Algernon Moncrieff
Algernon Moncrieff's JournalTanks for Ukraine: Germany to send Leopard 2s and allow others to export - reports
Source: BBC News
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has decided to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and allow other countries to do the same, reports in Germany say.
Leopard 2s are made in Germany and Berlin needs to approve their export.
Germany has been hesitant to send its own - or allow other nations to send theirs - over concerns it could escalate the conflict with Russia.
Now, after international pressure, Mr Scholz has decided to send at least 14 Leopard 2s, German outlets say.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64391272?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
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CNN: The House has a speaker. Here's what comes next
The House has a speaker. Here’s what comes nextWith subpoena power and control over powerful committees, the House GOP plans to make investigations into the Biden administration a top priority. Among its targets are:
Hunter Biden. GOP Rep. James Comer, who is in line to chair the House Oversight Committee, said that “in the 118th Congress, this committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners and whether he is a President who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence.”
The heart of Comer’s investigation will be digging into more than 100 suspicious activity reports that Republicans claim banks have filed related to the president’s son Hunter Biden’s financial activities. Comer has said, “We would love to talk to people in the Biden family, specifically Hunter and Joe Biden.”
The White House said the investigations are politically motivated and a waste of time. Such reports are not conclusive and do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing.
The Department of Justice and FBI. GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who is widely expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in November requesting a slew of documents on everything from the Justice Department’s alleged “targeting” of Project Veritas to the FBI search for classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The southern border. After winning the majority, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas telling him and other department officials to be prepared to testify.
The Afghanistan withdrawal. Biden’s decision to remove US troops from Afghanistan in 2021 led to a frantic attempt by many Afghans to flee the county, with devastating scenes of people clinging to the wings of planes as they tried to escape before the Taliban government officially assumed power. Republicans have signaled that they are eyeing potential probes into the events.
Covid-19 origins. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce panel, has said that “how the pandemic started, that’s probably the most important public health question that needs to be answered.” Two studies released last year both concluded that a seafood market in Wuhan, China, was most likely the epicenter for the virus.
Hunter Biden will be the new Benghazi or Whitewater. I suspect they will try to say that President Biden was derelict in his duty with respect to the Afghan withdrawal and try to instigate impeachment hearings that will go pretty much nowhere. Covid-19 origins will be to say that China, not Russia, is our real enemy and that we should get with the program, stop sending money to Ukraine, and make every American sit through Shen-Yun.
Rep. Kevin Hern might consider being speaker if McCarthy falls short, source says
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/house-speaker-leadership-vote-01-05-23/h_889d4bbf7010d65db66ccffaa413339b"If McCarthy can’t get the votes, Hern won’t turn down a challenge. People his entire life have been telling him he can’t do something and look where he is now," the source said.
Hern, who is the head of the Republican Study Committee, has received a couple of anti-McCarthy protest votes in the eighth round of voting, but it unclear if he, or anyone, could earn a winning number of votes.
My questions:
1) At some point, do they caucus again and consider re-voting on majority leader?
2) What other names will emerge?
A "motion to vacate a chair" is a key demand of Republicans voting against McCarthy.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/house-speaker-leadership-vote-01-05-23/index.htmlDemocrats, under former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, changed the rules to make it more difficult to force a vote on vacating the chair. The Pelosi rules require a majority of either party to sign on before a vote can be taken.
Now, GOP hardliners want a single member to be able to force a vote. Sensing it would be used to gum up the work of the House by the House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy had heretofore opposed changing the rules back, although he has now relented on that.
Why not just let a single member force a vote? Here's Rep. Dan Crenshaw, the Texas Republican, as quoted in a previous CNN story on the subject: “There’s a reason [the motion to vacate] already got debated. You can’t govern with a gun to your head and that is what they are asking for. It makes us highly unstable, and it lays out the potential too for Democrats to take advantage of this and create absolute chaos.”
Police Called to Ted Cruz's Texas Home for Teen With Self-Inflicted Wounds
Source: Daily Beast
Police and medical personnel were called to the Texas home of Sen. Ted Cruz Tuesday night after reports of a 14-year-old girl at the property suffering from self-inflicted stab wounds to her arms.
The teen was taken to the hospital shortly after. It’s unclear who the girl was—though Cruz does have two daughters: Catherine, 11, and Caroline, 14.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-called-to-ted-cruzs-texas-home-for-teen-girl-with-self-inflicted-wounds
Today is a day members of both parties have awaited for over a year.
Tomorrow, the endless stream of political emails begging for money will finally, mercifully, come to an end (for about a year, anyway).
Heather Cox Richardson - November 21, 2022 (Monday) "Operation Higher Court"
The first harks back to the furor last May when the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health—the decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized abortion rights as a constitutional right—was leaked to Politico before it was released. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts called the leak a “singular and egregious breach of…trust” and ordered an investigation to find the leaker. In late October, Justice Samuel Alito told the Heritage Foundation that the leak was a “grave betrayal of trust by somebody, and it was a shock” that had made the court’s right-wing majority “targets for assassination.”
On Saturday, Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker of the New York Times reported that the Reverend Rob Schenck, formerly an antiabortion activist, wrote to Roberts in July (although the letter was dated June 7, 2022) to say that in 2014 he had received advance notice of the court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby—the decision allowing corporations to deny their employees contraceptive health care coverage—from a woman who had just had dinner with Justice and Mrs. Alito. The dinner guest told Schenck that she had learned that Alito was writing the decision and that it would favor evangelical Christians. Schenck, who has become an advocate of choice as he is trying to mark himself as a progressive evangelical leader, signed the letter to Roberts, “Yours in the interest of truth and fairness.”
Schenck provided the reporters with contemporary emails suggesting he knew the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case ahead of time, and they talked to four people who confirmed that he had confidential information about it before the court handed it down. He used that information to prepare a public relations push ready to go the minute the decision was public.
The leak of a Supreme Court decision is shocking and potentially illegal, but even more shocking than the revelation that there have been two major leaks from the court—both of right-wing opinions authored by Alito—was the story the reporters unraveled of the degree to which evangelical activists worked to become close to the justices, especially through participation in the court’s historical society, as well as religious events, a plan Schenck called “Operation Higher Court.” Their goal was to influence the justices quietly, and it appears to have been at least somewhat successful: in July, Peggy Nienaber, the executive director of Liberty Counsel’s D.C. ministry, who worked with Schenck, was caught on a hot mic saying she prayed with certain Supreme Court justices.
Heather Cox Richardson released this on Facebook. She also has a paid subscriber page.
Kyrie Irving Defends Antisemitic Documentary and Conspiracy Theory
Source: The New York Times
Nets guard Kyrie Irving doubled down on his support of an antisemitic documentary and a “New World Order” conspiracy theory about secret societies during a testy news conference Saturday night, a day after his team’s owner chastised him for supporting the film.
The conspiracy theory, pushed by the Infowars host Alex Jones, falsely suggests that people in the government are working to enslave the human population by, among other methods, releasing viruses.
“History is not supposed to be hidden from anybody,” Irving said as he defended himself for posting a link on Twitter to the 2018 documentary “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which espouses several antisemitic tropes.
“Did I do anything illegal?” Irving said. “Did I hurt anybody? Did I harm anybody? Am I going out and saying that I hate one specific group of people?”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/sports/basketball/kyrie-irving-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory.html
Insurance company Kemper lays off 339 workers, including 39 Alabama employees, citing inflation
Source: Advance Local
Insurance company Kemper Corporation confirmed Thursday it has laid off 339 employees, including 39 in Alabama, citing “the longer-term economic impacts of the pandemic—primarily significant prolonged inflation.”
“Like most insurance carriers, particularly those who write personal lines, the longer-term economic impacts of the pandemic—primarily significant prolonged inflation—have required us to make changes to our businesses which have led to a lower volume of policies in-force,” Chicago-based Kemper said in a statement to AL.com. “That reduced volume means we have to respond accordingly, including making some tough but necessary decisions to adjust our employee count.”
“Nationwide, we laid off just over 3 percent, or 339 employees, including 39 employees in Alabama,” the statement went on to say.
Read more: https://www.al.com/business/2022/10/insurance-company-kemper-lays-off-339-workers-including-39-alabama-employees-citing-inflation.html
Many Americans Say They Want To Relocate For Political Reasons. Few Actually Do.
538To be fair, moving can be expensive — on the order of thousands of dollars, even for a local relocation, according to industry experts — making this an unfeasible option for many Americans. Uprooting your everyday life to potentially gain access to a specific kind of health care isn’t an investment a lot of people can make. And those who can afford to do so are also more likely to be able to travel across state lines in a health care emergency, making the case to move in light of stricter abortion laws less urgent.
Even when Americans do move, they don’t go far. In fact, an overwhelming number don’t live that far from their hometown. That includes young people, one of the most likely demographic groups to say they want to move and perhaps among the most flexible in being able to lay down new roots. A Center for Economic Studies research paper released in July, for example, found that 80 percent of young Americans live within 100 miles of where they grew up, and 58 percent live within just 10 miles.
But that data implies that local moving patterns, especially around increasingly progressive cities situated in more conservative states, may be worth a closer look. The level of political diversity within states has become easy to spot on electoral maps — clusters of blue in major metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Nashville and Austin, for example, amidst redder spreads throughout the states of Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Comparing these cities with their states may reveal more than comparing, say, all of California to all of Texas.
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