“During an operation evolving over the past seven days, the KCSO Special Operations Division, along with Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division (DPS-CID), worked cooperatively with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding a Kerrville man who was believed to a threat to national security. Coleman Thomas Blevins, age 28, of Kerrville, was arrested by the KCSO Special Operations Division in the 1000 block of Junction Highway on Friday, May 28th, on a warrant for a Terroristic Threat to Create Public Fear of Serious Bodily Injury. Supporting the arrest were the DPS-CID, FBI, Kerrville PD Patrol Division, and US Secret Service.”

“Through the period of investigation, KCSO investigators made contact and conversed with Mr. Blevins, confirmed his affiliation and networking with extremist ideologies. On May 27th, KCSO Special Operations Division intercepted a message indicating that Blevins was preparing to proceed with a mass shooting. In the message, Mr. Blevins made a specific threat that included Wal-Mart. Working with the FBI, KCSO Investigators confirmed Mr. Blevins’ capability of following through with the threat and moved immediately to arrest him. After the arrest, a search warrant for Mr. Blevins’ residence in the 200 block of Spence St was executed. In that warrant service, firearms, ammunition, electronic evidence, concentrated THC, and radical ideology paraphernalia, including books, flags, and handwritten documents were seized. Mr. Blevins is currently on active felony probation and is prohibited from possessing firearms. Mr. Blevins was subsequently booked into the Kerr County Jail on a $250,000 bond, where he remains at this time. The FBI or other federal authorities may seek federal charges in this case. As with all criminal cases, charges may be added or modified prior to trial. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty” – Kerr County Texas Sheriff’s Office Facebook post.

New York Times: “Democrats in the Texas Legislature staged a dramatic, late-night walkout on Sunday night to force the failure of a sweeping Republican overhaul of state election laws. The move, which deprived the session of the minimum number of lawmakers required for a vote before a midnight deadline, was a stunning setback for state Republicans who had made a new voting law one of their top priorities. The effort is not entirely dead, however. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, indicated that he would call a special session of the Legislature, which could start as early as June 1, or Tuesday, to restart the process. The governor has said that he strongly supported an election bill, and in a statement he called the failure to reach one on Sunday ‘deeply disappointing.’ He was widely expected to sign whatever measure Republicans passed.

“Election Integrity & Bail Reform were emergency items for this legislative session,” Mr. Abbott said on Twitter on Sunday night. “They will be added to the special session agenda.” He did not specify when the session would start. While Republicans would still be favored to pass a bill in a special session, the unexpected turn of events on Sunday presents a new hurdle in their push to enact a far-reaching election law that would install some of the most rigid voting restrictions in the country, and cement the state as one of the hardest in which to cast a ballot. The final bill, known as S.B. 7, included new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used for the first time during the 2020 election in Harris County, home to Houston and a growing number of the state’s Democratic voters. Republicans’ inability to pass the measure on Sunday night was the first major stumble for the party in its monthslong drive to restrict voting across the nation, and an embarrassment for G.O.P. leaders in the Texas Legislature who at least momentarily fell short of a top legislative goal for both the governor and the Republican Party.”

Back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, a series of books from a group of authors responsible for The People’s Almanac hit the best sellers list.  Two editions of Book of Lists compiled by David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace and Irving Wallace asked scientists, politicians, researchers and pop culture icons everything from their favorite albums to the greatest inventions of all time.

It was a lighthearted mix of trivia, opinion and gossip that kept people occupied.  And as a young reader, it was fun to get a glimpse into the opinions of people from a wide variety of fields.

In 1981, Wallechinsky, Wallace and Wallace took on another project, The Book of Predictions, a look at what some of those same scientists, politicians, researchers and pop culture icons saw the future progressing.  A few weeks ago, I found my copy of the book (purchased as a beach read in 1981 for $3.95), and thought I’d share some of the forecasts along with a scale on how correct their predictions were, with 10 being spot-on and 1 being way off.

• Attorney F. Lee Bailey predicted that by 1992, the “nine old men” on the Supreme Court would be “nine old people,” with four or five of the justices being women.  The Court has three women on it, the make-up of which started in 2010.  Accuracy:  7

https://youtu.be/m_UUIbhMWOM

At the “For God and Country Patriot Roundup”–yes, that’s actually the name–being held in Dallas, former Trump National Security Advisor and three-star general in the United States Army who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States (not protect a politician) said in response to a question from a QAnon follower about why a military coup, like the one that happened in Myanmar earlier this year, couldn’t happen in the United States.  “No reason.  I mean, it should happen here,” Flynn says.  “No reason.”

The Oklahoman: “Gov. Kevin Stitt on Friday signed legislation that will name a stretch of highway in the panhandle after [Former President Trump]. Republican legislators slipped the Trump highway proposal into the Oklahoma Legislature’s annual omnibus bridge-and highway-naming bill, which is typically uncontroversial. Also included in the bill is language to name a stretch of Cimarron County highway in Midwest City after U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe.”

“President Donald J. Trump Highway will be a roughly 20-mile stretch of U.S. 287 from Boise City to the Oklahoma-Texas border in Cimarron County. The legislation was briefly derailed in the Oklahoma Legislature when Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, pointed out that state law says typically, a person must be dead for at least three years before a highway or bridge can be named in their honor. The only exception is for Medal of Honor recipients. Nevertheless, Republican legislators persisted. In an amendment to Senate Bill 624, they crossed out the three-year requirement currently in state law.”

Globe & Intelligencer:  The “Unified theory of fascism” begins with Dr. Karen Horney’s concept of the neurotic personality as being split between an idealized and actual self. The frustrated individual is bedeviled by his inability to meet the expectations of the society he lives in. In the case of Trump supporters, the most prominent area of failure has to do with traditional American expectations of the man’s role as the family breadwinner, and the general expectation of providing for a comfortable middle-class suburban lifestyle. It is undeniable that many parts of the United States have experienced economic hardship in the last few decades. Manufacturing plant closures and job loss have created difficult conditions for large numbers of Americans. It is not having that experience by itself that makes one neurotic, but how one responds to that stress that demonstrates the difference between the rational and mature individual, and the neurotic authoritarian.

The Tennesseean: “Seven people are presumed dead after a small plane crashed on Percy Priest Lake on Saturday, while it was heading from Smyrna to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida. Dive teams from local emergency agencies found human remains and pieces of the plane that crashed on Percy Warner Lake. According to the Federal Aviation Administration website, no one on that flight was qualified to fly the plane. Rutherford County government confirmed seven people on board on Saturday night’s flight, including William J. Lara, Gwen S. Lara, Jennifer J. Martin, David L. Martin, Jessica Walters, Jonathan Walters and Brandon Hannah. Gwen Lara, 66, was founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church and author of ‘The Weigh Down Diet,’ a program based on ‘helping people turn away from the love of food and toward a love of God,’ her website says.”

“Plane carrying Remnant Fellowship founder Gwen Shamblin Lara, other church leaders may have been heading to a MAGA rally with Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, one speaker’s Facebook post suggests” reports News Channel 5 Nashville’s Phil Williams.

“Helio Castroneves earned a major slice of Indy 500 history Sunday, becoming the fourth driver to win for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing for a fourth time,” reports NBC News.

“Castroneves, 45, joined Rick Mears, A.J. Foyt and Al Unser as a four-time winner at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, outdueling Alex Palou to win the 105th Indy 500. Castroneves, who also won the Indy 500 in 2001-02 and ’09, took the lead from Palou for the final time with two laps remaining in his No. 60 Dallara-Honda to score the first victory at the Brickyard for Meyer Shank Racing.”

“Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco convened the first meeting of the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force on Thursday, May 27th,” reports the Justice.gov website. “Launched earlier this month, the Task Force is marshaling the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across the federal government to enhance enforcement efforts against COVID-19 related fraud.”

“In launching the first meeting of the Task Force, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told the members that the “aim of the Task Force is to join forces against fraud and protect the integrity of government funds.'”

Wall Street Journal: “The Federal Reserve told Deutsche Bank AG in recent weeks that the lender is failing to address persistent shortcomings in its anti-money-laundering controls, according to people familiar with the matter. The Fed’s frustration has escalated to a point that the bank could be fined, the people said. Deutsche Bank has poured massive resources into addressing repeated shortcomings and penalties related to allowing suspect transactions. The Fed told Deutsche Bank that instead of making progress, the German lender with a large Wall Street presence is backsliding. The regulator has said that some of the anti-money-laundering control problems require immediate attention, according to the people.”

“A spokesman for Deutsche Bank said the bank doesn’t comment on dialogue with regulators. A spokesman for the Fed declined to comment. The Fed’s harsh words contrast with the bank’s message that it has worked diligently to improve its systems and has put most of its legal troubles in the past. The Fed’s latest warning comes four years after it classified Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations as being in ‘troubled condition,’ a rare rebuke for a major bank. In May 2020, it issued a fresh admonishment over the bank’s money-laundering controls. In 2020, Deutsche Bank also settled with New York’s Department of Financial Services over the bank’s role as a correspondent bank in one of Europe’s largest money-laundering scandals and for failing to properly monitor its dealings with late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”

Guidance issued by the EEOC on May 28th of 2021 addresses a number of issues regarding the rights and responsibilities of employers and concerns over employee health information during the Covid19 pandemic. One key item in the report is addressed as follows:

“Under the ADA, Title VII, and other federal employment nondiscrimination laws, may an employer require all employees physically entering the workplace to be vaccinated for COVID-19?”

Daily Beast: “Earlier this month, a lawyer for the busted Capitol rioter Anthony Antonio offered a remarkable defense for his client: It was Fox News’ fault. After losing his job during the pandemic, his lawyer argued, Antonio spent the next six months watching Fox News ‘constantly.’ In doing so, he developed ‘Foxitus,’ which caused him to believe Donald Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ lies and then storm the Capitol. While this defense has garnered loads of media attention for its novelty, a much more cynical courtroom defense involving Fox News and right-wing punditry has been largely overlooked. That defense, dubbed the ‘No Reasonable Person’ defense, has been made by a string of prominent conservatives, including Sidney Powell, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson. It argues that ‘no reasonable person’ would believe the statements they make, which ostensibly gives them the right to say whatever they want – no matter how reckless or untrue. The ‘No Reasonable Person’ defense is significant because it shows that conservative media stars and their networks, and even prominent conservative lawyers, are finally admitting that they are not reliable sources of facts: They are opportunists and entertainers, first and foremost.”

“Take Sidney Powell, Donald Trump’s former lawyer. In March, Powell sought to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation suit filed against her by Dominion Voting Systems. Her lawyers argued that ‘No reasonable person would conclude that the statements [Powell made] were truly statements of fact.’ The ‘statements’ the motion referred to were Powell’s claims that Dominion engaged in a widespread conspiracy to rig the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden – by, among other things, electronically switching votes cast for Trump to Biden. Those statements were repeated constantly by Fox News and other right-wing outlets, doing untold damage to our democracy by helping entrench the fallacy that the election was stolen (polls show most Republicans still believe this). As Orwellian as Powell’s defense sounds – she is a lawyer, after all – it was just the latest attempt by a prominent conservative to use this argument to avoid responsibility for making potentially libelous claims. Given the enormous influence Powell (by representing Trump) and these other conservative stars hold on the Republican electorate, the essence of the argument is jaw-dropping. They are arguing, in a court of law, that they should not be held accountable for their statements because most people should know that their statements are not true. Whether their viewers and listeners are ‘reasonable’ is another matter, but one need only look at Antonio and the Capitol riot to know that ludicrous, baseless statements are often widely believed.”

“Two people were killed and over 20 injured in a mass shooting in Miami early Sunday, the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a statement,” NBC News reports. “Three people got out of an SUV and ‘began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd,’ that were standing outside a ‘scheduled event’ at an establishment on 186th Street, in the Hialeah area to the west of Miami Gardens, the statement said. NBC’s Miami area station reported that the venue was a banquet hall, which was rented out for a concert.”

“Naftali Bennett will give a statement at 8PM local time and announce his intention to form a ‘change government’ with opposition leader Yair Lapid to oust Netanyahu” – Barak Ravid, Axios.

As a result of the offensive content and opinions shared by HatWRKS in Nashville, Stetson and our distribution partners will cease the sale of all Stetson products. We thank you for your continued support and patience.

— Stetson (@stetsonusa) May 29, 2021

“A woman who told Clive police she intentionally struck a 14-year-old with her SUV because the girl was Latina received a 25-year prison sentence after the girl’s father testified that the December 2019 attack had shaken his belief that his family was safe in the United States,” reports the Des Moines Register. “Nicole Poole Franklin, 43, of Des Moines, also received a concurrent 25-year sentence in Polk County Court for intentionally hitting a 12-year-old boy, who is Black, the same day in a rampage police said included yelling racial and ethnic slurs at a gas station employee.”

Politico: “The U.S. national security community is monitoring two Iranian naval vessels whose ultimate destination may be Venezuela, according to three people familiar with the situation, in what would be a provocative move at a tense moment in U.S.-Iran relations. An Iranian frigate and the Makran, a former oil tanker that was converted to a floating forward staging base, have been heading south along the east coast of Africa, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.”

“U.S. officials do not know for sure the destination of the Iranian ships, these officials said, but believe they may be ultimately headed for Venezuela. Iran’s intent in sending the vessels in the direction of the Western Hemisphere remains a mystery, the people said, as does their cargo. The two countries – both of them facing severe U.S. sanctions – have developed closer ties over the last few years, with cooperation ranging from gasoline shipments to joint car and cement factory projects. Senior officials in President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas have been advised that welcoming the Iranian warships would be a mistake, according to a person familiar with the discussions. But it’s not clear whether Maduro has heeded that warning: At one point on Thursday, U.S. military officials understood the ships had turned around, but as of Friday morning they were still steaming south, one of the people said.”

The QAnon crazies at the “Patriot Round Up” conference in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend are going at it in full-force, with claims that Donald Trump is not only still president, but that he will retake his (ahem) rightful position in the White House by evicting President Joe Biden.

“[Trump] can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set” said Sidney Powell, a lawyer who has lost every one of the lawsuits she’s brought regarding the November 2020 election and now faces a billion-dollar-plus lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.  “And Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump will be moved back in.”  (Video after the fold.)

Powell says that Trump would not get the time back that he lost while Biden was in office, curiously citing the Constitution which she’s ignored in her lawsuits. 

https://youtu.be/AZXdznf52Mw

Fox News host (and woman whose voice could remove wallpaper) Jeanine Pirro is convinced Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted a pandemic during the term of Donald Trump.  “He explicitly said President Donald Trump would face a crisis and a pandemic unlike anything we have seen. and she asks “Why didn’t Fauci develop a responsible method for this virus four years ago?”

Unfortunately for Jeanie, Fauci doesn’t say the pandemic would hit during the Trump Administration.  Fauci said “there will be a surprise outbreak.”  He didn’t say of what, or where, or even use the word pandemic.

“That comment alone should convince you that with his unique ability to predict a future pandemic and predict specifically during Presidents Trump’s [sic] term should frighten anyone,” Jeanie concludes.

“A lawsuit has been filed against Houston Methodist Hospital over its mandate for “requiring its employees to be injected with an experimental vaccine as a condition of employment,” according to the lawsuit, filed by attorney Jared R. Woodfill,” reports click2houston.com. “Woodfill said he is representing 117 workers who are included in the suit. The lawsuit states that for the first time in U.S. history, an employer is forcing its employees to be vaccinated “with an experimental COVID-19 mRNA gene modification injection” or be fired.”