On Friday, CNN reported that former President Donald Trump had a top aide ask his son-in-law Jared Kushner whether it would be possible to trademark the phrase "Rigged Election," just days after the presidential election was called for Joe Biden in 2020.

The information was revealed in emails provided by Kushner, an adviser in Trump's White House, and released as part of the final batches of transcripts from the House January 6 Select Committee.

"On November 9, 2020, then-Trump aide Dan Scavino emailed Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, with the request from Trump," reported Tierney Sneed, Katelyn Polantz, and Kate Sullivan. "'Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see – or ask…I don’t know who to take to,' the email from Scavino reads, according to a transcript of Kushner’s testimony to the committee, which was released by the panel on Friday. Two phrases were bolded in the email: 'Save America PAC!' and 'Rigged Election!'"

"Kushner forwarded the request and discussed it on an email chain that included Eric Trump, the President’s son; Alex Cannon, a Trump campaign lawyer; Sean Dollman, the chief financial officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign, and Justin Clark, a Trump campaign lawyer," said the report, noting that Kushner wrote "Guys - can we do ASAP please?"

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-asked-kushner-if-it-was-possible-to-trademark-the-phrase-rigged-election-report/

This is beyond silly

The presence of police in schools actively jeopardizes the safety of Black students compared to their counterparts of other races, according to a report published this month.

Black students were subjected to more than 80% of the incidents of police violence accounted for in the survey, which analyzed more than 285 incidents over a decade. At least 60% of police assaults on students resulted in serious injury to the students, including broken bones, concussions and hospitalizations. The report also cited 24 cases of sexual assault on students and five student deaths as a result of police force in schools. It was published by the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, and the Alliance for Educational Justice, a coalition of groups working toward equity in public schools.

“It’s not just the fact that school policing is ineffective and a major waste of public funds. It is also harmful to the physical and emotional safety and health of students of color throughout the United States,” said Tyler Whittenberg, the deputy director at the Advancement Project.

The groups rounded up every identifiable reported incident of police violence in schools from 2011 to 2021, but the organizations concede their data is likely to be based on an undercount.

The report is named “#AssaultAtSpringValley, after a 16-year-old Black girl attending Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, was placed in a headlock and flipped over in her desk, then dragged and thrown across her classroom by a school police officer in 2015. It was in response to allegations that she was being disruptive and refusing to give up her phone and leave the classroom.

The school district fired the officer; two years later, a Justice Department investigation determined there was insufficient evidence to pursue federal charges.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/report-police-schools-outsize-effect-black-children-rcna63523

for how to educate hospital administrators in the future. ALL of them. It goes like this.

There will be no such thing as a degree in Health Care Administration unless it includes the following:

As part of the curriculum, all students will have clinical as well as classroom education. Clinical education will be taught by nurses with advanced degrees and adjunct faculty in the following areas: radiology, laboratory, dietary, transport, and housekeeping. Students will, as part of this clinical education, serve in each department, either in direct patient care or by shadowing, and each student will show competency and be graded accordingly.
1. Each student will be certified as a nursing assistant and will work for 2 full semesters as a CNA, 4 credit hours per semester; supervision by clinical instructors and nursing personnel, just like nursing students get. This will be a lab course, so 8 hours per week.
2. As to other departments, each student will shadow skilled personnel in lab and X-ray (1 semester) and will work under the direction of adjunct faculty in dietary, housekeeping, and transport (1 semester)
3. Each student will spend one full year shadowing nurses in all departments (2 semesters) under the direction of nursing
clinical instructors.
Only then, and after all the classes in finance and administrivia, will they be fully qualified to understand how a hospital really runs.

We'd need a whole lot fewer "assistant CEO's"!

In early 2022, Jordyn Bashford thought things were as good as they could be for a nurse amid the Covid pandemic.

A few months earlier, she had signed an agreement with a travel nurse agency called Aya Healthcare and left Canada to work at a hospital in Vancouver, Washington.

Before the end of her first shift at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, she said she realized other travel nurses there were earning even more than she was and asked for more money. Aya quickly amended her agreement and raised her hourly pay from $57 to $96.

In January, her rate increased again to $105 as part of a new agreement. She thought that the high pay — and a generous living stipend of nearly $1,300 per month — meant she and her fiancé could finally make plans to buy a house.

But two months later, when her assignment was renewed, Aya slashed her hourly pay back down to $56, and then cut it still more to $43.80 — less than her initial rate.

“I do know that travel nursing is fluid, and you can lose your job at any time, but I wasn’t expecting [my hourly pay] to fall 50%,” Bashford said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/travel-nurses-took-high-paying-jobs-covid-pay-slashed-rcna59604

I know at least three of the four agencies mentioned in the article: Aya, Maxim, and Cross Country. They were known in my time as a traveler as crap agencies. I worked for On Assignment and they were never anything but great. I did do two assignments for TNS and they were kind of shady, but I learned.

A Shiba Inu who earned global fame for starring in a viral meme is sick with leukemia and liver disease, her owner says.

In a series of Instagram posts this week, Atsuko Sato, a teacher who lives in Japan, said the 17-year-old pooch was in "a very dangerous condition" after being diagnosed with acute cholangiohepatitis, a type of inflammation in the digestive system, and chronic lymphoma leukemia, a blood cancer.

"Right now, the liver level is very bad and jaundice appears," Sato wrote in one caption. "But antibiotics will definitely improve."

The dog, known by the name "Kabosu," had stopped eating and drinking over the weekend but was beginning to get her energy back, Sato said.

Kabosu, a rescue dog, became an internet sensation after social media users began resharing a photo posted to Sato's personal blog in 2010.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1145813075/shiba-inu-doge-meme-kabosu-sick

Normally Don Beyer doesn’t bring his multivariable calculus textbook to work, but his final exam was coming up that weekend.

“And I’m running out of time,” he said, plopping the textbook and a scribbled notebook filled with esoteric-looking calculations on a coffee table in his office, “because I have all these—”

His phone was ringing. “I’ll be there,” Beyer told a colleague wondering when he would be returning to the House floor for votes.

It seemed study time would have to wait.

That’s been the story of the year for Beyer (D-Va.), who has been moonlighting as a student at George Mason University in pursuit of a master’s degree in machine learning while balancing his duties as a congressman. Beyer — a science wonk, economist and former car salesman — has been taking one class per semester in a slow but steady march toward the degree, with hopes of one day applying his artificial-intelligence knowledge to his legislative work as the technology evolves further.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” the 72-year-old Beyer said — although, “I was trying to think last night about the consequences. Number one is I read only two-thirds as many books this year. If I hit 53 I’ll be lucky, just because the time that I used to read books, I’m doing problems.”

https://wapo.st/3GoRkP5

Earlier this year, as Elon Musk looked increasingly likely to lose his court battle and be forced into purchasing Twitter, Justine De Caires started to get nervous.

Like others, De Caires, a Twitter software engineer of three and a half years, predicted a Musk takeover would come with mass layoffs. Unlike many, the 25-year-old had closely followed the legal battle between the billionaire and the social media company and read every page of the merger agreement. “I get fascinated and interested in things very easily,” explained DeCaires, who uses they/them pronouns.

Twitter higher-ups promised to stick to a generous severance package in the event of a Musk takeover, De Caires says. But the engineer had doubts, and started looking for labor rights attorneys with a history of dealing with powerful tech companies. The first email was to a Massachusetts attorney named Shannon Liss-Riordan, who had filed a lawsuit against Tesla months earlier. The attorney called back that same day.

“It was kind of like, ‘OK, let’s wait and see how this goes,’” De Caires recalled of that first conversation. “But when things started happening—oh, she was ready.”

The mass layoffs at Twitter in November—a proverbial Red Wedding that cut the staff in half—has proven fertile ground for lawsuits. But Liss-Riordan, a labor rights veteran once dubbed “Sledgehammer Shannon,” was perhaps the best-equipped attorney in the country to handle the case. A chatty 53-year-old Boston transplant, Liss-Riordan has sued tech companies from Uber to DoorDash and won judgments of up to $100 million on behalf of their workers.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/shannon-liss-riordan-plans-to-make-elon-musk-pay-for-his-twitter-sins?ref=home

It's clobberin' time! Go Sledgehammer Shannon!

As Zina Wilson sat in front of her computer in her suburban Ohio home last year, she decided: You have ripped off the wrong family.

Wilson, 51, was fed up with her niece receiving eviction notices for apartments in Las Vegas she had never rented, about receiving notices from collection agencies for Wi-Fi in cities where she had never lived.

She would fight back in the online world, where she soon learned nothing can be trusted as real. Her search led her to gangs and criminals. Fearing for her safety, she agreed to tell her tale under one of the nom de plumes she used in her online research.

Online identity theft scams flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensnaring 1 in 6 Americans and leading to $52 billion in losses last year alone, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

Despite having no experience in online investigations, Wilson became obsessed with the case. She came to see it as a righteous fight for justice against a criminal scheme that she would learn, clue by clue, sprawled across the country – one she believes involves dozens of victims.

“I will not let this go,” Wilson said. “It’s about my niece, but I hate when people do the wrong thing ... knowingly stealing and ruining peoples’ lives.”

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/12/13/ohio-woman-chased-down-identity-thief-now-hunt-back/8323004001/

Long, but absolutely worth the read. Go Auntie!

One very pregnant dog saved from frigid outdoor conditions by Richmond Animal Care and Control (RACC) was able to perform a Christmas miracle, giving birth to nine healthy puppies on Christmas night, just three days after being rescued.

The expecting mother, aptly named ‘Mama Manolo’ by RACC, was seized from freezing outdoor conditions on Dec. 22, the animal control service said online.

With freezing temperatures defined as 32 degrees, Virginia Law states it is illegal for any animal to be kept outside on a tether without adequate shelter “when the actual or effective outdoor temperature is 85 degrees Fahrenheit or higher or 32 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.”

“This dog was outside in the freezing cold in a wooden dog house that was full of water,” RACC said in a video of the dog as she was being transferred to the care of Virginia Veterinary Centers (VVC).

Adequate shelter is also defined in Virginia Law as enabling each animal to be clean, dry and protected from the outside elements.

https://www.wric.com/community/positively-richmond/pregnant-dog-saved-from-brutal-freezing-outdoor-conditions-gives-birth-to-9-healthy-puppies-christmas-night-in-richmond/

The babies are so cute! But this is a reminder to spay/neuter your pets and keep them warm, dry, and safe from the elements.

This week, a dominatrix trio generously offered to spank city officials after asking their local city council in Florida to consider allocating $250,000 to fund a municipal dungeon..

On Tuesday, the trio, dressed in futuristic full-body bondage suits, appeared at a city commission meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where officials were discussing a $1 million contract for a waste processing plant.

In BDSM, a dominatrix, or dom, takes a dominating or controlling role during sex and sexual activities, while a submissive, or sub, is the one who obeys. This particular city council meeting was no different.

“Good evening counsel peoples you may call me 'Mistress,’” the dom in charge said. She was dressed in what appears to be a skin-tight latex or leather suit covering her whole body and impressively high heels. Only her lips, painted in red, and her blond braid, were visible.

There, Mistress, introduced by officials as Miss Krave, gave her pitch—reportedly a publicity stunt to promote a new kink nightclub opening nearby—with the two others standing behind on either side.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxn9py/florida-dominatrix-city-council-dungeon

I had to wait to stop giggling before I could post this.