Category: Uncategorized

Sweden and Finland will be joining the NATO military alliance as early as this summer, the Times of London reports, citing US officials in Brussels. “How can this be anything but a massive strategic blunder for Putin?,” said one senior American military official.

Twitter CEO Paran Agrawal announced on the platform that the Twitter Board of Directors offered Elon Musk, the company’s largest single shareholder, a seat on the board, but Musk declined the invitation.  (The tweet can be found after the fold.)

Agrawal noted that the board examined the risks and benefits of having Musk on the board, including that fact that joining the board would require Musk to act as a fiduciary for the company–a position the eccentric Musk might not have found desirable.

On Sunday morning, Musk apparently told Agrawal that he wasn’t interested in a board seat.

Someone working in the US Capitol this past week clicked on an advertisement for erotic fan fiction featuring Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) in a set up for a feature on internet tracking for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The show did a deep dive into how companies sell enough of your personal data to identify each person individually and how advertisers can target people or others could do it for more nefarious reasons. … yadda yadda yadda …

To prove their point, producers purchased data hitting men 45 years and older within a five mile radius of the Capitol and who had searched for a specific set of terms, which Oliver read out to be “divorce, massage, hair loss and mid-life crisis.”

A low-flying goose slammed into the side of an unhelmeted motorcyclist on a Pennsylvania highway, causing him to lose control of his cycle and collide with a Chevy sedan, the Centre Daily Times reports.

Police reviewed video that was being taken by cameras located in the Chevy to determine what happened to the motorcyclist.  The Harley-Davidson rider was declared dead at the scene.  There were no reports on the condition of the goose available.

The elderly owners of a small-town Georgia gun range and their 17-year-old grandson were shot and killed during a Friday night robbery at their business, with the perpetrator(s) getting away with more than 40 weapons, the Associated Press reports.

Thomas and Evelyn Hawk, both 75 years old, and their grandson, Luke, were found dead at the Lock Stock & Barrel gun range in Grantville, a town of 3,200 about 50 miles southwest of Atlanta.  The Hawks had owned the business for 30 years, and residents say they were well respected in the community.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been asked to assist with the investigation because of the murders and the stolen weapons.

With the Russians expected to redouble their attack in the east, Ukrainian leaders have requested allies send them more arms and supplies as they prepare to push back the effort, the Washington Post reports.

Russian forces shelled several towns in the east of Ukraine, from where analysts believe Russian forces will make a renewed effort to push further into Ukraine.  The attack destroyed a regional airport and hit several civilian targets.  “There are so many of them and they still have so much equipment. And it looks like they’re going to use all of it. So we are preparing for everything,” Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, warned Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Ukrainian leaders fear that as the war carries on, supplies of vital arms, ammunition and supplies will trickle out, and the Ukrainian military has made a priority of keeping open cross-border transit for refugees going out and arms coming in.

In a major decision, a federal judge ruled that the United States military cannot discharge soldiers solely because they’re HIV positive, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia determined that the previous restriction cited by the military–that HIV positive personnel could not be deployed worldwide because of their medical needs–is no longer the case with medications and treatments available on the market today.

“The military was the last employer in the country that had a policy against people living with HIV. Every other employer — including first responders — is subject to rules that prohibit discrimination based on HIV status,” Peter Perkowski, an attorney for the plaintiffs said, calling the decision it “a landmark victory — probably the biggest ruling in favor of people living with HIV in the last 20 years.”

A Texas District Attorney said in a statement posted to Facebook that the murder charges filed against a woman who self-induced an abortion will be dropped, saying that after an investigation by her office could not find reason to prosecute her.

The prosecutor, 229th District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez, said that the sheriff had a duty to investigate the incident, which was reported to authorities by a local hospital where Lizelle Herrera sought medical care.

“Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family,” Ramirez said in the statement.  “To ignore this fact would be shortsighted. The issues surrounding this matter are clearly contentious, however based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.”

I’m enjoying Ron DeSantis’s breast beating theatrics regarding Disney, because it’s clear nothing will come out of it.  Disney is at no risk of losing its special jurisdictional status in Florida, and by July, it will be dead and buried.

Why am I so confident?  Because DeSantis is not an idiot, despite playing one on TeeVee.  He’s playing to the base of the Republican Party who admire men who put on the “tough guy” act.  Remember how Trump would get up on stage and claim he would beat the crap outta people?  Trump has never thrown a punch–or taken one–in his life, and neither has DeSantis, but to their base, the fact that they act like they have is all that counts.

By July, the Florida gubernatorial primary will be decided and DeSantis will be crowned the nominee.  That’s when the pivot occurs, from gubernatorial campaign to proto-presidential campaign.  DeSantis needs to win reelection in Florida by a landslide to prove his viability in the presidential race because he won his first election by just 32,300 votes.

French President Emmanuel Macron took 28.4% of the vote to far right reptilian Marine Le Pen’s 23.4%, both advancing in Sunday’s first round election to face off again in two weeks, France24 projects. Ultranationalist asshole TV host Eric Zemmour took 7% and urged his followers to back Le Pen in his concession speech. “There is, facing Marine Le Pen, a man who has let in 2 million immigrants,” Zemmour told his fans. “I will not mistake my adversary. that is why I am calling on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.” Zemmour however was the only one of the other 10 candidates to endorse Le Pen. Leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, just barely squeezed out of the top two with 21.2% said “We know for whom we will never vote… you should not support Le Pen… There must not be one single vote for Le Pen in the second round,” which wasn’t quite echoing the Bernie enthusiasm for Biden, but Macron should probably still feel cautiously optimistic.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, facing a primary challenge from a possibly Trump-endorsed MAGA opponent, appears to be telling her state’s voters to vote for he because elections are rigged, which is definitely a smart move if she wants to try to get on the Orange Warlord’s good side again.

We’ve already chronicled a very loose, disjointed history of the last few decades how adult Disney fandom (and Star Wars fandom within it) rose from a mostly quiet indulgence to a very open, very expensive actual lifestyle held by many millions of Americans, growing the company’s market capitalization from $41 billion in 2001 to $240 billion in 2022 (down from a pre-pandemic high of $328 billion in 2019). The expansions and acquisitions Disney made along the way are the key to that growth: Marvel Entertainment in 2009, LucasFilm in 2012, and 20th Century Fox in 2018. The last of which is now called “20th Century Studios”, and “Fox” is strictly a TV broadcasting, sports, and propaganda brand owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Disney could still legally use the “Fox” name, but choose not to for whatever reason – maybe a desire to not be associated with Tucker Carlson and the other Nazi maniacs, maybe simpler branding purposes. Who knows.

“This is like endorsing Mitt Romney.”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart story “Donald Trump Endorses Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Race“, posted Saturday. Note Breitbart’s use of “Mehmet” in the headline.

Members of the House January 6th Select Committee are split on whether a criminal referral to the Justice Department for the Orange Warlord for inciting the insurrection will be necessary despite concluding they have more than enough evidence to do so, the New York Times reports.

There are a number of reasons why holding off is probably the correct move. First off, only contempt referrals carry the actual requirement that they be considered by the DC US Attorney’s office – any other type of referral has the same formal weight as submitting a crime report on the FBI’s website. Second, a referral would possibly add unnecessary political pressure to the already ongoing investigation inside the Justice Department. Lastly, a potentially far weightier criminal referral basically already happened last month when California federal Judge David O Carter ruled that it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed a crime in trying to overturn the election.

Had Carter not ruled as such when tossing John Eastman’s lawsuit against the committee claiming a nonexistent privileged attorney-client relationship between himself and Trump to hide his email from them, we would be amping to have them go ahead and do it, come hell or high water. But the fact is that the work has already been done for them. It’d be like firing a pistol when the judge already launched a switchblade drone. The committee can and should go ahead and spell out that Trump committed a crime when their final report is released, but leave out the “formal” referral which wouldn’t really be all that formal and stir up a pointless shitstorm.

This is happening because Trump’s surrounded himself by staff who are on McConnell’s payroll & hostile to the MAGA agenda. Everybody telling Trump who to endorse in primaries works for The Swamp.

They played him. Again. https://t.co/SoD656HT0V

— Mo Brooks (@MoBrooks) April 10, 2022

Mo-Mo, despite being burned by his Orange Messiah, still cannot bring himself to say that Trump actually made a mistake, is a fucking moron, is likely killing their chances in Pennsylvania by endorsing Mehmet, et cetera. Donald can never fail, he can only be failed by his minions.

Kelly Tshibaka, the Republican Senate candidate from Alaska anointed by Donald Trump to replace incumbent Lisa Murkowski (who’s running for reelection), said at a town hall meeting that she would support a law that would make mail order abortion medications illegal, with the purchaser, patient, prescriber, shipper and manufacturer all criminally liable for the delivery.  She even suggests having the US Postal Service monitor everyone’s mail to stop the delivery of those pills, because that’s not police-state-y at all.

I am honored to receive President Trump’s full support and endorsement, and I thank him for that. President Trump knows how critical it is to change the kinds of people we send to Washington. I’m ready to bring an America First agenda to the Senate for Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/7gmhZupinr

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) April 10, 2022

And we really hope Pennsylvania Lt Governor John Fetterman sends Trump a nice fruit basket as thanks for helping to hand him an absolute cupcake of an opponent in November.

Pakistan’s Parliament issued a no-confidence vote regarding the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, ousting him from office despite his claims that he had evidence the plot to remove him was being directed by the United States, the Washington Post reports.

The vote occurred amid chaos in the capital city of Islamabad, as police and military roamed the streets.  Once highly popular because of his promises of bringing reforms to the government, his tenure has been wracked by economic turmoil, defections of one-time allies, and administration scandals.

The 69-year-old former cricket star attempted to consolidate his support in the preceding weeks, holding massive rallies and claiming that his downfall was the result of interference from the United States and other foreign interests.  After the nation’s Supreme Court ruled against his attempt to dissolve Parliament earlier this month, Khan claimed they were part of the conspiracy against him.

The predominantly-Democratic state legislature overrode vetoes from Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, reinstating a law that protects abortion services in the state and provides pathways for medical professional who want to train in abortion services, the Baltimore Sun reports.

A moderate Republican much-discussed as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, Hogan vetoed recently passed legislation that protected abortion rights, required health insurance plans to cover abortions, funded the training of abortion providers, and launched a paid family and medical leave program for all workers in the state.

Less than 24 hours after Hogan vetoed those measure, the legislature overrode his vetoes.  In a letter explaining his vetoes, Hogan said he was concerned about the leave program’s costs, particularly for small businesses.