February 18, 2023

Kari Lake Dumps Man-Crush DeSantis With Soros-Related Conspiracy

The election-denying Arizona Republican once claimed DeSantis had the “BDE that we want all of our leaders to have.”

As the presidential jostling for 2024 gets underway, there seems to be no shortage of bad blood in MAGA-world.

Election-denying former news anchor Kari Lake, who once fawned over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for having the “BDE [Big Dick Energy] that we want all of our leaders to have,” is now spreading conspiracy theories about the Republican darling.

Lake, who can’t accept that she lost Arizona’s gubernatorial election last year, posted an article from the right-wing media site Gateway Pundit misleadingly alleging that liberal megadonor and Republican bugaboo George Soros had “endorsed” DeSantis for president.

“The Kiss of Death - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Endorsed by George Soros,” the headline read.

In reality, Soros only said DeSantis is “likely to be the Republican nominee,” calling him “shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kari-lake-dumps-man-crush-ron-desantis-with-soros-related-conspiracy

February 17, 2023

Florida surgeon general, again questioning COVID vaccines, sends letter to CDC, FDA

Joseph Ladapo cited the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which anyone can report to.

Florida’s top health official sent a letter this week to the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could be dangerous.

It’s the latest instance of Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who runs the Florida Department of Health, questioning the safety of the vaccines. In the letter, he cites an increase in the number of reports from Florida submitted to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, as evidence of a problem with the shots.

“Academic researchers throughout our country and around the globe have seen troubling safety signals of adverse events surrounding this vaccine. Their concerns are corroborated by the substantial increase in VAERS reports from Florida, including life-threatening conditions,” Ladapo wrote in the letter, dated Wednesday.

The CDC recommends everyone stay up to date with COVID-19 shots, which it says protect against severe disease, hospitalization and death in all age groups.

The letter — and a subsequent Department of Health news release — said Florida had seen a 4,400% increase in the VAERS reporting of “life-threatening conditions.”

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2023/02/17/ladapo-surgeon-general-coronavirus-vaccines-mrna-vaers-safety/

Floridians should be outraged having this fraud demonstrating medical malpractice in their name.

February 17, 2023

Rep. George Santos barricaded himself in his district office as angry constituents stood outside

Rep. George Santos barricaded himself in his district office as angry constituents stood outside demanding his resignation: reports

Rep. George Santos hid inside his district office as constituents attempted to deliver a petition calling for his resignation on Wednesday, according to multiple reports.

Local residents who arrived at the scandal-hit Republican's district office in Douglaston, Queens, were greeted by a police cordon, UK newspaper The Independent reported.

A staffer told the group that Santos was in the building but added that he refused to meet with a "mob," according to the paper.

The group of around 25 constituents chanted as they attempted to hand over the petition, which they said had more than 1,000 signatures, per the paper.

https://www.businessinsider.com/george-santos-hides-barricaded-office-face-constituents-queens-2023-2

February 17, 2023

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. 'Crazy Stuff.'

Source: New York Times

The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/business/media/fox-dominion-lawsuit.html

February 16, 2023

New York Times Blasts Staffers Who Condemned Paper's Trans Coverage

“We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists” in protests over the paper’s coverage of trans issues, its executive editor wrote.

A day after open letters from both celebrities and New York Times contributors blasted the paper for its coverage of transgender people, executive editor Joe Kahn hit back with a stern newsroom memo defending the coverage and condemning contributors and staffers who railed against it.

“Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy,” Kahn wrote, later adding: “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”

Kahn argued the open letters ignored the paper’s “strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society.”

The newsroom-wide memo, obtained by The Daily Beast, came hours after staffers began speaking out publicly against the coverage and signing onto the contributors’ open letter. It also came after the Times published an op-ed Thursday titled “In Defense of J.K. Rowling,” by columnist Pamela Paul, who notably wrote a piece questioning the legitimacy of trans women. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, has been a leading critic on trans issues.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-times-blast-staffers-who-condemned-papers-trans-coverage

February 16, 2023

Top Russian Military Official Dead After Fall From 16th Floor

Source: Daily Beast

Marina Yankina handled cash flows for the Western Military District.

A Russian military official in charge of financial provisions for the military district blamed for the Kremlin’s worst losses in Ukraine has been found dead after a nasty fall from a St. Petersburg high-rise.

Marina Yankina, head of the department of financial provisions for the Western Military District, was found dead on a sidewalk on Wednesday morning, according to multiple local reports. She is just the latest in a growing list of Russian military officials, defense industry figures, war critics, and gas and oil execs to die suddenly and mysteriously since the start of the full-scale invasion last year.

The 58-year-old’s belongings and documents were found on a balcony on the 16th floor of the building, Mash reports.

Russia’s Investigative Committee is looking into the circumstances of the deadly plunge, with their preliminary conclusion being suicide, according to Fontanka.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-russian-military-official-marina-yankina-dead-after-fall-from-16th-floor

February 16, 2023

Dismiss Ron DeSantis at Your Peril

So now Ron DeSantis is wishy-washy. A bit of a wimp. Or at least runs the risk of looking like one.

That’s a fresh sentiment discernible in some recent assessments, as political analysts and journalists marvel at, chew over and second-guess his failure to return Donald Trump’s increasingly ugly jabs.

I wish I agreed. I’m no DeSantis fan. But where those critics spot possible weakness, I see proven discipline. Brawling with Trump doesn’t flex DeSantis’s muscle. It shows he can be baited. And it just covers them both in mud.

The doubters have also theorized that DeSantis could be this presidential election cycle’s Scott Walker, a gleaming governor who can’t make the leap from a local stage to the national one — who dims as the lights grow brighter. Walker’s bid to be the Republican nominee in 2016 winked out even before the Iowa caucuses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/ron-desantis-trump-2024.html?unlocked_article_code=CyjHJRyB_B-ES7GDCJe_leumen4VSnspiMTsWaxprrNDzjtIv59Wc2BNdZazAsv4XjSP8TJOZtuzv-AurzkQraAVJAmyDj5GSuYkPVozNPtJWs3yO4GfJIp1GWC8T40AbPiJK88TbzE_9wi-tmlpQ51pE8krZq0GDBOT9MTavjR0pz8GTSkyo5mZtsUZDxCmUbW1NXMsscoRmhlm9LIqmsmWH1eGr4PDtsuJw-0fZKRHwb-4Cp5fiJIIRpIu5Xl55tcJVTKpZaWBf4fmUGwXkKH488w8795rrFmKAh5R3EKfX86WuwWrY9eyBV6i7xBZsq87pGHo9muuUNiYAVjD9po&smid=url-share

February 16, 2023

California's population dropped by 500,000 in two years as exodus continues

The California exodus has shown no sign of slowing down as the state’s population dropped by more than 500,000 people between April 2020 and July 2022, with the number of residents leaving surpassing those moving in by nearly 700,000.

The population decrease was second only to New York, which lost about 15,000 more people than California, census data show.

California has been seeing a decline in population for years, with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing even more people to move to other parts of the country, experts say. The primary reason for the exodus is the state’s high housing costs, but other reasons include the long commutes and the crowds, crime and pollution in the larger urban centers. The increased ability to work remotely — and not having to live near a big city — has also been a factor.

The rate of the exodus may now be slowing as the pandemic’s effects ease, but some experts say it could be a few years before the Golden State starts to record the kind of population growth it has seen in the past.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-15/californias-population-has-dropped-by-more-than-half-a-million-in-about-two-years-why

February 16, 2023

Nikki Haley launches GOP campaign by insulting Americans age 75 and over. Great start!

Watch out, mid-to-upper septuagenarians. Newly minted GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has questions about your mental acuity!

The South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador formally launched her campaign Wednesday with, among other things, a call for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

That line was surely aimed at pleasing Republicans who’ve convinced themselves that 80-year-old President Joe Biden is senile (while also being a devious criminal and an all-powerful leftist singlehandedly transforming America into a socialist hellscape). But it was also a shot at 76-year-old former President Donald Trump, a candidate as well, and at a sizable swath of the GOP’s most reliable base of voters.

A Pew Research Center study of the 2020 presidential election found voters ages 75 to 92 were the only ones who clearly favored Trump over Biden, by 58% to 42%.

https://news.yahoo.com/nikki-haley-launches-gop-campaign-193422788.html

February 16, 2023

Art exhibit canceled after SCF objects to works featuring diversity and inclusion

An annual Sarasota art exhibit celebrating diversity was pulled from a planned display at a Florida college campus because the college leadership asked the organization to remove artwork with the words “diversity,” “inclusion,” “justice” and “equality,” the sponsoring group said.

Embracing Our Differences, the organization behind the art display, wrote in a statement that its board of directors decided to pull the exhibit from State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota because the requests to remove the words went against the group's mission. The exhibit had been scheduled to be displayed at SCF Manatee-Sarasota from April 26 to May 9.

“We are not a political organization with a political agenda… Embracing Our Differences has remained and will continue to remain true to our core values, and those values include embracing and promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity,” the organization’s statement read. “To do otherwise would betray our mission and turn our backs on those who have supported us over the past two decades.”

Jamie Smith, the college’s associate vice president of communications, said the decision was made in part because the college believed three pieces of art “may have been found offensive and not embraced.”

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2023/02/15/embracing-our-differences-exhibit-canceled-at-state-college-of-florida-over-diversity-and-inclusion/69907264007/