Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions...
Meanwhile, newly couples of weds meet with Pope without exhaustive moral analysis.
Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions...
Meanwhile, newly couples of weds meet with Pope without exhaustive moral analysis.
At a recent rally in Kansas City, Missouri, Kennedy asked the crowd
of about 300 voters for help. The state requires independent candidates
to collect 10,000 signatures by July 29 to appear on the 2024 general
election presidential ballot. ...
The requirements for ballot access for candidates who are not the Democratic or Republican nominees vary widely from state to state, and the first deadlines are in early March, for North Carolina and Utah. Utah originally required independent candidates to file by Jan. 8, 2024, but earlier this month — soon after Kennedy filed a lawsuit against the state — it changed the date to March 5. ...
Kennedy's ballot access drive will also be heavily underwritten by the super PAC supporting him, American Values 2024. In December, the super PAC announced it would be investing $10 million to $15 million to put him on the ballot in at least 10 states . . ..
More.
The story likes to compare RFK Jr. to H. Ross Perot, but there's no way that RFK Jr. has anything close to the same appeal Perot once had and which still won him nothing.
Kennedy admits he's a spoiler, but most Americans still want a serious, positive candidacy, not a nattering nabob of negativism.
MSC, the world’s largest shipping carrier, said it is no longer traveling through the Suez Canal after its container ship, the MSC PALATIUM III, was attacked Friday while transiting the Red Sea under a subcharter to Messina Line. ...
In response to Friday’s attacks, in which three vessels were attacked, the World Shipping Council said it is deeply alarmed and concerned about the escalating crisis, and that it’s calling for decisive action to protect seafarers.
“The right of freedom of navigation stands as a fundamental right under international law, and must be safeguarded,” the council said. “The time for resolute international engagement is now.”
The U.S. government has been in discussions with countries of the 39-member Combined Maritime Forces to form a maritime task force to “ensure safe passage” of ships in the Red Sea.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees America’s military interests in the Middle East, has told CNBC discussions are ongoing.
The roll call vote is here.
Anger and frustration as COP28 draft text omits fossil fuel phaseout
The burning of coal, oil and gas accounts for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is for this reason that so many had pushed for the COP28 outcome to show that “we are truly at the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.”
However, COP28 President Sultan al Jaber faced a backlash last week when he claimed there was “no science” behind calls for a phase-out of fossil fuels, and that such a move would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
They always leave out that 82% of global energy comes from coal, oil, and gas.
You can't just wave a magic wand and make it all go away without committing global murder in the process.
Along with her dissertation, the decades-long pattern paints a picture of sloppiness, at best, and willful dishonesty at worst.
The whole sorry business is recounted here.
The plagiarism matter is entirely separate from the main show, however, in my opinion.
The character pattern of willfully omitting attribution involved in plagiarism is certainly related to the habit of Hamas defenders ignoring Hamas' crimes against Israel, of course, but it distracts from the issue which made Claudine Gay an issue in the first place.
She and the other university presidents could not bring themselves to say unequivocally that calls for a genocide of Jews violated their campus bullying and harassment policies.
Focusing on Gay's academic failings is already obscuring that.
". . . in the Middle East", but not in Israel.
Published on December 10, 2023 07:30PM EST
Taylor Swift spent some quality time with her BFFs!
The singer, 33, enjoyed a night out with friends in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday evening, when she and several pals — including Selena Gomez, Cara Delevingne, Anya Taylor-Joy and Zoë Kravitz — attended a Ramy Youssefcomedy show.
Part of the comedian's More Feelings tour, the sold-out show took place at The Brooklyn Academy of Music and will see 100% of proceeds going to support the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East through the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA).
ANERA, per its website, is a non-governmental organization that provides aid to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan.
Keep reading to see all the photos from Swift's night out with her pals.
More.
West's alignment with Hamas and Kennedy's openly stated purpose as a spoiler candidate combine to make them chiefly candidacies hurting the incumbent Joe Biden, but everything depends on them getting on the ballot in enough places.
Perot bled votes away from the incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992, and from Republican Bob Dole in 1996, resulting in Clinton winning each contest but not with 50% of the popular vote.
Wind energy. Bronx cheer. Emissions. Passing greenhouse gases. Loud fart. It's all here except for the skid mark.
God's chosen people strike again:
Two California Tickets Share Jackpot Win
RELEASE DATE: 12/9/2023
Two tickets sold in California will share the tenth Mega Millions® jackpot won in 2023, just in time for the holidays! Both were purchased at the Chevron station located at 18081 Ventura Boulevard in Encino. They matched all six numbers in Friday night’s drawing – the white balls 21, 26, 53, 66 and 70, plus the gold Mega Ball 13. The estimated prize had grown to $395 million ($189.0 million cash) since it was last won in Texas by a South Dakota-based trust on October 6.
The main lobbying group for U.S. retailers retracted its claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for nearly half of all inventory losses in 2021 after finding that incorrect data was used for its analysis. ...
Retail executives and law enforcement officials use the term organized retail crime to describe coordinated groups of thieves who shoplift or steal from retailers’ warehouses and trucks, reselling stolen merchandise on the black market.
More.
Wouldn't want to offend the black market now would we?
On Wednesday, the White House quietly updated its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website to
reflect that any final ban on menthol wouldn’t take place until at
least March. Even then, it’s expected to take years for menthol products
to be off store shelves. The ban was previously supposed to take effect
by the end of December. ...
Black Americans are affected most. Nearly 85% of Black smokers use menthols, compared to 30% of white smokers, according to the FDA.
More.
The soft fascism of public-private partnership becomes hard fascism:
“When drug companies won’t sell taxpayer-funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard said during a call with reporters Wednesday.
More.
Hard or soft, this is state capitalism.
Story here.
Combined with the Santos expulsion last week, the House GOP majority now goes down to 220 effective Jan 1, just a seven seat advantage over the Democrats, which guarantees that the new, more conservative Speaker Johnson will have to continue to compromise with Democrats to pass spending bills:
The removal of Santos lowers the number of House Republicans to 221, with 213 Democrats. This makes it even more difficult for the majority to pass legislation without Democratic support.
McCarthy's revenge.
Time.
2015 here:
Camille Paglia has written a scathing critique of Taylor Swift, referring to the singer as an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie” whose “twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth”.
But despite his litany of grievances, the mayor stopped short of calling for Zelensky’s immediate ouster. “The president has an important function today, and we have to support him until the end of the war,” Klitschko said. “But at the end of this war, every politician will pay for his successes or failures.”
More.
Menendez has denied taking payoffs from Daibes even though prosecutors allege testing shows Daibes’ fingerprints and DNA are on some of the tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in Menendez’s home.
“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said.
Looks like they'll finally get this guy.
According to Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes, who agree that Trump broke their hymen, being anti-Israel just means you are educated. Being pro-Israel means you are a moron.
Musk can extract the $44 billion price tag for tax loss purposes and relaunch the thing as the everything platform he keeps talking about.
This reminds me of the incredulity of Wall Street over Powell's relentless increases to the Federal Funds Rate. He telegraphed it repeatedly months in advance and then raised rates incrementally and said he would keep doing so, but they would not believe, and still do not.
Newsom: “You were a lockdown Governor… you locked down your beaches bars and restaurants… that’s just a fact. He’s running away from his record.”
DeSantis: “He’s imposed restrictions on his own people while exempting himself from those restrictions and going to the French Laundry while his people were suffering.”
Price increases at 3.5% instead of 3.7% year over year. This level remains outside of most people's experience since the late 1990s.
The broad measure fell to 3.0% from 3.4%. The energy goods and services component yoy has been negative, that is deflationary, for eight months in a row. The food component was up 2.0% year over year in October but is now in its tenth month of declines out of twelve on a year over year measure monthly.
Declining energy input costs have been the story behind declining inflation measures overall, primarily natural gas which is twice as important to the U.S. economy as gasoline on a BTU basis.
The Biden administration's green energy policy is at war with the reason for the happy circumstance of declining inflation measures it finds itself in, and Biden could be sailing to re-election if he were instead supporting fossil fuel production, which would slay the inflation dragon dead.
You can't make this stuff up it's so perfect. They're only a month behind the turn.
Treasury rout: Worst stretch for govt bonds since Civil War...
The 2019 election was the first time Northampton used the touchscreen voting machines from Election Systems & Software. That year, a programming glitch caused the ES&S machines to significantly undercount the votes for the Democratic candidate in a local judges’ race. Then on Nov. 7 this year, Northampton residents who showed up at their local polling station found that printouts from the same devices didn’t match the votes they had submitted digitally for two down-ballot judges contests. ... “In 2019, when the issues came up with the touchscreens, we were told, ‘Don’t worry about it. The cards are recording the votes,’” Northampton County Republican Committee Chair Glenn Geissinger told POLITICO. “OK, you’re telling me now, in 2023, ‘Don’t worry about what’s printed on the card?’”
More.