September 7, 2022

Pressure on Trump loyalist Jeffrey Clark as ex-DoJ colleague works with prosecutors

(Guardian UK) Legal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.

The cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.

Clark, then an assistant attorney general, played a key role at the DoJ towards the end of the Trump administration, which overlapped with plotting by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to persuade Georgia and other states to use “fake electors” for Trump, instead of ones that Joe Biden won.

In Trump’s desperate efforts to block Biden’s win, he turned to Clark for help at the suggestion of congressman Scott Perry, who had also touted him to Meadows, according to emails revealed by the House January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot by Trump supporters. .......(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/06/trump-pressure-doj-jeffrey-clark-prosecutors

September 7, 2022

So who the hell is Liz Truss, anyway? Even the Brits aren't exactly sure

So who the hell is Liz Truss, anyway? Even the Brits aren't exactly sure
Yep, the U.K. has a new prime minister, for now. But Boris Johnson is leering over her shoulder and won't go away

By ANDREW O'HEHIR
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 6:59PM


(Salon) It's not entirely fair to describe Liz Truss, the brand new prime minister of the United Kingdom, as "Boris Johnson in heels." But the salient point here might be that Truss herself would not find that insulting.

For better or worse (and it's not super-likely to be for better), Truss' tenure will be defined by the bloated ego and oversize personality of her mischievous-schoolboy predecessor, who on his way out the door compared himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who — according to historical accounts of uncertain veracity — was summoned back from retirement on his modest farm to assume dictatorial powers in 458 BC.

When Truss was announced on Monday as winner of the Conservative Party's arcane internal leadership struggle — and by extension the incoming prime minister — she gave a brief speech in which she called Johnson her "friend" and thanked him for "getting Brexit done" and leading the Tories to their whopping 2019 election victory. That struck me as more than a routine effort to mend fences with the ousted leader and his wounded supporters; it was a ritual incantation, meant to keep the imprisoned demon in his box. When we see that in a horror movie, we all know it's not going to work, and such is almost certainly the case here as well.



On this side of the Atlantic, the media is overloaded with quasi-informative explainers about who Truss is, how and why she has landed in 10 Downing Street and what her arrival might mean both for Britain's future and to the "special relationship" between the U.K. and the U.S. All of which is understandable, since even the British public is mildly puzzled by their nation's new parliamentary leader, and not at all sure how long she will last or whether she's anything more than a placeholder — either for the long-delayed return to power of the Labour Party under its neither/nor center-left milquetoast leader, Keir Starmer, or for the triumphant comeback of Boris Johnson himself (in the role of Cincinnatus or Donald Trump or Darth Vader, or all three at once). ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/06/so-the-hell-is-liz-truss-anyway-even-the-brits-arent-exactly-sure/

September 6, 2022

More women Dems are running in northern Michigan

(Detroit Metro Times) Antrim County is a GOP stronghold in northern Michigan, best known as being home to the tourist destination of Torch Lake, as well as one of the most-enduring conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

But in an unlikely turn, the county could be represented in the Michigan House by a female Democrat next year, Cathy Albro. The odds of that happening have risen after state Rep. John Roth (R-Traverse City), the Republican nominee, allegedly failed to register on time as an elector in the newly redrawn 104th House District.

That’s a unique situation, but Albro is one of several Democratic women running for legislative seats in traditionally red northern Michigan who are vying to get equal representation in lawmaking, and many who are fired up by Roe v. Wade being overturned.

But getting more women in office doesn’t happen without some elbow grease, said state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia), who chairs the executive committee of the Michigan Progressive Women’s Caucus.

“Anecdotally speaking … we have to work a lot harder than the male candidates,” Pohutusky said. “In reality, I feel like I have to know a policy inside and out because I’m starting from a place where people don’t think I’m as competent as a potential male counterpart. … There’s an inherent sexism there that we know we have to fight against and I think it ends up making a more impressive candidate and elected official.” ...........(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/news/more-women-dems-are-running-in-northern-michigan-31011648

September 6, 2022

America is finally waking up to the fascist danger: Let's hope it's not too late

America is finally waking up to the fascist danger: Let's hope it's not too late
Americans see the threat to democracy at last. But it's no time to celebrate: The Trumpists aren't beaten yet

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) For the last six years or so, most Americans — especially white Americans — were in denial about the monster rampaging across the country. Like privileged children, they believed that if their eyes were closed, the monster couldn't harm them. The real world does not work that way.

Those slumbering Americans are not entirely responsible for their bad decisions. In one ear they had the hope-peddlers and centrist pundits whispering, like faeries or gods in some pre-Raphaelite painting, that everything would be fine and they should just keep sleeping. In the other ear were Donald Trump, the Republican fascists and their allies, assuring them that everything would be fine and good because the Trump movement was fighting for "real Americans" like them.

....(snip)....

In all, the NBC poll offers further evidence that the Trumpists and Republican-fascists of the MAGAverse have constructed an alternate reality in which the basic understanding of facts and truth — and also the meaning of democracy and freedom — have been debased and distorted. Fascism is fueled by such fantasies, and malignant realities. This fracture may well decide the future of America.

....(snip)....

Other research has demonstrated that a large proportion of Trump supporters are willing to give up democracy if it means that white people must share power with nonwhites. In practice their vision of new America will entrench white conservative minority rule over an increasingly diverse and pluralistic majority. There is a name for such a society: apartheid.

....(snip)....

This is an existential struggle. Pro-democracy Americans — especially Democrats and liberals who still believe in the lasting power of our political system and "democratic institutions" — are running out of time to treat the crisis with the urgency it demands. More Americans are waking up to the danger of the Republican fascists and their movement. It is now a moral, patriotic and personal imperative for the entire nation to wake and face its historical responsibility. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/06/america-is-finally-waking-up-to-the-fascist-danger-lets-hope-its-not-too-late/

September 6, 2022

How deranged anti-Obama conspiracy theories led America to Donald Trump

How deranged anti-Obama conspiracy theories led America to Donald Trump
Folklorist Patricia Turner on how unhinged right-wing paranoia about the first Black president tore America apart

By KATHRYN JOYCE
Investigative Reporter
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In 2007, a widely forwarded email went viral, claiming that then-candidate Barack Obama hoped to replace the national anthem with Coca-Cola's 1971 advertising campaign song "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)." The email claimed that Obama had actually said that during an appearance on "Meet the Press," while explaining why he didn't wear an American flag pin and refused to put his hand over his heart when the anthem was played, suggesting that if the Coke jingle replaced the anthem, "then I might salute it." According to the email, Obama went on to say the U.S. flag should be redesigned; that the U.S. should disarm "to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren"; and that when he was president, "CHANGE" would quickly "overwhelm the United States of America."

From the distance of 15 years, it's easy to chalk that viral email — whose text was originally intended as satire — up as the same kind of "fake news" that proliferated during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, with Facebook posts and Macedonian-owned websites claiming that Obama had just banned the Pledge of Allegiance or the pope had endorsed Trump. After two years of moral panic around critical race theory, it's also easy to recognize the subtext that a Black person is unpatriotic by definition.

Yet that story is just one among dozens of similar examples: Obama was accused of disowning the Boy Scouts, court-martialing Christian service members or plotting to kill white people with Ebola. He was called a secret Muslim, a secret Kenyan, a secret Indonesian or secretly gay. As the conspiracy theories expanded to Michelle Obama, she had allegedly ordered that a picture of her in royal garb be put on a postage stamp, or was a Black nationalist or perhaps transgender.

All of this was more than just an early example of the disinformation age that became impossible to ignore a decade later. According to Patricia Turner, a professor of African American studies and folklorist at UCLA and author of the new book "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century," the sort of folk legend represented by the anthem email directly helped pave the way for Trump and today's political climate.

....(snip)....

Most people, if they've thought about it all, tend to date the start of our new conspiracy theory era back to around 2016, with the arrival of things like Pizzagate. You trace a far longer lineage, to well before Obama was elected.

I kind of expected that Barack and Michelle Obama would trigger this kind of thing when they burst on the scene in 2004. They arrived at the same time as social media and all the ways the internet democratized voices and access to a wide swath of the public. So there were two parallel things: the first prominent African-American couple likely to move into the White House, at the same time that people could express how they felt about that, good or bad, in more and more ways, more and more frequently on their computers. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/06/how-deranged-anti-obama-conspiracy-theories-led-america-to-donald/

September 5, 2022

The Heat Wave Crushing the West Is a Preview of Farmworkers' Hot Future

The Heat Wave Crushing the West Is a Preview of Farmworkers’ Hot Future
By the end of the century, the San Joaquin Valley could endure two months of extreme heat every summer. What will this mean for agriculture and farmworker communities?

BY ANNE MARSHALL-CHALMERS SEPTEMBER 2, 2022


(Civil Eats) Ascorching heat wave is beginning in California. In the San Joaquin Valley, temperatures are expected to stay above 105 degrees for eight days, endangering the 200,000-plus farmworkers who pick the valley’s tomatoes, strawberries, and other crops. On Tuesday, the temperature could soar to 112 degrees in parts of this vast, 8-million-acre swath of California that grows much of the nation’s fruit and vegetables.

As Civil Eats has reported, the consequences of this heat can be deadly. Farmworkers, who are a majority migrant and Spanish-speaking workforce, die of heat-related causes at a rate of 20 times more than other professions.

In 2004, a worker in the valley died from heat stroke after he spent 10 hours picking grapes in 105-degree weather, prompting California to enact the first heat standard in the nation. It requires employers to provide water and shade when temperatures climb above 80 degrees. Fatal heat-related illnesses have decreased since, according to the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, though a recent investigation found understaffing makes it hard to enforce heat protocols, and deaths have continued. At the national level, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in the initial stages of creating a federal heat injury and illness prevention.

As climate change drives more extreme heat in California, Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, a postdoctoral scholar in environmental systems at University of California, Merced, says extended heat waves like the one coming up will only increase.

....(snip)....

How will more extreme heat in the San Joaquin Valley impact workers who work in the fields?

Historically, here in the valley, there have been four or five days of extreme heat, and the projection is that by the end of the century, there will be 15 times more, so there will be two months of extreme heat.

You will see a big impact on farmworkers because no one will be able to work under those conditions, and with the law restricting farmworkers exposure to extreme heat, it will make it more challenging to rely on farm work as a profession. It would be inhumane to be working in such extreme heat. ..............(more)

https://civileats.com/2022/09/02/the-heat-wave-crushing-the-west-is-a-preview-of-farmworkers-hot-future/

September 5, 2022

Conservative Texas phone company fueling extremist takeover of schools

(Guardian UK) A conservative Texas-based phone company is planning a takeover of political offices in the US state, starting with public schools.

Patriot Mobile, which calls itself “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider”, has been fueling an extremist conservative movement taking over curriculum in public schools across Texas.

Leigh Wambsganss, the executive director of the company and its political arm, proudly declared victory in 11 out of 11 school board seats in the last election cycle in school districts around the Dallas-Fort Worth area on behalf of the company and conservative American Christians.

She said: “What this means is that now in north Texas, over 100,000 students who, before May, had leftist leadership now have conservative leadership!”

Earlier this year, the company established a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, which allows them to legally fundraise and finance political campaigns. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/05/texas-phone-company-conservative-takeover-schools

September 4, 2022

Fake Florida doctor sentenced to 9 years for dating scam

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida man was sentenced to nine years in federal prison after pleading guilty to defrauding more than 30 women of more than $1.3 million by pretending to be a doctor on online dating services, prosecutors said Thursday.

Brian Brainard Wedgeworth, 47, who formerly lived in the Florida capital city of Tallahassee and in Center Point, Alabama, used 10 different aliases as part of the scheme, according to court records.

“Our citizens should not be preyed upon by fraudsters who steal through overtures of affection,” U.S. Attorney Jason Cody said in a news release.

Wedgeworth made promises to the women to con them into sending him money, jewelry and watches, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty to 25 counts, including wire fraud, mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. .............(more)

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fake-florida-doctor-sentenced-years-dating-scam-89236081

September 4, 2022

Birds migrate along ancient routes -- here's how scientists are studying their journeys

Birds migrate along ancient routes — here's how scientists are studying their journeys
Technology is providing new insights into bird migration, revealing that it is more complex than we ever knew

By TOM LANGEN
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 4, 2022 2:59PM




This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Although it still feels like beach weather across much of North America, billions of birds have started taking wing for one of nature's great spectacles: fall migration. Birds fly south from the northern U.S. and Canada to wintering grounds in the southern U.S., Caribbean and Latin America, sometimes covering thousands of miles. Other birds leave temperate Eurasia for Africa, tropical Asia or Australia.

Using observation records and data collected through bird banding, 20th-century ornithologists roughly mapped general migration routes and timing for most migratory species. Later, using radar at airports and weather stations, they discovered how weather and other factors affect when birds migrate and how high they fly.

Today, technological advances are providing new insights into bird migration and showing that it is more complex and wonderful than scientists ever imagined. These new and constantly improving technologies are key aids for protecting migratory birds in the face of habitat loss and other threats.

Migratory flyways are paths that birds have traveled for centuries. Scientists are working to better understand how birds use these routes.

....(snip)....

Tracking individual birds via satellite

Three new technologies are rapidly expanding what we know about bird migration. The first is satellite telemetry of bird movement. Researchers fit birds with small solar-powered transmitters, which send data on the birds' locations to a satellite and then on to a scientist's office computer. The scientist can learn where a bird is, the route it took to get there and how fast it travels.

For example, the bar-tailed godwit, a pigeon-sized shorebird, breeds in Alaska and then migrates to New Zealand. Satellite transmitters show that godwits often fly nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. Recently, a godwit set the record for the longest nonstop flight by a land bird: 8,100 miles (13,000 kilometers) in 10 days, from Alaska to Australia. ........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/04/birds-migrate-along-ancient-routes--heres-how-scientists-are-studying-their-journeys_partner/

September 3, 2022

The End Of An Era: MetroCard Machines In NYC Will Be Phased Out By 2023

First the removal of payphones around New York City and now the last days of the infamous MetroCard machine. The machine, whose been in every NYC subway station since 1999, will be extinct after this year.

According to a tweet by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), “In the not-so-distant future, the MetroCard Machine will be phased out and replaced with OMNY vending machines.”

https://twitter.com/MTA/status/1565036063843909634

This leaves us wondering what the future of transportation on NYC subways will look like.

About OMNY

One Metro New York, known as OMNY was installed in subway stations and buses in 2019 as a way to phase out MetroCards. This contactless fare payment system allows commuters to simply tap their credit or debit card, wearable device, or smartphone at subway turnstiles, AutoGates, and buses.

The service is currently available in 472 subway stations across all 5 boroughs and on all MTA buses. According to OMNY, “In the coming months, we plan to support expanded fare options across subway, bus, paratransit, and commuter rail.”

MTA’s plan to phase out MetroCards

The MTA plans to phase out the use of MetroCards and MetroCard machines by the end of 2023. By then, OMNY will be installed in every subway station across the city. ..........(more)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/end-era-metrocard-machines-nyc-121500610.html