Related: A New Day in D.C.
I have neither watched or read anything about it, sorry.
"Georgia prosecutors open criminal probe of Trump’s call to top election official" by Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim New York Times, February 10, 2021
ATLANTA — Fulton County prosecutors have initiated a criminal investigation into former president Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, including a phone call he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him reverse his loss.
On Wednesday, Fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous state officials, including Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to “an investigation into attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia General Election.”
While the letter does not mention Trump by name, it is related to his intervention in Georgia’s election, according to a state official with knowledge of the matter. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.
For two months after Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump relentlessly attacked election officials in Georgia, including Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, claiming they were not doing enough to uncover instances of voting fraud that might change the outcome.
The inquiry makes Georgia the second state after New York where Trump faces a criminal investigation, and it comes in a jurisdiction where potential jurors are unlikely to be hospitable to the former president; Fulton County encompasses most of Atlanta and overwhelmingly supported Biden in the November election.
They just admitted he can't get a fair trial with unbiased jurors!
Former prosecutors said Trump’s calls might run afoul of at least three state laws. Biden’s victory in Georgia was reaffirmed after election officials recertified the state’s presidential election results in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and another recount, which was requested by Trump’s campaign and completed by machines.
Biden was the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia since 1992.....
Also see:
It's a new day in D.C., and here is his replacement.
Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago:
"In Florida, an unhappy Trump watches it all play out" by Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey Washington Post, February 10, 2021
As he faces his second impeachment trial, Donald Trump has been unusually quiet.
Ensconced in his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., the former president has spent his days golfing. He has remained sanguine that an evenly divided Senate will acquit him of charges of inciting an insurrection — despite his egging on of an angry crowd that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, yet despite his overall confidence, Tuesday’s opening arguments did not unfold as Trump or his allies had hoped.
Trump was especially disappointed in the performance of his lawyer Bruce Castor, who gave a rambling argument, wore an ill-fitting suit, and at one point praised the case presented by the Democratic House impeachment managers, two people involved in the effort said. The former president — monitoring the trial on television from Florida — had expected a swashbuckling lawyer and instead watched what was a confusing and disjointed performance.
Several Trump advisers also described Castor’s performance in harsh terms as underwhelming, as did a number of senators, including Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana., who said the shoddy defense spurred him to change his vote on the constitutionality of the proceedings.
In self-imposed exile in South Florida since leaving office on Jan. 20, Trump has created a gilded bubble around himself — a protective shield further enforced by the decision of Twitter and other social media companies to ban the former president from their platforms after the Capitol riot, which resulted in the death of a police officer and four others.
He is adrift, friends say, with no clear sense of what comes next for the first time in his political life. They add that Trump is calmer than they expected as he faces down another historic indictment in a career littered with them. At least four former senior Trump administration officials independently described the former president as “chill” or “chilling.”
Nonetheless, the Senate impeachment trial that began Tuesday is never far from his mind, allies say, but Trump’s seeming quietude, said one confidante who recently spoke with the former president, is less the result of newfound discipline and more a consequence of Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, who no longer has an instant public forum to blast out his latest grievances.
Trump is not expected to make a public appearance during the trial and is staying at his Florida club, two advisers said, but Trump has talked about reemerging in March, officials said, after taking a few weeks off.....
I'm sure that got people buzzing with hope.
The Globe jury is of the opinion that Senate Republicans will save Trump to save their own political skins even though his own lawyers proved his actions were indefensible and that the evidence against the former president is irrelevant and it should matter that the Democrats leading the effort to impeach the former president for inciting the deadly insurrection of Jan. 6 have the evidence overwhelmingly on their side in hundreds of hours of gut-wrenching video.
Related:
"Twitter jumped the most in a year after it reported fourth-quarter revenue that topped analysts’ estimates, capitalizing on a robust holiday season for digital advertising. Revenue rose 28 percent to $1.29 billion, compared with the $1.19 billion average analyst prediction, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was a strong quarter for digital advertising companies in general, which were buoyed by the push toward online shopping during the pandemic. Facebook, Google, Snap, and Pinterest all reported better-than-expected revenue for the period. Still, Twitter’s lackluster user additions could reignite concerns about long-term growth, especially after the company permanently banned former President Donald Trump from the service in January after his comments were seen as encouraging a mob at the US Capitol. Twitter has long argued that Trump’s presence on the platform didn’t meaningfully impact user growth, but it did raise Twitter’s public profile during his four years in office."
Mi$$ him yet?
They are now building a subscription product as a way to ease its dependence on advertising — a plan the social network has considered for years, and one that has taken on a heightened priority given the pandemic and pressure from activist investors to accelerate growth.
"Facebook dials down the politics for users" by Kevin Roose and Mike Isaac New York Times, February 10, 2021
After inflaming political discourse around the globe, Facebook is trying to turn down the temperature.
The social network announced Wednesday that it had started changing its algorithm to reduce the political content in users’ news feeds. The less political feed will be tested on a fraction of Facebook’s users in Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia beginning this week and will be expanded to the United States in the coming weeks, the company said.
One-Party totalitarianism on its way!
“During these initial tests we’ll explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people’s feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we’ll use going forward,” Aastha Gupta, a Facebook product management director, wrote in a blog post announcing the test.
Facebook previewed the change last month when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, said the company was experimenting with ways to tamp down divisive political debates among users.
Political stories won’t disappear from users’ feeds altogether. Content from official government agencies and services will be exempt from the algorithm change, Facebook said, as will information about COVID-19 from organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Last month, Zuckerberg said users would also still be able to discuss politics inside private groups.
(Blog editor simply shakes his head at the cavalier and casual way in which the journali$t refers to something that is more like the Soviet Union than America.
“They can be ways that people organize grassroots movements, speak out against injustice or learn from people with different perspectives, so we want these discussions to be able to keep happening,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook has been under fire from lawmakers from both parties. Liberals have blamed the company for allowing hate speech and misinformation to spread, while conservatives have claimed that they were censored.
Making Facebook less political could satisfy critics who blame it for increasing partisan polarization, but the move could also cut into the time that users spend on the app. Many of the most-engaged news stories on Facebook are political, and charged political debates often generate the heavy use and repeat visits that are good for the bottom line.
Data released by Facebook last fall showed that during one week in October, seven of the 10 most-engaged pages were primarily political, including those of President Donald Trump, Fox News, Breitbart, and Occupy Democrats.
It’s unclear how Facebook’s algorithm will define political content, or how significantly the changes will affect people’s feeds. Lauren Svensson, a Facebook spokeswoman, said the company would keep “refining this model during the test period to better identify political content, and we may or may not end up using this method longer term.”
Going to wipe you off the Face of the Earth if you don't think the right way.
It is also unclear what will happen if Facebook’s tests determine that reducing the political content also reduces people’s use of the site. In the past, the company has shelved or modified algorithm changes that aimed to lower the amount of misleading and divisive content people saw, after determining that the changes caused them to open Facebook less frequently.
Political posts make up only about 6 percent of what US users see on their feeds, Facebook said, but given the headaches that these posts have caused for the company, it’s no mystery why it wants to shrink that number. “Even a small percentage of political content can impact someone’s overall experience,” Gupta wrote.
Three years ago, Facebook said it would pull back on the amount of content posted to the site by news publishers and brands, an overhaul that it said put more focus on interaction among friends and family. At the time, Zuckerberg said he wanted to make sure that Facebook’s products were “not just fun but good for people.” He also said the company would take those actions even if it meant hurting the bottom line.
Still, Facebook users have had no problem finding political content. Nongovernmental organizations and political action committees paid to show millions of Americans highly targeted political advertising in the months before November’s presidential election. Users created vast numbers of private groups to discuss campaign issues, organize protests and support candidates. Until recently, Facebook’s own systems frequently suggested new, different political groups that users could join.
Uhhhhhh.... isn't that the same kind of ELECTION INTERFERENCE of which the Russians are accused.
Oh, right, was the CLEANEST ELECTION EVER!
Facebook has backtracked on some of this in recent months. After the polls closed on Election Day, the company shut down the ability to buy new political advertising, and after the deadly Capitol riot Jan. 6, Zuckerberg said the company would turn off the ability to recommend political groups to “turn down the temperature” on global conversations.
Under the new test, a machine-learning model will predict the likelihood that a post — whether it is posted by a major news organization, a political pundit, or your friend or relative — is political. Posts deemed political will appear less often in users’ feeds.
Oh, A.I. will decide!
Could lead to job cuts:
"Akamai cuts 2 percent of workforce as part of reorganization around security business" by Anissa Gardizy Globe Staff, February 10, 2021
Akamai Technologies said it has cut about 2 percent of its global workforce as part of a restructuring. Based on the company’s headcount at the end of 2020, that would amount to 160-plus jobs.
Effective March 1, Akamai said its business will be anchored by two newly created business groups, one focused on Internet security and the other focused on “edge technology,” which includes web performance and media delivery.
News of the layoffs came as the Cambridge-based company reported its 2020 revenue grew 11 percent, compared to the previous year, to $3.2 billion.
Tom Leighton, the co-founder and CEO of Akamai, said in a press release that the company believes the world’s reliance on the Internet will continue to grow as employees work remotely and cyberattacks increase in volume and sophistication. He said on a call with investors Tuesday that the restructuring comes “from a position of strength.”
The company reported on Tuesday that revenue from its security business topped $1 billion in 2020, growing over 25 percent from the year prior to become one-third of Akamai’s total revenue for the year.
As the company grows its security business, one prominent departure will be its chief security officer, Andy Ellis. The 20-year Akamai veteran announced he is leaving via Twitter on Tuesday.
Akamai said Rick McConnell, who currently serves as the president and general manager of the company’s web division, will lead the new security group. Adam Karon, the executive vice president and general manager of Akamai’s media and carrier division, will serve as chief operating officer and general manager of the new edge technology group.
Akamai’s chief financial officer told analysts on Tuesday that the company expects the workforce reduction to cost about $7 million in the next quarter.....
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Ready for a meltdown?
"Tech meltdowns kept unemployment aid from millions; A senator has a $500 million plan to fix that" by Tony Romm Washington Post, February 10, 2021
Senator Ron Wyden unveiled a bill Wednesday to upgrade the technical underpinnings of the country’s unemployment insurance system, hoping to remedy the many tech meltdowns that left millions of Americans struggling to obtain aid amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The proposal takes aim at the dated patchwork of state systems that forced many cash-starved families last year to wait weeks to receive their first unemployment checks. Wyden’s bill envisions a $500 million federal effort to standardize unemployment websites and other tools, which would be made available for states to adopt as they see fit.
’'Unemployment began in the 1930s, and not that much really has changed,’' Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said ahead of the bill’s introduction, ’'and certainly unemployment insurance services have not kept up with the times.’'
Wyden’s measure is backed by Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Mark Warner of Virginia. It marks a direct response to the technical glitches that have slowed unemployment websites, left government phone lines clogged, and marred the US government’s economic response to the coronavirus, as millions of Americans who unexpectedly lost their jobs struggled to stay current on their bills.
Are you sick of the excuses yet as to we get f**ked because no upgrades were ever made(?) -- and if so, where did all the money all these years go? -- while the $$$ flows right into the accounts of Wall Street overnight, no problem?
They can't do thi$ for you, $omething far more impactful to your exi$tence, but trust them on the poisons potions in their tubes!
Adding to the difficulties, it took some states months to implement some of the most critical stimulus programs Congress authorized as part of the $2 trillion Cares Act last March....
That's odd; banks get the money overnight.
Related:
"Thousands of hard-hit small businesses are once again having trouble accessing millions of dollars in pandemic aid from the state and federal governments, as they fight for survival while a second wave of virus infections continues to undermine the economy. A $700 million-plus relief fund set up by Massachusetts officials initially rejected some 4,000 applications so far this year from small businesses because their paperwork was incomplete. Meanwhile, the current round of the federal Paycheck Protection Program is rejecting loan applications at a higher-than-normal rate, according to local bankers. At the state level, the small business grant fund is being administered by the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corp., a quasi-public agency....."
Case counts are allegedly dropping like a WTC tower in free fall, so how can it be further undermining anything -- not that it ever was. All the undermine was done by criminal political leaders at the behest of their ma$ters.
WTF is a "qua$i-public agency" anyway?
Sure smells like fa$ci$m, does it not?
"Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday underscored the Fed’s commitment to reducing unemployment to multi-decade lows, where it stood before the pandemic, while signaling little concern about the risk of potentially high inflation or financial market instability. Powell stressed in prepared remarks for a webcast to the Economic Club of New York that the job market remains weak despite having recovered from the depths of the pandemic recession, and he signaled that the Fed isn’t considering any increase in its benchmark short-term interest rate from its level near zero. For now, there is little sign of rising prices. Consumer prices rose just 1.4 percent in January compared with a year earlier, the government said Wednesday. He noted that roughly 4 million people who are out of work have stopped looking for jobs, which means they aren’t counted as unemployed. If they were, the unemployment rate would be closer to 10 percent, and while the job losses among the highest-earning one-quarter of Americans have been just 4 percent, job losses among the poorest one-quarter have been “a staggering 17 percent,” Powell said."
That's a rever$al from earlier when we were told a surge of expected store closings early this year hasn’t materialized after strong holiday sales prompted retailers to hold on to their leases in hopes of a shopping rebound.
Also see:
He says we can’t afford to wait for perfection even if you have not a clue what was in it -- a far cry from what he was saying months ago when it was good politics but bad economics!
"A majority of the people arrested for Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble" by Todd C. Frankel Washington Post, February 10, 2021
WASHINGTON — Jenna Ryan seemed like an unlikely participant in the mob that stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6. She was a real estate agent from Texas. She flew into Washington on a private jet, and she was dressed that day in clothes better suited for a winter tailgate than a war, but in a different way, she fit right in.
Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor, and 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.
While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.
The criminal pre$$ has already convicted you.
"I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation," said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings, "and that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something way — mobilized a lot of people that day."
You mean PERIL?
The financial missteps by defendants in the attempted insurrection ranged from small debts of a few thousand dollars more than a decade ago to unpaid tax bills of $400,000 and homes facing foreclosure in recent years. Some of these people seemed to have regained their financial footing, but many of them once stood close to the edge.
Ryan had nearly lost everything, and the stakes seemed similarly high to her when she came to Washington in early January. She fully believed Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen and that he was going to save the country, she said in an interview with The Post, but now — facing federal charges and abandoned by people she considered "fellow patriots" — she said she feels betrayed.
"I bought into a lie, and the lie is the lie, and it’s embarrassing," she said. "I regret everything."
I feel that way heading back after purcha$ing a Globe every morning.
We are all feeling betrayed by ruling cla$$, of which the Globe is a major mouthpiece.
The FBI has said it found evidence of organized plots by extremist groups, but many of the people who came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 — including Ryan — appeared to have adopted their radical outlooks more informally, consuming conspiracy theories about the election on television, social media, and right-wing websites.
In the Capitol attack, business owners and white-collar workers made up 40 percent of the people accused of taking part, according to a study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. Only 9 percent appeared to be unemployed.
The participation of people with middle- and upper-middle-class positions fits with research suggesting that the rise of right-wing extremist groups in the 1950s was fueled by people in the middle of society who felt they were losing status and power, said Pippa Norris, a political science professor at Harvard University who has studied radical political movements.
If you are in the middle cla$$, fighting back against your impoverishment and extinction, it's right-wing extremism, got it.
Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police when she tried to leap through a door’s broken window inside the Capitol, had struggled to run a pool-service company outside San Diego and was saddled with a $23,000 judgment from a lender in 2017, according to court records.
There is a question as to whether that actually happened because there was a noticeable lack of blood for someone allegedly shot in the neck.
Dominic Pezzola, who federal authorities said is a member of the Proud Boys, is accused of being among the first to lead the surge inside the Capitol and helping to overwhelm police. Up to 140 officers were injured in the storming of the Capitol and one officer, Brian Sicknick, was killed.
Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., also has been named in state tax warrants totaling more than $40,000 over the past five years, according to public records. His attorney declined to comment.
The poor and uneducated are not more likely to join extremist movements, according to experts. Two professors a couple of years ago found the opposite in one example: an unexpectedly high number of engineers who became Islamist radicals.....
Yeah, they populate the Antifa and BLM city-sackers and are thus not extremists in any way!
Not only are they not joining, they are leaving the party:
"The tip of an iceberg? Why thousands of Republicans are quitting the party" by Nick Corasaniti, Annie Karni and Isabella Grullón Paz New York Times, February 10, 2021
In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the phone lines and websites of local election officials across the country were jumping: Tens of thousands of Republicans were calling or logging on to switch their party affiliations.
An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data.
Among those who recently left the party are Juan Nunez, 56, an Army veteran in Mechanicsburg, Pa. He said he had long felt that the difference between the United States and many other countries was that campaign-season fighting ended on Election Day, when all sides would peacefully accept the result. The Jan. 6 riot changed that, he said.
“What happened in DC that day, it broke my heart,” said Nunez, a lifelong Republican who is preparing to register as an independent. “It shook me to the core.”
The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California.
Voter rolls often change after presidential elections, when registrations sometimes shift toward the winner’s party or people update their old affiliations to correspond to their current party preferences, often at a department of motor vehicles. Other states remove voters who are inactive or who have died or those who have moved out of state from all parties and lump those people together with voters who changed their own registrations.
Among Democrats, 79,000 have left the party since early January, but the tumult at the Capitol, and the historic unpopularity of the former president, Donald Trump, have made for an intensely fluid period in American politics.
Michael P. McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, said, “this is probably a tip of an iceberg,” but, he cautioned, it could also be the vocal “never Trump” reality simply coming into focus as Republicans finally took the step of changing their registration, even though they hadn’t supported the president and his party since 2016.
Getting closer to Weaver are they?
Kevin Madden, a former Republican operative who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, fits this trend line, though he was ahead of the recent exodus. “It’s not a birthright, and it’s not a religion,” Madden said of party affiliation. “Political parties should be more like your local condo association. If the condo association starts to act in a way that’s inconsistent with your beliefs, you move.”
As for the overall trend of Republicans abandoning their party, he said that it was too soon to say if it spelled trouble in the long term, but that the numbers couldn’t be overlooked. “In all the time I worked in politics,” he said, “the thing that always worried me was not the position but the trend line.”
Some GOP officials noted the significant gains in registration that Republicans have seen recently, including before the 2020 election, and noted that the party had rebounded quickly in the past.
HOW in the FUCK did TRUMP LOSE, huh?
Nunez, the Army veteran in Pennsylvania, said his disgust with the Capitol riot was compounded when Republicans in Congress continued to push back on sending stimulus checks and staunchly opposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“They were so quick to bail out corporations, giving big companies money, but continue to fight over giving money to people in need,” said Nunez, who plans to change parties this week. “Also, I’m a business owner and I cannot imagine living on $7 an hour. We have to be fair.”
Don't worry; with the Democrats in total control, you will soon not vent have a business.
$peaking of $witching parties:
"US Chamber of Commerce names its first new leader in 24 years" by Lauren Hirsch New York Times, February 10, 2021
The US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday appointed Suzanne Clark as its next chief executive, one of the most powerful jobs in business, ending a 24-year run by Thomas J. Donohue.
Clark will have to manage a bitterly divided Washington as the chamber, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, seeks to cement a transition from being a steadfast Republican ally to promoting bipartisan moderation.
“I don’t know a single member of Congress who doesn’t want more jobs,” she said in an interview Tuesday.
Question is for whom.
Donohue, a former chief executive of the American Trucking Associations, helped the chamber build up its coffers and its political power, establishing it as a Washington powerhouse. For much of his tenure, that power was focused on backing the Republican Party, including through political spending. The chamber put about $308,000 toward Republicans for the 2016 election and a little over $1,000 toward Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Those ties fractured under former President Donald Trump, with whom Donohue openly sparred. As more extremist leanings took hold in the Republican Party, the chamber offered its support — and financial might — to moderate Democrats. In 2019, it changed its score card for politicians to encourage bipartisanship, and last year it endorsed 23 House Democrats for reelection — a move that perturbed some in its ranks. The group put about $550,000 toward Republicans in the 2020 election and a little over $200,000 toward Democrats.
Clark’s background may help the chamber’s shift to the middle. After an initial stint there, she spent seven years in the private sector, including at the Potomac Research Group and the National Journal Group.
“Once you’ve signed the front of a paycheck, it changes how you think,” Clark said.
Something most career politicians in Congre$$ have never done!
Since returning to the chamber in 2014 and being promoted to president in 2019, Clark has increased her responsibilities and visibility both internally and externally. During the pandemic she has argued for liability protections for employers and warned of the risk of a “K-shaped” economic recovery. She has also led a series of conversations with experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill and Melinda Gates.
As if they didn't have enough wealth and control already, and it is clear we are sunk if the Chamber of Commerce is on board with the Great Re$et.
Clark’s biggest challenge may be a balancing act between Republicans dismayed with the group’s new Democratic allies and Democrats who have historically viewed it as an antagonist to the progressive agenda.
The chamber has so far extended a warm welcome to President Joe Biden, announcing its support of market-based solutions to climate change and commending his plans on immigration policy.....
I sense disaster ahead.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Going to need a distraction, so why not the tried-and-true method?
"Biden’s top challenge abroad is something no one wants to talk about; After 4 years of Donald Trump, the former vice president has returned to a world filled with nuclear dangers" by Steven Erlanger New York Times, February 10, 2021
BRUSSELS — When Joe Biden left office as vice president four years ago, anxiety about nuclear weapons was low, save for North Korea, but after four years of Donald Trump, President Biden has returned to a world filled with nuclear dangers.
There is little arms control, modern technologies are unrestrained, and the players are more numerous and rapidly building up nuclear stockpiles. As important, Trump’s transactional, spasmodic, “America First” policies undermined allies’ confidence in US security guarantees.
Many experts are now warning that Biden must once again make arms control a priority, even if the notion seems as dated as the wide-lapeled suits of the 1970s and ’80s, when complex treaties about “throw weights” and “multiple-entry vehicles” dominated Cold War diplomacy.
Not to do so, they say, risks the acceleration of a nuclear arms race, with new threats to US allies in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, but few want to discuss the perils, especially in Europe, where nuclear literacy is largely gone and the danger comes from shorter-range nuclear weapons uncovered by any arms control.
Are YOU READY for a NUCLEAR WAR after the GRID GOES DOWN?
It's the ONLY WAY to PRESERVE the DOLLAR as a RESERVE CURRENCY as it is being DESTROYED by STIMULOOT, huh?
To Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs, the lack of a debate is shocking. “We barely discuss nuclear,” she said. “On the risk and threat side, there’s no sufficient understanding of how more dangerous it’s becoming.”
The most immediate fix would be to restore US credibility, experts said, though even that may not be easy. The old assurance that the United States would respond with its own arsenal if allies were attacked was a strong barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons. No more, perhaps.
America’s partners in Europe and Asia feel vulnerable. They want reassurance that US security guarantees are valid, realistic, and reliable, experts said. If not, some would consider going nuclear themselves, openly or secretly.
What is compelling them are the new dangers of a world where North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenals are expanding, China is doubling its nuclear-weapons stockpile and building sophisticated intermediate-range missiles, Russia has modernized its nuclear arms and is developing hypersonic missiles, and Iran is thought to be several months from producing enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb.....
Those all look like OLD DANGERS, and I also stopped reading there due the the last lie regarding Iran that proves the NYT "apology" for Iraq WMD was disingenuous at best.
Related:
"Spike in attacks on Asian-Americans in Bay Area sparks fear, demands for justice" by Jada Chin Washington Post, February 10, 2021
SAN FRANCISCO — A surge in brutal attacks against Asian-American seniors in the Bay Area, including one that resulted in the death of an 84-year-old Thai man, has left residents fearful and angry and activists — including Hollywood celebrities — demanding justice.
Related: "LVMH and Rihanna are suspending the ready-to wear operations of Fenty, the US pop singer’s brand, less than two years after its debut as the pandemic pummels demand for clothing. Fenty was launched to great fanfare in May 2019 and represented a rare effort by LVMH to build a new fashion brand from scratch. The luxury giant has typically focused on acquiring businesses with prestigious legacies, whether it’s handbag maker Louis Vuitton or champagne producer Moet & Chandon."
Watch what you wear.
San Francisco’s mayor and police chief have promised to address concerns, and on Tuesday, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced the creation of a special response unit to investigate crimes against Asian-Americans, especially the elderly.
There have been several attacks on elderly members of the Asian-American community recently, but the brutal Jan. 28 assault of Vicha Ratanapakdee, which was captured on video, sparked particular outrage. In the video, which was widely shared around the world, Ratanapakdee is seen being violently shoved to the ground during his morning walk in San Francisco. He died days later.
San Francisco police arrested 19-year-old Antoine Watson on charges of murder and elder abuse in Ratanapakdee’s death. Watson has pleaded not guilty, and a judge Monday ordered him held without bond while awaiting trial, the San Francisco Examiner reported.
What's his story?
I hope he isn't a prisoner that was released because of CV.
If the video I saw was correct, he is a black man, right?
Asian-Americans have increasingly been targeted since the start of the pandemic. Former president Donald Trump inaccurately called the coronavirus the “China virus” and blamed the country for the pandemic. The first known coronavirus outbreak was in Wuhan, China, but scientists are still trying to discover the virus’s origin.
Yeah, as China penetrates our society ever deeper the long-time American prejudice against the "yellow" man must be dealt with.
In one of his first acts, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at combating xenophobia against the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities due to the coronavirus pandemic. Asked about the recent increase in attacks against Asian-Americans, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: ’'I’m not aware if the president had seen any of the videos, but he is concerned about the discrimination, the actions against the Asian-American community.’'
How come he doesn't have one in his Cabinet, and why is it overloaded with Zioni$t Jews?
Civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen condemned the increase in anti-Asian crime and asked for more media coverage. The issue had received little attention outside of California until video of Ratanapakdee’s attack went viral. It was widely shared by celebrities including Gemma Chan, Paris Hilton, Daniel Dae Kim, and Daniel Wu.
His death sparked international outrage, prompting messages on social media, including hashtags #JusticeForVicha and #AsiansAreHumans.....
The perpetrators should be hung, no?
Then that video can go viral:
"TikTok sale pushed by Trump is shelved, report says" by TALI ARBEL and MATT O’BRIEN Associated Press, February 10, 2021
The Biden administration has “indefinitely” shelved a proposed US takeover of the popular video app TikTok, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Last year, the Trump administration brokered a deal that would have had US corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in the Chinese-owned app on national-security grounds.
The unusual arrangement stemmed from an order by then-President Donald Trump that aimed to ban TikTok in the United States unless it accepted a greater degree of American control.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki did not deny the Journal report, but said Wednesday the Biden administration hasn’t taken a “new proactive step” in the process.
Psaki added that the Biden administration is comprehensively evaluating risks to US data, including those involving TikTok.
I feel so much safer now.
Trump targeted TikTok over the summer via a series of executive orders that cited concerns over the US data that TikTok collects from its users, but courts blocked the White House’s attempted ban from going into effect, and the presidential election soon took precedence over the TikTok fight for Trump.
Trump cited concerns that the Chinese government could spy on TikTok users if the app remains under Chinese ownership. TikTok has denied it’s a security threat but said it was still trying to work with the US government to resolve its concerns.....
Even safer.
Should be a good Match, right?
Maybe they can start shipping containers again:
"The world’s largest container carrier said trade disruptions that have sent freight rates soaring and overwhelmed major ports may start to ease after the first quarter, disappointing investors but signaling eventual relief for cargo shippers. A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S chief executive Soren Skou said the fourth quarter was marked by a continuous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking ahead, Maersk said it expects “the current exceptional situation” of surging demand, supply chain bottlenecks, and equipment shortages to continue this quarter “and normalize thereafter.”
Time to ship on out myself.
Enjoy today's show, readers.
