“A growing chorus of Democrats is calling on President Joe Biden to pull the plug on bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, arguing the talks are going nowhere fast and risk derailing major parts of his policy agenda. An advertisement funded by a coalition of liberal groups, whose leaders are close to the White House, putting pressure on Biden and Congress to include child care, paid leave and home care for the aging and disabled in the infrastructure package, was set to begin airing Thursday during primetime on CNN. The ad debuted the same day Republicans unveiled their latest counteroffer, which many Democrats critiqued as insufficient.”

“The coalition, made up of more than a dozen groups, is pushing Biden to take initiatives that are currently part of two separate proposals – known as the jobs and families plans – and fold them into one larger legislative package that Democrats could pass on a party-line vote in the Congress. ‘We certainly want the president to make the pivot with Congress to move this package, the entire package, forward quickly,’ Ai-jen Poo, director of Caring Across Generations and senior advisor to Care in Action, said in an interview. ‘His own timeline has sunsetted in terms of giving some space for the potential for a bipartisan solution here.’ Caring Across Generations is pushing for access to affordable long-term care for families, which Poo said should not be put into a secondary bill that includes Biden’s agenda for families. Care in Action advocates for domestic workers, including nannies and caregivers, and is paying for the commercial” – McClatchy.

The Times of London: “President Lukashenko of Belarus has threatened to allow migrants and drugs to pour into western Europe if sanctions are imposed on his regime for the forced landing of a Ryanair flight. European Union foreign ministers began talks in Lisbon yesterday on economic measures that could target the former Soviet state’s most important industries and its financial sector. Lukashenko, 66, warned Europe: ‘We stopped drugs and migrants. Now you will eat them and catch them yourselves.’

“NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned that the gunman who shot and killed nine VTA co-workers before committing suicide Wednesday was under investigation for allegedly making racist remarks to coworkers and was scheduled to attend a disciplinary hearing on the day of the attack. According to law enforcement sources, Samuel Cassidy, 57, had been the subject of recent complaints including accusations that he was making inappropriate racial remarks to colleagues while on the job as a station maintenance worker” – NBC Bay Area.

Axios: “A bill led by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) would increase the penalties for robocallers, including more prison time and stiffer fines. Americans are giving up on answering their phones because they are so plagued by robocalls. Masto on Thursday introduced the ‘Deter Obnoxious, Nefarious, and Outrageous Telephone (DO NOT) Call Act.'”

“The bill would clarify that violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act are punishable by prison terms of up to one year. Aggravated violations – such as more than 100,000 violations in a day or calls that lead to a loss of $5,000 in a year – can be punished by three years in prison. Increase maximum fines for falsifying caller ID from $10,000 to $20,000. Cosponsors are expected to include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). The senators previously introduced the legislation in 2019. There were an estimated 4.4 billion robocalls in April, according to data from robocall-blocking company YouMail.”

“Next month, the director of national intelligence, acting at the behest of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, is scheduled to release a report that collects from across the government all relevant material on what the officials now call ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’ Regardless of what ultimately emerges in this report – whether it’s a trove of blockbuster reveals or a disappointing dud – the mere prospect has catalyzed a wave of mainstream coverage of government UFO research, from the New Yorker to ’60 Minutes.’ A bewildering and still highly controversial subject has achieved a surprising level of public respectability as a national security concern.”

“In just the three years since the existence of the Pentagon UFO office was made public, the federal government has become increasingly less cagey about a subject that was mocked as absurd and feared as taboo; YouTube is now filled with cockpit videos from military pilots, some verified by the Pentagon, of strange encounters with objects that seem to defy known laws of aerodynamics. Just this month a video taken by the USS Omaha off the California coast in 2019 shows an identified spherical aircraft hovering over the water, before disappearing beneath the waves. Even Barack Obama has spoken recently about encounters ‘we can’t explain.’ The quarter-century saga stretching from Harry Reid’s first attendance at one of Bigelow’s NIDS meetings to the forthcoming release of once-secret documents offers a modern case study in how marginalized ideas can make their way into the mainstream” – Politico.

Reuters: “Japan was set on Friday to extend a state of emergency in Tokyo and other areas by about three weeks to June 20 as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of easing less than two months before the Summer Olympics open. The state of emergency in the capital and eight other prefectures had been scheduled to end on May 31, but strains on the medical system remain severe. Japan has seen a record number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition in recent days, even as the number of new infections has slowed.”

“‘In Osaka and Tokyo, the flow of people is starting to creep up, and there are concerns that infections will rise,’ Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who also heads the country’s coronavirus countermeasures, said at the start of a meeting with experts. The experts later approved the government proposal and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is expected to officially announce the extensions later on Friday. Worries about variants of the novel coronavirus and a slow vaccination drive have prompted urgent calls from doctors, some high-profile business executives, and hundreds of thousands of citizens to cancel the Olympic Games, due to start on July 23.”

The four-pound Ingenuity helicopter, NASA’s first extraterrestrial airborne rover, hit a snag in its sixth flight on Mars when a photo taken by the aircraft didn’t register with the navigation system, causing the copter to sway back and forth in the air, NBC News reports.

Ingenuity was around 33 feet in the air as it flew, using landmarks on the ground as waypoints as it flew a planned flight of 705 feet.  The error occurred about a minute into the flight, causing Ingenuity to tilt back and forth about 20 degrees off center and causing power spikes as the copter was around 215 feet from its planned destination.

Even with the flight error, the aircraft was still able to land 16 feet from its target, Havard Grip, the helicopter’s chief pilot, posted online.  A built-in system to provide extra margin for stability “came to the rescue,” he wrote.

In an apparent hate crime, stickers bearing the Nazi swastika and the words “WE ARE EVERYWHERE” were placed on the doors of the Alaska Jewish Museum and a gay bar in the Anchorage early Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reports.

Security cameras show a man wearing a hood and a mask putting a sticker on the glass door of the Alaska Jewish Museum at around 2:00 a.m. Tuesday.  About 45 minutes later, a camera caught the same individual putting a duplicate sticker on the front door of Mad Myrna’s, a gay bar in downtown Anchorage.

“What that sticker symbolizes is hate,” Anchorage police spokesperson MJ Thim told The Associated Press. “And we’re not going to stand for it, and there’s no place for it. And we’re going to investigate it and figure out what this is all about.”

For former Secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security–two who served under Democrats and two, Republicans–released a letter Thursday calling on the Senate to vote to form a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.

As CNN reports, the statement was signed by by former Homeland Security Secretaries Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, who served under George W. Bush; and Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson, who served under Barack Obama.

The letter says that “we must understand how the violent insurrection at the Capitol came together to ensure the peaceful transfer of power in our country is never so threatened again.”

“Breaking News! Massive numbers of dead people ‘voted’ in the 2020 Presidential Election, far greater than anyone has known or seen before. Some of these ‘dead people’ even applied for an application to vote. This is just one of the many fraudulent aspects of the 2020 Presidential Election. People are just now beginning to understand!” – Yet another post from the Fat Bastard.

Just sixteen Republican Senators held meetings Thursday with the mother and life partner of slain Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick to discuss their desire to have a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, the Washington Post reports.

Of the sixteen meetings, a number of Republicans sent staff to meeting with Gladys Sicknick and Sandra Garza.  Two police officers who were at the Capitol during the insurrection attempt, D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone and the U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, also accompanied Sicknick and Garza.

“That’s why I’m here today,” Sicknick told reporters on trying to lobby Republican Senators to investigate the coup attempt. “You know, usually I stay in the background, and I just couldn’t — I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.”

“Almost but not quite a decade ago, researchers from UC Berkeley equipped a little robotic car with an actuated metal rod with a weight on the end and used it to show how lizards use their tails to stabilize themselves while jumping through the air. That research inspired a whole bunch of other tailed mobile robots, including a couple of nifty ones from Amir Patel at the University of Cape Town,” reports IEEE Spectrum.

“The robotic tails that we’ve seen are generally actuated inertial tails: a moving mass that goes one way causes the robot that it’s attached to to go the other way. This is how lizard tails work, and it’s a totally fine way to do things. In fact, people generally figured that many if not most other animals that use their tails to improve their agility leverage this inertial principle, including (most famously) the cheetah. But at least as far as the cheetah was concerned, nobody had actually bothered to check, until Patel took the tails from a collection of ex-cheetahs and showed that in fact cheetah tails are almost entirely fluff. So if it’s not the mass of its tail that helps a cheetah chase down prey, then it must be the aerodynamics.”

New York Times: “Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump’s favor, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The criminal investigation, which began during the final months of the Trump administration and has not been previously reported, underscores the federal government’s increasingly aggressive approach toward rooting out foreign interference in American electoral politics.”

“Much of that effort is focused on Russian intelligence, which has suspected ties to at least one of the Ukrainians now under investigation. The investigation is unfolding separately from a long-running federal inquiry in Manhattan that is aimed at Mr. Giuliani. While the two investigations have a similar cast of characters and overlap in some ways, Mr. Giuliani is not a subject of the Brooklyn investigation, the people said. Instead, the Brooklyn prosecutors, along with the F.B.I., are focused on current and former Ukrainian officials suspected of trying to influence the election by spreading unsubstantiated claims of corruption about Mr. Biden through a number of channels, including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time. It is unclear whether the Brooklyn prosecutors will ultimately charge any of the Ukrainians. At one point in the investigation, the authorities examined a trip Mr. Giuliani took to Europe in December 2019, when he met with several Ukrainians, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry.”

The trial of former “That 70’s Show” star Danny Masterson has featured testimony from members or ex-members of Scientology who explained how the cult/religion worked to cover up the crimes of their members, particularly their high-profile adherents.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Masterson is accused of multiple rapes, some dating as far back as 2001.  The Church had accusers followed by private investigators, had one victim sign a statement saying was she was at fault for the attack, and silenced another by threatening to isolate her from her family forever.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo stated the group has “an expressly written doctrine” that “not only discourages, but prohibits” its members from reporting one another to law enforcement.

Sounds like the Bern is a tough customer. Just wait until Newsmax hears about that one guy who demands to be able to hear his own personal mini-bottle of Heinz ketchup pop when it’s being unsealed by his server. And has a seven step guide on how to serve him Diet Coke that includes the words “Do not deviate”. I’m sure they’ll be all over that one.

In 2016, US Customs agents detained Samuel James Cassidy, the man who reportedly shot and killed nine people at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority on Wednesday, because he possessed books and information on terrorism and fear, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Cassidy also possessed a manifest in which he described his hatred of his workplace and coworkers, according to a memo released by the Department of Homeland Security.  He possessed “books about terrorism and fear and manifestos…as well as a black memo book filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA” when he returned to the United States from the Philippines.

Customs and Border Protection detained Cassidy and questioned him, but according to the memo, he declined to admit having any significant issues with his coworkers.

The WSJ could not determine if the memo was shared with any local law enforcement or with his employer.

St Louis Post-Dispatch: “A Missouri lawmaker allegedly used his position as a cop to receive a ‘sexual favor’ from an intoxicated teenage girl in 2015 and his boss, the Pike County sheriff, is accused of attempting to obstruct a probe as the deputy ran for a seat in the Legislature last year, the Post-Dispatch has learned. According to a report obtained from Frankford Police Chief Josh Baker in response to an open records request, state Rep. Chad Perkins, a Bowling Green Republican, allegedly accepted ‘sexual favors from a teenage girl while on duty’ as a police officer.”

“The report said the Pike County prosecutor, as well as state and federal investigators have been alerted to the allegations. The speaker of the Missouri House, Rep. Rob Vescovo, R-Arnold, also has been notified of the incident. The speaker forwarded the information to the House Ethics Committee. In an April 19 memo that was attached to the report, Baker writes to Vescovo, and officials working for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the attorney general’s office and the Peace Officer Standards & Training Program. ‘I implore your offices to investigate this ongoing criminal activity,’ he said. Perkins, 42, is a freshman lawmaker who was elected to the northeast Missouri House seat in 2020. He represents parts of Ralls, Monroe, Lincoln, and Pike counties. Perkins said his relationship with the 19-year-old was consensual and the controversy is the product of a local political feud over his decision to not publicly endorse Baker’s wife in her bid for Pike County assessor in the 2020 election. ‘There is no victim. There’s nothing to that. It was just political sour grapes because I wouldn’t help his wife out,’ Perkins said.”

“As expected, Bashar Al-Assad wins Syrian presidential elections by 95.1%. He will now rule Syria for another seven years until 2028” reports The Public Source’s Kareem Chehayeb.

National news is a tough racket. The outfits with the resources and expertise to report original items have a lofty position as the ones breaking the news. It’s probably only a slight exaggeration to say that 95% of the news from DC comes from the Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, AP, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Daily Beast, and Axios. The same with New York City to the extent that it remains a base of power for Trump’s minions and as the nation’s media and finance capital. Everything flows from those sources, both laterally – as in NBC writes an original article based on a report in the NYT, ABC breaks something and Axios picks it up, etc – and through percolation – RawStory publishes an article from a Washington Post investigation, The Hill does the same with a CNN report, etc.

Now just because those players dominate the most important sectors does not mean they’re the only game in town as far as content aggregation goes – there’s local papers and TV affiliates, blogs aplenty, not to mention the social media posts and press releases by the players in the news themselves. But when we’re talking about the biggest story of the year, the one that has not happened yet, it’s going to come from one of those top dogs and then everyone else will rush in a frenzy to be second place. It’s that silver medal, the bragging rights that would come with it, and the fear of not having them that’s driving my anxiety these days.