Oligarchy defined: The most powerful corporations in America get together to plan how to control legislation in dozens of states https://t.co/SO5XOb2n43

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) April 12, 2021

“A Florida woman who claimed she is Harry Potter fatally struck a federal judge visiting from New York and seriously injured a 6-year-old boy after swerving her car onto a sidewalk, officials said. The crash occurred Friday morning in Boca Raton, Florida. According to multiple reports, U.S. District Judge Sandra Feuerstein was walking on a sidewalk when a car driven by Nastasia Andranie Snape struck her. The car continued, striking and injuring a 6-year-old boy crossing the street. The boy, Anthony Ovchinnikov, was taken to the hospital, but his condition Sunday could not be determined. The 23-year-old Snape was charged with vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a crash involving death. Feuerstein had served as a federal judge in New York’s Eastern District since 2003. She was based at the federal courthouse in Central Islip on Long Island. Feuerstein was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush after 16 years as a New York state judge, according to Eastern District website. The court’s jurisdiction covers Long Island, including Brooklyn and Queens, along with Staten Island.”

“Police say that in the ambulance, Snape began screaming and fighting with medics while yelling she is Harry Potter. The medics drugged her. Police say they found in her purse the synthetic drug commonly known as ‘bath salts,’ which can cause psychotic episodes. Police say Snape then fled into neighboring Delray Beach, where she crashed. A Delray police officer said Snape appeared to be having convulsions, but was able to get out of the car. She stared into space and would only say she was OK. She remained jailed Sunday on $60,000 bond. The Palm Beach County public defender’s office was not open Sunday and has a policy of not speaking about its cases” – WNBC.

Politico: “A senior Trump health official’s bid to become the first administration alumnus elected to Congress is running into resistance from an unlikely source: his own former colleagues. Brian Harrison, a chief of staff to former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, has angered a swath of Trump White House and HHS political appointees with his ‘America First’-style campaign in the special election for a Dallas-area House seat, prompting complaints that he’s inflating his record and trying to co-opt Trump’s brand. A first-time candidate who helped run a labradoodle-breeding family business prior to joining the Trump administration, Harrison has sought to break out of a crowded Republican field by casting himself as a key driver of Trump’s agenda, touting his role in the administration’s Covid vaccine development effort and taking credit for a series of anti-abortion and deregulatory policies.”

“But the 38-year-old’s claims have reignited rivalries that raged throughout much of the Trump years, putting Harrison at odds with former White House and health officials who viewed him more as a driver of internal conflicts that hampered Trump’s health care ambitions, according to nearly a dozen former administration officials. The campaign has prompted one top Trump HHS official, Roger Severino, to endorse one of Harrison’s opponents, amid what three former officials described as frustration with Harrison running on the kinds of anti-abortion policies that Severino’s office worked on and struggled at times to convince department leaders to finalize. Others have worked furiously behind the scenes to counter Harrison’s campaign, going as far as to urge Trump not to weigh in on Harrison’s behalf as the special election hits its stretch run. ‘There are people close to the president reminding him not to endorse Brian Harrison,’ a former White House official said. ‘There’s no MAGA candidate in that race.’ Harrison said he’s raised more than $600,000 ahead of the May 1 election to fill the seat vacated by the late Rep. Ron Wright, who died in February after contracting coronavirus. It’s a sum he expressed confidence would help catapult him to the top of a 23-candidate field that includes 11 Republicans, including Wright’s widow, Susan Wright.”

This is a total lie.

I am on a pre-planned vacation with my fiancée. I was welcomed at Trump Doral days ago.

No such meeting was denied nor sought.

Gabby, “unnamed sources” lied.

When can we expect a retraction? https://t.co/6oaW7JlXUt

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) April 12, 2021

Some points:  no one said Gaetz wasn’t allowed to speak at Doral; the story is that Gaetz was denied a meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago; and if Gaetz was on a “pre-planned vacation” with his soon-to-be-ex fiancee, why did he alter everything to do a speaking engagement at a Trump property?

https://youtu.be/XR-U1PGQz3k

Fox News weekend host and lead singer in a Kentucky-based Midnight Oil tribute band Steve Hilton slammed leaders of American corporations who participated in a conference call to find ways to defend voting rights in the United States what’s wrong with America, apparently thinking capitalism is somehow responsible for Republicans suppressing the right to vote.

Two weeks after the disclosure that he allegedly paid for sex with underaged girls and reportedly supplied them with drugs, embattled Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz was rejected when he requested a meeting with Donald Trump, CNN reports.

Gaetz spoke to a gathering of women supporting Trump at Trump’s Doral country club on Friday, and apparently sought to meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  Before the request even made it to Trump, aides rejected the request.

So goes the GOP cancelation of Matt Gaetz, from whom Republicans, including Trump, are distancing themselves.  In listing Republican supporters during a meeting of high-dollar GOP donors at Mar-a-Lago Saturday, Trump named people like Kristi Noem, Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis.  He failed to mention Gaetz, one of his most vocal supporters.

https://youtu.be/PtNO3zzex7U

During a “60 Minutes” interview, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell said that the US economy is ready for acceleration in growth and job creation, but that the one unknown that could greatly adversely impact a recovery is a new wave of coronavirus infections, according to CNN.

“What we’re seeing now is really an economy that seems to be much at an inflection point.  And that’s because of widespread vaccination and strong fiscal support, strong monetary policy support. We feel like we’re at a place where the economy’s about to start growing much more quickly and job creation coming in much more quickly,” Powell said.  “But that’s only if there isn’t another wave of COVID-19.  The principal risk to our economy right now really is that the disease would spread again. It’s going to be smart if people can continue to socially distance and wear masks.”

The planned nationwide rallies for the non-existent “White Lives Matter” movement coordinated for white nationalists largely failed to materialize around the nation, with the only one making any news coverage happening at the Huntington Beach Pier in California.

According to the Los Angeles Times, two people were arrested as several hundred people from opposing sides–the minority being in support of the white nationalists–gathered at the pier as local police and other law enforcement stood by in case violence broke out.

The Huntington Beach rally, which attracted Trump supporters and white nationalists on one side with hundreds of sane people on the other, was supposed to start at 1 p.m. local time, but people started gathering around 11 a.m.  By 2 p.m., the groups had dissipated, with scattered arguments between individuals popping up. 

Soaking up gallons of water in an otherwise arid environment, patches of grass that speckle the landscape in Las Vegas use up 14 gallons of water per person per day–15% of the water consumption in the area.

But the city water officials want to change that by banning ornamental grasses, becoming the first large municipality in the nation to undertake the measure to preserve water in a desert region, ABC News reports.  The ban would not impact grass grown for sports fields or parks, but it would require the removal and replacement of a total of eight square miles of grasses on areas people don’t walk on like office parks and highway median strips.

“The public perception outside of Las Vegas is certainly much different — and has been for a long time — than the water conservation ethic within the community,” said Colby Pellegrino, Southern Nevada Water Authority water resources director.

Otter Globe & Intelligencer: A collection of documents recently released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reveals that Trump Administration appointees may be vulnerable to Federal criminal conspiracy charges for bullying and threatening scientists, in an effort to promote conservative narratives and increase Donald J. Trump’s re-election prospects.  This article will provide a brief outline of how the actions of Trump Administration officials appear to have violated multiple sections of the US Title Code.  The sections cited in this article are:

• 18 USC § 371: Conspiracy to defraud the government
• 18 USC § 595: Interference by administrative employees of Federal, State or Territorial Governments

These charges apply to actions by three Trump appointees: Dr. Paul Atlas, Dr. Steven Alexander, and Dr. Steven Hatfill.

Now that the Trump Administration is over, it’s time to examine the actions of corrupt Trump appointees, and realize that what we took for granted as just part of everyday life in the Trump Administration were in fact serious criminal offenses worthy of time in Federal prison. We should not allow crimes to go unpunished because the criminals employed a “firehose of felonies” approach and exhausted all of us with their lawlessness. Trump appointees at the CDC very clearly manipulated government publications regarding the Coronavirus, and it’s quite obvious from the timing and context of their statements that they were seeking to promote conservative media themes and improve Trump’s re-election prospects. These are crimes that constitute defrauding the United States government for the purpose of using Federal government agencies to improperly promote a political candidate. These are not things that should be ignored, or left unpunished.

The Iranian government claims a “terrorist attack” on its key nuclear research facility at Natanz disabled parts of the facility a day after Iran announced that it would bring 150 uranium-enriching centrifuges would be brought back online, CNN reports.

“Today’s attack demonstrates that the enemies of Iran’s progress and advancement in nuclear science, as well as nuclear negotiations, are in desperation committing terrorist actions against the nuclear technology at Natanz,” Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization told the state news agency.

Iran has stated that it would reopen parts of its nuclear research and development program after Donald Trump unilaterally violated the agreement by implementing sanctions against Iran even though his administration acknowledge Iran was in technical compliance with a multinational agreement negotiated by the Obama Administration.

More than 100 leaders of some of the largest corporations in the United States held a conference call on Saturday to review their responses to Republican efforts to pass voter suppression laws through various GOP-led state legislatures, the Washington Post reports.

Corporate officers from airlines, retailers and manufacturers, as well as at least one NFL team owner, joined the call according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor, one of the people who organized the call.

The discussions revolved around withholding corporate donations to Republican candidates and their affiliated PACs to promoting get-out-the-vote efforts to withdrawing operations from states that pass such legislation.

https://youtu.be/U71DGwGVVYs

Fox News host Chris Wallace stunned Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott by pointing out that for all the complaining about the conditions children are being subjected to in detainment facilities in the past three months Abbott has made, Wallace could find no record of Abbott making any similar complaints during the entirety of the Trump administration, when thousands of children were separated from their families and similar charges of abuse were made.

Pastor Gregory Locke of Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, a crazy asshole who was in the news more than a few times over the last year with his refusal to reduce in-person services during the Coronavirus pandemic, talking about Bible stuff on the stage on Sunday.

“Some of the donors left last night before Trump finished speaking at Mar-a-Lago for a bus back to the hotel, per attendee, and the remarks have gotten mixed reviews. ‘There was nothing new. It was just the greatest hits,’ one person at the event said. ‘And it was really nasty'”: Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey on the Orange God Emperor’s Saturday night speech.

New York Times: “She burst into the hospital morgue and the bodies were everywhere, about a dozen of them in black bags on stretchers. She headed straight for the autopsy room, pleading with the guard in a black jacket: ‘Can I speak to the doctor who opened up my father?’ Olga Kagarlitskaya’s father had been hospitalized weeks earlier in a coronavirus ward. Now he was gone, cause of death: ‘viral pneumonia, unspecified.’ Ms. Kagarlitskaya, recording the scene on her smartphone, wanted to know the truth. But the guard, hands in pockets, sent her away.”

“There were thousands of similar cases across Russia last year, the government’s own statistics show. At least 300,000 more people died last year during the coronavirus pandemic than were reported in Russia’s most widely cited official statistics. Not all of those deaths were necessarily from the virus. But they belie President Vladimir V. Putin’s contention that the country has managed the virus better than most. In reality, a New York Times analysis of mortality data shows deaths in Russia during the pandemic last year were 28 percent higher than normal – an increase in mortality greater than in the United States and most countries in Europe.”

One of the methods that politicians in trouble sometimes use is the publication of polls that show they enjoy a high level of support in their home state or district.  The theory behind this practice is the use of the “bandwagon effect”, politicians hope that their voters will see the claims of strong support from the community, and decide that passing scandal really isn’t so bad, and they should ignore all of the bad news and continue supporting their guy.  Child sex trafficking suspect and FL-1 House Representative Matt Gaetz has just provided the country with an excellent example of how politicians use this kind of tactic.

On April 10th at 8:52 pm Matt Gaetz published a tweet with the suspicious claim that “I had no role in commissioning this poll, but the results do not surprise me.”  The poll that he linked to claimed, among other things that over 63% of FL-1 residents do not believe he is guilty, and over 71% don’t believe he should resign.  The poll specifically mentioned that 8% of respondents don’t think he should resign even if he is guilty.  The poll then makes several claims regarding the possibility of the GOP nomination in FL-1 going to other candidates, but then cautions that other candidates should tread cautiously, as most Republicans in the district don’t believe Gaetz should resign.

Charlie Sykes: “Even after the lunacy of the past four years, the GOP’s recent behavior is jaw-dropping, an extraordinary transformation that feels like the Republican Party has experienced some sort of bizarre brain swap. After years as the pro-business party, Republicans have formed an anti-corporate chorus. Republicans who only recently railed about ‘cancel culture,’ now loudly demand the cancellation of critics, opponents and politically incorrect foes. The GOP’s enemies list now ranges from Major League Baseball, to Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS and Merck, not to mention state election officials who refused to help Donald Trump overturn the election, and the handful of sitting Republicans who had the temerity to vote to impeach him.”

“During the Trump era, we’ve already seen how Republicans who once embraced free trade are now committed protectionists. The party that insisted that ‘character matters’ in the 1990s, decided that nothing mattered after Trump came along. Republicans cared deeply about deficits and debts… until they lost interest. A party that prided itself on its patriotism has made its peace with a seditious insurrection, and now finds itself attacking the national pastime. It’s a head-shaking display of ideological malleability that seems like a rejection of every principle that conservatives held dear. The reality is that the GOP’s working-class war against corporate America is neither a war, nor working class, nor especially anti-corporate. Like almost everything else in Republican politics these days, the GOP-corporate slap fight is more performative than substantive. And everyone involved knows it.”

“Lawyer for Tommy Webster, retired NYPD cop accused of beating an MPD officer with flagpole on January 6th, says his client is in a ‘dormitory setting’ with people serving time for ‘inner-city crimes’ – ‘for a middle aged guy whose never been arrested before this has been a shock for him’. Webster has a ‘sparkling record’ with the NYPD which led to ‘the lofty assignment of protecting the mayor,’ attorney says – but if he won’t be released he wants him moved back to jail in upstate New York (He’s not in D.C., where riot detainees are in a separate wing, causing friction on both sides – like others arrested elsewhere he’s been moved around the country on the way to D.C.)” reports the Washington Post’s Rachel Wiener.