The Fed’s report on the SVB failure is out. A combination of causes highlighted, including Trump-era deregulation.
He’s not the messiah; he’s a very naughty boy.
Texas forcing all state employees to wear clothing matching their biological gender.
While in Montana…
Zephyr was officially censured on Thursday but has been barred from speaking during House debates since April 20.
The first action against Zephyr stemmed from her vocal opposition to a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors, which was signed into law Friday by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. On April 18, while debating the bill, Zephyr told colleagues who supported the measure that they had blood on their hands, alluding to studies that show gender-affirming care can reduce suicide rates in transgender youths.
But Zephyr’s official censure followed a demonstration in the House gallery last Monday, where seven people were arrested for protesting in support of the silenced lawmaker.
“Monday, this body witnessed one of its members participating in conduct that disrupted and disturbed the orderly proceedings of this body … placing legislators, staff and even our pages at risk of harm,” said Republican House Majority Leader Sue Vintin before Wednesday’s vote to temporarily expel Zephyr.
Zephyr will be banished from the House floor for the rest of the 2023 session, which ends May 5, and will only be allowed to vote remotely.
Although some good news:
Not sure why not mentioned, but the Republican house did manage to pass a budget.
They’re all still fighting over raising the debt ceiling.
The GOP’s debt ceiling plan, dubbed the “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” includes $4.5 trillion in cuts to government spending and returns discretionary spending to fiscal year 2022 levels.
This includes:
- Rescinding the funding for 87,000 IRS agents
- Reallocating unspent COVID-19 relief money
- Eliminating Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan
- Ending tax credits for companies that invest in green energy
- Raising the age limit to 56 from 50 on work requirements to receive federal food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP
- Blocking the Biden administration from limiting consumer access to gas stoves or ovens
These cuts are tied to a $1.5 trillion increase of the debt ceiling until May 2024.
A touch of the Aryan ideal.
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Very sad.
Amanda Zurawski tore into GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas at a Senate hearing on Wednesday over the state’s abortion ban, saying she “nearly died on their watch” after being denied care in a pregnancy crisis.
“I wanted to address my senators, Cruz and Cornyn, neither of whom, regrettably, are in the room right now. But I would like for them to know that what happened to me … it’s a direct result of the policies that they support,” Zurawski said. “I nearly died on their watch and furthermore, as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future.”
Zurawski is suing Texas for withholding an abortion as her pregnancy complications became more dire. She said she had been told her baby would not survive, but doctors said they could not offer more care because fetal cardiac activity could still be detected, according to her suit.
Zurawski eventually developed sepsis, and doctors induced labor. She gave birth and the baby died.
Ironic for any Republican to say the below, when many Republican lawmakers want to ban abortions for rape victims. Or who restrict sex education in schools, so the kids don’t know the consequences of what they’re doing, or how to prevent pregnancies.
Quelle surprise. He really should be investigated and then (if evidence is found) impeached.
… Now, in late April 2023, the allegations against Kavanaugh are being scrutinized once again. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner, in an article published on April 28, reports that a Senate investigation of those allegations “contained serious omissions.”
That 28-page report from September 2018 was released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who headed the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. The report, Kirchgaessner notes, “prominently included an unfounded and unverified claim” that Ramirez “was ‘likely’ mistaken when she alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dormitory party because another Yale student was allegedly known for such acts.”
“The suggestion that Kavanaugh was the victim of mistaken identity was sent to the (Senate) Judiciary Committee by a Colorado-based attorney named Joseph C. Smith. Jr., according to a non-redacted copy of a 2018 e-mail obtained by the Guardian,” Kirchgaessner explains. “Smith was a friend and former colleague of the Judiciary Committee’s then-lead counsel Mike Davis.… Smith wrote to Davis in the 29 September, 2018 e-mail that he was in a class behind Kavanaugh and Ramirez, who graduated in the class of 1987, and believed Ramirez was likely mistaken in identifying Kavanaugh.”
Kirchgaessner continues, “Instead, Smith said it was a fellow classmate named Jack Maxey, who was a member of Kavanaugh’s fraternity, who allegedly had a ‘reputation’ for exposing himself, and had once done so at a party. To back his claim, Smith also attached a photograph of Maxey exposing himself in his fraternity’s 1988 yearbook picture. The allegation that Ramirez was likely mistaken was included in the Senate (Judiciary) Committee’s final report even though Maxey — who was described but not named — was not attending Yale at the time of the alleged incident.”
GOP activist Maxey, according to Kirchgaessner, “confirmed” to The Guardian that he was still in high school — not a student at Yale — at the time of the alleged incident.
Maxey told The Guardian, “I was not at Yale. I was a senior in high school at the time. I was not in New Haven…. These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences ever.”
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Also on the supreme court.
United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is facing increased criticism for refusing to address the burgeoning corruption scandals involving Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Earlier this week, Roberts drew heavy fire for ignoring requests from lawmakers on Capitol Hill to testify about what, if anything, he intends to do about the public’s eroding confidence in the Court and its apparent inability to adopt a code of ethical conduct for its nine jurists.
Prior to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Twitter, Truthout 's Sharon Zhang noted that "just in the past few weeks, reports have uncovered that Thomas has for decades received lavish gifts from and sold property to a GOP billionaire megadonor without disclosing it, and that Neil Gorsuch has skirted disclosure requirements to hide his property sale to the CEO of a major law firm that frequently appears before the Court. The reports have shown that justices seemingly can’t even follow the lax rules that Supreme Court justices are legally bound to.
Of course the Supreme Court is unpopular due to all the attacks. It has nothing to do with the partisan way the Republicans stacked the court, the overturning of established precedent, the sexual attack allegations around two members (one Dem & one Repub), the political activities of spouses and refusal to recuse themselves, or the quite blatant financial benefits some judges have taken. No, it’s those unfair and constant criticising of the court!
Speaking of spouses…
- Jane Roberts was paid more than $10 million by a host of elite law firms, a whistleblower alleges.
- At least one of those firms argued a case before Chief Justice Roberts after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Details of Jane Roberts’ work come as Congress struggles to reform the Court’s self-policed ethics.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife earned $10.3 million in commissions for her work for elite law firms, one of which argued a case before her husband, Business Insider reports.
Jane Sullivan Roberts stepped away from her career as a prominent lawyer two years after her husband’s confirmation to the Supreme Court to become a legal recruiter, matching job-seeking lawyers with employers in what turned out to be a lucrative career change.
She made $10.3 million in commissions from 2007 to 2014, according to a whistleblower complaint, which cites internal records that were obtained from her employer by a disgruntled former colleague of Jane Roberts.
Kendal B. Price, the whistleblower who worked with Roberts at the firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, said as the chief justice’s wife, income Jane Roberts earns from law firms who try cases before the court should be subject to scrutiny.
And apparently like an 1890s prospector.
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Watch the first 60 seconds or so of this clip (also posted in the mass shooting thread)
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Literally nothing
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that is the strangest and most disturbing sort of flex you could imagine
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Getting even more bizarre.
It raises more questions than it answers.
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This ‘alarmed fox executives’ so much that they … let him keep his prime time show for several years. Look at the tweet date, this is from the day after the Jan 6 coup attempt.
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Not relevant for the firing due to the reasons @Humble_Minion said, but fascinating for what it says about Carlson.
- What he really believes about Antifa and the left
- The implications of saying “how white men fight”.
- What he really believes about the effects of what he was spouting on television. But still kept on doing it night after night.
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Too much to unpack in one afternoon, that’s for sure.
That sounds like something out of a novel
Something something Skinner meme “No it is the children who are wrong”.
Update from North Dakota.
Florida sucks.
And Texas
… Sue, a pseudonym, is an emergency medicine physician at a major Texas city hospital. Ever since Roe was overturned and the state’s trigger law went into effect, Sue and other Texas doctors have been required to submit patients’ private medical information into a state-run website without their knowledge or consent—adhering to a mandate that forces them to report women as suffering from abortion complications even when they’re not.
This rarely reported on section of Texas law lists 28 medical issues as abortion complications—conditions that reproductive health experts point out often have nothing to do with abortion. Still, doctors are required to tell the state about any woman who develops one of these issues if she happens to have had an abortion at any point in her life.
Doctors who don’t make these reports can be fined for each ‘violation’; after three violations, they could lose their license. Sue, who got conflicting and often confusing guidance from the large health system that runs her hospital and dozens of others in the state, was terrified not to comply. “For all I knew, I could be one that [Attorney General] Ken Paxton made an example of,” she says.
This reporting mandate is a central and insidious part of Republicans’ strategy to paint abortion as dangerous despite decades of evidence to the contrary. It’s a policy that forces doctors, under threat of losing their license, to lend their name and medical credibility to the collection of false data—‘research’ that will be used by the state to claim abortion is unsafe.
“They want to force us to report a complication so they can submit and advertise bad data,” Sue says.
The list of ‘complications’ that Texas doctors are forced to attribute to abortion are vague and nonsensical. Some, like “adverse reactions to anesthesia,” are risks associated with having any medical procedure. (As Sue points out, it’s not as if there’s a state commission on adverse reactions to colonoscopies.)
Others, like “infection,” could develop in a patient for a reason completely unrelated to abortion or predate the procedure, yet would still be counted as a complication. The law also lists complications like “pelvic inflammatory disease,” which is a type of infection and therefore could be double-counted.
Other ‘complications’ would require reports to the state years after a patient had an abortion. I’ll use myself as an example: My daughter was born three months early after I developed severe preeclampsia. If I delivered her in Texas tomorrow, and happened to mention that I ended a pregnancy a few years previous, my doctor would be required to report my daughter’s early birth as a complication of abortion. Never mind that there’s no link between preeclampsia and abortion; because “preterm delivery in subsequent pregnancies” is on the law’s list of reportable conditions, my physician would have no choice.
What’s more, it wouldn’t be just one doctor reporting my supposed complication to the state. Texas law requires that every single physician involved in a patient’s care fill out the state’s abortion complication form. Even the hospital itself, as an entity, has to file a report. It’s a policy that encourages double, triple, even quadruple duplicate reports for a single person. (Again, a patient who may not have an abortion complication at all!) …
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