And another day of autocratic leaders, election deniers, the economic package, Alex Jones, monkeypox health emergency, claiming an ‘unborn child’ on taxes, DeSantis shit, Mormon Church sex abuse, and the gay and trans ‘panic’ defense comes to a close:
“If the GOP prevails in their goals we will one day be telling our children and grandchildren what freedom was like before the GOP took control.” — Dean Obeidallah
“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” — Dick Cheney
“They just let it keep happening.” — MJ
Deaths
US: 1,057,811 (+572)
World: 6,430,111 (+3511)
Cases
US: 93,739,666 (+146,452)
World: 586,567,684 (+1,424,657)
Autocratic Hungarian leader Orban hailed by US conservatives. Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged cheering American conservatives on Thursday to “take back the institutions,” stick to hardline stances on gay rights and immigration and fight for the next U.S. presidential election as a pivotal moment for their beliefs.
Why conservatives invited Hungary's autocratic PM to headline Dallas event. Yet to many in the right wing of the Republican party, Orbán offers a model for electoral success. His endurance–he won his fourth straight term as prime minister in April–relies on an unrepentant appeal to a white and Christian heritage for Hungary. It has also depended on rounds of crackdowns on civil liberties and dissenting voices inside the country. In the U.S. Orbán has been given intellectual credence by the American Conservative's Rod Dreher and extraordinary exposure by Fox News's Tucker Carlson. The primetime cable star has played an outsized role in presenting Orbán to a broader public in this country with interviews, a documentary series and a recurrent argument that the U.S. would be better off with the Hungarian leader's approach…Many Hungarian policies would rankle the American right. Abortion is legal in Hungary, to a point. The state greatly restricts private gun ownership. And the government offers health care to all. Such distinctions make no difference to fans seeking inspiration from a strong leader…In Orbán, attendees will hear from a European leader who promotes an explicitly Christian and white vision of Hungary, one who built up a hard border and severe policies to keep migrants out. Orbán's ruling party has also ground down political opponents, bought off or starved independent voices in the press and universities and targeted human rights groups…"He's fighting for an old white world or old white Europe where, you know, men were men and women were women," Demeter tells NPR. "And there were no transgender people or gay people. Or if there were gay people they stayed at home." The US-based human rights group Freedom House has called Hungary a hybrid regime - in a transition between democracy and autocracy. "There has been a democratic backsliding in Hungary for looking at press freedom, for looking at LGBTQ rights," says the Hungarian journalist Flora Garamvolgyi, who has written about Orbán's ties to U.S. conservatives. "And I don't think that aligns with American values, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat."
Election deniers are running to control voting. Here's how they've fared so far. Election officials and democracy experts are sounding the alarm, as Republicans who deny the 2020 election results have now moved closer to overseeing the voting process in six different states. — The alarm bells are ringing. Are you listening?
Liz Cheney says DOJ not prosecuting Trump could call into question the US as ‘nation of laws’. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said if the Justice Department does not prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection at the US Capitol, the decision could call into question whether the United States can “call ourselves a nation of laws.” In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Cheney – the GOP vice chair of the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection – said Trump is “guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty of any president in our nation’s history” and pointed to a judge who’s said he likely committed crimes...“The question for us is, are we a nation of laws? Are we a country where no one is above the law? And what do the facts and the evidence show?” Cheney said.
Democrats say they’ve reached agreement on economic package. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., a centrist who was seen as the pivotal vote, said in a statement that she had agreed to changes in the measure’s tax and energy provisions and was ready to “move forward” on the bill.
House January 6 panel asks lawyer for Alex Jones’s accidentally leaked texts. The House January 6 committee has contacted the attorney for a family suing Alex Jones for defamation in an attempt to obtain the far-right conspiracy theorist’s text messages, which were inadvertently leaked to the plaintiffs. In court in Texas on Thursday, Mark Bankston, the lawyer for the parents of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old boy who was among 20 children and six adults killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which Jones falsely said was a hoax, said the January 6 panel had asked him for the messages. Bankston did not say if the request from both the committee and federal law enforcement came in the form of a subpoena, as news outlets reported it would. He said he intends to cooperate with the request unless a court orders him otherwise.
Alex Jones ordered to pay Sandy Hook parents more than $4M. The parents had sought at least $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the compensation charges they are considering — and Jones himself said any award over $2 million “would sink us.” It likely won’t be the last judgment against Jones — who was not in the courtroom when the jury announced its decision to award $4.11 million — over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun controls. A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims’ families and an FBI agent who worked on the case.
US declares public health emergency over monkeypox outbreak. The federal government declared a public health emergency Thursday to bolster the response to the monkeypox outbreak that has infected more than 6,600 Americans. The announcement will free up money and other resources to fight the virus, which may cause fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body.
Monkeypox infections have nearly doubled in two weeks. Cases had been recorded in all but two states as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 44 states and Washington, D.C., at the end of July and from 14 states and Washington, D.C., at the beginning of June. In total, the U.S. has reported more than 6,000 cases since the beginning of May. The total worldwide exceeds 25,000. According to an NBC News analysis of CDC data, the seven-day average of reported new cases increased from an average of 154 on July 20 to an average of 279 on Aug. 3.
Georgia says an "unborn child" can be claimed as a dependent on state taxes. Residents filing their 2022 tax returns who had fetuses with detectable heartbeats at six weeks of pregnancy can claim a dependent personal exemption in the amount of $3,000, the department said on Monday.
DeSantis suspends Florida prosecutor for suggesting he would not enforce restrictions on abortion, gender therapy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended the top county prosecutor from Tampa on Thursday after the Democrat publicly said he wouldn’t enforce a new state abortion restriction or a potential law banning surgeries for transgender children. -- This is straight up fascism by DeSantis, but more to the point: like this Florida prosecutor (Andrew Warren) we must stand against evil, or evil will prevail.
“Speaking of Ron DeSantis, why are Republicans so fond of having assholes lead them?” -- Steve Redmond
Florida’s Republican governor is attacking trans rights to gain power. Of course, there is nothing inherently ‘sexual’ about being transgender, and there is no evidence of any inherent ‘risk’ in allowing trans students to access the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity…“Florida has grown increasingly more hostile toward our community.” He places much of the blame on DeSantis: “We are being targeted by a governor desperate to be president someday and willing to traffic in all manners of hate and bigotry to get there.” — DeSantis is not only an asshole, he’s an authoritarian who spreads hate and bigotry in his never ending quest for power. He must be stopped. The country will suffer greatly if he is ever President.
The Associated Press obtained nearly 12,000 pages of records showing that a help line run by the Mormon church is part of a system that can be misused to divert abuse accusations against church members away from law enforcement — and out of the public eye. The help line has been criticized by abuse victims and their attorneys for being inadequate to quickly stop abuse and protect victims. Yet the Utah-based faith has stuck by the system despite the criticism and increasing scrutiny from attorneys and prosecutors, including those in the Adams case. “’I just think that the Mormon church really sucks. Seriously sucks,” said MJ, who is now 16, during an interview with the AP. “They are just the worst type of people, from what I’ve experienced and what other people have also experienced.”…Arizona’s child sex abuse reporting law, and similar laws in more than 20 states that require clergy to report child sex abuse and neglect, says that clergy, physicians, nurses, or anyone caring for a child who “reasonably believes” a child has been abused or neglected has a legal obligation to report the information to police or the state Department of Child Safety. But it also says that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities if the clergy determine it is “reasonable and necessary” under church doctrine. — Read that last sentence again. — Before establishing the help line in 1995, the Mormon church simply instructed bishops to comply with local child sex abuse reporting laws…That video represented nine minutes and 14 seconds in seven years of continual and unnecessary trauma for MJ — and a lifetime of abuse for her tiny sister — while Bishops Herrod and Mauzy and church representatives in Salt Lake City stood by…Whatever moral or public policy arguments one could make that the church should have told authorities that Paul Adams was raping his daughters are irrelevant, the lawyers argued. “Arizona’s reporting statute broadly exempts confidential communications with clergy, as determined by the clergyman himself,” according to the church motion to dismiss the case. “Reasonable people can debate whether this is the best public policy choice. But that is not an issue for a jury or this court.” Bishop Herrod, in his recorded interview, said church officials told him he had to keep what Adams told him confidential or he could be sued if he went to authorities. — There is so much wrong with all of this.
Russian court gives Brittney Griner nine years on drugs charges. A Russian court has found US basketball star Brittney Griner guilty of drug smuggling, and sentenced her to nine years in prison in a case that has reached the highest levels of United States-Russia diplomacy. The court “found the defendant guilty” of smuggling and possessing “a significant amount of narcotics”, judge Anna Sotnikova told a court in the town of Khimki just outside Moscow. The player was also fined one million rubles ($16,300). -- Never forget that Republicans admire Russian leadership.
Feds charge 4 police officers in fatal Breonna Taylor raid. The U.S. Justice Department announced civil rights charges Thursday against four Louisville police officers over the drug raid that led to the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose fatal shooting contributed to the racial justice protests that rocked the U.S. in the spring and summer of 2020. The charges are another effort to hold law enforcement accountable for the killing of the 26-year-old medical worker after one of the officers was acquitted of state charges earlier this year.
Yes, the gay and trans ‘panic’ defense is still legal in a majority of states. The gay and trans panic legal defense is a legal strategy that asks a jury to find that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity/expression is to blame for a defendant’s violent reaction, including murder, according to the LGBTQ+ Bar...No state recognizes the LGBTQ+ panic defense as a free-standing defense, the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, a research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, said in a 2021 report. Instead, the Williams Institute report and the American Bar Association (ABA) say the LGBTQ+ panic defense is used to bolster the defendant's defense claim. There are three defenses the LGBTQ+ panic defense is paired with:...It is not banned in 35 states and five territories, and it isn’t banned at the federal level, either. According to MAP, 57% of the American LGBTQ+ population lives in states where the defense isn’t banned.
'Social contagion' isn’t causing more youths to be transgender, study finds. “Social contagion” is not driving an increasing number of adolescents to come out as transgender, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics. The study also found that the proportion of adolescents who were assigned female at birth and have come out as transgender also has not increased, which contradicts claims that adolescents whose birth sex is female are more susceptible to this so-called external influence.
Half the country is in drought, and no region has been spared. More than 50% of the country was in some level of drought for the fourth week in a row, the US Drought Monitor reported Thursday, as the combination of warmer-than-normal temperatures and low rainfall is drawing the moisture out of plants and soil. And no region of the country has been spared.
Workers in Iraq given day off as temperatures rise above 50C (122F). A heatwave in the country has been ongoing since mid-July and is forecast to continue. Burning heat is not unusual in Iraq, as one of the hottest places on Earth. But residents say conditions are worsening.
Why Do Orthopedic Surgeons Have Such High Breast Cancer Rates? These findings come with a number of important caveats. The sample sizes are small, and the studies were based on voluntary surveys, which may elicit more responses from people who have had cancer. The breast cancer rates, as high as they may be, may not be caused solely by radiation. Due to the demands of the job, orthopedic surgeons tend to have kids later and to spend less time breast-feeding children, both of which are risk factors for breast cancer. (The studies controlled for age, but not for reproductive status.) Even with the limitations, the breast cancer rates among orthopedic surgeons are “enough of a signal to say we really need to study this further.”
Johnny Depp, Jeff Beck Accused of Stealing Lyrics From Incarcerated Man’s Poem. Depp and Beck’s “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade” appears to share numerous lines with “Hobo Ben,” a toast performed by Slim Wilson and recorded by esteemed folklorist Bruce Jackson in the mid-Sixties.
Mammoth bones and 'ghost' footprints add to heated debate about first humans in North America. The fossilized bones, in particular, could suggest people lived in North America tens of thousands of years before the generally accepted date for the arrival of the first Native Americans of about 10,000 B.C. BCE.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment