And another day of charges, ‘complete secrecy,’ long Covid, gun carnage, we’ve known how to prevent school shootings, Johnson survives, Amy Coney Barrett and People of Praise, looming food crises, and banning minors from attending drag shows in TX comes to a close:
“It’s possible we may under estimate the number of people in the country who have no preference in a battle between democracy and a dictatorship.” -- Horatio McFlabbergasted
Deaths
US: 1,033,830
World: 6,321,475
Cases
US: 86,637,487
World: 535,912,801
Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy in Capitol riot. The former top leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group and other members were charged Monday with seditious conspiracy for what federal prosecutors say was a coordinated attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Email reveals Trump campaign told fake electors in Georgia to use 'complete secrecy'. The Trump campaign directed a group of Georgia Republicans to meet in secret and obscure their objectives in an email obtained by federal prosecutors as part of their recent investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election in several swing states. The email is part of the intensifying Justice Department investigation focused on the Trump campaign's interactions with so-called alternate Republican electors in states Trump lost and whether a scheme to organize them could be charged as a crime.
Missed risk: Long COVID threat extends far beyond pandemic. But what if the big risk wasn’t death or system collapse, but debilitating illness? Last week, the United States logged its millionth dead COVID victim. In the same two years of this pandemic, 8 million people have contracted long COVID and become shadows of their former selves. According to the World Health Organization, one of every five of the 500 million COVID sufferers may develop long COVID…Teasdale’s post-COVID symptoms match a condition called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS. It typically afflicts people recovering from a viral infection like SARS, Epstein-Barr or West Nile disease. While it’s considered neurological, it seems to invade the body from every portal: causing brain fog, sensitivity to light and sound, but also racing hearts, dropping oxygen levels, muscular aches, coordination issues — Teasdale simply feels like his body is going haywire…Vaccines have proved effective at preventing deaths and extreme immediate complications from COVID infections. But a recent study by the federal Veteran’s Administration looked at more than 30,000 COVID victims and found a neutral response for long COVID — the chance someone would get long COVID was even whether they had the vaccine or not. And for an inanimate disease, it seems to have a vindictive personality. Most ME/CFS sufferers will start feeling better, take a longer daily walk or talk to a few more friends, and 24 hours later get flattened so hard they can’t lift a fork of dinner to their mouths. The process has a name: post-exertional malaise or PEM…For people with post-viral ME/CFS, the recovery rate after six months is about 5%. No cures exist yet. Some people have found occasional relief with mild stimulants like Ritalin, usually at much lower doses than prescribed for attention-deficit disorder. Diets designed to reduce inflammation also offer some help. For many sufferers, that means a lifetime of long-term disability. — This is what scares me.
Manchin wants to raise age to 21 for gun purchases, doesn’t see need for AR-15s. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voiced his support Monday for raising the age to 21 for purchasing semi-automatic weapons and questioned why individuals need to own high-powered AR-15-style weapons, putting him at odds with Republicans who are resisting imposing any restrictions on access to firearms.
Key GOP senators signal that raising age to buy semiautomatic weapons is off the table. The two leading GOP senators involved in gun talks on Capitol Hill signaled Monday evening that it's unlikely Congress will raise the age requirement for purchasing semiautomatic firearms to 21, instead saying they are looking at changing the criminal background check system to access juvenile records before a sale is complete.
As Congress Putters, the Gun Carnage Continues. Those lawmakers—and the voters they fear crossing—seem to find this steady stream of mass shootings, mounting gun violence, and an epidemic of gun suicides preferable to tolerating even modest restrictions on access to deadly weapons.
From graduation parties to a mall, 13 mass shootings over the weekend leave more than a dozen dead and over 70 injured. The US has suffered at least 246 mass shootings in 2022 – far more than there have been days so far in the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That’s the same number of mass shootings in 2021 through June 5. The country is on pace to match or surpass last year’s total, which is the worst on record, according to the data compiled by GVA.
We’ve Known How To Prevent A School Shooting for More Than 20 Years. While all the experts I spoke with said that policies that keep guns out of the hands of teenagers are an important part of preventing mass shootings, they all also said it is crucial to set up systems that spot teens who are struggling and may become dangerous. You can’t predict violent events or who will go from threatening behavior to murder, O’Toole said. But it is possible for us to look around and see the people who are having problems and need intervention. Interventions can prevent violence, even if we can’t predict it, she told me. For example, at least four potential school shootings that were averted in the weeks after Parkland all stopped because the would-be killers spoke or wrote about their plans and someone told law enforcement. And there’s usually time to spot these things coming. While homicides in general are almost never premeditated, mass shootings — including school shootings — almost always are.
British PM Boris Johnson narrowly survives vote that threatened to oust him from power. Boris Johnson survives — for now...Johnson won by 211 votes to 148 in a high-drama secret ballot in Parliament that threatened to oust him from power. That's a majority of just 63, dividing his party 59 percent to 41 percent — a far bigger mutiny than many pundits had expected.
Legal claims shed light on founder of faith group tied to Amy Coney Barrett. The founder of the People of Praise, a secretive charismatic Christian group that counts supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, was described in a sworn affidavit filed in the 1990s as exerting almost total control over one of the group’s female members, including making all decisions about her finances and dating relationships. — This sounds very much like a cult.
Musk threatens to walk away from Twitter deal. Elon Musk is threatening to walk away from his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about its spam bot and fake accounts. -- God, I wish he’d just go the fuck away.
“While Elon Musk lays off 10 percent of Tesla employees, he's set to take home $23 billion bonus. Yes, $23 billion. The economy is somehow always great for billionaires, bad for workers.” — Robert Reich
UN: Climate shocks, war fuel multiple looming food crises. Two U.N. food agencies issued stark warnings Monday about multiple, looming food crises on the planet, driven by climate “shocks” like drought and worsened by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine that have sent fuel and food prices soaring.
Biden waives solar panel tariffs, seeks to boost production. President Joe Biden ordered emergency measures Monday to increase U.S. manufacturing of solar panels and declared a two-year tariff exemption on panels from Southeast Asia as he attempted to jumpstart an industry key to his climate change-fighting goals.
Historical emissions caused the climate crisis. But it’s what we do today that will make or break it, study shows. That’s the main finding of a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday, which says that even if the world cut emissions to zero today, there would still be a 42% chance of hitting 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels within a decade. That probability rises to 66% if the world waits until 2029 to reach zero emissions. Nevertheless, achieving zero emissions this decade is shaping out to be a pipe dream at this point, considering global emissions are still climbing, and set to continue for the next several years. A UN report showed that new and updated pledges on emissions will only cut around 7.5% from current rates by 2030. Additionally, China, the world’s largest emitter, is not set to reach zero emissions until 2060.
The national average gas price is creeping toward $5 a gallon, and there's no immediate end in sight. The price of fuel is expected to move even higher from already record territory, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the onset of hurricane season in the U.S., analysts say.
A Texas lawmaker has announced that he will introduce legislation to ban minors from attending drag shows in the state. State Rep. Bryan Slaton said a ban was necessary to protect children from “perverted adults,” citing a viral video of children attending a Dallas drag show. -- Republicans are actively forcing their personal beliefs onto everyone else. That is not how one defines “freedom.” Next they’ll aim for legislation that prevents parents from taking their children to see R rated movies. Shut the fuck up, Republicans. Live your life, and don’t try to control how other people live theirs.
'I'm not jumping in after you:' Man drowned in Tempe Town Lake as police watched, transcripts reveal. In the transcript, an officer reportedly threatened to detain his wife, telling her, "If you don't calm down, I'm going to put you in my car." The rest of the document reveals how his wife continued to beg them for help while the officers continued to tell her to calm down. "I'm just distraught because he's drowning right in front of him and you won't help," she said.
Overweight people lost 35 to 52 pounds on newly approved diabetes drug, study says. A weekly dose of a medication recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat type 2 diabetes may help adults without diabetes lose weight as well, a new study found. Tirzepatide, which is sold under the brand name Mounjaro, was studied in people without diabetes in three dosages: 5, 10 and 15 milligrams. Participants with obesity or who were overweight and took the 5-milligram dose lost an average of 35 pounds (16 killograms), those on the 10-milligram dose lost an average of 49 pounds (22 kilograms), and participants on the 15-milligram dose lost an average of 52 pounds (23.6 kilograms).
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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