[Powerline] Burt Bacharach was of course the incredibly inventive composer in the legendary songwriting partnership with lyricist Hal David. Bacharach died yesterday at the age of 94. Stephen Holden’s New York Times obituary provides an excellent short course in the fruits of their partnership. I would like to quote Auden’s great elegy of Yeats: "What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/09/2023 12:17 ||
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#1
Take five. Yes, saw him once performing next door to the academy in Annapolis. Reminds me of Leon Redbone who also liked to perform in small locations(venues).
Songs that he co-wrote which have topped the Billboard Hot 100 include "This Guy's in Love with You" (1968), "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (1969), "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (1970), "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" (1981), and "That's What Friends Are For" (1986).
[Blaze] A man who died shortly after his guilty verdict was read inside a Texas courtroom last year committed suicide by consuming a toxic level of a common food preservative, a new report says.
On August 11, 2022, 57-year-old Edward Leclair was standing inside a courtroom in Denton, Texas. He was on trial for five counts of child sexual abuse. After just three and a half hours of deliberation, the jury had settled on a verdict: guilty. As the judge read the verdict, Leclair reportedly began to "chug" what appeared to be a "cloudy" liquid inside a water bottle.
Moments later, the bailiff found Leclair unconscious in his holding cell. Leclair was quickly rushed to the Medical City Denton hospital, where he was pronounced dead just before 3 p.m. that same day.
Now, a new report from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office has determined a cause of death. The "cloudy" liquid Leclair drank turned out to be sodium nitrite partially dissolved in water. Though sodium nitrite is a fairly common substance, often used as a food preservative for meat, large quantities of it can cause low blood pressure and limit the flow of oxygen throughout the body.
And nitrites become nitrosamines, a known carcinogen. Not that he need worry about it any longer.
#3
At the least, it saved the Texas Taxpayers $25,000+ a year to house him. Plus, likely 100's of 1000's in medical bills needed to keep patching him up if he was placed in general population.
But he could have / should have done it before the trial and also saved as much $$$$, w/o wasting everyone's time.
.
#9
Isn't that the stuff they use on processed meats?
Yes, indeed, mossomo. Nitrates and nitrites. Nitrates convert to nitrites, which when exposed to heat convert to nitrosamines; this was the reason my cancer researching father gave for refusing to buy a grill. Nitrosamines also turn up in tobacco products in large enough quantities to be a concern.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/09/2023 13:33 Comments ||
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#4
Its a beautiful looking game. I don't know the difference between Pifflewheel and Mervgriffondale and I want to play. The Killjoys have made me a participant; is next giving Kerbal 2 the business for not having vagina shaped rockets?
[NYPOST] Skin flick icon Ron Jeremy has been committed to a state mental hospital in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, after being found incompetent to stand trial on rape and other charges.
Jeremy, 69, whose real name is Ron Jeremy Hyatt, can be held for up to two years,
California has public mental hospitals with beds enough and capability to hold and treat patients for more than a few days? How did that happen?
Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Greg Risling said Tuesday.
A hearing on the 5-foot-6 actor’s progress is scheduled for May 8.
Jeremy has pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." after being hit with 30 counts of rape and other sexual misconduct stemming from incidents in the LA area over a 23-year period.
In January, Superior Court Judge Ronald Harris ruled that Jeremy was not competent to assist in his defense, according to his lawyer, Stuart Goldfarb, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rooters on Tuesday.
"When he was arrested two years ago, I said he would be found innocent of all charges," Goldfarb told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named in an email last month.
"Two years have passed and with the additional discovery I received, I believed he would have been found innocent. It is unfortunate due to mental condition he will not go to trial and have the opportunity to clear his name," he added.
Heavily populated cities such as New York and L.A. would be primary targets - but more rural areas also at risk
Idaho, Maine, parts of northern California and Oregon are 'safe' zones, according to FEMA hotspot map of US
READ MORE: US stocks up on $300m worth of radiation sickness drug
These are the nuclear 'hotspots' across America that could be targeted in the event of a thermonuclear war, according to the government.
While heavily populated cities like New York and Los Angeles may seem like the most likely US targets, there are other, more strategic targets in states such as Montana or North Dakota to wipe out the US's retaliatory forces.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) originally released the map of the areas most likely to be targeted in 2015
Oh?
- but it has resurfaced on social media again as the West teeters on the brink of conflict with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Ah. I wondered.
The map shows potential targets in every state, with dense clusters along the eastern seaboard and in California. Particularly large clusters are also highlighted in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Active nuclear power plants are large targets. There are around 90 active nuclear plants in the United States, including plants in Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a 'safe' place to live, consider parts of Idaho, Maine, northern California, and Oregon, where the lack of nuclear plants and more sparse populations make them less likely targets.
The US has strategically positioned nuclear forces, which could be prime nuclear targets, far from population centers. There are ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile silos), naval and air force bases, and nuclear storage depots scattered across the country.
Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, says there are six US cities that are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack. New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC are prime targets, not only because of their dense populations but because of critical infrastructure such as financial centers, government buildings, and energy plants. Other cities and metro areas that could be likely targets include Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
#6
Looks like my neighborhood is good, so we can continue to sabotage infrastructure and shovel armaments into the war zone. If they start targeting Dollar Tree locations, I am going to be more of an advocate for a negotiated settlement, especially if Circle K locations become part of the attack algorithm.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/09/2023 12:48 Comments ||
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#7
Like NN21, it was 20 miles as the crow flies to the center of a major USAF base. About 25 to major transcontinental rail and interstate highway bridges plus the state capitol. A different era.
#10
A little blowby from hitting LM in Ft. Worth.
Dallas they can have. Prevailing summer winds will take the cloud north into the Choctaw/Chickasaw/Cherokee nations. Winter winds, Austin and Houston, so no great loss.
[IsraelTimes] The death toll from the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday climbed above 15,000 by Wednesday, according to authorities, as rescuers raced to save survivors trapped under debris in freezing weather.
Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and 2,992 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 15,383. Tens of thousands more were injured.
Rescue teams in Turkey and Syria have been searching for signs of life from an untold number of people trapped in the rubble. Teams from more than two dozen countries, including Israel, have joined tens of thousands of local emergency personnel in the effort. But the scale of destruction from the quake and its powerful aftershocks was so immense and spread over such a wide area that many people were still awaiting help.
Experts said the survival window for those trapped under the rubble or otherwise unable to obtain basic necessities was closing rapidly. At the same time, they said it was too soon to abandon hope.
“The first 72 hours are considered to be critical,” said Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University in England. “The survival ratio on average within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22% and by the fifth day it is 6%.”
Rescuers at times used excavators or picked gingerly through debris. It was not clear how many people might still be trapped.
David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, said data from past earthquakes suggested the likelihood of survival was now slim, particularly for seriously injured individuals.
“Statistically, today is the day when we’re going to stop finding people,” he said on Wednesday. “That doesn’t mean we should stop searching.”
Alexander cautioned that the final death toll may not be known for weeks because of the sheer amount of rubble. The earthquake’s toll has already outstripped that of a 7.8-magnitude quake in Nepal in 2015, when 8,800 died. A 2011 earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000 people.
Many of those who survived this week’s quake lost their homes and were forced to sleep in cars, government shelters, or outdoors amid rain and snowfall in some areas.
“We don’t have a tent, we don’t have a heating stove, we don’t have anything. Our children are in bad shape,” Aysan Kurt, 27, said. “We did not die from hunger or the earthquake, but we will die freezing from the cold.”
Temperatures in the quake-stricken Turkish city of Gaziantep plunged to minus five degrees Celsius early Thursday but thousands of families spent the night in cars and makeshift tents — too scared or banned from returning to their homes.
[HodhodYemenNews] The corpse count from the devastating earthquake in Syria has risen to 2,500 deaths and 4,885 injuries across the country, in an ongoing toll, according to the counter’s Ministry of Health on Wednesday.
The ministry said in a statement that the number of victims in Hama province rose to 51 deaths and 73 injuries, and in Lattakia to 506 deaths and 792 injuries, in an indefinite toll. In addition, they counted 390 deaths and 750 injuries in Aleppo, and in the city of Jableh, the corpse count reached 254 deaths and 171 injuries.
The Syrian Minister of Health, Hassan al-Ghabbash, said: "The ambulance response cadres raced against time to the accident sites, carrying over 600 health personnel with various specialties."
Moreover, the number of collapsed buildings reached 102 buildings in Lattakia and 54 in Aleppo.
Meanwhile, ...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth had turned a paler shade of blue. Star-A-Star had struck again... the so-called Civil Defense (White Helmets) also announced that the corpse count from the earthquake in the terrorist groups-held northwestern Syrian areas has risen to more than 1,280 deaths and more than 2,600 injured, and the number is expected to rise significantly due to the presence of hundreds of families under the rubble.
The National Seismological Center reported that an earthquake measuring 4.5 degrees on the Richter scale struck at 9:09 am on Wednesday in the Iskenderun district, 48 km north of Syria.
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
A minor 4.2-magnitude quake struck an area five kilometers south of Hermel and was felt in the Bekaa, the Nort... https://t.co/V6ggLnkQUr
[NYPOST] The corpse count from the earthquake that devastated The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... and Syria surpassed 11,000 Wednesday as rescuers toiled through the night in frigid temperatures in a frantic — and increasingly desperate — race against time to find survivors.
The tally was expected to rise even higher as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep in their beds when the initial 7.8 magnitude quake hit in the early morning on Monday.
Turkey’s President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than there are in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really most important... announced that the corpse count in the country has reached 8,754 as he visited a "tent city" in Kahramanmaras where people left homeless by the disaster are living.
Speaking to news hounds, with constant ambulance sirens in the background, Erdogan acknowledged there had been problems early on in the response but vowed that everything would get better by the day and that no one would "be left in the streets."
[Dawn] Afghanistan’s Taliban ...Arabic for students... administration will send around $165,000 in aid to Turkiye and Syria to help the response to a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck this week, according to a foreign ministry statement.
Afghanistan is in the grips of a severe economic and humanitarian crisis and is itself the location of one of the United Nation’s largest humanitarian aid programs.
The Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew, sparking enforcement of sanctions on its banking sector, and no capital has formally recognised its government.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ... announces a relief package of 10 million Afghanis ($111,024) and 5 million Afghanis ($55,512) to Turkiye and Syria respectively on the basis of shared humanity and Islamic brotherhood," a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement said late on Tuesday.
The corpse count from the huge tremor in southern Turkiye and Syria had jumped to more than 8,300 lives on Wednesday as rescuers worked against time in harsh winter conditions to dig survivors out of the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Tens of thousands more were maimed and many people were left without homes in freezing temperatures.
In Afghanistan, hundreds have also died in recent weeks due to bitter cold and an economic crisis.
Many aid groups have partially suspended operations due to a Taliban administration ruling that most female NGO workers could not work, leaving agencies unable to operate many programmes in the conservative country.
Western diplomats have said they will not consider formally recognising the administration unless it changes course on women’s rights.
Despite the cut of development funding that once formed the backbone of the Afghan state’s budget, the World Bank said in a report that the Taliban administration has increased exports — some of it coal to Pakistain — and revenue collection remained strong, including from customs duties and mining royalties.
Ike Ekweremadu and three others have been charged with human trafficking
His wife Beatrice, daughter Sonia and a middleman have also been charged
A wealthy Nigerian politician has denied offering to reward his sick daughter's prospective kidney donor, saying selfless acts were less of a rarity in his country.
Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56, daughter Sonia, 25, and medical 'middleman' Obinna Obeta, 50, are accused of conspiring to arrange or facilitate the travel of the young man to Britain with a view to his exploitation.
The 21-year-old street trader from Lagos was allegedly offered up to £7,000 and the promise of a better life in the UK in exchange for giving a kidney to Sonia Ekweremadu.
It is alleged he was falsely presented as Sonia's cousin in a failed bid to persuade medics at the Royal Free Hospital in London to carry out the £80,000 private procedure.
In opening addresses at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, lawyers for the defendants insisted they believed the donor, who cannot be identified, was acting 'altruistically'.
The politician's case is that Dr Obeta had spoken to Ekweremadu's medically trained brother Diwe in the autumn of 2021 and had offered to help find Sonia a prospective donor.
He denied lying in support of the donor's visa application to travel to the UK and was not privy to an online application which claimed the young man was related to Sonia.
Mr Hicks said Ekweremadu did not attend any visits to the Royal Free Hospital in February and March last year, which concluded that the donor was unsuitable.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
02/09/2023 06:45 ||
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[Breitbart] Raúl Castro, the 91-year-old communist former dictator of Cuba who served for decades as elder brother Fidel Castro’s top executioner, this week unretired from politics to appear on the ballot as a “candidate” for the Cuban parliament in next month’s “election.”
Castro’s return breaks a promise he made upon his full retirement in 2021 to leave power for good.
As a repressive communist regime, Cuba does not hold free or fair elections. Its bureaucracy occasionally nominates trusted communists for positions in the country’s legislature, the National Assembly of the People’s Power, who appear uncontested on local ballots.
The Communist Party has scheduled its next “election” for March 26. The Assembly is expected to have 470 members after that election, 135 fewer than its last five-year session due to Cuba’s dramatic population decline, a result of a mass exodus ongoing today.
Regime officials fabricate misleading high turnouts by pressuring locals to participate in the farce; not doing so may risk access to food, their regime-controlled jobs, or their homes. Openly objecting to a candidate or attempting to run an anti-communist political campaign could result in arrests and long-term imprisonment. Even expressing mild dissent could result in prison time. In one prominent example, in December, the Communist Party sentenced Havana resident Carlos Ernesto Díaz González to upwards of two years in prison for saying publicly, “I don’t want to be a communist.”
Raúl Castro will appear on the “ballot,” all but guaranteeing him a lawmaker seat representing his native eastern Santiago de Cuba, alongside the nation’s “president,” Miguel Díaz-Canel. Castro gifted the presidency to Díaz-Canel in 2018, claiming he would “retire” from public life due to his age. Díaz-Canel has served as a figurehead for the dominant Castro dynasty, still led by Raúl, and stated transparently in his first speech as “president,” “Raúl will remain at the forefront of the political vanguard.”
Díaz-Canel will represent central Santa Clara if elected in his rigged “election,” a position from which the Assembly is likely to renominate him to serve as “president.”
Also appearing on the ballots this year is Elián González, a current Cuban tourism official who began his public life as a five-year-old refuge, abducted away from his family and forced to live under a brutal communist regime by leftist President Bill Clinton in 2000. Now 29, González, who the regime regular parades as a trophy against the United States, will soon likely represent his native Matanzas province in the National Assembly.
Castro’s return to the spotlight is the most noteworthy of the individuals “nominated” to serve as lawmakers. Castro has largely attempted to remain outside of the public political eye since his official retirement in 2021.
“I will continue to militate as one more revolutionary combatant, willing to offer my modest contribution until the end of life,” Castro said at the time. “I fervently believe in the strength and valor of the example and understanding of my compatriots. So long as I live, I will be ready with my foot in the stirrup to defend soclaism.”
That belief appears to have eroded significantly during Díaz-Canel’s disastrous solo tenure at the helm of the country. Protests of a size unseen in Cuba since the 1990s erupted in nearly every municipality of the country on July 11, 2021, almost three months to the day that Castro stepped down as the chairman of the Communist Party. Violent repression of dissidents, including door-to-door raids and the imprisonment of dozens of children, has done little to stop the movement that began that day. Cubans held nearly 4,000 protests against communism on the island throughout 2022 despite American and other foreign corporate media largely giving up on covering the movement shortly after the July 11 protests.
Díaz-Canel has also presided over a catastrophic Chinese coronavirus response, ceaseless blackouts that have fueled the protests and damaged the tourism industry, and a massive fire at an oil depot in Matanzas that devastated the local enviroment and jeopardized the country’s fuel supply.
The official newspaper of the Communist Party, Granma, announced that Castro had been “nominated” to serve as a lawmaker on Sunday. Another relic of the Cuban Revolution, 90-year-old Castro loyalist Ramiro Valdés, will also appear on ballots in Artemisa, a suburb of Havana – a second vote of no confidence for the Díaz-Canel generation of communist rulers.
The members of the National Assembly of the People’s Power are chosen through a process in which local “candidate commissions,” run by Communist Party enforcers, choose the candidates, and local delegations get to approve or disapprove of the candidate. Cuba does not allow “precandidates” to appear before the delegations who have a history of political dissidents or offer ideas divergent from Communist Party orthodoxy. The delegations very rarely reject candidates because the vote on those the Party hand-picks is public – a dissenting delegate has to raise their hand in front of the crowd, exposing them to Party retribution.
Despite this, Granma claimed that local delegations rejected two candidates in Camagüey province, but did not name them or elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the situation. Cuban journalist René Gómez Manzano, writing for the independent outlet Cubanet, noted that local coverage in Camagüey did not report that such a thing had happened, leaving unclear exactly what transpired during that province’s votes.
Biden officials reportedly detected suspected Chinese surveillance balloons in 12 different countries across five continents before the recent incident
The latest balloon's slow track over the US gave officials unique time to study it
The three detected under Trump were called 'unidentified aerial phenomena'
#2
When are we going to do something about China? They're going to keep fucking with us until we hit them, and hard. The Three Gorges Dam is awfully vulnerable to a stealth bomber attack and they'll be dealing with the aftermath for decades.
#6
I just finished reading Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires.
J. Edgar Hoover spent decades insisting that the Mafia did not exist. He wasn't the only gummint official who took that stance even after the evidence was overwhelming.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/09/2023 11:20 Comments ||
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#7
Bob would like us to drown 3 million innocent people as a reprisal against a regime that considers its citizens to be cannon fodder. Wiping out the dam would likely tick off Xi because his family owns the associated power generating facility. We should definitely do something about the CCP short of mass murder. Perhaps, we should start by removing all of our compromised politicians, generals and bureaucrats.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/09/2023 12:41 Comments ||
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#8
Coming up soon: US intelligence confirms that sun rose in the east this morning.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/09/2023 16:13 Comments ||
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#11
Bobby--what I read was that they started looking more carefully at old satellite photos and noticing things that had gotten missed before.
Salt to taste.
Posted by: James ||
02/09/2023 22:40 Comments ||
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[NYPOST] Zoom Video Communications said on Tuesday it would cut 15% of its workforce, or about 1,300 jobs, and trim base pay for its executive leadership as pandemic-fueled demand for the company’s video conferencing services slows.
Shares of the company rose about 9% on the news, after declining 63% last year.
Announcing the layoffs, chief executive Eric Yuan also said he will take a salary cut of 98% for the coming fiscal year, forgoing his fiscal 2023 corporate bonus.
"We worked tirelessly ... but we also made mistakes. We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities," the top boss said.
The company, which became a household name during lockdowns due to the popularity of its video-conferencing tools, has seen its revenue growth slow.
Analysts are forecasting Zoom’s revenue to have risen just 6.7% in fiscal 2022 after a more than four-fold jump in revenue and a nine-fold surge in profit in 2021. Profit is estimated to have fallen 38% in 2022.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/09/2023 00:00 ||
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#1
Did some digging on Eric Yuan.
Either he is a real hero trying to save his company and 1,000's of jobs and wanted to present he was also taking it in the shorts also.
Or if he took the pay cut to protect the company stock price and knowing his Monthly Income of $170M+ was enough to weather these trying times? Thus presenting a staged PR façade.
Bob Iger is planning to lay off some 7,000 employees to cut back costs in the entertainment and ESPN divisions
He announced plans on Wednesday to restructure the company and eliminate a division set up by his predecessor Bob Chapek
The move comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seizes control of its Reedy Creek Improvement District
On Wednesday, Iger announced his plans to restructure the company, effectively eliminating the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution group set up under former CEO Bob Chapek.
The new structure, according to the Hollywood Reporter, will have only three divisions, Disney Entertainment — which will include film and TV assets as well as Disney+; ESPN — which will include ESPN and ESPN+; and Parks, Experiences and Products — which will include theme parks and the consumer products team.
As part of that changeup, Disney will cut 7,000 jobs — representing a little over three percent of its global workforce. The cuts are likely to predominantly affect the entertainment and ESPN divisions, despite the company beating analyst's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2022.
[NYPOST] Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger on Wednesday announced a sweeping corporate restructuring that will slash 7,000 jobs as part of an effort to achieve $5.5 billion in cost savings.
The Mouse House, which is under pressure to turn a profit from its global streaming business, said it would reorganize into three segments: an entertainment unit that encompasses film, television and streaming; a sports-focused ESPN unit; and Disney parks, experiences and products.
"I do not make this decision lightly," Iger said on Wednesday’s conference call with investors, regarding the cuts.
Iger outlined the cost-cutting plan to investors during the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call, in which Disney reported adjusted earnings per share of 99 cents, ahead of the average analyst estimate of 78 cents, according to Refinitiv data.
Net income came in at $1.279 billion, below analyst estimates of $1.429 billion. Revenue hit $23.512 billion, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $23.4 billion.
Iger said he planned to cut $2.5 billion in sales and general administrative expenses and other operating costs, an effort that is already under way. Another $3 billion in savings would come from reductions in non-sports content, including the layoffs.
"There’s a lot to accomplish but let me be clear, this is my No. 1 priority," said Iger, touting the importance of streaming and returning value to shareholders.
#2
Their steaming service is full of Edgar suits, divisive, and quality so poor the GROOMERS+ think they are being trolled.
ESPN is a fashion brand now. When they do show a game, the pool of sportscasters is so thin due to them aging and retiring that these studio twerps with no life experience are filling the gaps.
despite the company beating analyst's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2022.
We didn't fall 1000 feet, we defied expectations by only falling 998.
As for the parks, well, I"m curious what happens to and how secure the data is concerning face recording the children.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/09/2023 12:52 Comments ||
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#4
^^^ Serious quesion: Which 7000 will they be firing? Will it be the SJWs who have wrecked the company? Or will it be a bunch of ticket takers at Disneyland?
Posted by: Tom ||
02/09/2023 16:14 Comments ||
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[CBO] The federal budget deficit was $459 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates $200 billion more than the shortfall recorded during the same period last year. Outlays were 9 percent higher and revenues were 3 percent lower from October through January than during the same period in fiscal year 2022.
Outlays in fiscal year 2023 were reduced by the shifting of certain payments, totaling $63 billion; from October 1, 2022 (the first day of fiscal year 2023), into fiscal year 2022 because October 1 fell on a weekend. If not for those shifts, the deficit would have been $522 billion, double the shortfall during the same period in fiscal year 2022. conveniently released the day after Biden's SOTU with its econ happy talk
This CBO includes the Social Security, USPS and some other trust funds
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/09/2023 00:00 ||
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Commentary in italics by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] The US should not rule out the possibility of a default on financial obligations, Brian Moynihan, head of Bank of America, told CNN. Congress is arguing about raising the debt ceiling because the government has no money. This means that it is time for American business to prepare for the worst.
Congress is once again arguing about raising the national debt ceiling
...the Democrats are arguing, anyway. The Republicans who control the House are thus far refusing...
- the amount that the US government can borrow to pay its bills on time. And this means that it is time for corporate America to prepare for the worst.
As the CEO of Bank of America (BAC), the second largest bank in the country, told CNN, lawmakers would do well to solve all the problems, because the market and the economy love stability. However, the possibility of debt default cannot be ignored.
“We need to be ready for this not only in our country, but also in other countries of the world,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said on Monday. “ You hope it doesn’t happen, but hope is not a strategy, so you have to be prepared.”
President Joe Biden may address this topic in his annual State of the Union address. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already warned Congress that the country could default on its financial obligations as early as June if it fails to raise the debt ceiling by that time.
Subsequently, Yellen said that the absence of an agreement to limit the debt is fraught with a "global financial crisis." The Treasury is currently taking "extraordinary measures" to ensure that all payments are made on time.
The recent dramatic events around the debt ceiling have led to a number of calls for the government to get rid of it completely. Iron argument: political squabbles should not prevent the country from fulfilling its financial obligations.
Moynihan is not particularly enthusiastic about this idea. When asked about lifting the debt ceiling, he replied that "a discussion is needed about our confidence that the country is living within its means."
“The Congress has the appropriate financial resources. I would not be reckless in trying to restructure the US constitution. I think we should leave it alone and make sure it works properly.”
However, he acknowledged that since 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis, the government has had to spend heavily on various stimulus programs, taking on a lot of debt over the past couple of years to overcome the pandemic and level its impact on the economy.
The US economy quickly recovered from the effects of the brief downturn caused by the coronavirus. So much so that inflation has become the biggest problem for the country and the Federal Reserve.
Over the past year, the Fed has been actively raising rates in an attempt to keep it in check. And it worked, but the US labor market remains surprisingly strong. “The unemployment rate remains very low. Extremely low,” Moynihan said. "That's one of the problems for the Fed."
In this regard, according to him,Bank of America continues to forecast a “moderate recession” going forward, although the start date is continually being pushed back. He argues that raising rates could hurt corporate profits, but the good news is that most citizens are still working, earning and spending.
Moynihan also didn't seem overly concerned that the geopolitical tensions between the US and China sparked by the recent spy balloon incident would have a long-term impact on the global economy.
He stated that given the importance of China in the global supply chain, no one is interested in escalating economic tensions.
“It's interesting to watch all this fictitious struggle between the two countries, but from a purely economic point of view, free trade is undoubtedly the best thing in the world.”
Of course, the debt ceiling will be raised again. Precisely to avoid an immediate default on government obligations.
But the general problem of debt growth has not disappeared and the problem is getting worse, which is why its discussion has reached the level of the top management of the largest American banks.As for the "discussion about living within one's means," it is obvious that the United States has long been living beyond its means, including by issuing unsecured dollars.
Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman, who is a stroke survivor, has been rushed to a Washington, DC hospital.
The Daily Mail reports:
BREAKING NEWS: Senator John Fetterman is rushed to hospital after ’feeling lightheaded’ as doctors check if he’s suffered another stroke
Senator John Fetterman has been rushed to hospital this evening.
The Pennsylvania Democrat, who has suffered from a stroke on May 13 last year, is currently undergoing tests at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington DC.
A spokesperson for the politician said on Wednesday night: ’Towards the end of the Senate Democratic retreat today, Senator John Fetterman began feeling lightheaded. "His neck goiter also complained"
’He left and called his staff, who picked him up and drove him to The George Washington University Hospital.
’Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stoke, but doctors are running more tests and John is remaining overnight for observation. He is in good spirits and talking with his staff and family.’
Fetterman suffered his stroke in May, days before Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, but he still won the race handily.
#6
It appears the Gov can appoint anyone to be the temporary Senator until the next General Election in 2024. Given how the wife has been in public behavior during the campaign and afterwards, I suspect she might not be the choice to face a general election campaign in 2024.
[NYPOST] The Church of England is considering scrapping centuries of religious teaching to give God gender-neutral pronouns.
The church, which is headed by King Charles III, confirmed that its Liturgical Commission has launched a special project to examine updating future teachings.
Some priests have already made such changes, trading references to "he" and "him" for simply "God" or even "they" and "them," and rewriting the "Our Father" that starts the Lord’s Prayer to "Our Father and Mother."
One unidentified priest defended the updated language — while conceding to the Times of London that critics "think we’re being a bit woke."
"God is not male. Certainly not the white cis male with a beard, sitting on a cloud we seem to reduce and limit God to so often," the Rev. Chantal Noppen also told the UK Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/09/2023 00:00 ||
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#2
Yet another decision to help the real estate sales division of the Church of England as they close down more centuries old churches for lack of congregation. Woke is so appealing to what is left of the traditional laity!
[Dallas Morning News] To combat the nation’s fentanyl epidemic, researchers at the University of Houston have created a fentanyl vaccine that could help prevent overdoses. They aim to test the vaccine in a human trial within the next year.
The vaccine will need FDA approval before people can use it. According to Johns Hopkins University, that process can take five to 15 years, and sometimes longer. The process can be sped up during a public health emergency where no alternate treatments exist. The first COVID-19 vaccines were created, tested and given emergency use authorization by the FDA in under a year. I wonder who would authorize another 'public health emergency'?
In the published study, Haile’s team said the vaccine successfully produced antibodies against fentanyl in rats. The vaccine also blocked one of the effects of fentanyl: pain relief. Compared to unvaccinated rats, vaccinated rats also had decreased fentanyl levels in their brains when fentanyl was administered 20 weeks after their first vaccination.
"The effect was pretty incredible," Haile said. "I’ve never seen anything like this, ever." Fentanyl antibodies? But other drugs are not affected. Pretty incredible, for sure!
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/09/2023 08:13 ||
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#1
Chemists can come up with fentanyl analogues faster than they can invent vaccines to block them.
#2
They aim to test the vaccine in a human trial within the next year.
I'm sure Houston can provide plenty of guinea pig starting today. Pass it on to the EM teams for a go/no-go test. Probably can't kill many more than the Jab so far.
#3
A neurosurgeon I knew once told me he expected the day would come where all addiction impulses will be eradicable via a "gamma knife" type procedure.
He said it would probably come with an unanticipated downside but might be necessary for people who just can't help themselves.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/09/2023 11:17 Comments ||
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#4
FDA will slow walk this, CDC will deride.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/09/2023 12:18 Comments ||
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#5
The cynic in me still wonders if the whole fentanyl epidemic is the purposeful creation of the Davos crowd.
[Technology.org] It took just a single incorrect answer from Google’s new AI chatbot named Bard to drive the company’s shares down by 8%.
The incorrect answer, in fact, was shown in the ad that was first released on Monday and was intended to demonstrate one of the most important capabilities of the new artificial intelligence-based platform.
The AI chatbot error was first publicized by Reuters. The question that was answered by the Bard chatbot was about which satellite first took pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system.
The ad consisted of a short GIF video demonstrating the operation of Bard. The error was noticed a few hours before the official Bard’s launch event in Paris.
Today, Alphabet’s (Google parent company) shares were traded 8% lower compared to their earlier price. This means a loss of about $100 billion in terms of total value.
[NPASYRIA] Late on Wednesday, the Syrian Governorate of Rif Dimashq announced a building collapsed in the town of Harasta in Rif Dimashq.
Governor of Rif Dimashq Safwan Abu Sadaa told pro-government al-Watan newspaper, "Information signify two persons are under the rubble."
Syria’s National Earthquake Center announced recording an earthquake of a 4.3 magnitude and 30 km deep on the Syrian-Lebanese border at 09:58 pm (GMT+3).
Abu Sadaa added, "The building was one of dilapidated ones and was not suitable for housing. Undoubtedly, tremors are a main reason behind the collapse of the building."
The Syrian Health Ministry said, "The Emergency unit responded immediately with fully-equipped seven ambulances after a residential building collapsed in Harasta," adding that the town’s hospital is fully ready to deal with the situation.
A source told North Press, "Civil defense teams are still searching for survivors under the rubble as a result of a building collapse in the al-Kana’s [churches] street in Harasta. Information indicate that there are three people under the rubble."
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
People in Jinderis town in the countryside of #Afrin, northwest Syria, bury more than 60 bodies for the 3rd day in row. The town is among the most affected places in #Syria as a result of Monday's #earthquake. pic.twitter.com/rj8nczGzjo
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Blaze] A man who died shortly after his guilty verdict was read inside a Texas courtroom last year committed suicide by consuming a toxic level of a common food preservative, a new report says.
[NYPOST] Skin flick icon 
...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than there are in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really most important...
...Arabic for 
[Breitbart] 
cut 15% of its workforce, or about 1,300 jobs, and trim base pay for its executive leadership as pandemic-fueled demand for the company’s video conferencing services slows.
[Gateway] This is a breaking news story.
[NYPOST] The Church of England is considering scrapping centuries of religious teaching to give God gender-neutral pronouns.
[Dallas Morning News] To combat the nation’s fentanyl epidemic, researchers at the University of Houston have created a fentanyl vaccine that could help prevent overdoses. They aim to test the vaccine in a human trial within the next year.
