July 23, 2022

Madison Cawthorn, Chick-fil-A enthusiast

Madison Cawthorn spent campaign donations he was supposed to return on 'egregiously' frequent trips to Chick-fil-A and other businesses and now can't pay donors back, report says


Madison Cawthorn may be in violation of campaign laws as a result of the "outrageous" spending of campaign funds meant to be used during his now-defunct general election campaign, an anonymous source told the Daily Beast.

According to the source, the North Carolina GOP Representative's campaign had so little money during the end of his primary that they were forced to spend general fund money during the primary.

However, election laws do not allow for those funds to be spent until the general election. If a candidate loses their primary, they must return it to donors. ......(moe)

https://www.businessinsider.com/madison-cawthorn-cant-pay-donors-back-report-says-2022-7

July 22, 2022

It's so hot, roads are buckling, they're putting foil on a bridge and roofs are melting around the..

It’s so hot, roads are buckling, they’re putting foil on a bridge and roofs are melting around the world


(CNN) It’s so hot across the globe, roads and roofs are melting.

The deadly heat waves of the last week have sparked strange infrastructural events around the world as millions endure searing temperatures that are still on the rise.

The heat-related events also speak to aging infrastructures worldwide, most of which – roads, bridges, railroads, buildings – are not prepared for the sweltering conditions as of late.

So how hot has it been, exactly? Well…

It’s so hot, the runway at a London airport melted

The United Kingdom saw its hottest day on record Tuesday, when temperatures breached 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

It’s been so hot that a runway at London Luton Airport on the capital’s outskirts had to be closed off as it melted in the heat.

“Flights are temporarily suspended to allow for an essential runway repair after high surface temperatures caused a small section to lift,” the airport tweeted Monday. .............(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/weather/global-infrastructure-its-so-hot-extreme-heat/index.html

July 22, 2022

Neighbors upset about man doing yard work in the nude

Better be careful with that hedge trimmer


STUART, Fla. — People who live in a Stuart neighborhood say their neighbor does yard work and walks around his property naked. They say they’ve called the sheriff's office, but deputies say, there is nothing they can do.

"I came out Sunday night to put the trash out, and I look over and he is bent over, winding up his hose, and I'm like that is my view of the neighborhood,” says Melissa Ny, a neighbor.

Concerned neighbors want to crack down on this naked truth, the man who lives at the end of their street is a nudist.

"He works on his car, and he does it naked and everyone has called the police, he is just out there doing his yard work, whatever he needs to do outside, naked," says Ny. .........(more)

https://www.wpbf.com/article/stuart-neighbors-upset-about-man-doing-yard-work-in-the-nude/23310164#

July 22, 2022

24 hours of a coup: Jan. 6 hearings end with damming minute-by-minute account of Trump's crusade

24 hours of a coup: Jan. 6 hearings end with damming minute-by-minute account of Trump's crusade
The Jan. 6 committee masterfully ended the first chapter of their presentation to the nation with a blockbuster

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
PUBLISHED JULY 22, 2022 7:06AM


(Salon) If Donald Trump knew any history — which he most certainely does not — you might think that he based his January 6 rally and march to the Capitol on the infamous March on Rome, a 1923 coup d'etat orchestrated by Benito Mussolini. That is when Mussolini's blackshirts staged a dramatic march to the Italian capitol and took over the government. (Like Donald Trump, Mussolini didn't actually accompany his followers on their march but did have his picture taken with them.) The existing Italian government didn't put up any resistance and Mussolini easily assumed power the next day without any blood being shed. Everyone had already known the mob violence the blackshirts were capable of, they'd been wreaking havoc on the population for some time.

Of course, Trump knew nothing of this when he called for his mob to assemble in the nation's Capitol on the day the congress certified the election for Joe Biden. He just has the same fascistic instincts as Benito Mussolini and thought he could use his crowd to intimidate Congress into going along with his crackpot plans to overturn the election with fake electors. If that didn't work, he even had members of his party, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., prepared to demand that the count be delayed for 10 days so he could continue his pressure on Republican officials.

As it turned out, his crowd staged a violent assault on the Capitol injuring hundreds of police officers. Trump had incited them to not only stop the count but got them to hunt down his allegedly disloyal vice president by tweeting in the middle of the violence, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands truth!"

Like Mussolini, the president may not have been with them in person but he was leading them just the same.

....(snip)....

He did manage to call GOP senators, however, to try to get them to go along with his daft plan even as his people were storming the building. He also spoke to his lawyer and co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani a couple of times, although we can only speculate about what they discussed. But after sending that inflammatory tweet targeting Mike Pence, Trump refused to do anything more than belatedly release another tweet saying not to harm the Capitol police. It is then that one rioter is heard on tape laughing and saying, "he didn't say anything about not hurting the congressmen!" ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/22/24-hours-of-a-coup-jan-6-hearings-end-with-damming-minute-by-minute-account-of-crusade/

July 22, 2022

Bulls & Darwin 3, Stupid Humans 0

MADRID, July 20 (Reuters) - Three people have died in the last 24 hours after suffering severe injuries during several bull-running festivals in Spain's Valencia region, local authorities said on Wednesday.

The three men were injured on different days during the past two weeks but all died within hours this week - a reminder of how dangerous these traditional events, which are also the target of criticism by animal rights groups, can be.

The town of Picassent held a day of mourning on Wednesday after one of its residents died due to a severe head trauma after more than a week in intensive care.

Bull-running festivals, where groups of people run in front of one or more fighting bulls, are a long-standing Spanish tradition with many towns holding such events each year. .........(more)

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/three-dead-less-than-24-hours-after-valencia-bull-festivals-2022-07-20/

July 22, 2022

How to win post-Roe legal battles for abortion: "People should feel like they have a voice"

How to win post-Roe legal battles for abortion: "People should feel like they have a voice"
"We didn't know that Roe was going to be overturned," says Amanda Allen, before helping save an abortion sanctuary

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JULY 21, 2022 1:21PM


(Salon) It the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, a black cloud of fear and despair has billowed out over the country. Republican-controlled state governments have been competing with each other over who can pass the most sadistic abortion bans, while anti-choice activists gaslight the public over how serious the impact of such laws will be. The news is drowning in horror stories of child rape victims being denied abortion, miscarrying women being denied medical care and pregnant women being denied the right to divorce. Even for those of us who have covered the anti-choice movement for a long time and are aware that they're motivated by cruelty and misogyny — not "life" — the viciousness towards women and girls has been harrowing.

"I thought I was sufficiently cynical about the anti-abortion movement," Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote, "but I admit to being taken aback by this blithe, public disregard for the lives of women, including women suffering the loss of wanted pregnancies."

As the years of Donald Trump have made crystal clear, Republicans cannot be shamed out of their tyrannical and cold-blooded impulses. That's why decisions like Roe were so important: Only the law can check the authoritarian sadism. And now without Roe, it's hard to know how to help those who need abortions.

That's why it was such a thrill to get a text from Amanda Allen, who works for The Lawyering Project, the group founded by Stephanie Toti, the attorney who argued before the Supreme Court to secure the 2016 abortion rights victory in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. Full disclosure: Allen is a good friend of mine, which is why she was texting me to let me know she and her team had won a huge victory in the state of Minnesota. For Allen, a Minnesota native, it was especially sweet to do her part to help those still living where she grew up. While red states across the country debate how close to death a pregnant person must be in order to allow them to abort a failed pregnancy, in Minnesota, the state Supreme Court just struck down nearly every onerous abortion regulation, including needless waiting periods and age restrictions. In doing so, they helped make Minnesota a safe haven in the Midwest for abortion.

....(snip)....

You and the Lawyering Project secured a major victory for abortion rights in Minnesota. Can you tell me about that?

We filed this case a little over three years ago, on behalf of two healthcare providers, an abortion fund in Minnesota called Our Justice, and a congregation based in Minneapolis. We filed that case really under a very different set of political and legal circumstances, but we filed it purely under Minnesota law, which means that this case will always be insulated from whatever happens in the federal courts. We didn't know that Roe was going to be overturned this year when we filed that case. But it underscores the importance of using a lot of different legal strategies, even when the federal courts may be more favorable to you.

Our strategy, in this case, was to challenge the entire status quo of abortion access in Minnesota. A lot of people think of Minnesota as a purple state, maybe even a blue state in the Midwest. They are surprised to learn that Minnesota had a bunch of really harmful and burdensome restrictions on abortion access. Up until last week, Minnesota had a 24-hour delay law that forced people to wait 24 hours between getting a state-mandated lecture about why they shouldn't get an abortion and actually obtaining care. Minnesota had a law that required adolescents to notify two parents before they could get an abortion or see a judge for permission to get the abortion without doing that. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/21/how-to-win-post-roe-legal-battles-for-abortion-people-should-feel-like-they-have-a-voice/

July 21, 2022

Oh great now we're littering on Mars.....

(CNN) NASA’s Perseverance rover captured an unusual image of something lying in the red sand of Mars: a bundle of string.

The rover’s front left hazard avoidance camera took a photo of the light-colored object on July 12 that some people likened to spaghetti.

Officials at the space agency confirmed that they believe the object to be a string left over from Perseverance’s landing.

The string could be from the rover or its descent stage, a component similar to a rocket-powered jet pack used to safely lower the rover to the planet’s surface, according to a spokesperson for the Perseverance mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. ...................(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/20/world/perseverance-rover-string-debris-scn/index.html

July 21, 2022

Meltdown: London's hottest day ever brought on madness that far exceeded the temperature

Meltdown
London’s hottest day ever brought on madness that far exceeded the temperature.

BY IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS
JULY 20, 20224:32 PM


(Slate) It is very hot in Britain. At midday on Tuesday, the U.K. recorded its highest-ever temperature of 40.3 degrees Celsius, or 104.5 Farenheit.

Before people who live in Death Valley get angry with me, let me explain why that does in fact count as “very hot” here in London. Our summers used to involve a couple of weeks in the early 20s (around 70 Fahrenheit for Americans), a good bit of rain, and complaints that summer “never really came this year.” No longer. Now, you can bank on weather in the 20s, yes, but also one week where it becomes impossible to remain sane as temperatures and tempers skyrocket. We live in homes originally built for shivering chimney sweeps or something, and so on the whole, homes are built to keep heat in. I have never been in a home in this country that had air conditioning. Most of us didn’t even know how to keep a house cool until a few years ago when this first started happening consistently, blithely leaving our windows open and saying “I’ll just buy a fan if it gets hot” every day for a month until they sell out when it does in fact get hot.

How are we dealing with it? Not well. There is nothing like a weather event to short fuse the collective consciousness of the United Kingdom at the best of times. Temperatures in double digits Celsius are enough to guarantee that there will be British people out in the parks sunbathing. So instead of hearing 40 degrees Celsius and thinking “batten down the hatches, it’s time for a cold bath,” they think “tops off lads, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime tanning opportunity.” We can’t, as a nation, get our head around what it means to live in that heat. I went out to buy some food, battling headwinds that felt like standing in front of an oven, and found myself reading car number plates and not quite being able to remember how the shapes of the letters connect to the sounds you make when you say them.

And all our infrastructure was built with lower temperatures in mind. Chaos has reigned. There were train tracks on fire, roads and airport runways melting, police smashing car windows to rescue boiling dogs, forest fires, suburban houses all over London burning down, Beefeaters being given bottles of water to suckle from like baby goats, surgeries cancelled because operating theatres were too hot, ambulances being called out left right and center to treat heat exposure, people’s leather sofas and rubbish bins and fences going up in flames. Every lush green park in the south of England looked like New Mexico overnight. ..........(more)

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/europe-heat-wave-london-record-advice-madness.html

July 21, 2022

Extreme weather impacting DART, MTA

Extreme weather impacting DART, MTA
July 20, 2022

With high heat impacting central parts of Texas and Oklahoma and heavy rains in New York City, transit agencies are taking steps to ensure safe service delivery.
Mischa Wanek-Libman




Extreme weather is impacting transit agencies in New York City, as well as in central Texas and Oklahoma. While media reports focus on the record heat affecting Europe, most of Oklahoma, central and eastern Texas, most of Arkansas, northern Louisiana and the western counties of Tennessee and Mississippi were under excessive Heat Warning from the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service Prediction Center said “scorching heat” would remain a concern over the next few days due to “a stagnant upper-level ridge” hovering over the Southwest.

In Oklahoma City, Okla., EMBARK published a list of cooling centers throughout the city, as well as which bus routes could be used to access them. The list also included cooling centers in Midwest City and Norman, Okla.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) will operate light-rail vehicles no more than 30 mph between 2:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. through Wednesday, July 20, due to the record high temperatures expected to impact north Texas. DART warns the speed restrictions could result in delays of 10-15 minutes.

Steel rails can be at greater risk of experiencing a thermal buckle under extreme heat conditions where reduced travel speeds can mitigate the risk. Rail systems with overhead wires can also experience sagging wires in extreme heat. Last summer, Portland Streetcar shared an image of damaged power cables caused by extreme heat. .............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/safety-security/article/21274737/extreme-weather-impacting-dart-mta

July 21, 2022

"A constitutional joke": Jamie Raskin destroys Republicans' 2nd Amendment fantasy

(Salon) Rep Jamie Raskin, D-MD, went off on Republicans for their "insurrectionist view" of the Second Amendment during Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on a bill that would ban assault weapons.

The proposed legislation, which was first introduced back in March 2021, would ban the sale, manufacturing, and importation of certain automatic weapons, in addition to high-capacity ammunition magazines, which allow guns to send quickly off 10 rounds of ammunition. The proposed bill was resurfaced weeks after a series of deadly mass shootings, in Buffalo, NY, Uvalde, TX, and most recently at a fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1549806878389022720

Raskin began his speech by attacking Texas Congressman Chip Roy's reasoning for why an assault ban would be unconstitutional. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/21/a-constitutional-joke-jamie-raskin-destroys-republicans-2nd-amendment-fantasy/