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marmar

marmar's Journal
marmar's Journal
October 8, 2021

Trump's coup plot was worse than anyone knew


Trump's coup plot was worse than anyone knew
Republicans are trying their best to make attempted coups now normal politics in America

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 8, 2021 10:03AM


(Salon) It seemed odd last December when then-Attorney General Bill Barr resigned before the end of President Trump's term. Barr had been such a loyal soldier throughout, defending Trump's misdeeds and corrupting the Department of Justice (DOJ) on his behalf over and over again. Barr had broken DOJ protocols repeatedly as well, most recently ordering the department to investigate claims of voter fraud before any suit or legal proceedings had been initiated. But it all fell apart when Barr said in an interview that he had not actually seen any evidence of such fraud. The president was very displeased. Barr later told him to his face that the claims were "nonsense" and a major rift developed between the two.

Nonetheless, Barr apparently still tried to appease Trump and later told the U.S. Attorney in Georgia to look into Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani's wild claims and make it a priority. But within a few days, Trump announced that Barr would be leaving his post and he was gone by the end of the month, replaced by his deputy Jeffrey Rosen.

I don't think we know the full scope of what was going on with Barr and Trump during this period despite Barr's self-serving recitations to several authors of books on the final days. But it's clear that he knew that Trump was out of control and he decided to jump off the sinking ship before it went under.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee released an interim Senate Judiciary Committee Report covering the testimony of various high-level Department of Justice officials during that period between the election and the insurrection and it is a blockbuster. It's titled "Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election," which pretty much says it all. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/08/coup-plot-was-worse-than-anyone-knew/




October 7, 2021

Clarence Thomas's Wife Hired Ex-TPUSA Staffer Known For Saying 'I Hate Blacks'


Conservative activist Crystal Clanton, who was forced to leave the right-wing student group Turning Point USA last year after her racist comments were revealed, was hired by the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Mediaite has learned.

Clanton’s racist comments were made known publicly after the New Yorker obtained screenshots of text messages in which she wrote, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.”

Clanton served as TPUSA’s second-in-command — just below the group’s founder Charlie Kirk — for five years, before she left late last year after the nonprofit was made aware of the text messages and learned that they would be used in a story, according to multiple sources who spoke to Mediaite.

Shortly after she left TPUSA, Clanton was hired by Ginni Thomas — the wife of the only black Supreme Court Justice currently serving on the bench — to assist with her right-wing media ventures. ............(more)

https://www.mediaite.com/online/exclusive-clarence-thomas-wife-hired-ex-tpusa-staffer-known-for-saying-i-hate-blacks/




October 7, 2021

From reports, you'd swear that masses of healthcare workers quit over vax requirements. The reality:


Few U.S. Health Workers Are Defying Vaccine Mandates, Companies Say


(NYT) With deadlines for health care workers to take coronavirus vaccinations either passed or quickly approaching, only a fraction of those workers across the United States are risking their jobs by not complying.

The consequences that employers warned of are becoming reality.

UCHealth System in Colorado fired 119 people this week. Kaiser Permanente, based in California, has suspended more than 2,200 employees. And 400 workers have resigned from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit rather than get inoculated.

....(snip)....

Still, about 1 percent of Kaiser’s work force across the country — approximately 2,200 workers — were put on unpaid administrative leave because they had not met the requirement, the spokesman said. They have until Dec. 1 to get vaccinated to be able to return to work.

The Henry Ford Health System required its employees to comply with a vaccination requirement by last Friday. The system said on Tuesday that 99 percent of its 33,000 employees had been fully vaccinated, were soon to get their second dose or had received medical or religious exemptions. .............(more)

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/07/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine?





October 7, 2021

How the once-feared mu variant all but disappeared


How the once-feared mu variant all but disappeared
The vaccine-resistant variant turned heads when it was discovered. It hasn't been detected anywhere for two weeks

By NICOLE KARLIS
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 6, 2021 3:28PM


(Salon) In September, news broke that a new coronavirus mutation — the mu variant, formally known as B.1.621 — could potentially evade vaccine-induced immunity.

"This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies, but vaccine- and convalescent serum-induced antibodies," President Joe Biden's COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters in September. "But there isn't a lot of clinical data to suggest that. It is mostly laboratory in-vitro data."

At the time, the idea of a vaccine-resistant variant sent a shockwave of fear through the world. The dreaded delta variant was already known to be more resistant to vaccines than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus. Could mu, which was first discovered in Colombia, be worse than delta? Indeed, mu appeared to have specific mutations that have been associated with resistance to immunity, as well a mutation known as P681H that has been linked to accelerated transmission.

Now, nearly a month later — long after the World Health Organization dubbed the mu variant one "of interest" that needed to be monitored — data from outbreak.info shows the mu variant hasn't been detected in the U.S., nor anywhere in the world, since September 21, 2021. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/06/how-the-once-feared-mu-variant-all-but-disappeared/





October 6, 2021

Bear discovers lost GoPro, turns it on, starts recording himself




Bear discovers lost GoPro, turns it on, starts recording himself

A black bear discovered a lost GoPro in the Wyoming wilderness, switched it on and began filming itself, an astonishing video has shown.

Dylan Schilt, from Laramie, was hunting with a bow and arrow in the mountains earlier this month when he found the action camera, which had fallen off a snowmobile and into thick sand months earlier.

After charging the camera, the hunter discovered the footage.

The bear is seen providing a close-up of his gnashers after turning the camera on using his mouth.

After sharing its glaring gums, the animal attempts to tear the camera apart with its sharp claws.


https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/bear-gopro-wyoming-snow-video-v88f521d9?






October 6, 2021

In cities, dangerous heat exposure has tripled since the 1980s, with the poor most at risk



(The Conversation) Extreme urban heat exposure has dramatically increased since the early 1980s, with the total exposure tripling over the past 35 years. Today, about 1.7 billion people, nearly one-quarter of the global population, live in urban areas where extreme heat exposure has risen, as we show in a new study released Oct. 4, 2021.

Most reports on urban heat exposure are based on broad estimates that overlook millions of at-risk residents. We looked closer. Using satellite estimates of where every person on the planet lived each year from 1983 to 2016, we counted the number of days per year that people in over 13,000 urban areas were exposed to extreme heat.

The story that emerges is one of rapidly increasing heat exposure, with poor and marginalized people particularly at risk.

Nearly two-thirds of the global increase in urban exposure to extreme heat was in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. This is in part because of climate change and the urban heat island effect – temperatures in urban areas are higher because of the materials used to build roads and buildings. But it is also because the number of people living in dense urban areas has rapidly increased.

Urban populations have ballooned, from 2 billion people living in cities and towns in 1985 to 4.4 billion today. While the patterns vary from city to city, urban population growth has been fastest among African cities where governments did not plan or build infrastructure to meet the needs of new urban residents. ..............(more)

https://theconversation.com/in-cities-dangerous-heat-exposure-has-tripled-since-the-1980s-with-the-poor-most-at-risk-169153




October 6, 2021

A Week in the World's Most Chaotic City

A Week in the World’s Most Chaotic City
Lagos is poised to become the world’s biggest city. The Nigerian megacity is a massive experiment – unregulated and wild, with endless traffic jams, waterfront slums and an impressively resilient population.

By Heiner Hoffmann, Akintunde Akinleye (Fotos) und Bernhard Riedmann (Grafik)
30.09.2021, 14.37 Uhr




(Der Spiegel) Every now and then, children slip through the cracks between the wooden planks or fall over the edge and disappear into the sea. "Just yesterday, I got my head stuck at the bottom of the sea,” says a three-year-old girl, laughing aloud. Aliate Ajagun, her mother, laughs along: "Then I just bend down and pull them back up.”

There is nothing out of the ordinary here about toddlers disappearing into the sea and then reappearing. Indeed, Lagosians, the people of Lagos, consider very little to be out of the ordinary.

Aliate Ajagun and her five children live on a kind of platform about three by five meters in size. It’s built on stilts in the lagoon of Lagos, which some statistics show to be the largest city in Africa. The floor is made of planks. The gaps between the planks reveal the sea water below, a murky, grayish soup.

....(snip)....

Lagos is loud. Everything here has its own sound The honking of the endless traffic jams; the relentless, slightly frantic music piping out of the loudspeakers in stores; itinerant merchants offering their services; the wandering tailor with his rattling scissors; the vendors who drum distinct rhythms for each product as they parade through the streets.

There are a lot of codes that are part of this city’s DNA, and they must be learned. It is hot and humid, and the temperatures barely go down at night. Lagos is a city where the rich don’t hide their wealth and the poor can’t cloak their poverty. There’s only one thing that unites them all: the water. ............(more)

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/lagos-in-nigeria-a-week-in-the-world-s-most-chaotic-city-a-6d56ae7e-596b-40f1-b1ad-43ba0778a6c7




October 5, 2021

Florida Man Caught With Enough Fentanyl to Kill Over 2,000 People: Deputies



Sheriff's deputies in one southwest Florida county arrested a man this past weekend who they said had enough of the dangerous drug fentanyl to kill more than 2,000 people.

NBC affiliate WBBH-TV reports 23-year-old Steven Estiverne was arrested in Immokalee following a traffic stop. Collier County Sheriff's deputies say the car smelled of marijuana and Estiverne had the drug on his lap and on the passenger seat.

Deputies searched the car and found over four grams of fentanyl in the car, enough to kill 2,130 people. Over 21 grams of marijuana and nearly $25,000 in case were also found in the car. .................(more)

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/sw-florida-man-caught-with-enough-fentanyl-to-kill-over-2k-people-deputies/2566516/




October 5, 2021

Seattle: Sound Transit opens light-rail extension to Northgate





Sound Transit can now provide north Seattle with improved transit options and faster travel times to downtown Seattle with the Oct. 2 opening of the 4.3-mile Northgate Light-Rail Extension. The extension will be known as Line 1 and includes three stations at Northgate, Roosevelt and U District. Riders can expect headways as short as eight minutes and travel times between Northgate and downtown Seattle set to be 13 minutes.

Sound Transit explains the opening of Line 1 “heralds the start of an unprecedented period of transit expansion in the region. In just three years, the Link light-rail network will nearly triple in reach, from 22 miles to 62 miles, with service to Tacoma’s Hilltop in 2022, East King County in 2023 and Lynnwood, Federal Way and Downtown Redmond in 2024.”

Sound Transit Board Chair and University Place Council Member Kent Keel called the opening of the project a “historic day” and the beginning “of three years that will transform how people get around our region.”

"The opening of Northgate Link is a great leap forward for Puget Sound commuters, the first of many leaps forward for Sound Transit in the coming years," said Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff. "As Sound Transit looks to nearly triple our light-rail network in just the next three years, we are thankful for the hard work and dedication of staff and the construction workforce in achieving this monumental feat in the middle of a pandemic." ............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21240713/sound-transit-opens-lightrail-extension-to-northgate




October 5, 2021

Will the mainstream media ever face its failure to tell the truth about Jan. 6?


Will the mainstream media ever face its failure to tell the truth about Jan. 6?
Media voices proclaimed that Trump was a buffoon who could never stage a coup. Now they just want us to forget

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 5, 2021 9:57AM


(Salon) Ayear or so ago, many or most of the professional smart people in the mainstream news media felt certain that Donald Trump and his allies would not attempt a coup. Those of us who warned that Trump would do anything to stay in power were described as hysterical or alarmist, and suffering from "Trump derangement syndrome."

We were told that Republicans, for all their bad behavior, were patriots who loved America, and that Trump himself was too ignorant, too disorganized and too incompetent to succeed in overturning an election.

After Jan. 6, those who denied that such a thing was imaginable were made to look like adults who believe in Santa Claus. More important, Trump's coup was not defeated. Its ringleaders and organizers are not in jail, but are walking free and overtly planning for a more successful attempt next time.

....(snip)....

How have many of the gatekeepers of approved public discourse in America responded to the events of Jan. 6 and the continuing attacks on American democracy? For the most part, by throwing their huge mistake down the memory hole. The boldest among them now present themselves as full-throated defenders of American democracy, claiming that they actually warned the country and the world about Trump's imminent coup attempt.

They simply hope that the public is not paying attention. To watch this public rewrite of American history in real time is something like seeing a TV series recast a prominent character with a new actor in the middle of a season, while pretending that nothing has changed. Given the limited attention span of the American people at large, this ploy may work. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/05/will-the-mainstream-media-ever-face-its-failure-to-tell-the-truth-about-jan-6/




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