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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. Seconded. This is an excellent series, and I highly recommend it.
  2. If Texans actually had the opportunity to have a direct vote on abortion rights, I'm sure it'd pass here, too. So, I'm not exactly sure that I'd say we're redder than them. In 2016, both Texas and Ohio voted for Hillary at the exact same percentage: 43.24%. In 2020, the share of Texans who voted for Biden exceeded that of Ohio. I made this quick chart to show how Democratic presidential candidates have performed in elections in the two states during my lifetime. The patterns are pretty similar, but they really diverged in the Bush/Obama years. Now, focus your eyes on the orange columns from 2000 to 2020 and tell me you don't see incremental improvement. It's still too soon, I think, for Texas to be one of the good guys in 2024, but we've been heading in the right direction. Let's keep focus on getting Joe reelected nationally in 2024, and we may get there by 2030.
  3. Without looking at any maps or data, it might be similar to the phenomenon that was going on for so long following Civil Rights in the Solid South, where all/most of the states immediately flipped from Democratic to Republican in presidential elections. However, because of traditions, habits, and incumbents, it took them 2-3 decades for that to make its way down the ballot.
  4. Believe me, I think we've all done the same or similar at some point. This morning, I really hesitated because the answer did seem way too obvious.
  5. A few DT morons have been actively calling for ethnic cleansing, saying Palestinians should be forced to leave the Gaza Strip. I guess advocating for actual war crimes isn't considered too political for the News section of this site.
  6. You're right that it's long been considered a bell-weather state in the elections, but it's historically more important to the GOP, as no Republican has EVER won the presidency in the entire history of this country without winning Ohio. That said, from the 1964 election through 2016, its vote accurately predicted the outcome of the Electoral College (but not the popular vote that Hillary won in 2016). So, it's likely moving away from that bell-weather status based on the past two elections.
  7. A few days ago, I got curious about when the schools that Texas affiliates with (or will soon) began accepting Black undergrad students and was taken aback by how late some of them came around. This is what I found based on either Wikipedia or school websites. 1948 Arkansas (first public school below the Mason-Dixon line) 1949 1950 Missouri, Tennessee 1951 1952 1953 1954 Kentucky 1955 Oklahoma, Oklahoma State 1956 Texas 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 Georgia, Texas Tech 1962 Ole Miss, Florida, SMU, Houston, Rice 1963 Alabama, South Carolina 1964 Texas A&M, LSU, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Baylor, TCU 1965 Mississippi State
  8. While I'm at it, look closely at the timeline of which religious groups have controlled Jerusalem since 2000 BCE. Now, consider who has the "legitimate" claim to the land. Based on our upbringing within a Judeo-Christian culture, it's natural that we automatically assume that piece of dirt ought to belong to Israel because that's what we read in the Bible and were taught in Sunday school. That's our default. But look at it from the perspective of the Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim. Who has actually occupied the land longer? Now, to be clear, I'm a supporter of Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself. That opinion is based largely on the fact that Israel already does exist; it's based on the reality that 7 million Jews now inhabit the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. That's just the way it is. But there's also the reality that 7 million Palestinians also live there and have just as deep of roots and just as much of a historical claim to that territory as them. I, obviously, also understand why the British and, subsequently, the UN decided to give some of the land to the Jews after the Holocaust. What I don't understand, and can only attribute to ethnoreligious bias, fear, and/or hatred, is the mindset of those in the DT thread and the wider world who don't recognize that Palestinians have just as much of a right to some of that land.
  9. The West Bank is heating up. While this is "news," it doesn't directly involve what's going on in Gaza, so per Blacklab's wishes, I'll refrain from posting this piece in the DT thread. Since we're already here, I'll take the opportunity to editorialize. Think about the bolded phrase and consider that the Israeli government calls matters in the West Bank its "internal affairs." To me, this is key to understanding their mindset. To them, the West Bank is already theirs; they've staked their claim. The only complication is what to do with the Palestinians, and their solution is to keep squeezing them into tighter enclaves until it's unbearable for the Palestinians to continue to exist. Conveniently, incrementally increasing the pressure also ramps up the backlash from Palestinians, who can then be labeled violent extremists and terrorists. Also, consider what the Israeli government officially calls the West Bank, the Judea and Samaria Area, while the rest of the world recognizes it as Occupied Palestinian Territory. This is the crux of the entire problem, including the Gaza Strip. The current Israeli government and Right Wingers, including in the US, already consider the West Bank and Gaza, and all the Holy Land, as de facto Israeli territory...from the river to the sea. Meanwhile, the people who have continuously lived there for millennia are, ironically, the interlopers. And so what do we do with people who don't "belong" somewhere? The death of a 14-year-old could further inflame tensions in the West Bank. An Israeli teenager whose disappearance had led to riots by Israeli settlers in the West Bank was found dead on Saturday, the Israeli authorities said, threatening to further inflame tensions in the Israeli-occupied territory. Binyamin Achimair, 14, had left a farming settlement in the West Bank to herd sheep on Friday morning, but never returned, according to the Israeli police. The Israeli forces later found his corpse, and the military said, without providing evidence, that he had been “murdered in a terrorist attack.” After Binyamin’s disappearance on Friday, armed Israeli settlers stormed a Palestinian village near Ramallah, torching several buildings and cars, according to Palestinian officials and Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group. One Palestinian man — Jihad Abu Aliya — was killed during the clashes and at least 25 others wounded, according to the village mayor, Amin Abu Aliya. Binyamin’s death and the possibility of further Israeli reprisals could ratchet up violence in the West Bank, where roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers live alongside about 2.7 million Palestinians. Over 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces across the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 sparked Israel’s campaign in Gaza, according to the United Nations. There was another violent Israeli riot on Saturday in Al Mughayir, the village attacked on Friday, as well as one in a different Palestinian village, Duma, said an Israeli security official. Israeli settlers, some of them armed, entered the villages, the official added, and there were reports that they had opened fire. The clashes on Saturday in Al Mughayir left at least three Palestinians wounded, one critically, the Palestinian health ministry said. Israeli troops and the police had largely dispersed the disturbances, the Israeli official said. “There’s no order, there’s no safety,” said Na’asan Na’asan, 28, a resident of Al Mughayir. “They’re shooting at us — why isn’t there anyone to protect us?” The Biden administration has said Israel must do more to clamp down on violence by extremist Israeli settlers, and it has imposed sanctions on several whom it said were involved in attacks on Palestinians. Israeli leaders denounced that move as interference in the country’s internal affairs. As Israeli troops and police officers searched for Binyamin on Friday afternoon, armed Israeli settlers burst into Al Mughayir, setting buildings and cars on fire, said Mr. Abu Aliya. In video circulated by Yesh Din, smoke can be seen billowing from some burning cars and buildings. In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel decried Binyamin’s “heinous murder” and vowed that Israel would “close accounts” with whomever killed him. He did not explicitly mention the riot, instead telling the Israeli public to “allow the security forces to conduct their work unmolested” as they investigate the killing. Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, similarly condemned the teenager’s murder. But he also denounced the settler attacks, saying “the violent riots by settlers are a dangerous violation of the law, and they are hampering the forces operating on the ground.” The Israeli military confirmed that multiple “violent riots” had taken place in the area during the search efforts on Friday. At one point, “rocks were hurled” at Israeli soldiers, leading them to open fire in response, the Israeli military said. The Israeli police and soldiers had also removed Israeli settlers who had entered Al Mughayir, the military said. Israeli soldiers were in the area “even before the settlers arrived,” both Mr. Abu Aliya and Mr. Na’asan said, but did not block them from entering the village and torching buildings and cars. It was not immediately clear how Jihad Abu Aliya, the village resident, was killed. Human rights groups have long charged that the Israeli authorities do not do enough to prevent violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and that the perpetrators are rarely arrested. An Israeli police spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment as to whether any Israelis had been arrested during the incident. Last February, an attack by Israeli settlers devastated the Palestinian town of Huwara in the northern West Bank. At least one Palestinian was killed and 390 were wounded in the riot, according to Palestinian officials, in which Israelis burned a number of buildings and cars while terrified Palestinians fled burning homes.
  10. Trump Says He Intends to Testify in His Manhattan Criminal Case Donald J. Trump, having failed to fend off a criminal trial in Manhattan that begins on Monday, said that he planned to testify in the case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star. Taking questions Friday from reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump, when asked whether he would take the stand, responded that he would. “I’m testifying. I tell the truth,” he said, standing just off a sunny patio of the private club with Speaker Mike Johnson behind him. “I mean, all I can do is tell the truth. And the truth is that there’s no case. They have no case.” A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has charged Mr. Trump with 34 felonies, declined to comment on his remarks. Despite Mr. Trump’s comments, it is far from a sure thing that he will testify. Instead, his comments initiate a familiar two-step: It will not be clear whether the former president will take the stand until the moment he actually does. Mr. Trump will most likely wait to see whether the prosecution presents a strong case — and whether the judge presiding over the trial plans to restrict prosecutors’ efforts to cross-examine him, according to people with knowledge of his planning. In past cases, Mr. Trump has wavered after saying that he would testify, including during his civil fraud trial last year, when he canceled his defense testimony the day before he was scheduled to take the stand. When he was called to testify by the New York attorney general’s office, which filed the case, it did not go well. The judge in the case, who found Mr. Trump liable for conspiring to inflate his net worth, criticized the former president for not answering directly and questioned his credibility. Testifying in a criminal case would be even riskier. In the trial scheduled to start next week, Mr. Trump is for the first time facing the threat of criminal conviction. He will be at a disadvantage with a jury in Manhattan, a heavily Democratic county. “Jury selection is largely luck,” Mr. Trump said in his remarks on Friday. “It depends who you get.” The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, accused Mr. Trump of coordinating the hush-money payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 election. The $130,000 payment bought her silence as she was shopping a story about a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump was charged with falsifying documents to cover up that payment. Mr. Trump denies the charges, and having had sex with Ms. Daniels. He has cast Mr. Bragg’s case as a politically motivated witch hunt. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday.
  11. Wordle 1,029 2/6 🟩🟨⬛🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #307 🟩🟩🟦🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 Daily Quordle 810 8️⃣5️⃣ 4️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜ 🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ClickWord.org Daily 434: 464 points (top 40% 👏) 13 words: 🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟧🟧🟧🟨🟨🟩🟩🟩 💪 Best word: 90 points 🔥 Streak: 3 days #ClickWord #ClickWordDaily434
  12. I just watched the first episode, and I think it's entertaining. The show breaks up the drama/intrigue pretty well with moments of humor. So far, it's much better than Apple's other historical drama, Manhunt, which I find kind of tedious with its stilted dialogue and bad acting.
  13. Check the dates above for when they first appeared. Slang dictionary post from DT for reference:
  14. While that's true, they never really got over the election of Bill Clinton either. After Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Big Bush, a Democrat holding the Oval Office was considered heretical to their beliefs that only a Republican had the God-given right to sit at that desk. I don't know how old you are (so you may not remember), but the reaction that the GOP had to Clinton's election was a huge fucking freakout, too, resulting in all kinds of crazy conspiratorial shit fueled by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the militia movement, black helicopters, Ruby Ridge, OKC bombing, etc. Riding that wave of rage, the GOP taking over the House for the first time in a generation and Newt Gingrich's Contract with America bullshit along with the rise of the anti-immigrant, isolationist, paleo-conservative (i.e., fascist) Pat Buchanan. If you go back and watch his speeches or thousands of hours as a teevee commentator, he really was the prototype for Trump. A lot of former Republicans on this board didn't see it at the time (or were too young), but the early 90s, in my view, was when the GOP truly began to radicalize. It just took Obama's election, a wave of Islamophobia, Lou Dobb's incessant bleating about the Border Crisis, the Great Recession, and 20 years of Fox News (at that point) to seal the deal in turning the GOP into the abomination that it is today.
  15. Houston Chronicle article about this. The one additional detail (bolded) from this one is that the number of transplant patients dying each year keeps increasing. Memorial Hermann doctor made 'inappropriate changes' to transplant patient records, hospital says Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center has found evidence that a doctor was manipulating records for liver transplant candidates, potentially preventing some patients from receiving life-saving organs, according to a statement from the health system. The hospital declined to identify the doctor. The New York Times reported he is Dr. J. Steve Bynon, a prominent surgeon who, in 2011, took over the hospital’s abdominal transplant program, which includes kidney and liver operations. Bynon could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. The hospital said the “inappropriate changes… effectively inactivated the candidates on the liver transplant waiting list. Subsequently, these patients did not/were not able to receive organ donation offers while inactive.” The allegations are a blow to Memorial Hermann, one of the largest hospitals in the country and the oldest in the Texas Medical Center, and to hundreds of patients awaiting a transplant there. Despite its size, the hospital’s liver transplant center is one of the smallest in Texas, having performed 30 transplants last year, according to federal data. Memorial Hermann halted its kidney transplant program on Tuesday, four days after it inactivated its liver transplant program. Both stoppages were due to “a pattern of irregularities” with liver donor acceptance criteria, the hospital said at the time. A hospital investigation found problems with information entered into a database used to match donor organs with patients, officials said Thursday. The information included the patient’s age and weight. The hospital did not provide further details. Memorial Hermann has seen an increasing number of its liver transplant candidates die on the wait list or become too sick for a transplant in recent years, according to data from the Organ Procurement Transplantation Network. The data shows that four patients fell into that criteria in 2021, followed by 11 in 2022 and 14 in 2023. Five patients have died or become too sick to transplant so far this year, while the hospital has performed only three liver transplants. The “irregularities” were limited to liver transplants, the hospital previously said, but kidney transplants were halted because they share the same leadership. Multiple federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration, have also been deployed to investigate, a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. Memorial Hermann has not said how long both programs will remain shut down. The hospital said it was working with patients and their families to get them care. Last week, the hospital began contacting the 38 patients on the liver program transplant list. This week, the hospital started reaching out to each of the 346 patients on the kidney program transplant list. Candidates on the waiting list do not receive organ offers when a transplant program is inactive, but they do continue to accrue waiting time, a United Network for Organ Sharing spokesperson said. Candidates may be on the waiting list at multiple transplant programs or transfer their waiting list time from one program to another, though each transplant program has its own criteria for evaluating and accepting candidates, the UNOS spokesperson said. Houston Methodist, Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center also offer transplant programs in Houston. A Houston Methodist spokesperson said that it had received calls from several liver transplant candidates and was “actively working” to get them into the hospital’s transplant program.
  16. The short of it is that this should NOT be a political issue, but it is being made into one. Worse than that -- it's become partisan.
  17. The former president has the final say in whether the bill will be brought to the floor. Apparently, the Speaker will meet with him sometime today, so we'll see if they can clear the schedule for a vote next week. However, I'm not optimistic since this Congress hasn't approved any assistance since December 2022. All of our allies are looking to us and begging for American leadership. Only yesterday, Japan's prime minister gave a speech to Congress asking for increased aid for Ukraine and saying the country would collapse without our support. I guess we'll see soon if the Western alliance of free nations still matters to some.
  18. I cannot imagine the motive here. Texas Surgeon Is Accused of Secretly Denying Liver Transplants A Houston hospital is investigating whether a doctor altered a transplant list to make his patients ineligible for care. A disproportionate number of them have died while waiting for new organs. For decades, Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr., a transplant surgeon in Texas, gained accolades and national prominence for his work, including by helping to enforce professional standards in the country’s sprawling organ transplant system. But officials are now investigating allegations that Dr. Bynon was secretly manipulating a government database to make some of his own patients ineligible to receive new livers, potentially depriving them of lifesaving care. Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, where Dr. Bynon oversaw both the liver and kidney transplant programs, abruptly shut down those programs in the past week while looking into the allegations. On Thursday, the medical center, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Texas, said in a statement that a doctor in its liver transplant program had admitted to changing patient records. That effectively denied the transplants, the hospital said. Officials identified the physician as Dr. Bynon, who is employed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and has had a contract to lead Memorial Hermann’s abdominal transplant program since 2011. It was not clear what could have motivated Dr. Bynon. Reached by phone on Thursday, he referred questions to UTHealth Houston, which declined to comment. Dr. Bynon did not confirm he had admitted to altering records. cont'd
  19. Wordle 1,028 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛ ⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #306 🟦🟪🟦🟦 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Daily Quordle 809 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ClickWord.org Daily 433: 547 points (top 20% 🎊) 12 words: ⚛️🟪🟪🟪🟪🟧🟧🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩 💪 Best word: 126 points 🔥 Streak: 2 days #ClickWord #ClickWordDaily433
  20. Great little Easter Egg at the beginning of Episode 6. Call the phone number.
  21. Yeah, I've read a couple of articles on it, and the writers argue the point of the movie isn't the partisan politics. It seems that its intent is to scare the shit out of the viewer and disabuse anyone's notions of a modern-day romanticized civil war that many like to speculate about or yearn for. Basically, it would suck tremendously. From a guest essay by Stephen Marche, the author of “The Next Civil War”: “Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it. The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong. Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning. From a NYTimes critic: Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise. ***** There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.
  22. Crossposting for more eyeballs.
  23. This is Christian Nationalism, and it is oh so very fucking dangerous. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pushes pastors to run for political office During a private meeting at Ed Young's Second Baptist Church in Houston, dozens of right-wing Christians strategized how to win seats in the 2024 elections. As millions of Texans prepared to stare at the sky Monday to glimpse the total solar eclipse, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined his pastor Ed Young in a prayer circle at Houston's Second Baptist Church, where they embraced conservative kingmakers and called for pastors and believers to run for office. "If we don't win in 2024, we lose this nation," Patrick said ahead of the November elections, while standing on a small stage at the church's massive Woodway campus. "Today, it is a battle of darkness and light. There are people who pray to God, believe in God, raise their families in God's work and there are people over here who don't believe in God and want to kick God out. They hate God. That's the battle we're in." Patrick, a longtime member of the SBC-affiliated megachurch and one of the most powerful Republicans in Texas, attended the pastor's private luncheon organized by the American Renewal Project (ARP), a group founded by anti-gay Dallas political operative David Lane. The ARP has enlisted North Carolina's GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to recruit and train clergy and congregants to win seats on local school boards, city councils, county commissions and on the state legislature. The project's Houston meeting represented the first of 20 gatherings across Texas. "We need America to get out of the chaos and come back to peace," said Patrick, who called North Carolina's Robinson a friend. "Whether its pastors or just believers, they need to stand up and either run for office, support people running for office…" and register citizens to vote in elections. Patrick drew applause for praising anti-abortion state and federal laws and for verbalizing anti-immigration rhetoric alleging that "millions" of people including "criminals, sex offenders, and child abusers" were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He also claimed the Biden administration refused to do anything to stop the border "chaos" because migrants mean future Democratic voters. "I'd rather be kicked out of office for my positions than kicked out of Heaven for my positions," Patrick said. "Vote me into office and vote me into Heaven." The speech a little more than a month after Pastor Young delivered a ranting sermon during which he referred to migrants coming into Texas as "undesirables," "garbage" and "raff" and suggesting that the United States is already "lost through foolishness." Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Young referred to the Democratic Party as "some kind of religion that is basically godless" and called for his congregants to vote out local officials. On Monday, Lane, the founder of the American Renewal Project, said 50 pastors and religious leaders ran for various political seats in North Carolina in 2022 to fight in "a war between God Jehovah and the false god of secularism." Lane aimed to replicate his successes in Texas and encourage more than 100 believers to run for statewide office in the coming years. "The American culture is nothing but the manifestation of the false religion that's governing America," Lane said. "If we're going to save the country for our kids and theirs, we have to move into the public square in obedience to Jesus' Kingdom" which he believes was assigned in the Gospel of Matthew. Patrick echoed the need for Christians to prepare for a sort of spiritual warfare during the "battle" of November elections, his words seemingly in line with to the aims of Christian nationalism, an ideology that seeks to merge American and Christian identities. "If we get ready for battle in the election in 2024, I believe the victory will be the Lord's," Patrick said. "But we have to stand up and fight.” The lieutenant governor spoke with certainty when saying "we're all going to Heaven" in the room with pastors and others wearing pins of an American flag with a cross. "We're already saved. We're gone," he said. "But what about the future? What are our children and grandchildren are going to inherit?"
  24. Massive attack destroys one of Ukraine’s largest power plants A massive missile and drone attack destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants and damaged others, officials said Thursday, part of a renewed Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure. The Trypilska plant, which was the biggest energy supplier for the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was struck numerous times, destroying the transformer, turbines and generators and leaving the plant ablaze. As the first drone approached, workers hid in a shelter, saving their lives, said Andrii Hota, director of the state company that runs the plant, Centrenergo. ***** The plant supplied electricity to 3 million customers — but none lost power because the grid was able to compensate since demands are low at this time of year. Still, the consequences of the strikes could be felt in the coming months, as air conditioning use ramps up with summer. At least 10 other strikes overnight damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region, which has been struck repeatedly, were without power. ***** Russia has recently renewed strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, and attacks last month blacked out large parts of the country — a level of darkness not seen since the first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The volume and accuracy of the attacks have alarmed the country’s defenders and left officials scrambling for better ways to defend energy assets. The strikes have also tested Ukraine’s ability to make quick repairs. Ukraine’s leaders have pleaded for more air defense systems to ward off such attacks, but those supplies have been slow in coming. “Today’s situation demonstrates that there’s nothing left to shoot down” the missiles, Hota said.
  25. Austria continues to be infested with spies. It's a long story with a bunch of names, so I've tried to clip and bold the basics. The link is to the original AP story if you want to read all of it. An espionage scandal rocks Austria, laying bare alleged Russian spying operations across Europe VIENNA (AP) — Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades as the arrest of a former intelligence officer brings to light evidence of extensive Russian infiltration, lax official oversight and behavior worthy of a spy novel. Egisto Ott was arrested March 29. The 86-page arrest warrant, obtained by The Associated Press, alleges among other things that he handed over cellphone data of former high-ranking Austrian officials to Russian intelligence, helped plot a burglary at a prominent journalist’s apartment, and wrote up “suggestions for improvement” after a Russian-ordered killing in Germany. Ott is suspected of having provided sensitive information to Jan Marsalek, a fugitive fellow Austrian wanted on suspicion of fraud since the collapse in 2020 of German payment company Wirecard, where he was the chief operating officer. The warrant says chat messages provided by British authorities link Marsalek directly to the Russian intelligence agency FSB. German and Austrian media have reported that Marsalek is believed to have had connections to Russian intelligence since at least 2014. He is now thought to be in Russia. ***** Ott, a former police officer, was an intelligence officer in Turkey and Italy from 2001 to 2012 before moving on to manage undercover agents at Austria’s now-defunct domestic intelligence agency, the BVT. He was suspended from the BVT in 2017 when allegations emerged for the first time that he could be spying for Russia, but reassigned the following year to work for the Austrian police academy. In 2021, he was suspended pending further investigation into his alleged ties to Russia and taken into custody. Authorities concluded the evidence was too thin and released him about four weeks later. At the BVT, Ott served under Martin Weiss, the former chief of Austrian intelligence operations. Prosecutors alleged that Ott and Weiss have a “close friendship.” In the arrest warrant, they say that Weiss began to work for Marsalek and Wirecard after leaving the intelligence agency in 2018, and that he passed orders from Marsalek and Russian operatives to Ott. According to the arrest warrant, Marsalek said in a text message that he helped “evacuate” Weiss to Dubai. ***** Between 2017 and 2021, the Austrian warrant says, Ott collected sensitive information on people of interest to Russia “for the purpose of transmission to Jan Marsalek and to unknown representatives of Russian authorities” by conducting numerous searches in national police databases and making requests to other European police officers, including in Italy and Britain. Ott also allegedly requested data from the information system of Europe’s border-free travel area to ascertain whether suspected Russian operatives and former Wirecard employees were wanted or subject to travel restrictions. The warrant contains a long list of people who were spied on, including Russian dissidents, businesspeople and a former officer who had quit the FSB. ***** Five Bulgarian citizens who allegedly worked as part of a network with Marsalek were arrested last year in Britain and another in February. According to the Ott arrest warrant, chat messages between Marsalek and one of the suspects in that case, Orlin Roussev, that were seized by Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency point to further operations by Marsalek and his Austrian helpers. Just five weeks after Ott was released from custody in 2021, prosecutors say he requested the address of Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev in Vienna and supplied it to Marsalek. They say Marsalek later commissioned a team to break into Grozev’s apartment and steal a laptop and USB stick. Grozev, who tracked down Russian officers allegedly involved in the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in 2018 and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020, relocated from Vienna last year after Austrian authorities told him they could no longer guarantee his security. ***** Investigators also found a lessons-learned analysis on Ott’s mobile phone that contained “suggestions for improvement” for Russian intelligence operations in Europe following the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity. A Russian man was caught and convicted in that case; German judges said he acted on the orders of Russian authorities.
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