South African court orders ex-president to jail for contempt

Source: Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma has been found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to 15 months in prison for defying a court order to appear before an inquiry probing wide-ranging allegations of corruption during his tenure from 2009 to 2018.

Zuma was not in court for the ruling on Tuesday and has been ordered to hand himself over within five days to a police station in his hometown of Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal province or in Johannesburg.

If Zuma fails to turn himself in within five days South Africa’s minister of police and the police commissioner have been ordered to take him into custody within three days.

This is the first time in South Africa’s history that a former president has been sentenced to prison.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/africa-south-africa-courts-ca4b08b93ab679ec2304da47625800bd

'It definitely feels early': GOP's long race to 2024 begins

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — In the past week alone, Nikki Haley regaled activists in Iowa, Mike Pence courted donors in California and Donald Trump returned to the rally stage, teasing a third campaign for the White House.

The midterms are more than a year away, and there are 1,225 days until the next presidential election. But Republicans eyeing a White House run are wasting no time in jockeying for a strong position in what could emerge as an extremely crowded field of contenders.

The politicking will only intensify in the coming weeks, particularly in Iowa, home to the nation’s leadoff presidential caucuses and a state where conservative evangelicals play a significant role in steering the direction of the GOP. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is slated to visit on Tuesday, and others, including Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are expected to appear in July.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-michael-pence-election-2020-campaign-2016-government-and-politics-6c670a583ea8be1b46196ec75134623c

Delta variant having huge impact on vaccine effectiveness, says expert

How Does Democrat Party Properly Message to Rural White Communities

This is one trillion dollar question in the room right now? The reason why I am contemplating this question is that I consistently hear about rural counties in Oregon that want to secede from Oregon became part of Ohio.

I know that this problem is not fixable and given the scarcity of resources, it is extensively more efficient to target suburban and urban voters given that the amount of votes in urban/suburban area far exceed that of rural area.

However, one thing that you can do is try to raise a grassroots movements where people can learn how to build working-class polticial organizations in these areas. You can provide the tools and training for people who might want to take at the stab at this problem even it should not be the target of state/national parties.

So the question that I have is what type of outreach strategies would work and what we can do improve the situtation. I am know that these people will most likely to become conservative, but building a grassroots movement even with limited success can go long way to challenging stereotypes and other issues especially if it is homegrown.

Just my thoughts. Peace out.

Republican Lawmaker Tells High School That Government Is Incompetent And Wearing Masks Is Terrible

I try to be empathetic to be people who have vaccine hesistant but welcome with this garbage

And that I get stuff like this



And then I say to myself, you have gone way down the rabbit hole, and there is no way that I deal with you. I am not an expert deprogrammer with years and years of experience excelling in deprogramming anti-vaxxers and expertly handling issues with trauma.

From my personal experience, people like this are usually 100% into alternative medicine. As a result, they would rather trust a conspiracy theorist than Western medicine without a detailed background check on conspiracy theorists.

They are the same people who talk about VAERS and the whole other issues. I think that I lost a friend because I talked about the vaccines too much. While attempting to be empathetic towards people who would naturally distrust vaccines, I often find that I am dealing with the conspiracy theories because these people put too much trust in a conspiracy theorist. After all, a conspiracy theorist will confirm their existing bias instead of checking to see if the conspiracy theorist's conspiracies are even remotely factual.

This happens when people are locked down for months on end and lose their ability to think because they get locked into their warped bubbles critically. And this remark is similar to the damn garbage you see on Infowars, even though the individual who wrote this post and Alex Jones are diametrically the polar opposites ideologically on almost every other issue.

And this is a second time in the last seven days that I had to post some BS post from somebody in my social network.

Fox Host Claims Fauci Lied To Congress, Calls For Prosecution

Fox News host Steve Hilton on Sunday claimed lied to Congress about the origins of the coronavirus and called for him to be prosecuted, part of a pattern of conservative attacks on the nation's top infectious diseases expert.

Hilton claimed the words Fauci used to describe "Gain-of-function" research in 2012 were exactly the words used in a progress report to describe U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

As new questions have emerged about the true origins of the coronavirus, some Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators have seized on connections between Fauci and the Wuhan lab, drawing unsubstantiated conclusions that Fauci was responsible for funding the creation of the coronavirus that caused the global pandemic.


https://thehill.com/homenews/media/557200-fox-host-claims-fauci-lied-to-congress-calls-for-prosecution

"Fauci Gate" And What His Emails Tell Us About Covid-19 And American Politics

Among them, Sen. Rand Paul has been a leading figure in helping to spread misinformation about the Fauci emails.

In early February of 2020, Fauci received an email from a woman asking if she should wear a mask while traveling.

As Vox's Anna North reported, "When people like Trump don't wear masks and make wearing masks a political issue, their supporters are less likely to wear them." It follows that when people like Fauci do wear a mask and are involved in suggesting rules about wearing them, these same people will be waiting for an opportunity to prove him wrong.

https://www.vox.com/2021/6/6/22521289/fauci-gate-email-covid-19-trump

Mike Lindell Claims SCOTUS Will Overturn 2020 Election 9-0

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell claimed on his social media platform that he's uncovered proof that China hacked the 2020 presidential election using Dominion and when Supreme Court looks at his evidence they will vote to overturn the election.

Lindell, claims he's hired the very best white hat hackers and they have just uncovered all the evidence he needs that China was behind Traitor Trump's downfall.

Lindell made sure to blur out the face of his expert who has suddenly found the explosive evidence of China's chicanery.

"I'm 100% sure that when this goes before the Supreme Court, it's gonna be 9 to 0. 9-0 to pull this election down, and that this was 100% attempt by China on our country through these machines," Lindell crowed.

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/06/mike-lindell-claims-supreme-court-will

Crystal Smith, mother of Aiden Fucci, arrested, accused of tampering with evidence