Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Whi$tling in the Dark

There are ripples in the water:

"U.S. stocks dropped from record highs as investors weighed the potential fallout from forced block sales on the rest of Wall Street. The financials sector weighed on the benchmark S&P 500 for much of the day following revelations that banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley liquidated holdings in Bill Hwang’s family office Archegos Capital Management on Friday after he failed to meet margin calls. Boeing Co. lifted the Dow Jones Industrial Average to another all-time high after the aircraft maker announced a large order. The Nasdaq Composite finished in the red. “Investors are whistling in the dark as they try to determine how wide the Archegos-related pain will spread,” said Adam Phillips, director of portfolio strategy at EP Wealth Advisors. “You’re seeing a tug-of-war play out between those who believe the situation is benign and those who worry about a systemic risk.” Small ripples of the forced unwind were felt in credit markets. Nomura had to take the rare step of canceling a bond deal that had already priced after its loss warning. The investment grade credit default swaps index, a gauge of U.S. credit fear, was relatively calm, even though traders are demanding a higher cost to hedge against losses on the debt of banks that have been caught up in the Archegos situation, including Nomura and Credit Suisse....."

"Archegos-linked stocks sink on block-trade fallout fears" by Divya Balji and Elena Popina Bloomberg, March 29, 2021

The group of stocks at the center of a $20 billion block-trade selling spree last week were under pressure on Monday as investors worried there could be more fallout from forced offerings.

Quite a difference from two months ago, no?

ViacomCBS fell 6.7 percent after a $2.1 billion block trade that launched on Sunday was said to price at the top of its range, while Discovery slipped 1.6 percent. The American depositary receipts of Chinese companies Baidu and GSX Techedu extended their declines following the forced liquidation of positions linked to Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, while Tencent Music Entertainment Group eked out a 1.2 percent gain.

The wave of block trades continued Monday as a large stake of about 20 million shares of Rocket Cos Inc. was said to have been sold Monday via Morgan Stanley. Shares of the home-loan provider closed 0.5 percent lower. Wells Fargo was said to have executed on four block trades valued at a combined $2 billion on Monday on ViacomCBS, Baidu, Farfetch Ltd., and Vipshop Holdings Ltd.

The block trades initiated by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were triggered after Archegos failed to meet margin calls, leaving Nomura Holdings Inc. and Credit Suisse facing potentially “significant” losses and sending shares of both plunging. The possibility of additional trades still looms over the market, while the traditional end-of-quarter volatility may contribute to sharper swings on previously high-flying stocks.

Feels like a Lehman $ituation.

The margin call will force every prime brokerage to review their books, said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp. “When you look at the stocks that were incorrectly bet on, Wall Street must ponder if the V-shaped stock market recovery got out of hand.”

It's a K-shaped recovery, but anyway....

In the United States, bank stocks fell as the KBW Bank Index lost 2.3 percent, the most in a month. Goldman slipped 0.5 percent, even after the investment bank was said to have told shareholders and clients that the margin call will likely have an immaterial impact on its financial results. Morgan Stanley sank 2.6 percent.

Small ripples of the forced unwind were felt in credit markets. Nomura had to take the rare step of canceling a bond deal that had already priced after its loss warning. The investment grade credit default swaps index, a gauge of US credit fear, was relatively calm, even though traders are demanding a higher cost to hedge against losses on the debt of banks that have been caught up in the Archegos situation, including Nomura and Credit Suisse.

A block of about 45 million shares in ViacomCBS priced at $47 a share, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday. The trade was launched on Sunday via Morgan Stanley and was struck at a 2.6 percent discount to Friday’s close of $48.23. The US media giant was also the subject of at least one large block trade on Friday through Goldman Sachs.

Other stocks involved in Friday’s spree of block trades included Farfetch and Iqiyi Inc., according to an e-mail to Goldman clients seen by Bloomberg News. Both slumped after whipsawing in early trading Monday.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has been monitoring the forced liquidation in holdings linked to Archegos, a spokesperson said.

Signs of support for some of the stocks are already starting to emerge.....

That is the hallmark of an impending CRASH, folks!


Have the bankers overplayed their hand, readers? 

Is that why a crash is being set up?


Related:

"Southwest Airlines ordered 100 Boeing 737 Max 7 jets and said it would purchase as many as 155 more, cementing a half-century relationship and ending a public flirtation with Airbus. The 100-plane order, valued at about $10 billion before customary discounts, gives a boost to the slow-selling, 150-seat Max 7, the smallest plane available in the line. Southwest also switched 70 orders for the Max 8 to the 7, the airline said in a statement Monday."

That is why they lo$t altitude:

"One of Europe’s busiest airports hit the bond market on Monday to shore up its finances in the face of a second tourist season lost to the coronavirus pandemic. London’s Gatwick Airport is marketing 400 million pounds ($553 million) of junk-rated debt with a five-year maturity, but with British holiday makers still forbidden from traveling, it’s offering a hefty premium to lure skeptical investors — a yield between 4.75 percent and 5 percent, which is more than double the average for European bonds with a similar credit rating."

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One guy is $creaming at the top of his lungs:

"How Larry Summers went from Obama’s top economic adviser to one of Biden’s loudest critics" by David J. Lynch Washington Post, March 29, 2021

Just about everywhere you look in the Biden White House, you can see former treasury secretary Larry Summers’s influence. Everywhere, that is, except for the policies.

Summers, 66, who drafted economic blueprints for the past two Democratic presidents and was a top candidate to lead the Federal Reserve Board under President Barack Obama, has emerged in recent weeks as the loudest critic of President Biden’s approach to reviving the pandemic-era US economy. The Harvard University professor — who advised Biden for a time last summer — warns that the president’s stimulus plan may trigger the highest inflation in more than half a century and could cost Democrats the chance to make lasting investments in the economy.

Not may, will, and that is a good thing.

Summers’s Cassandra-like critique has ignited a firestorm among liberals, his traditional adversaries, who blame him for financial industry deregulation in the 1990s that contributed to the financial crisis and for the anemic recovery that followed, but his arguments also have been swatted aside by his erstwhile allies in the White House, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve, who argue that the economy is in desperate need of help.

Another Cassandra for the time capsule!

’'This might not have struck as much a nerve if it didn’t reflect concerns that were widely felt,’' Summers said in a 45-minute telephone interview last week.

The extraordinary clash between a globally recognized Democratic economist and a Democratic president hoping to enact the most transformative liberal agenda since the Great Society involves both the central issues of the day and the lessons of history.

If he at times has veered into hyperbole, Summers nonetheless has given voice to an unpopular opinion that many in the Democratic camp say deserves consideration. Few other Democratic economists seem willing to air such concerns, perhaps for fear of imperiling Biden’s ability to translate his fragile congressional majority into decisive action.

Summers’s complaint about an oversized stimulus ’'was what a lot of people were saying privately, what was being whispered by people without his voice or without his platform who were nervous about going public,’' said Jason Furman, who was Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers chair and disagrees with Summers’s inflation assessment.

At issue are the risks and opportunities involved in restarting a $20 trillion economy and the unresolved debate over the mistakes made in responding to the 2008 financial crisis.

Summers says the Biden administration’s spending plan was drafted to satisfy political realities rather than economic requirements, and it is courting disaster. The Biden brain trust and other economists, including Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, say he’s misreading the moment and overstating the downside risks.

’'The discussion he’s trying to push is one we should have,’' said Claudia Sahm, a longtime Summers critic and a former Federal Reserve staff economist who is now at the Jain Family Institute, ’'but it’s so out of proportion, and since [the bill] passed, he’s gotten more and more vicious.’'

Summers began warning of economic overheating late last year, criticizing the proposed $2,000 stimulus checks for individual Americans as ’'bad economics.’' When he made that argument, in a piece for Bloomberg Opinion, the idea had already been endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and soon-to-be Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York. Biden joined them days later.

Summers is all for bailing out the banks and Wall Street to the tune of trillions, though.

Last month, as Congress was considering Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Summers criticized it in a Washington Post opinion piece as excessive and poorly designed. Too much would be spent sending checks to people who didn’t need the money, while almost nothing would be used to increase the economy’s long-run potential, he said.

Summers acknowledged that the Obama administration hadn’t spent enough to bolster the economy after the 2008 financial crisis, but Biden’s rescue plan would learn that lesson too well, adding too much fuel to an economic fire that would already be raging by the time the money arrived.

The pandemic had punched a roughly $20 billion hole in Americans’ monthly wage income, he said. Biden proposed filling it with more than $100 billion. Coupled with the Federal Reserve’s ultralow interest rates, Washington’s spendthrift ways could send prices soaring.

’'I know the bathtub has been too empty,’' Summers said, ’'but one has to think about what the capacity of the bathtub is and how much water we’re trying to flow into it.’'

Now that they have flooded the economy with printed out of air money, the cash will soon be worthless -- thus the rise in prices!

Summers worries that a reopened economy could rev out of control. Either a surge of demand overwhelms producers and sends prices soaring or the Fed will try to prevent that inflationary spike by abruptly hiking interest rates, plunging the economy into a new recession.

There’s only a 1-in-3 chance that the administration enjoys a boom that settles into years of sustainable growth, he said.

That can't be right because the Globe told me we are going back to the roaring '80s.

’'We’re taking substantial risks,’' Summers said.

The United States could suffer the sort of price spiral that hasn’t been seen since the late 1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson refused to raise taxes to cover the combined costs of his domestic agenda and the Vietnam War, he says. From 1.6 percent in 1965, inflation ticked up to nearly 6 percent five years later.

The architects of Biden’s plan say any inflationary risks pale alongside the damage that could be done to millions of Americans if the administration doesn’t restore a vibrant economy. Spending on roads, bridges, and rural broadband networks, which could lift economic growth in the long run, was always envisioned as the second part of a two-step maneuver.

We are so f**ked then!


Is he out of the loop because of the friends he kept?

Jeffrey Epstein (second from left) hosted a dinner at Harvard in 2004. With him were (from left) Alan Dershowitz, Robert Trivers, and Lawrence Summers.
Jeffrey Epstein (second from left) hosted a dinner at Harvard in 2004. With him were (from left) Alan Dershowitz, Robert Trivers, and Lawrence Summers.© 2004 Rick Friedman

He's been made, folks. 

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Time to vote on the union:

"Contentious union vote at Amazon heads to a count" by Karen Weise and Michael Corkery New York Times, March 29, 2021

SEATTLE — Thousands of yellow envelopes mailed to a squat brick building in Birmingham, Ala., will hold the fate of one of the most closely watched union elections in recent history, one that could alter the shape of the labor movement and one of America’s largest employers.

The envelopes contain the ballots of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Birmingham. Almost 6,000 workers at the building, one of Amazon’s largest, are eligible to decide whether they form the first union at an Amazon operation in the United States, after years of fierce resistance by the company. Voting ended Monday.

The organizers have made the case in a monthslong campaign that Amazon’s intense monitoring of workers infringes on their dignity and that its pay is not commensurate with the constant pressure workers feel to produce. The union estimates that roughly 85 percent of the workforce at the warehouse is Black and has linked the organizing to the struggle for racial justice.

Amazon has countered that its $15 minimum wage is twice the state minimum and that it offers health insurance and other benefits that can be hard to find in low-wage jobs.

“Even the fact that the vote is taking place is a referendum on the so-called future of work,” said Beth Gutelius, a researcher who studies the warehousing industry.

Whatever the outcome of the vote — which may not be known for days — the union drive has already succeeded in roiling the world’s biggest e-commerce company and spotlighting complaints about its labor practices. The vote comes at a delicate time for the company, which faces increasing scrutiny in Washington and around the world for its market power and influence, which have grown during the pandemic as consumers flocked online to avoid stores. President Biden has signaled his support for the workers, as have many progressive leaders.

If the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union succeeds, it would be a huge victory for the labor movement, whose membership has declined for decades. A victory would also give it a foothold inside the country’s second-largest private employer. The company now has 950,000 workers in the United States, after adding more than 400,000 in the last year alone.

If the union loses, particularly by a large margin, Amazon will have turned the tide on a unionization drive that seemed to have many winds at its back. A loss could force labor organizers to rethink their overall strategy and give Amazon confidence that its approach is working.

The union drive has captured national attention partly because of the nation’s focus on essential workers during the pandemic and on racial inequalities highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Obviously, we want to win,” Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, said Friday when he visited Alabama, “but I think a major point has already been proven, and that is that workers, even in the Deep South, are prepared to stand up and organize and fight for justice.”

In Bessemer, Ala., a pro-union radio spot paid for by Black Lives Matter aired on a local R&B station, while every intersection around the warehouse has been crowded with signs. “Bama has your back! Vote union!” one read. The large building was draped in sky blue banners blaring “VOTE.” On Friday, an Amazon employee drove a golf cart around the parking lot to ward off news media.

The unionization effort came together quickly, especially for one aimed at such a large target. Workers at the building in Bessemer approached the local branch of the retail workers union last summer. In October, organizers began showing up at the warehouse daily, trying to talk with workers between shift changes.

By late December, more than 2,000 workers had signed cards indicating that they wanted an election. The labor board determined that figure showed enough interest to hold a vote.

Amazon wanted the voting to happen in person, as is typical, but the National Labor Relations Board found that the pandemic made that too risky and ordered a mail-in election.

Amazon claims that mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud, but were all for it last November.

The ballots were mailed out to workers in early February and had to be signed and received by the labor board at its Birmingham office by the end of Monday.

On Tuesday, the vote counting begins — a process that could take many days.

First, a staff member at the labor board will read the names of the workers, without opening an inner envelope with the actual ballot. Representatives from the union and Amazon will be on a private video conference. As each name is read, they will check the workers’ names against a staff list, and if either side contests whether that worker was eligible to vote, that ballot will be set aside. A representative from each side is also expected to be there in person to observe the process.

Republican monitors were given the boot last November.

After the two sides have had the opportunity to make their objections about eligibility, the NLRB will begin counting the uncontested ballots. After every 100 votes, the labor board will count those ballots again until all the votes are counted. This portion will be open to reporters on a video conference line.

If there are more contested ballots than uncontested, that is likely to set off legal arguments by the union and Amazon over the eligibility of each contested ballot. Each side has about a week to make its case before NLRB certifies the vote.

Either side can contest whether the vote was conducted fairly. The union, for instance, could argue that the company took steps to improperly sway the vote, by potentially making workers fearful of reprisal if they supported organizing.

But not the presidency, and if you do you are pushing false theories, etc.

If the union prevails, workers fear that the company may shut down the warehouse. Amazon has backed away from locations that bring it headaches before. In 2000, it closed a customer service office that was trying to unionize, saying the closing was the result of a reorganization. It stopped construction on an office tower when Seattle wanted to tax the company and backed out of plans to build a second headquarters in New York City after facing progressive opposition, but the company has committed more than $360 million in leases and equipment for the Bessemer warehouse, and shutting down the vote of a large Black workforce could publicly backfire, said Marc Wulfraat, a logistics consultant who closely tracks the company.....

I'll bet Bezos can't wait until AI takes your place!


Looks like the honeymoon is over but smile for the photo anyway.

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Let's hope they don't evict you

"CDC extends eviction moratorium through June; The protection was set to expire at the end of this month" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, March 29, 2021

Struggling renters just got more time to sort out their finances.

The Biden administration on Monday extended a ban on many evictions for another three months, just days before it was set to expire. Citing the ongoing pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control said it will continue the moratorium until the end of June.

On the road to property seizures and communism, for the landowner is still responsible for payments to the bank.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health,” the agency said in a statement. “Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings — like homeless shelters — by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

The federal ban has probably kept millions of Americans from facing eviction since it was put in place by the Trump administration in September, particularly as even stricter state moratoriums, such as the one in Massachusetts, have expired. It prohibits courts from ordering the eviction of most households if they have lost income in the pandemic and would face homelessness.

As a practical matter, the ban has also discouraged many landlords from launching eviction cases, which in Massachusetts can take months to work through court. At the same time, rent-relief funds are starting to flow from Washington, D.C., to help tenants who are still out of work keep current and pay off debt they accumulated last year. The stimulus packages passed in December and March will, combined, send roughly $900 million in rental funds to Massachusetts. The Baker administration plans to pump much of it into a rental aid program that provides up to $10,000 to tenants and their landlords. Extending the federal eviction ban, advocates say, will give more time for that money to reach people.

Still, the ban is controversial. Many landlord groups oppose the measure, saying it forces them to provide housing without compensation, and federal judges in Texas and Ohio recently ruled against it in lawsuits, saying the CDC overstepped its authority, though neither judge has yet moved to strike down the ban nationwide. 

Still, even many supporters acknowledge the federal ban can not continue indefinitely.....

WHY can it not continue indefinitely?


The $olution? 

Form a union!

"To stay in their homes, tenants are unionizing" by Zoe Greenberg Globe Staff, March 29, 2021

Rumors circulated that the landlord wanted everyone out, but Giuliana Perez could not contemplate leaving her two-bedroom apartment, where light pours into the living room, in the middle of a pandemic. What would she do with her elderly mother? How would she pay first and last month’s rent at a new place when her hours as a caregiver had been slashed?

So in June of last year, she decided to act. She went door to door in her Hyde Park building, knocking at each of the eight other units. The neighbors talked about the raging virus, the cluttered basement. Perez learned about a leaking ceiling in one apartment and a broken dishwasher in another. The residents wrote a letter to the landlord, asking to meet as a group to “figure out how we can stay in our homes.”

That was how the 15 Dana Ave. tenant association was born. The group joined a host of newly created tenants unions across the city, a local response to massive unemployment caused by COVID and widespread fear of eviction.

“I hadn’t done anything like that in my life,” Perez, 43, said. “I was never in a position to fight back.”

For months, tenants and housing advocates have feared a “tsunami” of evictions coming to Boston. To prevent that, lawmakers enacted sweeping solutions, including a state moratorium on evictions, which expired in October, and a weaker federal moratorium, which still stands.

Governor Charlie Baker earmarked money for housing attorneys and mediators to help keep renters in their homes, and now $857 million in new federal funds will dramatically expand rental assistance in the state, but as residents waited for those large-scale solutions, some tenants, like Perez, turned to a more homegrown approach: They formed tenants unions to negotiate collectively with their landlords.....

They all went for a drink if the ad below was any indication.


Look, I don't think people should be thrown out into the street but moratoriums and bans aren't the answer either. 

The answer is calling out the CVD fraud and going back to normal.

Related:

"Acting Mayor Kim Janey announced that the city was setting aside $50 million — most of it from the federal government — to help struggling renters and landlords make ends meet amid the pandemic. Janey said the money will help families pay for utilities, including Internet access, a crucial tool during the pandemic. At a time when many tenants are under financial stress and unable to pay rent, the city is encouraging landlords and tenants to communicate and work together to reach agreement, she said. Janey said the Rental Relief Fund has provided critical support to nearly 1,900 households that were at risk of eviction due to COVID-19. “These new funds,” she said, “will do even more.”

Uh-huh.

At least you have a place to eat a meal:

"Major Food Group, best known for hosting power brokers at its Carbone Italian restaurants in New York and Miami, is bringing its pasta sauces to the masses. This is the company’s first entry in the world of consumer packaged goods. Starting Monday, Carbone Fine Foods will offer three of its notable sauces —Marinara, Arrabbiata, and Tomato Basil — on its website and on Amazon. The sauces will also roll out at Stop & Shop supermarkets in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The preservative-free sauce uses the same ingredients as at the restaurants, including ripe southern Italian tomatoes, fresh basil, and oregano, and it is crafted in small batches. Carbone products retail for $9 for a 24 oz. jar. That puts it in the premium sauce market, which has shown growth during the pandemic."

Want to order a pizza?

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This guy left you the bill:

"One of world’s greatest hidden fortunes is wiped out in days" by Katherine Burton and Tom Maloney Bloomberg, March 30, 2021

From his perch high above Midtown Manhattan, just across from Carnegie Hall, Bill Hwang was quietly building one of the world’s greatest fortunes.

Even on Wall Street, few ever noticed him — until suddenly, everyone did.

Hwang and his private investment firm, Archegos Capital Management, are now at the center of one of the biggest margin callof all time — a multibillion-dollar fiasco involving secretive market bets that were dangerously leveraged and unwound in a blink.

Hwang’s most recent ascent can be pieced together from stocks dumped by banks in recent days — ViacomCBS, Discovery, GSX Techedu, Baidu — all of which had soared this year, sometimes confounding traders who couldn’t fathom why.

One part of Hwang’s portfolio, which has been traded in blocks since Friday by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo, was worth almost $40 billion last week. Bankers reckon that Archegos’s net capital — essentially Hwang’s wealth — had reached north of $10 billion, and as disposals keep emerging, estimates of his firm’s total positions keep climbing: tens of billions, $50 billion, even more than $100 billion.

It evaporated in mere days.

’'I’ve never seen anything like this — how quiet it was, how concentrated, and how fast it disappeared,’' said Mike Novogratz, a career macro investor and former partner at Goldman Sachs who’s been trading since 1994. ’'This has to be one of the single greatest losses of personal wealth in history.’'

Ea$y come, ea$y go!

The cascade of trading losses has reverberated from New York to Zurich to Tokyo and beyond, and leaves myriad unanswered questions, including the big one: How could someone take such big risks, facilitated by so many banksunder the noses of regulators the world over?

UH-OH!

One part of the answer is that Hwang set up as a family office with limited oversight and then employed financial derivatives to amass big stakes in companies without ever having to disclose them. Another part is that global banks embraced him as a lucrative customer.....

The A$ian Madoff?


The whole thing is spooking investors.

Hating the Boston Globe

Only because I love people :(

Rachel is 5'7 wearing size 27

That was at the top of the page this morning, and the first ad I saw.

I'm disgusted and speechless, folks.

It is supposed to be a femini$t new$paper from front to back, but WTF?

Somehow the white man who has destroyed us is as popular as ever (who did they call and I'm expected to believe that?)

I'm almost afraid to flip below the fold because of what I might find.

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Yes, we must all be inculcated and brainwashed in a certain chosen Holocau$t™ and none other even as the Saudis buy up all the property(?) and treat their women better now.

So now pure historical terms such as “Auschwitz” and nondescript things like “dreidel” and “rabbi,” are verboten and considered anti-semitic.

Once again, I'm stunned into speechless astonishment at the insane absurdity of what society is becoming, and here is the thing: you want to know who rules you? 

Who can you not criticize?


I'm afraid to turn in to the damn thing for what ads it might bring.

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And yet no one interfered and they just watched while recording?


One can't help but note the racism inherent in the Black versus white component, and just as spring hits we get an acquittal that should send BLM back into the streets.

"Attack on Asian woman prompts another hate crime investigation" by Michael R. Sisak and Karen Matthews Associated Press, March 30, 2021

NEW YORK— A vicious attack on an Asian American woman as she walked to church near New York City’s Times Square is drawing widespread condemnation and raising alarms about the failure of bystanders to intervene amid a rash of anti-Asian violence across the US.

A lone assailant was seen on surveillance video late Monday morning, kicking the 65-year-old woman in the stomach, knocking her to the ground, and stomping on her face, all as police say he shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her, “you don’t belong here.”

The attack happened outside an apartment building two blocks from Times Square, a bustling, heavily policed section of midtown Manhattan known as the “Crossroads of the World.”

Two workers inside the building who appeared to be security guards were seen on the video witnessing the attack but failing to come to the woman’s aid. Their union said they called for help immediately. The attacker was able to casually walk away while onlookers watched, the video showed.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the video of the attack “absolutely disgusting and outrageous” and said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that witnesses did not intervene.

“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” de Blasio said Tuesday at his daily news briefing.

“If you see someone being attacked, do whatever you can,” he said. “Make noise. Call out what’s happening. Go and try and help. Immediately call for help. Call 911. This is something where we all have to be part of the solution. We can’t just stand back and watch a heinous act happening.”

Unless they are putting the knee to a black man or its the cops blowing somebody away, right?

Or promoting mass-murdering wars based on lies -- topped with insults to boot (New World Order indeed)!

I hope the reader who has bothered to read this far can understand by growing detesting of my pre$$.

The attack comes amid a national spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, and happened just weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent.

On Friday, in the same neighborhood as Monday’s attack, a 65-year-old Asian American woman was accosted by a man waving an unknown object and shouting anti-Asian insults. A 48-year-old man was arrested the next day and charged with menacing. He is not suspected in Monday’s attack.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called Monday’s attack “horrifying and repugnant” and he ordered a state police hate crimes task force to offer its assistance to the NYPD. No arrests have been made.

He's STILL THERE?

The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force, which is investigating the attack, released surveillance video of the attack and photographs of the suspect Monday evening and asked anyone with information to contact the department’s confidential hot line or submit tips online.....



What they didn't tell you is it was a Black man who did the assault, and I am wondering how much they are being paid by the forces of $oro$ or Deep $tate for the Operation Gladio efforts?

At least Garland is on it:

"Garland launches internal Justice Dept. review to improve hate-crime tracking, prosecutions" by David Nakamura Washington Post, March 30, 2021

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday announced that the Justice Department will conduct a 30-day internal review to determine how the agency can bolster the tracking and prosecutions of hate crimes and bias incidents motivated around race, gender, and other factors.

In his first executive memo to staff since taking office, Garland said hate crimes have a “toxic effect” on society and emphasized that reports of rising discrimination and violence aimed at Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic required “renewed energy and emphasis” from the federal law enforcement agency.

I like Asians, so....

Among the aims, he said, would be improving hate crime data collection, prioritizing investigations and prosecutions, and using civil authorities to target unlawful acts of bias that do not meet the federal definition of a hate crimes.

The Justice Department “will continue to seek justice for the victims of the hate-filled mass murders that we have seen too many times in the past several years,” Garland said, in the wake of mass shootings this month in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo.

So when do the prosecutions of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rice, Obama, Joe, et al begin?

Pre$$ should be on the docket, too, for that and the CVD $cam.

The Atlanta suspect, Robert Aaron Long, who is white, is charged with killing eight, including six women of Asian descent, at three spas. The Boulder suspect, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, is a native of Syria who is charged with killing 10 at a grocery store.

Yeah, "white supremacy" had nothing to do with either, and they have quickly faded because they don't fit the pre$$ narrative even as the shots echo in your head that trigger mind manipulations.

The move came as part of a broader Biden administration response Tuesday to mounting pressure from Asian American advocates. In a separate announcement, the White House said it would reinstate an initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and allocate nearly $50 million in new grants at the Department of Health and Human Services to assist survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

This guy is tossing around money like a drunk sailor!

Under a 1990 law signed by president George H.W. Bush, the Justice Department has been required to track hate crimes nationwide every year, but the FBI’s count has been plagued by inconsistent reporting.

Asian American community groups have begun tallies of their own through self-reporting portals.....


Speaking of anti-Asian discrimination with extreme prejudice:

"Three women working to vaccinate children shot dead in Afghanistan" by Adam Nossiter New York Times, March 30, 2021

KABUL — Three health workers, all women, working for the government’s polio vaccine campaign were shot dead in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, local officials said, only weeks after three women working in television were killed in the same city.

The women, all in their 20s, were going about their jobs in the bustling town near the border with Pakistan when they were gunned down in two separate attacks.

Afghanistan, which recorded 56 cases of polio in 2020, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, is one of two countries where the disease has not been eradicated, trailing Pakistan.

What, they don't want to be injected with cancer?

"Terrorists" = "anti-vaxxers." huh?

Around the same time as Tuesday’s shootings, there was an explosion at the city’s regional hospital, officials said, in front of the compound where the vaccines are stored. There were no casualties, but windows were shattered.

Looks like a false flag waving or a complete fiction if you ask me, or am I supposed to take my lying, agenda-pushing war pre$$ at face value?

The latest killings — part of a wave of targeted assassinations often singling out women, journalists, professionals, activists, and doctors — happened at a fraught moment for Afghanistan as the Taliban have made steady military gains, and relentlessly attack those deemed as collaborating with the Afghan government. Additionally, remnants of the Islamic State group operating in the region have focused on carrying out fewer large-scale bombings and more smaller but targeted assaults.

Related:

"The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a dayslong ambush of a port town in northern Mozambique last week that forced tens of thousands of people to flee the area and left dozens dead, including some foreigners. The attack on the town, Palma, was an alarming escalation of the war in the gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado, where insurgents with loose ties to the Islamic State have killed at least 2,000 people in a campaign of violence over the past three years. In recent months, the local insurgency has grown in strength and seized large swaths of territory, including the region’s other main port town. Last week’s attack demonstrated a new level of boldness from the insurgents and was the closest the group has come to a multibillion-dollar gas project that is operated by international energy companies....."

Funny how those guys always show up in places like that.

Maybe Biden can send the troops there next, oh, wait a minute....

Meanwhile, the United States has yet to definitively say whether it will meet the May 1 deadline for withdrawing all US forces, per an agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020.....

(Blog editor shakes his head)

Now the point of this propaganda waving women and children at me (sigh) is clear. 

We have to stay to protect the women whom we have bombed into widowhood or worse.

If a bomb falls in Afghanistan does it make a sound?


I was also told that the month began with the assassination of three women who worked for a television station in Jalalabad and that a female television and radio presenter from the same station was gunned down in much the same way in December with the Islamic State claiming responsibility for both incidents, and the New York Times documented the deaths of at least 136 civilians and 168 security force members in such targeted killings in 2020, more than nearly any other year of the war as the Taliban are increasing pressure on government and society, asserting dominance as stuttering, intermittent negotiations take place to settle the Afghan conflict and Ross Wilson, the US chargé d’affaires in Kabul, denounced Tuesday’s killings and said “such attacks are a direct affront to Afghans’ dream of building a better life for their children as attacking vaccinators is as heartless as it is inexplicable.” 


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Back and forth, back and forth, serve and volley....



"Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former president Donald Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter. Investigators are examining whether Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences. It was not clear how Gaetz met the girl, believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing, according to two of the people. The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration under Attorney General William P. Barr, the two people said. Given Gaetz’s national profile, senior Justice Department officials in Washington — including some appointed by Trump — were notified of the investigation, the people said. The three people said that the examination of Gaetz, 38, is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl. Greenberg, who has since resigned his post as tax collector in Seminole County, north of Orlando, visited the White House with Gaetz in 2019, according to a photograph that Greenberg posted on Twitter. No charges have been brought against Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear. Gaetz said in an interview that his lawyers had been in touch with the Justice Department and that they were told he was the subject, not the target, of an investigation. “I only know that it has to do with women,” Gaetz said. “I have a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.”

Once again, a member of the tribe behind the blackmail ring and I saw Gaetz on Tucker last night and this guy looks like he is in trouble.

He's being outed because he is a Trump backer, but he is involved with all the child-trafficking adoption shit. The entire ruling cla$$ is riddled with the perversions, sorry, with politicians compromised by perversions, corruption, or both.

As for regular prosecutions and severe sentences, pffft!

This insulting crap has really become absurd, and I hope you can understand my hatred at this point.

"If you thought the relationship between Fox News and the Trump family was close when patriarch Donald was president, you just had to wait a little longer. On Monday, Fox News hired the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a paid pundit. Hiring Lara Trump, who is married to middle son Eric Trump, formalizes her relationship with the network, on which she has regularly appeared as a guest during the past several years, on both opinion and news shows. After appearing regularly on Fox News for many years, Donald Trump became angry at the network during the presidential election last year, when Fox was the first major network to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Fox subsequently lost some longtime viewers to Newsmax, a more reflexively pro-Trump cable news network, but the former president has appeared on Fox regularly since leaving the White House, most recently joining Jeanine Pirro for a phone interview on her Saturday night program, ’'Justice with Judge Jeanine.’' Fox hired former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as a contributor earlier this month. Former National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow recently launched his own show for Fox Business Network. And Trump’s first press secretary, Sarah Sanders, worked for the network as a contributor before leaving to pursue a run for governor of Arkansas. Lara Trump is also considering a run for the US Senate in her home state of North Carolina. On Monday, she said her political aspirations would not preclude her TV career." 

Proving he is a false prophet and controlled opposition, and I don't even want him back now.

Time to change the channel:

"The New York State Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that a defamation case against former president Donald Trump, brought by an “Apprentice” contestant who alleged he sexually assaulted her years ago, can go forward as the immunity claim he raised while in office no longer applies. In a brief order, the state’s highest court said Trump’s appeal of a lower court decision denying his immunity status is now ’'moot’' because he is no longer a sitting president. The defense was raised in the lawsuit brought by Summer Zervos and in other long-running cases still facing the former president. The lawsuit brought by Zervos, who in 2016 alleged that Trump forced himself on her in a Los Angeles hotel room a decade before, is expected to resume after a lengthy delay caused by Trump’s appeals. Zervos sued Trump in 2017, alleging that Trump, who hosted the popular NBC reality show, smeared her when she came forward with the sexual assault allegation. In denying her claims, Trump said Zervos lied and suggested she was motivated by money. Trump has vehemently denied Zervos’s account and allegations of sexual misconduct made by other women." 

He is just as much of a compromi$ed $cum as all the rest. 

That's why he was fired!

He's lucky he's not in a detention center somewhere:

"Over 4,000 migrants, many kids, crowded into Texas facility" by Elliot Spagat and Nomaan Merchant Associated Press, March 30, 2021

DONNA, Texas (AP) — More than 500 migrant children were packed into plastic-walled rooms built for 32 people, sitting inches apart on mats with foil blankets Tuesday at the largest U.S. Customs and Border Protection holding facility for unaccompanied children.

Overall, CBP’s main child processing center, a compound of white tents in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, held over 4,100 migrants, more than 3,400 of them children who traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border alone and the rest of them families. It is designed for 250 people under guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Biden administration allowed journalists to see conditions for the first time since the facility opened Feb. 9 amid a spike in families and unaccompanied children crossing the border.

It was a grim picture.

If Trump had kept them out they would have been screaming!

A 3,200-square-foot (297-square-meter) space had been divided into several rooms for 32 children each under CDC guidelines, each separated by thick plastic walls instead of the chain-link fence used by previous administrations. Despite the health recommendations, one of the “pods” held nearly 700 kids, another had nearly 600 and others had just above 500. Everyone wore masks, but COVID-19 tests aren’t done unless they show symptoms.

Try to think of it as a home away from home.

Doors to the rooms were open for free movement but there was little room to roam and no one to play games. Most children just sat on the ground close together, chatting quietly. Some were wrapped in foil blankets. Lights are dimmed at night.

Incredible.

They have freedom, you do not, and there arrival in your community will coincide with spike in cases, watch.

Children, most of them between 13 and 17, are separated by age. Families occupied a separate pod that was less crowded than the jam-packed rooms for older children.

A room for “tender age” children from 3 to 9 years old consisted of a walled playpen with mats on the floor and far more space than the eight pods for older children. An 11-year-old boy cared for his 3-year-old sister, and a 17-year-old cared for her newborn.

“I’m a Border Patrol agent. I didn’t sign up for this,” Oscar Escamilla, acting executive officer of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, said while looking at the younger kids.

Children are processed in the tent facility in the town of Donna before being taken to longer-term care facilities run by U.S. Health and Human Services and then placed with a family member, relative or sponsor.

Trafficking :(

About two dozen of some 270 children being transferred to HHS midday tested positive for COVID-19 — the only time they are tested unless they exhibit symptoms earlier. Escamilla said the overall positivity rate at the Donna facility was about 14%.

That 0.7% positivity rate based on a flawed diagnosis of a nonexistent virus will be going up.

As they prepared to leave, children who tested negative for COVID-19 played soccer in the outdoor recreation area, where they can go three times a day when their pods are being cleaned. Those who tested positive for the virus gathered around metal benches off to the side and will still go to HHS centers.

The Border Patrol is apprehending far more children daily than HHS is taking, leading to a severe backlog. The Border Patrol is not supposed to detain children for more than three days, but HHS lacks space.

More than 2,000 kids have been at the Donna facility for more than 72 hours, including 39 for more than 15 days. One child had been there 20 days. The average stay was 133 hours.

“The intent of the Border Patrol is not detention. We’re not in the business of detention,” said Escamilla, the official who supervised the media tour. “We’re forced into the business because we can’t turn them over to anybody.”

HHS is housing children at convention centers in Dallas and San Diego and is opening large-scale sites in San Antonio, El Paso and elsewhere.

They are not only destroying the middle class of this country in a quest to seize property, they are assisting this mass migration to completely change the character of this country.

A large HHS facility is being built near the holding center in Donna, separated by a chain-link fence. Noise from construction equipment filled the air near seven buses that were to take children to other HHS facilities.

About 250 to 300 children enter the Donna facility daily and far fewer leave, a “lopsided” difference that Escamilla said was leading to more crowded conditions. It has held as many as 4,600 migrants.

More than 17,000 unaccompanied children were in U.S. custody as of Monday, about 12,000 with HHS and the rest with Customs and Border Protection. On Monday, 446 children entered CBP custody but only 229 went to HHS.

HHS, which opened a facility Tuesday for 500 children at Fort Bliss in Texas, is working to build up to a capacity of 13,500 beds, spokesman Mark Weber said.

Several hundred kids and teenagers are crossing the border daily, most fleeing violence, poverty or the effects of natural disasters in Central America. President Joe Biden has declined to resume his predecessor’s practice of expelling unaccompanied children, but his administration has continued expelling adults under a coronavirus-related public health declaration enacted by former President Donald Trump. Biden also has tried to expel most families traveling together, but changes in Mexican law have forced agents to release many parents and children into the U.S.

Along with drug dealers, murderers, rapists, terrorists, etc.

In some cases, parents refused entry into the U.S. have sent their children across the border alone, hoping they will be placed with relatives eventually.

Biden has faced intense pressure to bring more transparency to how large numbers of migrant children are being treated. In his administration’s first tour of the Donna holding facility, two journalists from The Associated Press and a crew from CBS shared text, photos and video with other news outlets as part of a pool arrangement.

Yeah, you guys are such heroes.

At the facility, children entered a tent with a dirt floor and three rows of bleacher-style seats. About 60 children waited to be admitted Tuesday, all wearing masks and seated close together.

They then go into a small room for lice and scabies inspection and a general health check, including whether they have a fever. Their hair is hosed down.

Why did early 1940s Germany just come to mind?

The facility is staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners, who perform psychological tests, including asking children if they have had any suicidal thoughts. All shoelaces are removed to avoid harm to anyone.

Amid the loud hum of air conditioning vents, children are led to a room for processing, with anyone 14 and older getting photographed and having their fingerprints taken. Younger kids don’t.

Already treating them like the criminals they are (what they are doing is illegal, you know?).

In another room, agents ask them if they have a contact in the U.S. and allow the child to speak with them by phone. Plastic shields separate the agents and the children, who are seated at tables. They get bracelets with a barcode that shows a history of when they showered, medical conditions and any other personal information.

OMG, they come here to be admitted to the New World Order!

All children are given notices to appear in immigration court, clearing the way for them to be released to Health and Human Services. About 1,200 children were ready for release Tuesday but there was nowhere to send them, Escamilla said.

Maybe they can billet at the White House or with Schumer or Pelosi, 'eh?


Either that or send them to Brazil(?).

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Just don't send them to England:

"Police response at Sarah Everard vigil was appropriate, investigators say" by Megan Specia New York Times, March 30, 2021

LONDON — The official body investigating police conduct at a London vigil for Sarah Everard, who was killed while walking home this month, has determined that the city’s police acted appropriately” at the event, according to a report released Tuesday.

(Blog editor once again shaking his head. 

I suppose the outrage is reserved for Black men, and welcome to the totalitarian tyranny, ladies! 

This is Soviet Union stuff, folks -- proving western "authorities" no longer care about appearances)

The police had faced widespread criticism for their actions at the event after videos and photographs circulated showing officers pinning some women to the ground as they cleared the demonstration.

You can't believe your lying eyes anymore, nor should you believe the imagery and illusion presented to you by the pre$$.

Everard’s killing, in which a London police officer has been charged, has spurred a broader reckoning about violence against women and girls in Britain and prompted calls for policing overhauls. The London rally, on March 13, began as a vigil for Everard, 33, but grew into an antiviolence demonstration, and had been deemed illegal under a national coronavirus lockdown.

No Magna Carte anymore?

The police response at the event also fueled broader protests nationally against a proposed policing and crime bill that would extend police powers to shut down peaceful demonstrations.

Some protests are okay, others not.

“After reviewing a huge body of evidence — rather than a snapshot on social media — we found that there are some things the Met could have done better,” said the leader of the inspection team, Matt Parr, using a shorthand term for London’s Metropolitan Police, “but we saw nothing to suggest police officers acted in anything but a measured and proportionate way in challenging circumstances.”

Just like Sergeant Schultz!

The investigation, carried out by the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, an independent government body, determined officers’ actions to be appropriate and “found that the Metropolitan Police was justified in adopting the view that the risks of transmitting COVID-19 at the vigil were too great to ignore when planning for and policing the event,” the inspectorate said in a statement.

CVD has been SO PLAYED to advance their totalitarian agenda and Great Re$et.

The inspectors’ findings say police officers at the vigil “did their best to peacefully disperse the crowd,” “remained calm and professional when subjected to abuse,” and “did not act in a heavy-handed manner,” but they did note that there was a disconnect between officers and commanders about the changing nature of the event, citing “insufficient communication.”

This whole experience is a damn disconnect!

The pre$$ doesn't match with common sense and reality, although I know it is complicated -- except that's the point. IT IS NOT!

The inspectorate said its conclusions came after reviewing hundreds of pieces of evidence, including both body camera footage from officers at the vigil and other footage of the event, and conducting interviews with police, vigil organizers, and politicians.

We call that a COVER UP!

It added that “public confidence in the Metropolitan Police suffered as a result of the vigil,” and noted the effect of the images of the officers arresting women.

NO, it suffered due to the REACTION of the TYRANNICAL THUGS called police.

“A more conciliatory response after the event might have served the Met’s interests better,” investigators said. One line in the report was particularly critical of the “chorus of those condemning the Metropolitan Police, and calling for the resignation of the commissioner, within hours of the arrests,” which it called unwarranted.

It said that while “a certain degree of uninformed commentary, particularly on social media, is inevitable, in this case some of the leading voices were those in positions of some responsibility,” appearing to take aim at politicians, some of whom had called for the leader of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, to step down.

The reaction to the investigation, commissioned by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Home Office, the government ministry that oversees policing, has been mixed.

Khan, who previously said he was “surprised and angry” at the police response, said that he accepted the report, in a statement to The Mirror, but, he added, “it is clear that trust and confidence of women and girls in the police and criminal justice system is far from adequate.”

Others were more critical.....


Time to move to Australia and get back in kitchen where you belong:

"Marc Feren Claude Biart was always careful to hide his face in his Italian cooking tutorials, filming the YouTube videos while laying low from police on a sandy beach in the Caribbean, but Biart, an alleged member of southern Italy’s powerful ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate, had failed to obscure his tattoos on tape — a clue authorities now say they used to track down the mobster in the Dominican Republic. Biart, 53, was arrested Monday at Milan's Malpensa airport after arriving on a flight from Santo Domingo, according to the Italian state broadcaster Rai, the latest episode in a sprawling, international effort to fight the 'Ndrangheta. Italian law enforcement officials working with Interpol, the global police organization, have in the past decade aggressively pursued the group’s affiliates, the country’s biggest and most influential Mafia organization. Officials have traced cocaine deals and brutal murders in its home base in Calabria — the “toe” of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula — to hundreds of mobsters across three continents, from a local mayor and police chief up to a former member of Parliament. In one case this week, officials detained one man as he was reportedly being treated for COVID-19 at a Portuguese hospital, but of all those arrests, Biart's may be the only one that was facilitated by both body art and gourmet hobbies....."

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Sorry for losing my appetite for the Globe.

I guess this is how it ends and the endless insults down the memory hole leave on feeling like they are tripping so put on some music and call a cop:

"Judge denies bid by senator, wife to block officials from referring probe into them to state prosecutors" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, March 30, 2021

A Massachusetts judge on Tuesday denied a request from a state senator that she temporarily block campaign finance regulators from referring an investigation into him, his wife, and other family members to prosecutors, dealing them a legal blow amid an unusually public probe.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christine Roach also declined a request Tuesday by state Senator Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, and others that the Office of Campaign and Political Finance provide them with “all” the evidence that director Michael Sullivan has compiled against them.

Roach wrote in her 18-page ruling that the Fattmans have “no reasonable likelihood of success” proving that Sullivan violated state law by not turning over all the evidence, or that he violated their due process by not recusing himself from the probe, as they have demanded.

Fattman and his wife, Worcester County Register of Probate Stephanie Fattman, as well as their family members and the Sutton Republican Town Committee, had sued Sullivan and sought an injunction against him. They argued that he refused to fully detail the evidence against them and that he’s pursued a biased and “illegal” investigation with the goal of, as their attorney claimed, getting “one last defendant for his trophy case” before he steps down from his position next month.

Roach, however, dismissed that. “There is no record to support a claim of personal or official animosity towards these particular plaintiffs,” she wrote Tuesday.

In early February, Sullivan issued the Fattmans a notice of intent to refer the investigation to prosecutors, saying his office found evidence the couple and the other plaintiffs had violated a rule that says candidates may not make contributions to a political committee “on the condition or with the agreement or understanding” that the funds must then be sent to someone else.

The exact allegations Sullivan is pursuing remain unclear, and Sullivan has yet to refer any case against the Fattmans to Attorney General Maura Healey’s office, which in turn could pursue a criminal or civil probe of its own, but the Fattmans — in both their complaint and a lengthy statement released Friday by the senator — said that Sullivan launched a probe in December, including into contributions Ryan Fattman’s campaign made to state and local Republican committees.

Public records show that in August the four-term senator made a $25,000 donation to the Sutton Republican Town Committee, where a relative and fellow plaintiff, Anthony Fattman, is chairman; the senator himself is listed as secretary of the committee. The contribution accounted for two-thirds of what the committee raised last year, according to its records.

In the two-plus months after Ryan Fattman’s donation, the town committee reported spending $41,000, with the vast majority of it — $33,253 — coming in the form of in-kind contributions to help Stephanie Fattman’s campaign, including in canvassing and phone calls to buttress her successful reelection to a second, six-year term.

It is not clear if these specific donations are the subject of Sullivan’s probe. Sullivan’s office has not publicly detailed the allegations, and a spokesman declined comment Tuesday on Roach’s decision. Healey’s office, which represented Sullivan in court, also declined comment.

Sullivan, who has led the Office of Campaign and Political Finance for more than 25 years and returned from retirement to lead the office until officials named his replacement, is scheduled to step down from the post early next month.

The Fattmans contend Sullivan violated the law in how he pursued the investigation, focusing intently on a comment he made during one interview when a Fattman attorney questioned Sullivan’s apparent conclusion that the senator may have violated the law, citing the specific section’s use of the word “may” as opposed to “must.”

“I don’t care what the law says. I don’t care about the difference between must and shall and may,” Sullivan reportedly responded, according to court documents filed by the Fattmans, but Roach said given all the evidence, his comment in an informal interview “cannot reasonably be taken literally,” given the investigation has followed the law as written.

“Plaintiffs chose to file their lawsuit, as was their right,” Roach said, “however, they cannot now unilaterally determine the factual scope of the controversy they have presented.”

She added that the Fattmans have also not proven they would face “irreparable harm” should she not intervene in the probe, and while they face the potential of a criminal referral and indictment, “that potential has not yet been realized and it may never be.”


I'm trying to cut back on the colorful highlighting and commentary, sorry, as the Globe says they should be given a break.

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So what kind of body type do you prefer?

"URI faculty condemn professor for ‘statements that dehumanize people’ in trans community; The email signed by 14 of Donna Hughes’s colleagues said the university is a key place for difficult dialogues, “but the personhood and dignity of all LGBTQIA+ persons should never be up for debate.”" by Alexa Gagosz Globe Staff, March 30, 2021

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — Faculty members affiliated with the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Rhode Island sent an e-mail to students recently, condemning statements by professor Donna Hughes that they describe as “anti-transgender.”

“We condemn statements that dehumanize people who identify as LGBTQIA+,” read the e-mail sent to students Sunday night. “We categorically state that the views of one faculty member do not represent the views of others in the department who are working to uphold the core values of GWS: human rights, dignity, and social justice.”

The e-mail was signed by 14 faculty members affiliated with the department.

On March 23, the university published a statement on its website condemning Hughes for making “statements and publications” that “espouse anti-transgender perspectives.”

Hughes, a professor and director of graduate studies in URI’s gender and women’s studies program, is one of the founders of the academic study of human trafficking. She is also the editor in chief of “Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence,” an open-access, nonprofit journal hosted by the University of Rhode Island.

Hughes published an essay in late February on 4W, an online platform that describes itself as a fourth-wave, radical feminist outletoutside of the liberal mainstream.”

Like everything else, that has been turned on its head as well. 

Those who defend women are now demonized on the altar of confused perversion, sorry.

“The American political left is increasingly diving headfirst into their own world of lies and fantasy and, unlike in the imaginary world of QAnon, real children are becoming actual victims,” Hughes wrote in her essay. “The trans-sex fantasy, the belief that a person can change his or her sex, either from male to female or from female to male, is spreading largely unquestioned among the political left.”

The essay describes hormonal and surgical interventions as “horrors that de-sex” young people, and asserts that “same sex rights, particularly those of women and girls” are being taken away “when biological males identify as trans-women.”

“The biological category of sex, particularly women’s sex, is being smashed,“ she wrote.

University students and staff members told the Globe recently that Hughes’s essay is indicative of deeply rooted issues at the university.

Alexander Lalama, one of the faculty members who signed the letter, told the Globe Tuesday that Hughess’ statements stood out as “antagonistic to my own values and strong beliefs in fighting for LGBTQ rights” and the letter reaffirms their commitment to equity and inclusion.

“My mission as part of the GWS department, and my own personal mission, is to use the academic environment to build students’ awareness and knowledge of issues regarding identity categories in order to build an inclusive society grounded in social justice and human rights,” said Lalama. While the department is working to highlight its commitment to diversity, Lalama said, “I also think it’s critical to note that commitment to inclusivity is an ongoing process that we should all remain committed to.”

Ironically, the inclusivity excludes others!

Jenna Guitar, another faculty member who signed the letter, said they are teaching a new introductory course on transgender studies this semester, which works to introduce students to the “lives, histories, and culture of transgender and gender non-conforming folx through biography, literature, film, historical accounts, and other mediums.”

“I found it important to make it clear that the rhetoric espoused by one faculty member is not indicative of the entire department,” Guitar told the Globe. “I stand with the LGBTQIA+ community and I wish to make it clear that I find the rhetoric published by professor Hughes to be harmful. ... I don’t believe that the articles published by Hughes are indicative of the kind of environment we are trying to create in the GWS department at URI.”

“We want to let students who identify with these communities know we are deeply sorry you have had to go through the difficult experience of having your identities and lived experiences dismissed or diminished. We value you and are open to speaking with any of you who want to discuss the issues that have emerged from this event,” read the e-mail from faculty members, which was obtained by a Globe reporter. “We reaffirm our commitment to [university] President Dooley’s words: ‘As an institution, we continue to build an inclusive community, where all are welcomed and included, valued and respected, and where every person has the opportunity to learn and grow, and to achieve their goals in a safe and supportive environment. We all rise by lifting each other.’”

In other words, they were sent the email, and some of the signees have a conflict of interest, do they not?

“We affirm the general right of all faculty to ‘unqualified acceptance of the principle of freedom in inquiry and expression’ (URI/American Association of University Professors Collective Bargaining Agreement), while acknowledging this right carries with it the obligation and responsibility for scholars that their activities adhere to high standards of integrity and academic rigor, exercise appropriate restraint, and do not disrespect other persons,” the e-mail read.

The faculty e-mail said the signers wish to recognize the university as a key place for difficult dialogues; a place where ideas should be debated rigorously.

HAH!

“Confronting ideas, forming counter-arguments, and learning to speak with others who disagree with you is part of what it means to participate in a democratic society, but the personhood and dignity of all LGBTQIA+ persons should never be up for debate,” the e-mail continued.

No one is taking away their individuality no matter what their preference.

A university spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment on the faculty letter.

Annie Russell, the director of the university’s Gender and Sexuality Center, told the Globe she has called for implicit bias and micro-aggression awareness training since she was hired in 2012, no such training is required for faculty members at URI. Some department heads have opted to implement it, but the Gender and Women’s Studies Department, where Hughes is the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson endowed chair, has not.

“URI faculty and students have free speech rights just like I do, and I respect the right of those who disagree with me to express their views,” Hughes said Tuesday in an e-mail to a Globe reporter, “however, I am struck by the fact that no one has addressed any detail of what I’ve written in the essay. ... People are very interested in this issue because there is a demand for ‘gender identity’ or ‘gender-based rights’ to be treated equally to ‘sex’ and ‘sex-based rights.’ These fundamental shifts will have an immense impact on women and girls’ lives.”"

You are either FOR free speech or NOT! 

There are no IFS, ANDS, BUTS, or HOWEVERS, sorry, and you are ONLY FOR FREE SPEECH if it is SPEECH YOU HATE!

Everyone likes speech they agree with, and that is why I $upport the right of the Globe to publish their BS. It's up to the individual to determine what is the reality.


{@@##$$%%^^&&}

They really need to relax, and I wish this guy had:

"Woman killed on beach in Maine was attacked from behind by boyfriend, police say" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, March 30, 2021

Rhonda Pattelena was standing on a beach in York, Maine, when her boyfriend, Jeffrey Buchannan, allegedly attacked her from behind, fatally striking her in the head as at least two people looked on in horror, police said.

De Blasio is wondering why they were not a good samaritan.

Buchannan, who is 6 foot 1 inch and weighs about 175 pounds, first hit her with his hands and then with a rock police later recovered from Short Sands Beach, where Pattelena, 35, was killed around 4 p.m. on Friday, police wrote in a report.

Portions of the assault were captured by surveillance cameras from area businesses, the report stated. The recording shows Buchannan, 33, attack her from behind and then hit her several more times, police wrote. He then walks away.

Two witnesses told police they saw a man wearing a black hoodie, grey jeans, and red sneakers attack someone and then saw him “dragging a body behind the rocks,” Maine State Police Detective David Coflesky wrote.

Buchannan walked from the beach into a beachfront neighborhood heading toward the Fun-O-Rama arcade on Beach Street and then onto Railroad Avenue, the center of the resort town’s business community, police said. A witness directed a police officer to Buchannan, who was taken into custody without incident.

On Tuesday, Buchannan appeared by video in York County Superior Court, where Justice Wayne Douglas ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation as requested by Buchannan’s lawyer, Jon Gale. He was ordered held without bail and is scheduled to return to court on April 12.

According to the Globe, he just got out of prison.

The court hearing was brief and the evidence against Buchannan was not discussed. Buchannan wore what appeared to be a jail-issued long-sleeved orange sweatshirt, a blue face mask, and a pair of handcuffs. He did not speak.

Jeffrey Buchannan during his video Zoom arraignment in York County Superior Court in Alfred, Maine on Tuesday.
Jeffrey Buchannan during his video Zoom arraignment in York County Superior Court in Alfred, Maine on Tuesday (York County Superior Court).

Oh, he's a black guy that murdered a white woman.

That's why Globe is burying it on pages B3 and B5 the past two days.

No racism there.

Pattelena was declared dead on the beach, which was stained with blood. Police recovered a “rock that appeared to have been used as a weapon,” according to the report.

Buchannan was taken to the police station where he agreed to speak with investigators after he was read his Miranda rights, police wrote. He told police he came to York with Pattelena, whom he identified as his girlfriend.

Buchannan said he saw a man running toward him on the beach and saw Pattelena “making hand gestures” behind him. He felt threatened, he told investigators, and “blacked out.”

“When asked if he remembered anything, he advised that he first recalled breathing heavy and that Rhonda was laying on the ground,” Coflesky wrote. “He advised that he walked away at that point, leaving Rhonda behind.”

LAME!

Buchannan refused to talk to police further and was charged with murder.

Pattelena was the mother of three boys, including a 2-year-old fathered by Buchannan, according to her sister, Jessica, and longtime friend, Melissa Matranga. The Pattelena family spent time every summer at York. Matranga has organized a GoFundMe campaign for Pattelena’s children.

“She was an amazing mother and she was raising some amazing kids. She always did her best for them,” her sister told The Boston Globe. “She had the most beautiful soul you could ever meet. All she ever wanted to do was to help people.”

The fatal attack was at least the second time that Buchannan had physically attacked Pattelena, according to court records. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to assaulting her in Lawrence and kidnapping her and her two sons from earlier relationships. He was sentenced to two years behind bars.


Of course, no one saw this coming because and he is being remembered for touching the lives of so many people as the victim becomes part of history :(


You can check the schedule if you want to place a bet.