Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Question 43



Question 43

Is the West's relationship with Russia really dependent on the French negotiating with Putin? The French?
Are the Germans even in NATO anymore? Did they agree with Biden yesterday about the pipeline?
Will questions be raised, as they were with Trump, that Putin has something on Biden?

Viewership for Friday's Olympics Opening Ceremony was a dismal 16 million, as NBC faces what Yahoo!sports' Dan Wetzel called a "cataclysmic loss" of audience - a record low exceeding the previous record of 20.1 million viewers for 1988's Calgary games. It was 43% below the 2018 games' opening ceremony in South Korea which had 28.3 million viewers.

Last summer, Press Secretary Jen Psaki causally informed the media that the White House was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Would that be a 'speech crime?'

While we prefer dignity in the White House, it is more important to have secure borders, a non-nuclear Iran, a docile Russia, low inflation, and energy independence—all destroyed in a year by negating Trump policy, and still without dignity in the White House. Our president publicly called a reporter a “son of a b—.” Mr. Biden is as rude as any president, and without the success to compensate.--wsj

Last week McCann was two goals short of his career-high of 19 with the Kraken still having 38 games left to play.

This deserves the complete story.
A 26-year-old California man convicted of molesting a 10-year-old girl will serve out his sentence in a female juvenile facility because he now identifies as a woman.
James Tubbs was 17 when he grabbed the child by the neck, shoved her into a school bathroom stall, and sexually molested her.
DNA only recently linked Tubbs to the assault eight years ago.
After being taken into custody Tubbs adopted a new gender identity of Hannah Tubbs, making him eligible to serve his two-year sentence in a detention facility for women.
Tubbs is still anatomically a male and has not undergone any gender reassignment surgery.
The prosecutor, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, tried Tubbs as a juvenile even though he is 26 years old, which made him eligible for sentencing as a juvenile. That means Tubbs will not only be housed with females, but with minors.
Incidentally, he has had more recent, adult convictions.

Just a few days after dropping off Spotify, Young participated in the launch of a (temporary) satellite radio Neil Young channel.

The security threats in west Africa now include piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. In 2020, all but one of the world’s 28 kidnappings recorded at sea occurred in these waters. Similarly, in 2018, all six hijackings at sea, and 13 of the 18 incidents of ships fired upon occurred in the Gulf of Guinea. Of the 141 hostages held at sea that year, 130 were captured by pirates here.

Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper whose verses are usually in Spanish (and, on one occasion, Japanese), was the most played artist in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming platform.
While English still dominates, it is in decline.

On the eve of the 2020 election, 54 percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they considered themselves more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party, compared with 38 percent who said they considered themselves more a supporter of the Republican Party. By January 2021, views were evenly divided, with 46 percent saying Trump and 46 percent saying the GOP.
The latest poll, released last weekend, shows a reversal in attitudes, compared with the pre-election 2020 survey, and a further decline from last January. Today, 56 percent of Republicans say they are more supporters of the party than of Trump, while 36 percent say they are more supporters of Trump than the party.

From Musa al-Gharbi's article in The Guardian:
We are not living in a “post-truth” world. We are not on the brink of a civil war. The perception that we are is almost purely an artifact of people taking poll and survey data at face value despite overwhelming evidence that we probably shouldn’t…
In fact, rather than January 6 serving as a prelude to a civil war, the US saw lower levels of death from political violence in 2021 than in any other year since the turn of the century. Even as violent crime approached record highs across much of the country, fatalities from political violence dropped. This is not an outcome that seems consistent with large and growing shares of the population supposedly leaning towards settling the culture wars with bullets instead of ballots. This turn of events does not seem consistent with the notion that tens of millions of Americans – including large numbers of military, law enforcement and militia members – literally believe the presidency was stolen, elections can no longer be trusted, and the fate of the country is on the line.
Indeed, far from giving up on elections, Republican voters are reveling in the prospect of taking back one or both chambers of Congress at the end of this year; they are eagerly awaiting the midterms (likely for good reason).
In truth, most Republican voters likely don’t believe in the big lie. But many would nonetheless profess to believe it in polls and surveys – just as they’d support politicians who make similar professions (according to one estimate, Republican candidates who embrace the big lie enjoy a 6 percentage point electoral boost as compared to Republicans who publicly affirm the 2020 electoral results).

No comments: