stormed houses, flats, offices and a remote hunting lodge.

Investigators had been surveilling the group for months.

All defendants deny the charges.
The trial was slow to get under way on Tuesday after several lawyers lodged complaints to the judge, Jürgen Bonk, in which they expressed their objections to the proceedings taking place at all.

Outside the court, Roman von Alvensleben, a lawyer for Reuss, told journalists he objected to the fact that,
because there were three trials in separate locations,
“it is almost impossible to follow the cases properly and to cross reference them,” he said.

Across the three trials, a total of 26 defendants are in the dock for their alleged involvement in the plot.

A 27th, a 72-year-old who had been due to be on trial in Frankfurt, recently died.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/germany-far-right-coup-plot-who-is-on-trial-in-frankfurt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

skykiss, 3 months ago to random

David Weiss now says the salacious conspiracies were false. With the indictment yesterday of Alexander Smirnov, the source of those false claims, Weiss confesses he is a direct witness in an attempt to frame President Joe Biden, even as Weiss attempts to bury it.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/02/16/david-weiss-is-a-direct-witness-to-the-crimes-on-which-he-indicted-alexander-smirnov/

#corrupt #republicans #DoJ