April 13, 2022
Russian Brain Drain
The NY Times reports that tech workers began leaving Russia shortly after the invasion of Ukraine.
By March 22, a Russian tech industry trade group estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 tech workers had left the country and that an additional 70,000 to 100,000 would soon follow.
The tech workers are going to Armenia, "Georgia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other countries that accept Russian citizens without visas."
permalink | April 13, 2022 at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2022
British Climate Activist
The rigidity and closed-mindedness of Miranda Wheleha in this video is impressive. Her desired ends justify any means, even counter-productive means.
permalink | April 12, 2022 at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2022
When Egypt Welcomed The Glorious Mr. Putin
permalink | March 23, 2022 at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2022
Republican Candidate For California Secretary of State
California GOP Secretary of State candidate Rachel Hamm said today that she decided to run for office after her son found Jesus inside a closet in their home, and Jesus handed him a scroll telling her to declare her candidacy. pic.twitter.com/LdDLX1j8vS
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) March 18, 2022
“I’ve been a prophetic dreamer so I had spent a lot of 2019 and 20 having a lot of political dreams that I was in office,” said Hamm. “And because our youngest son Ezekiel is a seer I went and got him and I said, ‘Hey, can you look around and see what you’re seeing?’“Because I just really, I get a kick out of hearing him describe, you know, what he sees? And then he goes into the closet – which is where I had been when I was praying – and he said, ‘Whoa,’ and his eyes got like, big as saucers.
“And he kind of like started backing away, and then started bending down and he said, ‘You’ve got a really big guy in your closet, and his power is pushing me to the ground,’ and we had never had … he’d never had that reaction ever, to an angel.
“And so I’m like, is he’s for us, not against us, right? ‘He’s full of light, I can’t even see his face.’ And then he said, ‘and he has a scroll in his hand.’
“And so I was like, then he came with a message, what is the message, and the message was a commissioning. So at the very end, I asked him what his name was. ‘What angel is this?’ you know?
“And he said, ‘Immanuel,’ That wasn’t an angel. It wasn’t an angel that was Jesus himself. And so that’s why I’m running for secretary of state.”
Hamm has been endorsed by Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell.
permalink | March 21, 2022 at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2022
Proposed Voting District Maps For Desert Hot Springs
The agenda for thee March 15 City Council meeting is now available. Included in it are the two draft maps for voting districts in DHS. This is a link directly to that item in the agenda packet.
permalink | March 10, 2022 at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2022
Boebert Votes Against Veterans
From The Independent:
Lauren Boebert votes against bill for veterans dying from burn pits after ‘disrespectful’ SOTU heckling
The Republican congresswoman voted against the approval of the Honoring Our PACT Act on Thursday morning - saying no to supporting veterans returning from war sick and dying from toxic exposureRep Lauren Boebert voted against a bill to support US veterans sick and dying from toxic exposure to burn pits - just days after she heckled President Joe Biden as he spoke about the topic in his State of the Union address.
The Republican congresswoman cast her vote on Thursday morning [March 3, 2022] against passing the Honoring Our PACT Act, saying no to providing around 3.5 million veterans with access to healthcare and disability benefits after they served their country overseas.
This comes less than 48 hours after she sparked outrage among veterans, advocates and Democrat lawmakers for heckling President Joe Biden as he spoke about veterans suffering from exposure to burn pits in the SOTU on Tuesday night.
Despite Rep Boebert’s opposition, the bill sailed through the House anyway with lawmakers voting 256 to 174 in favour of its passage.
The bill gained some bipartisan support with 34 Republicans joining all the House Democrats in approving it.
permalink | March 3, 2022 at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
March 2, 2022
3,272 Breaches Of Trump's Border Wall
Smuggling gangs typically cut the barrier with inexpensive power tools widely available at retail hardware stores, including angle grinders and demolition saws. Once the 18-to-30-foot-tall bollards are severed near the ground, their only remaining point of attachment is at the top of the structure, leaving the steel beam dangling in the air. It easily swings open with a push, creating a gap wide enough for people and narcotics to pass through.
Video of a sawn-through bollard.
After smuggling crews cut through, they often disguise the breaches with tinted putty, making it difficult for agents to recognize which bollards have been compromised. The smugglers can return again and again to the site until the damage is detected, using the breach like a secret entrance.
permalink | March 2, 2022 at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2022
Lauren Boebert's Democratic Challenger
permalink | February 23, 2022 at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2022
Trump's Accounting Firm Drops Him
Mazars’ acknowledgment that the statements were fundamentally flawed was a potential blow to the Trump Organization as it attempts to fend off the long-running scrutiny of its finances. And for Mr. Trump, whose personal finances are intertwined with those of his family business and who has long faced questions about his taxes, Mazars is the latest in a long line of companies to break with him over the last year, following in the path of several banks, insurers and lawyers.
permalink | February 14, 2022 at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2022
The Speaker's Soup Police
Just to clear things up, @RepMTG
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) February 9, 2022
Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police pic.twitter.com/T9q76r706G
permalink | February 9, 2022 at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)
February 1, 2022
More Fine People From Temecula
The Press-Enterprise has a story of a racist couple who live in the Republican armpit of Riverside County. They were recorded making negative, ungrammatical remarks about Chinese people in front of some people they misperceived as Chinese. The internet went to work and quickly identified the man as Roger Miller, Director of Recreation and Golf in Coronado City. He appears to have been placed on leave. The woman is Sandra Miller who worked at Linfield Christian School in Temecula. She has been fired.
permalink | February 1, 2022 at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2022
The Thin Bread Crust
permalink | January 30, 2022 at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
The Danger!
One of the most disturbing and dangerous trends in America today is the nearly total elimination of REAL candles on restaurant tables and their replacement with FAKE electronic candles that turn on and off with a switch
— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) January 28, 2022
This must cease immediately
permalink | January 30, 2022 at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2022
Karen The Musical
Remix
permalink | January 29, 2022 at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2022
Who Were The January 6 Rioters?
Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago has collected data on the January 6 rioters in an attempt to profile them. He says the rioters were not fringe elements, but "mainstream" Republicans. Only 13% of those arrested are members of "skinhead gangs or prison gangs or militia groups or extremist groups, like the Proud Boys." Only 7% were unemployed, the national average. "[O]ver half of those who have been arrested are business owners, CEOs from white-collar occupations, doctors, lawyers, and architects." Two-thirds of them are over the age of 34. A quarter of those arrested have a college degree. While military veterans usually make up 40% of right-wing extremists, only about 15% of the rioters had military service. About 30% had prior criminal history, but that's less than half the usual rate among right-wing extremists.
52% of the rioters came from counties where Biden won the election.
Now, what else do those counties have in common? The No. 1 feature of the county sending insurrectionists, aside from simply the size of the population overall, is that these are the counties losing the most white population in the United States. The more counties have lost non-Hispanic white population since 2010—that is, between 2010 and 2020—the significantly more likely is the county to send an insurrectionist.
"There is a right-wing conspiracy theory called the great replacement, which says that white people are being overtaken by minorities and that this is going to cause a loss of rights for white people."
So Pape conducted a poll. He found "that 21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president. That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs. It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant."
Belief in the great replacement "is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic."
What we see is in the 21 million, the No. 1 set of news sources are conservative mainstream news sources. Forty-two percent of the 21 million report that it’s Fox News, Newsmax, One America. That’s their major source of news. The next set of sources, 32 percent report that it’s liberal or centrist media like CNN, NPR, NBC. You might say, well, wait a minute—how could that be? Well, just keep in mind that we’ve known for a long time as scholars that when you watch news that you disagree with, it makes you angry.
"Only 20 percent of these people report that their main sources are mainstream social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and only 10 percent report that it’s far right social media like Gab or Telegram."
permalink | January 4, 2022 at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)
December 31, 2021
"I guess I'm for democracy in other countries, I guess."
"I'm totally confused" -- Tucker Carlson wonder why the US would be allies with Ukraine instead of Russia, since Russia has more energy reservers. Rep. Mike Turner reminds him that we're supposed to be on the side of democracies. Carlson responds by saying, "I guess" pic.twitter.com/XIXfJXKsML
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 11, 2021
permalink | December 31, 2021 at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2021
Jesus of West Virginia
permalink | December 21, 2021 at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2021
Trump 2020
permalink | December 19, 2021 at 11:58 AM | Comments (1)
December 11, 2021
As Goes Texas
Gavin Newsom calls for bill modeled on Texas abortion ban to crack down on gun manufacturersCalifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday he will push for a new law modeled on Texas’ abortion ban that would let private citizens sue anyone who makes or sells assault weapons or ghost guns.
Newsom has excoriated the Texas law for limiting women’s access to abortion by allowing people to sue anyone who “aids or abets” one performed after about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Nevertheless, he said the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to let the law stay in effect while legal challenges proceed has opened an avenue for states to circumvent federal courts.
In a statement Saturday evening, Newsom pointed to a recent federal court decision to strike down California’s assault weapons ban. In his decision, a judge compared assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, language Newsom has harshly criticized.
“I am outraged by yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place,” Newsom said. “But if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”
Newsom said he will work with his staff, the Legislature and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to craft a bill that would let citizens sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts” in California. They could seek damages of at least $10,000 per violation plus costs and attorney’s fees, Newsom said.
“If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” said Newsom, a longtime advocate of strict gun control laws.
Legal experts had predicted that other states would try to copy the tactic used in the Texas abortion law, which attempts to circumvent legal challenges by giving private citizens the power to sue.
Arguing against her conservative colleagues’ decision to let the Texas law stand, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had warned their action would “clear the way” for other states to “reprise and perfect Texas’ scheme in the future to target the exercise of any right recognized by this court with which they disagree."
permalink | December 11, 2021 at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2021
Riverside County Supervisors Approve New Districts For Which They Will Be Sued And Lose
The Board of Supervisors approved "Map F" for the new supervisorial districts. Map F provides only one district (of five) with a majority Hispanic voting age population, despite the county's overall Hispanic voting age population of 45.5%. Their justification for this is that Map F avoids splitting some cities among two or even three districts.
Map F's numbers (highlighting added); click for greater readability.
