Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalRudy Giuliani associate Igor Fruman likely to plead guilty Wednesday
A former associate of Rudy Giuliani is expected to plead guilty to federal campaign finance charges, court documents show.
Igor Fruman, a Ukrainian-born businessman, had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges brought by New York federal prosecutors in October 2019. But the case’s court docket says a “change of plea” hearing for Fruman was scheduled for Wednesday.
An attorney for Fruman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
Fruman and his business partner, Lev Parnas, were carrying one-way tickets to Vienna when they were arrested at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington two years ago.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/rudy-giuliani-associate-igor-fruman-likely-plead-guilty-wednesday-n1277486
Hospitality the Ho-Chunk way extended to Afghan Refugees
The Ho-Chunk Nation is calling on it’s 7,800 members to help Afghan refugees headed to Fort McCoy with clothing donations in preparation for Wisconsin’s harsh winters.
Fort McCoy sits on traditionally Ho-Chunk territory and it’s this connection along with the group’s U.S. military veterans that got them involved.
“We were forcibly removed from our traditional territory back in the days of the treaties so we know what that feels like,” said Ho-Chunk Nation’s Public Relations Officer Ryan Greendeer.”
Veterans in the group were concerned that Afghan people who assisted U.S. forces would be displaced so they wanted to make sure they felt welcome.
https://www.channel3000.com/hospitality-the-ho-chunk-way-extended-to-afghan-refugees/
Why QAnon followers are like opioid addicts, and why that matters
A few years ago, QAnon had an obscure internet following organized around a baseless conspiracy theory. It has now become ubiquitous, with regular and disturbing news stories reminding us of its reach.
Last week, we learned of a QAnon-related data leak of Colorado voting machine logins. The week before, people around the country struggled to comprehend a gruesome homicide allegedly committed by a QAnon-following father who, according to authorities, told the FBI he killed his two small children because he believed they’d inherited from their mother lizard DNA that would turn them into monsters. Last spring, a mother admitted to killing her three children, saying she wanted to protect them from becoming victims of a sadistic cabal of pedophiles whose existence is widely believed among QAnon adherents.
Why would such outlandish conspiracy theories hold sway over these parents and others around the country? One way to comprehend the incomprehensible is to recognize the parallels between QAnon and addictive drugs like opioids — which are also manipulated by malicious actors to trap vulnerable people in increasingly unhealthy spirals that ultimately result in the destruction of families and even death. Recognizing these similarities is helpful in both accurately diagnosing the QAnon phenomenon and trying to treat it.
For starters, QAnon, like the painkiller abuse epidemic driven by the drug oxycodone, engulfs people who are most vulnerable to its content. An overwhelming proportion of QAnon followers arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, for instance, have mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a University of Maryland analysis. If you believe the world is out to get you, you are probably more likely to embrace QAnon narratives that explain exactly how the world is out to get you.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-qanon-followers-are-opioid-addicts-why-matters-ncna1277323
Grace Slick and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane: how we made White Rabbit
Grace Slick, singer and songwriterAll fairytales that are read to little girls feature a Prince Charming who comes and saves them. But Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland did not. Alice was on her own, and she was in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity – that’s the White Rabbit. A lot of women could have taken a message from that story about how you can push your own agenda.
The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me. Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it. I wrote White Rabbit on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there. I used that piano to write several different songs. When I started making money I bought a better one.
In the 60s, the drugs were not ones like heroin and alcohol that you take to blot out a terrible life, but psychedelics: marijuana, LSD and shroomies. Psychedelic drugs showed you that there are alternative realities. You open up to things that are unusual and different, and, in realising that there are alternative ways of looking at things, you become more accepting of things around you.
The line in the song “feed your head” is both about reading and psychedelics. I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/23/grace-slick-and-jack-casady-of-jefferson-airplane-how-we-made-white-rabbit
Revealed: how California police chased a nonexistent 'antifa bus'
On 1 June 2020, a law enforcement official in the small northern California city of Redding sent screenshots of two social media posts to her staff, asking them to investigate.
One was an Instagram story. “BE AWARE … I have heard, from a reliable source, that ANTIFA buses with close to 200 people (domestic terrorists) are planning to infiltrate Redding and possibly cause distraction and destruction,” it read.
The second, a Facebook post, warned that buses of protesters planning to “riot” had stopped in Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, “but there was no rioting or burning as they decided to move on”. The post included a grainy image of a small van with “Black Lives Matter” written on the back.
Elizabeth Barkley, then chief of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) northern division, which covers rural parts of the state just south of Oregon, asked her colleagues to look into the claims and “notify our allied agencies in town”. Ninety minutes later, another CHP official forwarded the message to officers saying, “The thought is these buses are roaming – looking for events to attend (and possibly cause problems).”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/revealed-california-police-antifa-misinformation
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The boogeyman is coming! Be afraid! Be very afraid!
R. Kelly And Britney TV Docs Tap Into 'Consequence Culture,' Not Cancel Culture
As the trial of disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly unfolds, it's tough to imagine reaching this moment without the 2019 Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.
That's because the six-part project seemed to transform public opinion about the singer in an instant, with detailed, harrowing accounts from women who said Kelly spent decades pursuing underage girls for sex and maintaining abusive relationships. Kelly has denied the allegations.
The public reaction — including prosecutors asking other potential victims to come forward and his longtime label, RCA, dissolving its working relationship with him — was surprising because journalists had been reporting on similar allegations against the singer since the late 1990s.
But cultural critic and filmmaker dream hampton, an executive producer on Surviving R. Kelly, says this project hit the world in a crucial moment: Social media spread word quickly, a younger generation was less tolerant, and viewers were drawn in by the power of seeing a succession of survivors telling their stories directly to the camera.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/23/1029623250/r-kelly-britney-spears-allen-farrow-russell-simmons
Vaccinated Parents Are Catching COVID As Schoolkids Bring The Virus Home
"We were so careful," says Alysha Johnson, a resident of Discovery Bay, east of San Francisco. "I'm a germaphobe. When this whole thing happened, we didn't leave the house for six months."
Johnson was crushed when her toddler caught COVID-19 at a summer play group recently.
"It was a pretty big deal how sick he got," says Johnson. "It wasn't just a little sniffle."
Her 2-year-old suffered a sore throat, a cough and a 104 degree fever. The bout lasted more than a week and sickened Johnson, her sister and her boyfriend — all of whom had been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
"It felt like a really bad sinus cold," Johnson says. "I felt exhausted. I lost my sense of taste and smell. That was the most bizarre sensation."
Johnson is relieved her vaccination likely protected her against a more severe case of COVID-19. But the fact that kids are transmitting the coronavirus to family members is unnerving many parents all over the U.S., and putting extra stress on many households as children head back to school.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/23/1029737143/breakthrough-covid-infections-add-even-more-chaos-to-schools-start-n-2021
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In Tennessee, where the governor is a RepubliQan and masks are optional at best, my grandsons have headaches and runny noses and their mom is awaiting results of Covid tests. My 3 year old granddaughter was held out of preschool this year because Covid.
Trump Booed at His Own Rally for Telling His Supporters to Get Vaccinated
Former President Donald Trump’s rally in Alabama Saturday featured one of the rarest of sights: A Trump crowd visibly angry at Trump.
The reason? Trump told people to go get vaccinated.
Operation Warp Speed, the unprecedented effort to develop and roll out a COVID-19 vaccine, began during the Trump administration, and the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved for emergency use while he was still in office. But the incident in Alabama reflects the vaccine skepticism that’s inundated the conservative movement—even as hospitals around the country are overwhelmed by the fourth sustained wave of the coronavirus.
Alabama, where just 36 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, has seen some of the worst effects of the Delta variant. The state is currently second only to neighboring Florida in hospitalization rate due to COVID, and its hospitals reached negative ICU capacity last week.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k785dz/trump-booed-at-his-own-rally-for-telling-his-supporters-to-get-vaccinated
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Leaderless mob turns on leader
ICU doctor seeks Democratic nomination for governor in 2022
Jason Martin, a Nashville physician and vocal critic of the state government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, officially launched his bid Monday for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, with hopes taking on Republican Gov. Bill Lee next year.
As COVID-19 infections sweep across Tennessee, deaths and gasps for life became growingly depleting for Martin, director of Hendersonville Medical Center's critical care unit.
And apart from treating patients from his day job, the 46-year-old doctor now hopes to save more lives by entering politics.
“Overall, I feel like the governor’s response to COVID has been ‘Fend for yourself,’” he said in an exclusive interview with The Tennessean. “I think it’s costing people lives.”
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/23/icu-doctor-jason-martin-seeks-2022-tennessee-governor-democratic-nomination/8173035002/
At least 21 dead, 20 missing in 'unbelievable' Tennessee flooding
At least 21 people are dead and 20 others remain missing after middle Tennessee was hit with record rainfall Friday into Saturday morning.
The flooding in the region caused cars to be tossed like toys and houses ripped off their foundations, officials said.
A preliminary rainfall total of 17.02 inches was measured Saturday at McEwen, Tennessee, which would break the all-time 24-hour rainfall record for the southern U.S. state, according to the National Weather Service. The old record was 13.06 inches, recorded in Milan on Sept. 13, 1982.
Authorities, who said the numbers would be fluid throughout the search and rescue efforts, initially said 22 people died and up to 60 people were missing. But Grey Collier, public information officer for the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency, told ABC News on Sunday night that the current death toll from the flooding is 21, with approximately 20 others still unaccounted for.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-dead-dozens-missing-unbelievable-tennessee-flooding/story?id=79584226
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