September 29, 2023

Irvine CA city leaders attend ribbon cutting for Epoch Times new office..weird rightwing rag

Social media posts reveal that Irvine City Councilmember and 2024 Irvine Mayoral candidate, Tammy Kim, attended and celebrated conspiracy laden click-bait publisher, The Epoch Times, with the opening of its new Irvine satellite office. In attendance were OC Board of Education (OCBE) Trustee Mari Barke, former CA State Senator, John Moorlach, Greater Irvine Chamber President, Bryan Starr, and a representative on behalf of current OC Board of Supervisors Director, Donald Wagner, among other mainly right-wing Republicans.

https://irvinewatchdog.org/featured/opinion-vice-mayor-tammy-kim-cuts-ribbon-for-far-right-disinformation-machines-new-irvine-office/

Background on The Epoch Times

A quick search on The Epoch Times Southern California chapter Facebook page reveals that they are currently knee-deep in attacking LGBTQ individuals and publishing right wing school board culture war issues. Is this the type of business you want to celebrate and endorse, Vice Mayor Kim? Does The Epoch Times reflect the interests of our highly educated community? To answer that, let’s learn a little more about this shadowy publication.

According to New York Times, “Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire. For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers. The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.” The NY Times article goes on to describe that it gained influence by embracing and fervently supporting Donald Trump and by spending massive amounts of money on Facebook ads pushing far right causes.

According to OpenDemocracy.net, “Not everything published by The Epoch Times qualifies as disinformation – a lot of its content consists of straightforward reports, often sourced from news agencies. But according to NewsGuard, a journalism and technology tool that rates the credibility of news websites and tracks misinformation, it fails to gather and present information responsibly, rarely corrects or clarifies errors, and remains opaque as to its ownership and funding.”

In August 2023, media outlets discovered a more concerning trend with The Epoch Times and their influence on politics through dark money. In recently disclosed campaign financial disclosures, former California Governor candidate, Larry Elder, received a salary from The Epoch Times ranging from $1 to $5 million dollars.

September 29, 2023

A 16 year old boy cut down that famous uk tree

Sorry I can't find the original thread about this topic

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/28/boy-16-arrested-in-connection-with-felling-of-famous-sycamore-gap-tree-hadrians-wall-england

Boy, 16, arrested after felling of famous Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall
Police in north of England say teenager arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage

September 28, 2023

DeSantis Forced to Say Why He Enjoys Denying Health Insurance to Poor Floridians

DeSantis Forced to Say Why He Enjoys Denying Health Insurance to Poor Floridians The banality of “normal” American conservatism briefly surfaces.

The backdrop is that the Affordable Care Act provided health insurance to poor people by expanding Medicaid. A conservative Supreme Court ruling gave states the right to opt out of the expansion, turning down free funding from Washington if they wished.
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Florida is now one of only ten states that reject Medicaid expansion. DeSantis almost never has to explain or justify this position. Shockingly, he had to do so at the debate.

Stuart Varney asked DeSantis why 2.5 million Floridians lack health insurance, which is a rate much higher than the national average. (Florida ranks fourth from the bottom in residents with health insurance). DeSantis first tried deflecting the problem to overall inflation:

DESANTIS:

Well, I think this is a symptom of our overall economic decline. Everything has gotten more expensive. You see insurance rates going through the roof. People that are going to get groceries, I’ve spoken with a woman in Iowa. And she said, you know, for the first time in my life, I’m having to take things out of my grocery cart when I get to the checkout line …

But then, DeSantis proceeded to give something like an explanation for his position:

“Our state’s a dynamic state. We’ve got a lot of folks that come. Of course, we’ve had a population boom.

We also don’t have a lot of welfare benefits, in Florida. We’re basically saying we want to — this is a field of dreams, you can do well in the state. But we’re not going to be like California and have massive numbers of people on government programs without work requirements. We believe in your work, and you got to do that. And so, that goes for all the welfare benefits.

And you know what that’s done, Stuart? Our unemployment rate is the lowest, amongst any big state. We have the highest GDP growth events (ph) of any big state. And even CNBC, no fan of mine, ranked Florida the No. 1 economy in America.”

In the middle of this word salad, some coherent thought can be extracted. Florida is a “field of dreams.” It rejects “welfare benefits.” DeSantis never uttered the word “Medicaid” or “Obamacare,” which explains why his state’s citizens lack health insurance at such high levels. Yet he did manage to express his belief that health insurance ought to be an earned benefit, not a right. If people get jobs working in construction or day care or at a convenience store, and those jobs do not have employer-provided health insurance, the state should not step in. Those people should work harder.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/desantis-why-i-enjoy-denying-health-care-to-poor-floridians.html

September 28, 2023

Ron DeSantis's Painfully Weird Smile Goes Viral During GOP Debate

Ron DeSantis’s Painfully Weird Smile Goes Viral During GOP Debate Once Again
The Florida governor has once again become a meme for his weird smile during the Republican debate.

Viewers watching the debate couldn’t help but notice that when speaking about vetoing “bloating spending bills,” DeSantis plastered a faltering smile on his face, which quickly fell into a disturbed grimace.

See it here


https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1707203282223898936




https://newrepublic.com/post/175829/ron-desantis-smile-fail-republican-debate

September 28, 2023

Mississippi state auditor calls some college degrees "indoctrination factories" "useless" "garbage"

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mississippi-auditor-college-majors-indoctrinate-students-defunded-103378914

Auditor says several college majors indoctrinate students and should be defunded
Mississippi's state auditor says numerous social science and humanities degree programs are “indoctrination factories.”

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In a report published Tuesday, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a Republican, argued that the state should change its approach to funding its public universities. He proposed tying public investment to workforce needs instead of providing funds without regard for the degree programs, as has traditionally been the case. Too many college graduates are leaving Mississippi, and aligning degree programs with labor market demand might stem the tide, White said.

In numerous statements on social media leading up to the report's publication, White said there should be no taxpayer funding for “useless degrees" in “garbage fields” like Urban Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, German Literature, African American Studies, Gender Studies and Women's Studies. Claiming some academic programs are hotbeds of political radicalization, White's statements and his report arrive as education, from K-12 to the university level, remains at the center of America's culture wars.

September 28, 2023

Drinking Drunk guy drives on the Venice boardwalk

September 28, 2023

Is Larry Elder still running for pres..haven't heard him mentioned since was barred from last debate

September 27, 2023

A Mississippo sheriff used his position to spy on his married girlfriend

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/rankin-county-mississippi-sheriff-abuse.html



In 2014, Bryan Bailey, the sheriff of Rankin County, Miss., made what seemed like a series of routine requests of the local district attorney’s office.

He needed grand jury subpoenas, he said, to force the phone company to turn over records of calls and text messages for what he called a “confidential internal investigation.”

Sheriff Bailey scrawled a brief note on a subpoena form and gave it to a paralegal in the district attorney’s office. “Please keep this confidential between you and I,” the note read. “Possible wrongdoing by school district employee.”

But his requests had nothing to do with alleged wrongdoing, or any criminal investigation, according to a previously undisclosed report obtained by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today. Instead, Sheriff Bailey tapped into the power of a grand jury at least eight times over a year to spy on his married girlfriend and the school employee with whom she was also “unfaithful,” the documents show.


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Mr. Guest, now a U.S. congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Ethics, decided he could not pursue the case further because of conflicts of interest, including his yearslong friendship with the sheriff. He told two local judges what he had discovered and passed his investigation on to the state attorney general.

And that’s where the matter ended.

September 27, 2023

Neighbors flashing high powered lights at windows where migrants are housed

September 27, 2023

CA gas station sign triggers backlash: "No Gypsy women in long shoplifting skirts allowed..."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-25/gas-station-bans-romani-women-rowland-heights-california-chevron

L.A. County gas station signs banned Romani women. Community lashes back over racism

The signs came down almost as fast as they went up: plain white sheets of paper, plastered to a Rowland Heights gas station door, prohibiting Romani women from entering.

“No Gypsy women in long shoplifting skirts allowed in the store,” the signs read, using a term the Romani community widely regards as a slur. One sign concluded in bright red font: “Nici un tigan” — “Not a single Gypsy” in the Romanian language. Once pictures of the signs surfaced online, backlash from Romani activists across the world came swiftly, prompting a response from Chevron and pledges to investigate from government officials.

For many Romani Americans, it’s the first time the American public is waking up to rampant discrimination against the community.

“Everybody was really upset and frankly shocked to see that from the Los Angeles area, it’s one of the areas that people view as diverse, accepting and a melting pot,” said Anya Redgewell, 46, a Romani woman who lives in Hemet. “If it had been directed at any other diaspora, someone would’ve tried to burn the building down.”

Seven signs dotted the entrances, exits and cash register of the Chevron gas station at Colima Road and South Nogales Street last week. They referred to a dozen people featured in photos as “drive off bandits” and one as a “graffiti tagger.” The papers referring to Romani people had been taken down. But at the cash register, a sign remained featuring pictures of three women wearing long skirts — a feature of traditional Romani clothing — under the heading “thieves.”

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A sign posted by a Chevron gas station in Rowland Heights banned women from a particular ethnic background from entering, claiming that many of them were thieves. Nicole Comstock reports.