With his poll numbers sagging and the criticism raging, venture capitalist and Senate hopeful J.D. Vance’s campaign appears to be dodging the spotlight.

The Daily Beast has learned the tech investor has now backed out of two upcoming debate appearances pitting him against the GOP primary field. The news comes as Vance falls more than a week behind his personal financial disclosure filing due date, which itself had already been extended for 90 days.

Asked why Vance ducked the debates, campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said in an email that Vance already had “prior commitments when we found out about the dates of the forums,” adding that “the campaign was not notified of the days of the forums until October 25.”

But emails reviewed by The Daily Beast challenge that claim.

Two emails confirm that the primary candidates, including Vance, had been informed of the dates several weeks in advance. The campaigns were also notified of one final change, related to an event in mid-November, in an email sent Sept. 27. That email, which The Daily Beast has reviewed, lists specific dates, locations, and estimated time slots for each of the upcoming debates.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/damaged-jd-vance-ducks-ohio-senate-debates-and-delays-disclosure?ref=home
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LOSER!

She brought tiny foster cats into her office at a retirement home. Residents found out — and kitten therapy began.

Estelle Nicol fell and injured herself six months ago, and when she moved into a care center in Orange County, Calif., her daughter noticed her beginning to withdraw.

“My mom was really sad and didn’t want to engage with people,” said Cathy Crair. “It was hard for her to leave her own home after so many years.”

Crair tried to persuade her mother, who is 98, to participate in social activities at the Meridian at Anaheim Hills assisted-living center, but she declined.

Then a few weeks later, a litter of newborn kittens showed up.

“My mom learned about the kittens and overnight we saw a change,” said Crair, 63. “She had something to hug and love.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/09/kitten-therapy-foster-retirement-home/

A decade or two ago, no one had trouble figuring out what White evangelical Christians wanted from the federal government. Alongside supply-siders and national security hawks, they made up the triumvirate of the GOP base and were willing to embrace their allies’ economic and foreign policy positions to ensure support for abortion restrictions and anti-gay policies. (During the Cold War, they were enthusiastic partners with national security hawks in the battle against godless communism.)

But social policy is no longer at the heart of the agenda of the demographic. Instead, it has become nearly indistinguishable from the MAGA movement.

Conservative commentator and evangelical Christian David A. French acknowledges in a piece for the Dispatch: “We know that opposition to abortion rights motivates white Evangelicals far less than their leaders’ rhetoric would suggest. Eastern Illinois University’s Ryan Burge, one of the nation’s leading statisticians of American religion, has noted, for example, that immigration drove Evangelical support for [Donald] Trump more than abortion.”

As for gay rights, the Public Religion Research Institute’s annual values survey shows a majority of White evangelical Christians still oppose gay marriage, but that “substantial majorities in every major religious group favor nondiscrimination laws that protect LGBTQ people, ranging from 59% among white evangelical Protestants to 92% among religiously unaffiliated Americans.” Moreover, even opposition to gay marriage is declining because of a massive generational divide on the issue between older evangelicals and more tolerant millennials and Generation Xers.

So what, then, do these voters want? Many essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. They want someone to help them win that existential fight. Government is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/09/america-cannot-give-evangelicals-want-they-want/
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Probably Jennifer Rubin's best column EVER.

When Daphna Cardinale became pregnant with her second daughter in January 2019, she was overjoyed. The in vitro fertilization process was a success, and she savored the next nine months, knowing the pregnancy would probably be her last.

But when the girl was born that September, Daphna and her husband, Alexander, were shocked. Alexander took several steps away from the birthing table, backing up against the wall, when he first saw the baby’s jet-black hair and complexion that was darker than his, his wife’s and their first daughter’s.

Even after they brought the girl home, Alexander could not shake the dissonance. The couple’s family and friends noticed, too, saying they were surprised the girl looked so different and even asking if the embryo had been donated. Alexander sometimes felt he had to joke that the baby girl was not his daughter.

In fact, the couple soon learned, she wasn’t.

According to a lawsuit the Cardinales filed Monday, the fertility clinic that facilitated the in vitro pregnancy, the California Center for Reproductive Health, implanted another couple’s embryo into Daphna. Their own embryo, the Cardinales learned, was implanted into the mother of the child to whom Daphna gave birth. In other words, the Cardinales allege, the fertility clinic mixed up the embryos — a mistake that forced the couples to trade their babies after months of raising them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/09/in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-mix-up-daphna-cardinale/
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What do you do in a case like this?

The Portuguese parliament has passed new labour laws to give workers a healthier work-life balance and to attract “digital nomads” to the country.

Employers could face penalties for contacting employees outside work hours, according to the new laws.

The legislation, approved on Friday, comes following the expansion of home working after the coronavirus pandemic, according to Portugal’s Socialist Party government.

Under new rules, employers could be penalised for contacting employees after work and will be forced to pay for increased expenses as a result of working from home – such as gas and electricity bills.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpdan/portugal-makes-it-illegal-for-your-boss-to-text-you-after-work
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*sigh* It can't happen here.

In a startling address to constituents, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently talked about controversial COVID-19 conspiracist Joe Rogan becoming the “president” of Texas if the state secedes from the union.

“I’m not there yet,” Cruz told an audience last month at Texas A&M University about Texas seceding from the United States — popularly known as “Texit.”

But “if there comes a point where it’s hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil,” he said to loud applause.

Asked if he would also take Rogan, a Texan, Cruz responded: “Joe Rogan, he might be president of Texas!”

When Cruz was asked by a member of the audience about the possibility of seceding, he said he “understood the sentiment.” But he added that he wasn’t ready for it — yet.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-joe-rogan-texas-secession_n_6188864ce4b055e47d7c1480
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I am ROTFL. The military would come in there so fast and blow their asses away it would look like Judgment Day!

I get an assortment of E-letters from an outfit called Book Riot. This is an article from one that I thought was both interesting and pertinent (as well as appalling). Sorry the link is long.

On October 25, Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency asking if any of the schools in the state have the books listed on a 16 page spreadsheet, as well as how much in funds schools had spent on these books.

These books are theoretically related to House Bill 3979, a so-called anti-CRT bill that bans teaching any materials that could mean “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” Of course, the bill — which is an overreach that has confused school districts about how to follow it — doesn’t actually mention books in school libraries. It’s about curriculum. Nonetheless, with the increase of book bans and challenges recently, Krause appears to want to preemptively remove any books that could be challenged for causing “discomfort.”

Ever since I saw this list, I’ve been itching to dig into it. It’s a bizarre assortment of titles, formatted in a way that suggests it’s copy-and-pasted from library listings. (The format of “Title : subtitle” is common in library records, but not in most other places.) Where did these books in particular come from, and what’s really on it? I went through all 850 books to find out, and I found some interesting and unsettling things.

Some disclaimers first: these are rough numbers. As you might expect, looking into 850 books took a while, so these are based on a glance at the cover and description. Also, I used “trans” as an umbrella term for any books dealing with gender-nonconforming people for the sake of clear statistics.

https://bookriot.com/texas-book-ban-list/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=RR%20Nov%205%2C%202021&utm_term=BookRiot_TheRiotRundown_DormantSuppress

Last fall, an anonymous hacker leaked a list of almost 40,000 past and present members of the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary group that often recruits military and police personnel. Reporters at NPR and WNYC/Gothamist scoured the data and ran the apparent members logs against rosters of active police officers in Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.

Now, an investigative report Friday by those same reporters reveals what many have long suspected: Active-duty police officers in some of our country’s largest departments are members of the Oath Keepers, which is also now under increased scrutiny for some members’ roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. At least 18 Oath Keepers associates, including the head of the militia organization, have been charged in the Capitol assault.

The Chicago Police Department was found to have 13 active employees on the Oath Keepers membership list. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had at least three active-duty deputies. And at least two active NYPD officers appeared on the list. The investigative work by this joint team of journalists to identify current cops in specific departments raises two questions about radicalization in the ranks: How did we get here, and what do we do about it?

The concern about potential violent extremism among police officers extends well beyond the Oath Keepers membership roster. This isn’t the first time that credible accusations of radicalization have been made against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Two recent reports from Loyola Law School and the RAND Corp. detail the problems in that agency. As noted in the work by NPR and WNYC/Gothamist:

“Those reports found a significant portion of Sheriff's Deputies have participated in subgroups, which have been accused of violent attacks and racial discrimination over decades. The reports specifically note one group active in the Compton, Calif., station known as 'The Executioners,' whose members have a tattoo resembling a skeleton wearing a Nazi helmet. According to the RAND Corporation report, which was commissioned by county officials, a whistleblower alleged that 'the Executioners encouraged shootings of civilians and had assaulted at least one other deputy at the station.'"

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/how-trump-steered-america-s-police-straight-oath-keepers-n1283431

A female high school ice hockey goalie in Pennsylvania is returning to the ice Monday for her first school game since she was the target of vulgar chants from spectators that resulted in discipline by a school and a youth sports organization.

Armstrong High School students chanted vulgarities at the Mars Area High School team's female goalie during an Oct. 28 game between the Armstrong River Hawks and Mars Fightin' Planets at the Armstrong team's Belmont Ice Arena near Kittanning, in western Pennsylvania. The chants from among a group of 50 to 60 students were captured on video posted to social media.

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Hockey League on Thursday barred Armstrong students from River Hawks hockey games and placed the school’s team on probation for the remainder of the 2021-22 season, including the playoffs. Siblings of varsity players can attend only if they enter and sit with a parent or guardian, and the school must provide a faculty member or administrator at each home and away varsity game to serve as a monitor.

League Commissioner John Mucha called the students’ actions “disgusting” and “absolutely more than kids being kids.”

“The game should’ve been stopped until the behavior stopped or the fans were escorted out of the building,” Mucha said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/students-barred-high-school-ice-hockey-games-after-chants-female-n1283447
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Armstrong should have forfeited the game.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health has called on the US supreme court to uphold the right to abortion in America or risk undermining international human rights law and threatening that right elsewhere in the world.

The special rapporteur, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, is one of just a handful of global observers whose mandate is to travel the world defending human rights.

Mofokeng has argued in a brief filed in a US court that overturning abortion rights would violate international human rights treaties ratified by the US, including the convention against torture, should women be forced to carry pregnancies to term.

In an interview, Mofokeng told the Guardian she could have filed a brief on abortion rights, “in any other court, in any other abortion case,” globally. However, she chose the US courts because of the direct threat posed to abortion rights in the supreme court’s upcoming session.

“We have this joke among us that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a [cold],” said Mofokeng. “So we know that politically that what happens in the United States… does have an impact in precedents elsewhere in the world.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/08/catastrophic-implications-un-health-expert-condemns-us-over-threat-to-abortion-rights