Wednesday, August 31, 2022

And another day of obstruction, white disinvestment, election board rejections, Americans not wanting to ban books, boosters, health crisis in Pakistan, disappearing lakes, the root cause of student debt crisis, and anti-cheating room scans comes to a close:

“The essence of authoritarian discipline in a party, scholars will tell you, is compelling the followers to publicly defend the indefensible as a way of constantly proving their loyalty and subservience.” -- Ronald Brownstein

“If Trump doesn’t get prosecuted, it will mean the government thinks a former president is above the law, because you or I would absolutely be prosecuted for doing what he did.” — Walter Shaub

Deaths

US: 1,071,420 (+1672)

World: 6,495,890 (+3930)

Cases

US: 96,347,971 (+198,955)

World: 608,022,534 (+846,749)

Obstruction now a major focus in Trump documents probe. The FBI investigation into top-secret government information discovered at Mar-a-Lago is zeroing in on the question of whether former President Donald Trump’s team criminally obstructed the probe. A new document alleges that government records had been concealed and removed and that law enforcement officials were misled about what was still there. The allegation does not necessarily mean that Trump or anyone else will ultimately face charges. But it could pose the most direct legal threat to Trump and those in his orbit, in part because the Justice Department has historically regarded obstruction as an aggravating factor that tilts in favor of bringing criminal charges involving the mishandling of classified information.

How Jackson, Mississippi ran out of water. On the surface, the apparent cause of this crisis is damaged infrastructure…But the roots of this crisis run much deeper, and are inextricably tied to white disinvestment from a majority-Black city.

“Water water everywhere, nor a drop to drink.” -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but Iron Maiden put it to song.

Michigan election board rejects abortion rights initiative. A Michigan elections board on Wednesday rejected an abortion rights initiative after its two Republican board members voted against putting the proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. The two Democrats on the Board of State Canvassers voted in favor, but getting the measure on the ballot required at least three votes of the four-member board. The Reproductive Freedom for All campaign, which gathered signatures to get the measure on the ballot, is expected to appeal to the Democratic-leaning Michigan Supreme Court in the coming days.

Peltola beats Palin, wins Alaska House special election. Democrat Mary Peltola won the special election for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat on Wednesday, besting a field that included Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor. Peltola, who is Yup’ik and turned 49 on Wednesday, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in the House and the first woman to hold the seat. She will serve the remaining months of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young’s term. Young held the seat for 49 years before his death in March.

Americans Don’t Want Books Banned, But They’re Divided Over What Schools Teach. Yet polls suggest that most Americans aren’t on board with banning books, not even those on controversial topics...In fact, the ALA poll found little difference between Republicans (70 percent) and Democrats (75 percent) on the issue. Similarly, that CBS News/YouGov poll found that Americans on both sides of the political aisle were opposed to banning books, although it also found stark differences when it came to how issues of race should be taught in the classroom, and it’s this divide that has muddied the banned-book debate currently raging in schools. For instance, even though there isn’t evidence that critical race theory, an academic legal framework asserting that racism is systemic and embedded in many American institutions, is being taught in classrooms across the U.S., many parents are worried that it is being taught thanks to Republican politicians’ and conservatives’ messaging on the topic.

US clears updated COVID boosters targeting newest variants. The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to COVID-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days. The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved millions of lives. The hope is that the modified boosters will blunt yet another winter surge.

UN cites possible crimes vs. humanity in China’s Xinjiang. China’s discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity, the U.N. human rights office said in a long-awaited report Wednesday, which cited “serious” rights violations and patterns of torture in recent years. The report seeks “urgent attention” from the U.N. and the world community to rights violations in Beijing’s campaign to root out terrorism.

Pakistan: WHO warns of health crisis after floods. Officials in Pakistan as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday that a health crisis could follow the devastating floods in the country that have cost at least 1,160 lives and affected more then 33 million people…On top of the 888 clinics and hospitals damaged or destroyed by the flooding, the damage to infrastructure has also made reaching health services more difficult. WHO has also raised the alarm about the possibility of waterborne diseases spreading rapidly. The climate-change-driven "monsoons on steroids,"  as United Nations chief Antonio Guterres put it, have been raging since mid-June and put one-third of the country underwater.

Lakes are disappearing in the Arctic as the region warms nearly four times faster as the rest of the planet. Climate change is causing a dramatic shift in the Arctic. As the Arctic warms at nearly four times the rate of the rest of the world, a new study has found a threat that's surprising scientists: Arctic lakes, the "cornerstones of the Arctic ecosystem," are completely vanishing…For Webb, the findings were a surprise. Scientists long expected that Arctic lakes would expand with climate change as ground ice continued to melt and climate models showed that drying would not be seen until at least 2060 or 2150. But based on Webb's research, it appears as though the thawing permafrost is creating drainage channels that add soil erosion, rather than water, to the Arctic lakes.

A device that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun in moments is wreaking havoc on American streets. Incidents of machine gun fire have exploded by about 1,400% from 2019 through last year…The previously unreported figures add to growing evidence that the widespread availability of inexpensive so-called conversion devices -- known as "auto switches" or "auto sears" -- capable of transforming semi-automatic weapons into machine guns in a matter of moments are wreaking havoc on American streets…Gun laws virtually eliminated automatic weapons from city streets for decades, Chittum said. "But now machine guns are back, and they're everywhere."…The increasing availability of auto switches has been driven in part by the ease with which they can be made using cheap, 3D-printed parts and instructions available online…"It's very easy," said Griffith, who explained how he learned to use a 3D printer to make the devices on YouTube. "In a matter of 15 minutes I was able to do it myself the first time."

Biden is addressing the root cause of the student debt crisis — conservative ideology. If you want to lower college costs, you need to first ask what raised them. There is more than one culprit. But a big one is massive government disinvestment...Reagan slashed government spending on higher ed by 25 percent between 1980 and 1985; that included $594 million less for student assistance and $338 million less for Pell grants. Reagan also eliminated low-cost, low-interest subsidized federal loans to those with incomes under $32,000. “Effectively, these changes shifted the federal government’s focus from providing students higher education grants to providing loans,” Fergus writes. These cuts were ideologically driven. When Reagan was governor of California, his education advisor Roger A. Freeman worried that too many low-income people were attending college. -- Yeah. Conservatives were, and still are, terrified of an educated populace that would upend the status quo, so they changed the system to keep low-income people from improving their lives. -- This contempt for, and fear of, an educated populace persisted into Reagan’s presidency. Fergus explains that some in the Reagan administration argued that giving government support to students would weaken the power of parents over their children, upsetting the patriarchal status quo. Reagan’s Education Secretary Terrel Bell in his memoir compared students’ needing aid to the “welfare queen”— the Reagan-era racist slur meant to stigmatize poor Black women as lazy grifters. Burying students in debt wasn’t an accident caused by some sort of technical policy mistake. It was a deliberate choice made by conservatives who saw the advancement of the young as a danger to supposedly natural and virtuous hierarchies of class, age, and, by implication, gender and race...The root of the problem, then, isn’t just that tuition is too high. The root of the problem is that conservatives want tuition to be high because they want to use education costs as a method of social discipline. They justify that by caricaturing young people as feminized, racialized slackers who drain the public coffers and weaken public virtue. -- Public colleges/universities didn’t raise tuition because they are greedy. They increased tuition because of the national disinvestment in higher education. And this disinvestment came while promotion of earning a college degree increased. Students were told to get an education but at the same time the powers that be decreased the funding for higher education. This forced students (and parents) into massive debt. Throw in the fact that student loans are not affected by bankruptcy, and we have a system where the government forces people into debt most can’t get out of while it collects principal and interest. It’s a rigged system. And it’s all by design. Higher education is being used to oppress people, usually the most vulnerable. Higher education should be fully funded by the State so everyone who wants the opportunity to earn a degree can do so. The status quo, or this “natural order” Conservatives want to hold on to, must be upended and thrown away.

High-stakes year begins for kids still learning to read. Mounting evidence from around the country shows that students who spent most of the time learning remotely during the 2020-2021 school year, many of them Black and Latino, lost about half of an academic year of learning. That’s twice as much as their peers who studied in person that year. Third graders are at a particularly delicate moment. This is the year when they must master reading or risk school failure. Everything after third grade will require reading comprehension to learn math, social studies and science. Students who don’t read fluently by the end of third grade are more likely to struggle in the future, and even drop out, studies show.

Anti-Cheating 'Room Scans' During Online Tests Are Unconstitutional, Rules Ohio District Court. An Ohio judge ruled on Monday that Cleveland State University's use of "room scans," a popular method for preventing cheating during online exams, violates the Fourth Amendment.

Reported sexual assaults across US military increase by 13%. Reports of sexual assaults across the U.S. military jumped by 13% last year, driven by significant increases in the Army and the Navy as bases began to move out of pandemic restrictions and public venues reopened, The Associated Press has learned. Mirroring the increase in those reports is the disclosure that close to 36,000 service members said in a confidential survey that they had experienced unwanted sexual contact — a dramatic increase over the roughly 20,000 who said that in a similar 2018 survey, U.S. defense and military officials said.

California jury awards $1M to teen whose school district failed to protect her from bullies in middle school. Eleri Irons, who is now 18, attended El Segundo Middle School when three classmates bullied her between November 2017 and June 2018, according to a lawsuit filed against the El Segundo Unified School District in April 2019. The bullying “included verbal harassment, spreading nasty rumors and text messaging mean comments directly” to her, the suit said. The bullying occurred on school grounds and on field trips, according to the lawsuit, which noted the trio started a “Let’s Kill Eleri Irons” petition in June 2018. “When this petition was discovered by Teachers, they failed to notify the parents of Claimant in any manner,” the suit said. “The gross negligence by School, Teachers, Principal, and District resulted in significant physical and psychological trauma to Claimant.”

New rules make star college football players millionaires. More than a year ago, the NCAA lifted long-standing restrictions on players profiting from their celebrity status, and in some cases it turned elite players such as Stroud and Alabama quarterback Bryce Young into instant millionaires. But the financial benefits for some athletes are being weighed against the possibility that such deals will divide locker rooms, create tension within programs, produce an uneven playing field across college athletics and overwhelm students stretched for time.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

And another day of hampering election preparations, no reliable drinking water, Zombie ice, Lassa Fever, the last member of a Brazil tribe dies, ID needed to buy canned whip cream in New York state comes to a close:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -- Voltaire

Deaths

US: 1,069,748

World: 6,491,960

Cases

US: 96,149,016

World: 607,175,775

With 10 weeks until midterms, election deniers are hampering some election preparations. With ten weeks to go until the 2022 midterms, dozens of state and local officials across the country tell ABC News that preparations for the election are being hampered by onerous public information requests, ongoing threats against election workers, and dangerous misinformation campaigns being waged by activists still intent on contesting the 2020 presidential election. The efforts, many of which are being coordinated at both the national and local level, range from confronting election officials at local government meetings to training volunteers to challenge the vote-counting process on Election Day, according to election officials…"Election officials are clearly getting, like, a copy-and paste-job of a FOIA request from some centralized entity," she said. "They can see in the FOIA request because it'll be bracket, insert county here, close bracket -- and the requestor doesn't insert the name of the county."…"They have become a weaponized tool against us to keep us from being able to do our job.”

Jackson, Mississippi, to go without reliable drinking water indefinitely. The city linked the failure to complications from the flooding of the Pearl River, but Governor Tate Reeves, who declared a state of emergency, said the cause was unknown and that the city-run water treatment plant had been poorly operated and understaffed for years…Jackson, the state capital, is more than 80% Black or African American, according to U.S. Census data. — And that’s why the city’s infrastructure was left to fail. — The town has been under a boiled water alert for a month…"Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale. It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.” -- Let’s be clear: The capital of a US state has no drinking water indefinitely.

Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches. Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) -- more than twice as much as previously forecast — according to a study published Monday. That’s because of something that could be called zombie ice. That’s doomed ice that, while still attached to thicker areas of ice, is no longer getting replenished by parent glaciers now receiving less snow. Without replenishment, the doomed ice is melting from climate change and will inevitably raise seas, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The deadly virus Nigerians fear more than COVID-19: Lassa fever. Doctors have assured the 48-year-old man that he will recover from the illness, an acute haemorrhagic disease similar to Ebola. He is lucky. Although 80 percent of those infected do not get very ill from the virus and most cases go undiagnosed, the death rate among those who end up in hospital is 15 percent, according to the World Health Organization. With an incubation period of between two and 21 days, severe symptoms can start showing a week into the illness. By then it could be too late. Lassa fever lowers the platelet count in the blood and its ability to clot, causing internal bleeding. Fatal organ failure can follow within days…Despite its widespread presence in West Africa, the disease remains little known in much of the world…Lassa fever infects an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Africans each year, of which thousands die, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Eighteen people have died after police in Madagascar opened fire on what they called a lynch mob angered at the kidnapping of a child with albinism, a senior doctor has said…On the large Indian Ocean island, people with albinism are regularly the target of violence. More than a dozen abductions, attacks, and murders have been reported in the past two years, according to the United Nations.

The last member of a tribe in Brazil has died, pulling Indigenous rights into focus. The last member of a besieged Indigenous tribe in Brazil has died, apparently of natural causes. Activists are holding up his legacy as a symbol of both the genocide and resilience of his people, calling for his land to be preserved as a reminder of both…His ethnicity, language and name remain a mystery. But his singularity — and decades of isolation — did gain him some broader recognition in and beyond Brazil. He earned the nickname "The Man of the Hole" because of the deep ditches he would dig…The rest of his tribe was likely massacred in attacks by gunmen hired by colonists and ranchers dating back to the 1970s…He had since resisted all attempts at contact and "made clear he just wanted to be left alone.”

Want to buy canned whipped cream in New York state? Don’t forget your ID. A little-known state law banning sales of cartridges used in cans of whipped cream to those under 21 has only recently been noticed — and enforced — to the amusement of customers unaware of the not-so-new regulation. The age limit was enacted nine months ago to curb teens’ possible abuse of nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. The nitrous oxide found in whipped cream canisters, when it is abused as a narcotic, is commonly referred to as “whippits” or “whip-its.”

Mikhail Gorbachev, who steered Soviet breakup, dead at 91. 

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Sunday, August 28, 2022

And another day of judge support, Ds hammering Rs over Social Security, interfering in election administration, the new face of the Republican Party, floods, signs in TX public schools, polio, space, and sport memorabilia comes to a close:

"American history is a record of small groups of people who keep remaking this country over and over, and who reveal to us all that the perpetual remaking is the greatest statement of fidelity to our creed and our national purpose, which is not to be like Russia, white and stagnant and oligarchic, or like China, monoethnic and authoritarian and centralized, but to be more like America, hybrid and dynamic and democratic and free to be remade." -- Ted Liu

“Speaking of debts being paid off, the GOP seems perfectly okay with the fact that Justice Kavanaugh's somehow were secretly wiped clean... Where was their outrage then?” -- George Taker

Deaths

US: 1,069,132

World: 6,488,072

Cases

US: 96,011,855

World: 605,859,798

Judge signals support for special master to review some Trump records FBI seized. The Trump-appointed judge ordered a hearing on Sept. 1 over whether a third party should be appointed to review the records for privileged or potentially privileged information.

Democrats hammer Republicans over Social Security as conservative candidates grab the 'third rail'. Ahead of the 2022 election, Masters is one of many Republicans to touch what has been called the “third rail” of American politics — a costly but popular pillar of the safety net that gives monthly cash benefits to those 62 and older, who vote in big numbers. In major Senate and House races across the country, GOP candidates have called for cutting long-term Social Security spending to tackle inflation and resolve the program's finances. Democrats are trying to make them pay a political price, arguing that the same Republicans created a budget hole by cutting taxes for top earners…In February, Senate Republican campaign chair Rick Scott released an 11-point plan “to rescue America” that requires “all federal legislation” to sunset in five years, unless Congress decides to “pass it again.” Democrats said his idea could sink Social Security.

33 state legislatures have introduced bills that would interfere in election administration, new report says. This year legislatures in 33 states — most of which are controlled by Republicans — have introduced 244 bills that would give the partisan legislature or legislatively appointed officials more sway over election operations than civilian appointees, or create undue burdens for nonpartisan election officials. Twenty-four of those bills became law, according to the report from the States United Democracy Center and Protect Democracy, nonpartisan organizations that aim to defend democratic elections. Some of the proposed laws were introduced by prominent election deniers who will be on the ballot this November, as candidates for office as their state's top election official.

The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party. Their crusade against public education is just the beginning. “Parents’ rights” is Moms for Liberty’s rallying cry. But they don’t mean every right. They’re decidedly unconcerned about a parent’s right to ensure that their gender nonconforming child is safe at school, for instance, or that their immunocompromised child is protected from Covid. Rather, the Moms who are for Liberty have mobilized around parental concerns that are decidedly conservative. They want to excise lessons on systemic racism, LGBTQ-friendly books, accommodations for transgender students, and Covid mitigations like vaccine and mask mandates. They want to defend the Second Amendment rights that have allowed school shooters to obtain weapons. They work toward these goals with an unflagging spirit of good cheer—hence the “joyful warriors” conference theme. “People want to be around joyful people,” one presenter said. “They don’t necessarily want to be around angry, screaming, yelling people, or it’s not going to grow.” Moms for Liberty isn’t the only parents’ rights group that has coalesced around the culture wars in the last few years, but it’s one of the largest. The organization was officially founded in early 2021. Just 19 months later, it has more than 100,000 members in some 200 chapters across 38 states...Media coverage of Moms for Liberty often tends to portray them as kooks who can’t possibly be taken seriously. But it’s a mistake to underestimate their power or the possibility they could be a deciding factor in the midterm elections. While billing itself as a grassroots organization—a loose coalition of like-minded moms who are concerned about the liberal bent of education—its supporters include heavy hitters in the conservative movement. Influential Republican strategists populate its leadership team, and major right-wing think tanks support it both financially and with expertise. All that conservative political prowess fuels one explicit goal: to take over school boards.

The mayor of Mississippi’s biggest city urged residents to “get out now” on Saturday as record-setting rain threatens to flood streets and creep into homes within the next two days.

An activist plans to test Texas' 'In God We Trust' law with signs in Arabic. He's taking on a Texas law that requires public schools to display signs and posters with the national motto "In God We Trust" in "conspicuous places." The law requires that the signs were either donated or purchased from private donations to the school.

More polio virus detected in upstate New York wastewater. The virus that causes polio has been found in wastewater samples from another upstate New York county, prompting state health officials to warn of expanding “community spread” of the life-threatening virus.

It's time to get excited about space again. In order to take the next giant leap for mankind and put a person on Mars, NASA first wants to go back to the moon, 50 years after the last Apollo mission. A spectacular baby step comes Monday with, weather and mechanical issues permitting, the Artemis I mission, as the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Mickey Mantle card breaks record, as sports memorabilia soar. A mint condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million Sunday, blasting into the record books as the most ever paid for sports memorabilia in a market that has grown exponentially more lucrative in recent years.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Friday, August 26, 2022

And another day of 184 classified documents, clues on the investigation, scrubbing websites in AZ, leaked video of Barrett faith group, jeopardizing election security in TX, fears of radiation leak, harassing Children’s hospitals, and spanking in school comes to a close:

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five." — George Orwell, 1984

Deaths

US: 1,068,843 (+732)

World: 6,485,604 (+2840)

Cases

US: 95,970,007 (+125,330)

World: 604,892,165 (+770,521)

FBI found 184 classified documents in boxes returned by Trump, redacted affidavit says, prompting search. It stated that 25 documents were marked as "TOP SECRET," 67 documents marked as "confidential" and 92 marked "secret." According to the affidavit, agents observed markings denoting various control systems designed to protect various types of sensitive information, including markings that designate intelligence gathered by "clandestine human sources," such as a report by a CIA officer or someone who works for the Defense Intelligence Agency. -- Trump should be in prison.

READ: The unsealed Department of Justice’s Trump warrant affidavit. The Justice Department on Friday complied with a judge’s order to release a redacted version of the affidavit that convinced him to approve a warrant to search former President Trump’s Florida home.

Trump affidavit drops clues on scale of FBI investigation. The curtain of secrecy has been pulled back ever so slightly on the investigation into Donald Trump's handling of classified documents and presidential records at Mar-a-Lago. Even with all the redactions, the picture revealed should be concerning to the former president. — The man should be in prison.

FBI: Trump mixed top secret docs with magazines, other items. Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday. No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property this month, including “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.” The 32-page affidavit — heavily redacted to protect the safety of witnesses and law enforcement officials and “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” — offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Mar-a-Lago long after Trump left the White House. It also reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally. -- As I said, Trump should be in prison.

In Arizona, Blake Masters backtracks on abortion and scrubs his campaign website. Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, said on his campaign website that he supported a "a federal personhood law" — until Thursday. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters softened his tone and scrubbed his website's policy page of tough abortion restrictions Thursday as his party reels from the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade…Just after it released the ad, Masters' campaign published an overhaul of his website and softened his rhetoric, rewriting or erasing five of his six positions. NBC News took screenshots of the website before and after it was changed. Masters' website appeared to have been refreshed after NBC News reached out for clarification about his abortion stances. "I am 100% pro-life," Masters' website read as of Thursday morning. That language is now gone. Another notable deletion: a line that detailed his support for "a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed." The personhood effort is an anti-abortion rights pursuit that would grant the same rights and legal protections to fetuses, in some cases before viability, as any person. The fetal personhood laws would classify abortion as murder and eliminate all or most abortion exceptions in states where the procedure is strictly curtailed. — Don’t let these disgusting excuses for humans get away with this. Vote for Democrats up and down the ballot this November.

Revealed: leaked video shows Amy Coney Barrett’s secretive faith group drove women to tears. The People of Praise, a secretive Christian faith group that counts the conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, considered women’s obedience and subservience to men as one of its key early teachings, according to leaked remarks and writings of the wife of the group’s founder. A leaked video of a recent private People of Praise event, marking its 50th anniversary, shows Dorothy Ranaghan explaining how some female followers of the faith group cried intensely in reaction to the group’s early teachings on “headship” and the “roles of men and women”, in which men are considered divinely ordained as the “head” of the family and dominant to women…The comment marks the first time a statement about some women’s negative early responses to “headship” teachings has been published…Former members of People of Praise, many of whom are critical of the group’s dominance over members’ lives, have described the group as calling for complete obedience of women to their husbands. — This is a cult.

Paxton legal opinion giving public immediate access to ballots jeopardizes election security and invites lawsuits, experts say. A legal opinion released by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week will almost certainly throw county elections offices into chaos after November, experts say, exposing election clerks to possible criminal charges and materially reducing the security of every ballot cast in the state. Federal and state law require that ballots be kept secure for 22 months after an election to allow for recounts and challenges — a time frame Texas counties have had set in place for decades. Paxton’s opinion, which doesn’t stem from any change to state law, theoretically permits anyone — an aggrieved voter, activist or out-of-state entity — to request access to ballots as soon as the day after they are counted. Such requests have been used by activists all over the country as a way to “audit” election results. The opinion from Paxton doesn’t carry the force of law, but experts say it will almost certainly serve as the basis for a lawsuit by right-wing activists. The opinion has already impacted elections administrators across the state, who told Votebeat that they’ve seen an onslaught of requests since Paxton released it. — Trumpers doing their best to destroy American democracy.

Fears of a radiation leak mount near Ukrainian nuclear plant. Authorities began distributing iodine tablets to residents near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Friday in case of a radiation leak, amid mounting fears that the fighting around the complex could trigger a catastrophe.

Scientists have reported that a man has tested positive for monkeypox, COVID-19, and HIV simultaneously in the first known case of its kind.

Children's hospitals are the latest target of anti-LGBTQ harassment. Hospitals and doctors around the country are facing harassment and even death threats over the medical care they offer to transgender kids. In many cases, they have been the subject of posts by a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok, as well as stories in conservative media outlets casting gender-affirming care as child abuse and mutilation. Which raises the question: where should social networks draw the line with accounts promoting narratives that spark harassment campaigns on their platforms and beyond?

Washington state to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035, following California. The specific regulations for Washington state are yet to be created and the public will have the chance to weigh in.

Missouri school district reinstates spanking if parents OK. A school district in southwestern Missouri decided to bring back spanking as a form of discipline for students — if their parents agree — despite warnings from many public health experts that the practice is detrimental to students.

NASA's Webb telescope captures first evidence of carbon dioxide on an exoplanet. The exoplanet, WASP-39b, is a hot gas giant orbiting a sunlike star that is 700 light-years from Earth and part of a larger Webb investigation that includes two other transiting planets, according to NASA. Understanding the atmospheric makeup of planets like WASP-39b is critical for knowing their origins and how they evolved, the agency noted in a news release.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Thursday, August 25, 2022

And another day of ‘trigger laws,’ the student loan crisis, the burden on Black borrowers, a Christian cell phone company’s vision for America, school lunch bills, phasing out gas vehicles, gas stoves, NE school paper, stem cells, and doppelgangers comes to a close:

“The grotesque & predictable irony of boomers who received largely free public education - and whose parents received free college via the GI bill- complaining about the slightest reduction in the insurmountable debt of the millions whom they insisted must go to college to survive.” — Otto Von Biz Markie

“Just wanted to remind everyone that Joel Osteen's $4.4 million PPP loan was forgiven.” — Hold My PomPoms Bitches

Deaths

US: 1,068,111 (+562)

World: 6,482,764 (+2636)

Cases

US: 95,844,677 (+110,593)

World: 604,121,644 (+800,733)

Judge orders unsealing of redacted affidavit in Trump search. The directive from U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart came hours after federal law enforcement officials submitted under seal the portions of the affidavit that they want to keep secret as their investigation moves forward. The judge set a deadline of noon Friday for a redacted, or blacked-out, version of the document.

Three more GOP-led states enact abortion ‘trigger laws’. To date, 13 states have passed so-called trigger laws that were designed to outlaw most abortions if the high court threw out the constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The majority of those states began enforcing their bans soon after the June 24 decision, but Idaho, Tennessee and Texas had to wait 30 days beyond when the justices formally entered the judgment, which happened several weeks after the ruling was announced.

Student loan crisis awaits new generation despite Biden plan. For millions of Americans, President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation offers a life-changing chance to escape the burden of debt. But for future generations of students, it doesn’t fix the underlying reason for the crisis: the rising cost of college. -- Instead of funding the US war machine with so much money, put some of that toward funding higher education for US students.

Student loan relief highlights burden on Black borrowers. Black borrowers on average carry about $40,000 in federal student loan debt, $10,000 more than white borrowers, according to federal education data. The disparity reflects a racial wealth gap in the U.S. — one that some advocates say the debt relief plan does not do enough to narrow...“When we think about education and higher education, fundamentally, it’s the promise of an equitable future,” Cole said. “We have so many Black graduates who go through the system, graduate and are not able to see that future because they disproportionately risk taking out loans.” -- That’s by design.

How a far-right, Christian cellphone company ‘took over’ four Texas school boards. Patriot Mobile markets itself as “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.” Now the Trump-aligned company is on a mission to win control of Texas school boards. Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.” “Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Bannon shouted as a crowd of CPAC attendees erupted in applause. It was a moment of celebration for an upstart company whose leaders say they are on a mission from God to restore conservative Christian values at all levels of government — especially in public schools. To carry out that calling, the Grapevine-based company this year created a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on nonpartisan school board races in the Fort Worth suburbs…Their candidates won every race, and nearly four months later, those Patriot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliver results…In that same interview, Wambsganss made clear that Patriot Mobile views its political activism as a religious calling — and that the group’s electoral success this spring was just the beginning. “We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wambsganss said, adding later in the interview, “Ultimately we want to expand to other counties, other states and be in every state across the nation.”…Patriot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with political and religious leaders who promote a once-fringe strand of Christian theology that experts say has grown more popular on the right in recent years. Dominionism, sometimes referred to as the Seven Mountains Mandate, is the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key “mountains” of American life, including business, media, government and education. — These people are dangerous to democracy and must be stopped. 

As students go back to school, many face a lunch bill for the first time in 2 years. But Senate Republicans balked at the cost of providing universal free meals for another year, and as part of the final compromise, Democrats agreed to drop it from the package. This means all schools will go back to requiring that families pay the full price for each meal if they do not qualify for free or reduced-price meals. In order to qualify, families must meet income requirements that are the same across the country. For the 2022-2023 school year a family of four must make less than $51,338 to qualify for reduced-price meals and $36,075 to qualify for free meals. But each school district sets its own school meal prices, and those can significantly vary, as can the cost of living — not just within states but from state to state, which the income requirements don't account for. — And so thanks to Trumpers, kids go hungry. 

California phasing out gas vehicles in climate change fight. California set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world’s most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles. The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market, which gets 10% of its sales from the nation’s most populous state.

Kids told to wear extra layers to cut energy bills. A nursery is telling children and staff they will have to wear more clothes to help cut heating costs as businesses struggle with soaring energy bills. "We can't afford to have the heating on all day because it will ruin us.”

How the Fossil Fuel Industry Convinced Americans to Love Gas Stoves. In the face of mounting health concerns, the industry has taken an approach right out of the tobacco playbook, citing a lack of regulation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA as evidence of why the public shouldn’t be concerned. But the EPA has never said gas stoves are safe. In 2016, the agency linked short- and long-term nitrogen dioxide exposure to respiratory problems like asthma. The UCLA study found that indoor NO2 emissions from running a stove alone can sometimes cause levels that the EPA would consider unacceptable outdoors, and running an oven at the same time makes things even worse. Indeed, the data shows that California’s buildings emit more nitrogen oxides than power plants, and only slightly less than cars...Consumers are beginning to realize, “I’m burning fossil fuels with an open flame in my house, and it’s contributing to asthma my kid has; it’s harming my mom, my dad, and my grandparents,” says the Sierra Club’s Gillespie. “I think people’s perception of what it means to have a gas stove changes pretty quickly.”

Nebraska school officials close newspaper after LGBTQ issue. Administrators at a Nebraska school shuttered the school’s award-winning student newspaper just days after its last edition that included articles and editorials on LGBTQ issues, leading press freedom advocates to call the move an act of censorship. The staff of Northwest Public Schools’ 54-year-old Saga newspaper was informed on May 19 of the paper’s elimination, the Grand Island Independent reported. Three days earlier, the newspaper had printed its June edition, which included an article titled, “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” on the origins of Pride Month and the history of homophobia. It also included an editorial opposing a Florida law that bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity and dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.” Officials overseeing the district, which is based in Grand Island, have not said when or why the decision was made to eliminate the student paper. But an email from a school employee to the Independent cancelling the student paper’s printing services on May 22 said it was “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.” The paper’s demise also came a month after its staff was reprimanded for publishing students’ preferred pronouns and names. District officials told students they could only use names assigned at birth going forward. -- Hatred towards others runs high with those in charge of this school.

Scientists use stem cells to create synthetic mouse embryos. Scientists have created “synthetic” mouse embryos from stem cells without a dad’s sperm or a mom’s egg or womb. The lab-created embryos mirror a natural mouse embryo up to 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures, including one like a beating heart. In the near term, researchers hope to use these so-called embryoids to better understand early stages of development and study mechanisms behind disease without the need for as many lab animals. The feat could also lay the foundation for creating synthetic human embryos for research in the future.

You have a doppelganger and probably share DNA with them, new study suggests. These are similar codes, he said, but it is just by random chance.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.