| Treasury Department sent information on Hunter Biden to expanding GOP Senate inquiry Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:18 AM PST  The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators' requests for highly sensitive records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over "'evidence' of questionable origin" to them, according to a Democrat on a committee conducting the investigation.
|
| Polls show Biden's campaign could be hitting the wall Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:42 PM PST  The state of Biden's campaign is far shakier than his longtime lead in the national polls would suggest. In fact, it may already be on its last legs.
|
| Officials: TSA agent tricked traveler into baring herself Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:54 AM PST  A federal Transportation Security Administration agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts as she went through security at one of the world's busiest airports, California's attorney said. Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Johnathon Lomeli, 22, was working at Los Angeles International Airport in June when he used fraud or deceit to falsely imprison the woman. Lomeli was arrested early Thursday at his home.
|
| Death of Chinese doctor fuels anger, demands for change Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:29 AM PST  The death of a whistleblowing doctor whose early warnings about China's new coronavirus outbreak were suppressed by the police has unleashed a wave of anger at the government's handling of the crisis -- and bold demands for more freedom. Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was among a group of people who sounded the alarm about the virus in late December, only to be reprimanded and censored by the authorities in central Hubei province. After Li's death was confirmed early Friday, the 34-year-old was lionised as a hero on social media, while officials were vilified for letting the epidemic spiral into a national health crisis instead of listening to the doctor.
|
| 'I'm the sheriff, who are you?': Sheriff stops fake cop car in its tracks Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:22 PM PST  Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard noticed something unusual about what he thought was a police car, but turned out to be a copycat.
|
| Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Wants to Legalize Drugs (As in All Drugs) Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:33 AM PST  For Gabbard, drug policy is a question of personal autonomy and free choice. "When it really comes right down to it, that's what this issue is about. It's about choice."
|
| Officials: TSA agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts Posted: 07 Feb 2020 06:57 AM PST  A federal Transportation Security Administration agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts as she went through security at one of the world's busiest airports, California's attorney said.
|
| Pelosi calls the speech by Trump she tore up a 'manifesto of mistruths' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:50 AM PST  Two days after ripping up her copy of his State of the Union speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore into President Trump.
|
| Senate Report Criticizes Response to Russian Meddling and Partly Blames McConnell Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:00 PM PST  WASHINGTON -- Republican congressional leaders' refusal to publicly acknowledge Russian election interference in 2016 contributed to a watered-down response by the Obama administration in the midst of the presidential campaign, a Senate report released Thursday found.Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and the Senate majority leader, reacted skeptically after receiving an intelligence briefing in September 2016 about the Russian interference, a former Obama administration official said in the report. "You security people should be careful that you're not getting used," McConnell told Lisa Monaco, the White House homeland security adviser under President Barack Obama, at the time, according to the report.The bulk of the report focuses its criticism on the Obama administration and the "heavily politicized environment" that prevented a more forceful response to the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. But the inclusion of McConnell's skepticism in a report from a Republican-led Senate committee could give the accusations new life.Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, have previously accused McConnell of stopping the Obama administration from speaking out more forcefully against Russian interference. McConnell has long denied those allegations, pointing to a bipartisan letter that congressional leaders released in late September 2016.The response to Russia's meddling presented a difficult political calculus for McConnell: A public acknowledgment before the election might have deterred Moscow and improved voters' trust in the outcome, but none of that was assured, and it also could have cost Republicans the White House.According to the report, numerous Obama administration officials said some members of Congress at the September 2016 briefing "resisted the administration request that a bipartisan statement be made regarding Russia being responsible for interference activities." It was at that briefing where McConnell told Monaco that she should be careful with the intelligence.The full report from the committee, led by Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., wavers on the effect any high-level U.S. government warning would have had on Russia's campaign of election sabotage. The Kremlin's operations continued even as the Obama administration began discussing them publicly, Senate investigators found."After the warnings, Russia continued its cyberactivity to include further public dissemination of stolen emails, clandestine social media-based influence operations, and penetration of state voting infrastructure through Election Day 2016," the report said.The committee said that the Obama administration was worried that its warnings to Russia could potentially undermine voters' confidence in the election, which would itself help the Russian effort. The government was also hampered by what it did not know, including the full extent of the Russian ability to manipulate election systems.The report also contained some new details about the Obama administration's efforts to halt the Russian interference campaign. The administration delivered five direct warnings to "various levels of the Russian government," including messages from Obama to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the report said.Obama warned Putin in a note that "the kind of consequences that he could anticipate would be powerfully impactful to their economy and far exceed anything that he had seen to date," the report said, citing an interview with Susan E. Rice, Obama's national security adviser at the time.Some of the material in the report is redacted, including the timing of the first warning that many in the administration received, in the form of briefings from the CIA director at the time, John O. Brennan.Even as they presented the report's findings as bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans on the committee highlighted the still-acrimonious partisan divide over the 2016 campaign in their responses.Burr aimed his criticism at the Obama administration, accusing officials of sharing too little information inside the government."Frozen by 'paralysis of analysis,' hamstrung by constraints both real and perceived, Obama officials debated courses of action without truly taking one," Burr said.Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, blamed partisan politics in part for the flawed response in 2016 and warned that they are still a barrier to fighting Russia's continuing interference in U.S. politics."I am particularly concerned, however, that a legitimate fear raised by the Obama administration -- that warning the public of the Russian attack could backfire politically -- is still present in our hyperpartisan environment," Warner said.In a supplement to the report, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the failure in the midst of the campaign to make a "bipartisan public acknowledgment of the ongoing attack by Russia" had serious implications.Such a statement, Wyden wrote, might have prompted the news media to give more context in their reporting of disclosures by WikiLeaks about the Clinton campaign, most importantly noting "their release was part of a Russian influence campaign" designed to assist Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee."An acknowledgment of Russian influence operations, particularly operations intended to help Donald Trump, would have reflected poorly on the candidate and his campaign," Wyden wrote. "But that should not have been a reason for the administration and members of Congress to withhold from the public warning of an ongoing attack by a foreign adversary."The committee report includes a range of recommendations to ensure the government is better prepared to react to a foreign influence campaign in future elections. Legislation enacted last year requires the director of national intelligence to present regular assessments of such threats before elections, the report noted.Senators also called for the executive branch to be more forthcoming with the public, particularly if foreign influence operations -- called "active measures" by the Russians -- are underway."In the event that such a campaign is detected, the public should be informed as soon as possible, with a clear and succinct statement of the threat, even if the information is incomplete," the report said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
|
| China virus toll hits 717 as cruise ship faces two-week quarantine Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:32 PM PST  The death toll from China's coronavirus outbreak rose to 717 on Saturday as the country seethes over an epidemic that claimed the life of a popular doctor and created global panic. The toll has now surpassed the number of people who died in mainland China and Hong Kong during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, after another 81 people succumbed to the illness in central Hubei province. More than 34,000 people have been infected in China by the new strain, which is believed to have emerged in a market that sold exotic animals in Hubei's capital, Wuhan, late last year.
|
| Former US drone operator recalls dropping a missile on Afghanistan children and says military is ‘worse than the Nazis’ Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:18 AM PST  A former US drone operator is speaking out against the atrocities he says he was forced to inflict during his time in the armed forces and says the American military as 'worse than the Nazis'.Brandon Bryant was enlisted in the US Air Force for six years. During his time with the military, he operated Predator drones, remotely firing missiles at targets more than 7,000 miles away from the small room containing his workspace near Las Vegas, Nevada.
|
| Pete Buttigieg Once Wrote a High School Essay About His Idol, Bernie Sanders. Tonight, He'll Debate Him Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:47 PM PST  Twenty years ago, a chubby and nearly unibrowed high school senior in South Bend, Indiana wrote an essay about his political idol, the then-57-year old…
|
| The next Tiananmen Square? Chinese citizens are demanding increased free speech after the death of a coronavirus whistleblower doctor. China is censoring their calls. Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:43 AM PST  Viral hashtags — "The Wuhan government owes Li Wenliang an apology," "I want freedom of speech," and "We want freedom of speech" – were seen by millions before being censored.
|
| 'Caution I have the coronavirus' prank in Illinois Walmart causes $10k in damage, police say Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:55 PM PST  Two teens has been charged after pulling a coronavirus prank at a Walmart in Joliet, Illinois, according to police.
|
| Six Times the Speed of Sound: Will the Air Force Get an SR-72 Spy Plane? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 09:59 AM PST  Better than the SR-71?
|
| It's 65 degrees in Antarctica today Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:23 AM PST  You'd need more layers in Texas today than you would in Antarctica.On Friday, scientists saw a likely record-breaking 65 degrees Fahrenheit on Antarctica's northernmost tip. The measurement taken at Esperanza Base along Antarctica's Trinity Peninsula beats out a previous record of 63.5 degrees taken in 2015, and comes just days after the end of the warmest January in the world's recorded history, The Washington Post reports.The Argentinian base announced Antarctica's T-shirt weather on Friday, but the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization said it would have to confirm the reading before declaring a record. The wave of warm area seems to be tied to a "foehn," or a rush of air that comes down from a slope or mountain and compresses air to warm it, the WMO's climate extremes expert told The Associated Press.The Antarctic Peninsula has been recorded as one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth, according to the WMO. A huge majority — around 87 percent — of the peninsula's glaciers have continually retreated over the past 50 years, an obvious sign of ongoing global warming. And with no definitive action being taken toward curbing human-caused climate change, glaciologist Eric Steig told the Post we can expect to see these records broken again soon.More stories from theweek.com Elizabeth Warren's last chance American democracy is dying How to watch the New Hampshire Democratic debate
|
| Drug lord Escobar's hit man dies of cancer in Colombia Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:37 AM PST  Pablo Escobar's most notorious hit man, known by the nickname "Popeye," died on Thursday at 57 after a life of crime he celebrated on YouTube, Colombia's prison authorities said.
|
| Box Kites, Rockets, and Satellites: Our 150-Year Endeavor To Forecast the Weather Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:28 AM PST |
| Hillary Clinton: 'Follow Mitt Romney's lead' and vote Trump out of office Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:16 AM PST  The 2016 Democratic nominee says she wasn't surprised that the Senate voted to acquit President Trump in his impeachment trial — but was nonetheless disappointed more Republicans didn't vote to remove him from office.
|
| Russia says Israel nearly shot down passenger plane in Syria Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:04 AM PST  Russia's Defense Ministry said Friday that Israeli air forces nearly shot down a passenger jetliner in Syria during a missile strike on the suburbs of Damascus a day earlier. The allegation comes as tensions run high in Syria, where fighting has escalated in the northern province of Idlib. Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian military, have clashed with Turkish troops that support the opposition there after failing to observe a cease-fire.
|
| Creepy Pete Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:15 PM PST  It has to be said: There is something plain amazing about Pete Buttigieg's run for the presidency. His last election was for mayor of a very small city. No offense to South Bend, Ind., but being the nation's 308th largest city is not something to brag about. Until the Iowa caucus Buttigieg never won the support of more than 9,000 people in an election. Pete Buttigieg did this by outlasting, out-fundraising, and out-debating former governors and a California senator, and lapping billionaire entrepreneurs. He beat a national front-runner and essentially tied the runner-up to the 2016 Democratic nomination. From unknown to serious contender for the presidency in less than a year: This is real Mr. Smith stuff, a tribute to the everyman nature of democracy.To repeat myself, this is amazing, amazing stuff.But also, it's really creepy.Right?A few nights ago, the Iowa meltdown was just starting to dawn on us. Officially the Iowa Democrats were telling us that they had verified precisely zero percent of the votes.And while we pondered that fact, this man, "Mayor Pete" emerged on cable news to dispel the utter confusion and uncertainty and declare himself the victor, based on his own tabulation. Think about that for a minute.This is a man from nowhere who seems to have spent a great deal of time in the last few years managing his own Wikipedia page. His popularity is widely attributed to the work of a single media genius, Lis Smith. And as he was declaring himself the winner, a flurry of reports were being filed that there were some questionable financial connections between the developer of the Iowa vote-counting app and the Pete Buttigieg campaign.Doesn't that fact pattern make your skin crawl? Just a little? But it wasn't just that a man no one had heard of a few months ago was now a self-authenticating leader of the Democratic field. It was the way he became that leader. "Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality," he said, introducing himself.What could he mean by that? In fact, with zero tabulated results, the improbable hope was quite deniable. Now with 100 percent of results in, it looks like Bernie Sanders won the most votes, but somehow Pete Buttigieg obtained more delegates owing to the Iowa Caucus terms of service -- which seems to run hundreds of pages long in describing how tiebreaks and rounding works, and happens to have worked almost entirely in Pete Buttigieg's flavor.The stagecraft was weird. If the demographic polling we've all read is correct, then the line of seven or eight African-American supporters behind him during his Iowa victory speech represents, by my math, 180 percent of his African-American support nationwide. In fact, those in that line seemed to constitute most of the African Americans in the room, which made you wonder how it was they were placed so directly in the sight lines of the television cameras. I bet that was a very delicate mission for the person tasked with it.The surreal and eerie quality of the speech was enhanced by the fact that he declared himself the winner in prose that was so fundamentally empty. "We had the belief that in the face of exhaustion and cynicism and division, in spite of every trampled norm and every poisonous tweak," he said, "that a rising majority of Americans was hungry for action and ready for new answers."What action? What answers? What is this? The whole timbre and cadence of his speech seemed to be modeled after the rhetoric of Barack Obama. But it lacked all the reassuring notes of specificity that seemed to prove Obama was an actual human being, inhabiting a corporeal body in the same space-time continuum that I inhabit.Buttigieg's speech, on the other hand, resembled a kind of mad-lib speech in which none of the blanks had been filled. Obama was promising not just "action" but to turn back the rising sea levels. How did Pete Buttigieg manage to beat Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and a dozen other people with more charm (such as Andrew Yang) with this utter pablum?I'm not saying for sure that Pete Buttigieg is a robot or a phenomenon of massive psychotic projection. I can't prove that. All I can say is that when he came out on stage in Iowa, I felt like we were undergoing a coup.Bernie Bros have started calling him "Mayor Cheat" -- which is funny. But I now think of him as "Creepy Pete." No one can explain to me with any narrative satisfaction how he ended up on television in the position he is in. But here he is, bidding to be our leader. It's amazing. It's incredible. So incredible that I just want to check with all my readers and all their friends: Why are we crediting this as our reality?
|
| Chinese citizens are furious at the death of the whistleblower doctor censored for talking about the coronavirus. His mother said she couldn't even say goodbye. Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:52 AM PST  Li Wenliang died of the Wuhan coronavirus on Friday. After he tried to warn colleagues about it in December, police had him admit to lying.
|
| Man 'filmed himself beating his girlfriend to death' and then called an Uber to take her to hospital Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:45 AM PST  A man allegedly filmed himself beating his girlfriend then ordered an Uber to take her to hospital, where she died.According to a cell phone video obtained through police warrants, Nicholas Forman, 23, from Collegeville, Pennsylvania, could be seen beating his girlfriend Sabrina Harooni, 22, on his lawn, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
|
| Latest coronavirus study implicates fecal transmission Posted: 07 Feb 2020 04:42 PM PST  Diarrhea may be a secondary path of transmission for the novel coronavirus, scientists said Friday following the publication of the latest study reporting patients with abdominal symptoms and loose stool. The primary path is believed to be virus-laden droplets from an infected person's cough, though researchers in early cases have said they focused heavily on patients with respiratory symptoms and may have overlooked those linked to the digestive tract. A total of 14 out of 138 patients (10 percent) in a Wuhan hospital who were studied in the new paper by Chinese authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) initially presented with diarrhea and nausea one or two days prior to development of fever and labored breathing.
|
| A tech side effect: Many residents of China say wearing face masks to avoid the coronavirus has made it impossible to unlock their phones with Face ID Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:18 AM PST  Some residents are venting their frustrations on social media.
|
| Michael Bloomberg surges to 2nd place in the betting markets Posted: 07 Feb 2020 01:49 PM PST  Americans may not be betting on Michael Bloomberg yet, but betting markets still think he's got a chance.The former New York City mayor has totally leapfrogged former Vice President Joe Biden in an average of betting markets, RealClearPolitics' average shows. Bloomberg has a 19 percent chance of winning, per ElectionBettingOdds.com, while PredictIt's betting market gives Bloomberg a 23-cent "yes" price to Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 43 cents.Bloomberg's rise coincides with a major drop in Biden's betting chances, likely stemming from the former vice president's dismal performance in Monday's Iowa caucuses. Even former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has come close to surpassing Biden in RealClearPolitics' average, and he did so decisively on PredictIt. Still, ElectionBettingOdds.com has President Trump with the best chance of winning the whole election this fall, giving him a 59.5 percent chance to Sanders' 14.8 percent and Bloomberg's 10 percent.The Biden drop was also good news for Sanders. He surpassed Biden on the betting markets in late January, and is now far and away the top candidate to win the Democratic nomination. Sanders, and according to RealClearPolitics' betting markets average, no top-ranking candidate has put that much space between themselves and second place since Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) bump in October of last year.More stories from theweek.com Elizabeth Warren's last chance American democracy is dying How to watch the New Hampshire Democratic debate
|
| Donald Trump impeachment trial: For Republicans, patriotism has left the Senate chamber Posted: 07 Feb 2020 06:09 AM PST  Republicans used to know that patriotism isn't about words, it's what you do. But today's congressional Republicans have lost sight of that.
|
| Virginia lawmakers to debate assault weapon ban Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:06 PM PST  Democratic lawmakers in Virginia are set to try to advance legislation to ban assault weapons despite pushback from members of their own party. A state House committee is scheduled to take up legislation backed by Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday that would ban the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms, including popular AR-15 style rifles. Heated debates over guns have dominated this year's legislative session, as Virginia has become ground zero in the nation's raging debate over gun control and mass shootings.
|
| The US Army wants its soldiers to be able to see enemies and other deadly threats through walls Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:50 PM PST  The Army is trying to defeat battlefield unknowns by figuring out how soldiers can see through walls, a capability straight out of science fiction.
|
| Colorado transgender teen pleads guilty to murder in school revenge case Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:44 PM PST  A transgender teenager accused of opening fire with a friend in a Denver-area charter school in May to exact revenge on classmates who bullied him pleaded guilty on Friday to murder and attempted murder charges, prosecutors said. Alec McKinney, 16, who has been held without bond since the May 7 rampage that left one student dead and eight others wounded, pleaded guilty to 17 criminal counts, including conspiracy and weapons charges, said Douglas County District Attorney George Brauchler. McKinney is accused along with Devon Erickson, 19, of carrying out the shooting at the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
|
| Coronavirus puts Shanghai into a coma Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:42 AM PST  For more than a week, the rare resident of Shanghai who dared venture outside has encountered something unfamiliar: a surreal peace and quiet. The deadly coronavirus epidemic has brought much of China to a standstill, but perhaps nowhere has the change been more stark than in the country's biggest and most vibrant city. Gone are the traffic jams, crowded sidewalks and businessmen hurrying to work, replaced by eerily empty roads, shuttered bars and businesses, and only the occasional pedestrians -- always behind a protective mask.
|
| Elizabeth Smart says she was sexually assaulted by passenger on Delta flight Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:51 AM PST  Elizabeth Smart has revealed she was sexually assaulted on a Delta flight by a fellow passenger last summer.On Thursday, Smart, who has advocated on behalf of kidnapping victims after she was abducted and sexually assaulted at 14, told CBS This Morning's Gayle King about the incident.
|
| Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:34 AM PST ![Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care]( "Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care") The basic building blocks of U.S. health care are now under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
|
| Could Bloomberg Win the Democratic Nomination? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 09:08 AM PST  Could Mike Bloomberg capture the Democratic Party's presidential nomination? I've ridiculed the possibility in the past, and with good reason: Bloomberg has taken stances that are anathema to progressives, and I'm not talking about his cheerleading for capitalism or the way he personifies Wall Street lucre like a walking Monopoly Man. He also waited far too late to enter the race and blithely skipped the early states.Nate Silver's forecasting model at FiveThirtyEight gives Bloomberg a less than 1 percent shot at the nomination. But betting markets disagree: As the degree of Joe Biden's failure in Iowa became apparent, Bloomberg's prospects surged. At PredictIt.org, for instance, Bernie Sanders is the heavy favorite, selling at 43 cents for a potential payoff of a dollar. Bloomberg runs a strong second, at 23 cents. Biden is in fourth place, at a pathetic 14 cents. Bettors appear to be envisioning Ramesh Ponnuru's scenario: Should Biden collapse and leave a clear path to victory for Sanders, those Democrats who do not daydream about November suicide will be looking for a moderate to back. Bloomberg would appear to be a more plausible contender for that role than Pete Buttigieg, with his student-council earnestness and thin résumé. What's more, the former New York City mayor would be self-funding.There are three big reasons Bloomberg could stage a last-minute rally and make a serious bid for the nomination.One: In the Ponnuru scenario, the Democrats could use every trick in the book, or indeed rewrite the book, to stop Sanders. Step forward, superdelegates! Hail, change in debate rules! The downside risk of this is a replay of the 1968 Chicago convention chaos, this time in Milwaukee. But it's not like even the Bolshiest of Bernie Bros are going to stay home on November 3 if their choice is between a capitalist Democrat and Donald Trump, and the party knows this.Two: Given Biden's continual struggles and Elizabeth Warren's rapid fade, the race could narrow to a Sanders–Bloomberg contest quickly if Buttigieg's momentum were to stall. Some of Warren's fans among technocrats and the highly educated will even defect to Bloomberg, on the grounds that he's the sort of managerial-class mandarin they feel an affinity with. (Warren's anti-capitalist rhetoric is, I think, seen as merely performative by a significant percentage of her devotees.)Three: Money. It's preposterous how rich Bloomberg is. Because of the way his wealth is generated, via subscriptions to his eponymous financial-services terminals, it comes in faster than he can spend it. He could spend $5 billion on this race and emerge from it richer than he was when he entered. Last year, Forbes put his net worth at $55.5 billion; this year he's at $61.7 billion. For comparison, saturation advertising for a blockbuster movie that everyone wants to see runs a studio about $50 million. No one knows what a Bloombergian level of advertising spending on a single idea might look like because it's never been done before. And that's not counting all the other ways money can be useful in a political campaign. As other candidates drop out of the race, Bloomberg will be able to buy up organizers and pollsters and canvassers and everybody else who wants a job in politics. He'll be able to put them up at the Four Seasons, rent them Cadillac Escalades, and feed them so much lobster thermidor it'll make Lego Batman envious. He'll be able to buy up activists and agitators too. Last week he evidently bought a ticket to the Super Bowl for the Houston-area woman, an anti-gun activist, who also starred in the $11 million gun-control commercial he ran during the game. Bloomberg has so far steered clear of using his fortune to tear down fellow Democrats, but the most effective political ads are attacks. If it comes down to him vs. Sanders, a declared enemy of capitalism, will he continue to avoid going negative? And how well would Sanders hold up against $100 million in attack ads?Even setting those factors aside, there's an argument to be made that Sanders is so extreme that there must be a low ceiling on his potential support even within the Democratic Party. For all the outsize influence of the Extremely Online progressive base, there are a lot of Democrats farther to the right: After the 2018 midterms, in which the party retook control of the House, conservatives and moderates accounted for 52 percent of its members.On the other hand, Bernie Bros (and maybe even Joe Biden) may take some comfort from knowing that they can pull out the Democratic Party's favorite weapon at any time and beat Bloomberg over the head with it. As mayor of New York City, Bloomberg loudly defended a police stop-and-frisk policy that disproportionately affected black New Yorkers, who in many cases argued that they were being profiled and harassed. Bloomberg was not only insensitive to criticism, he suggested those who opposed his policy were idiots. "Incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little," Bloomberg said in 2013. "It's exactly the reverse of what they're saying. I don't know where they went to school, but they certainly didn't take a math course, or a logic course." Bloomberg continued to defend the policy as recently as last year, even though crime continued to recede after the stop-and-frisk policy was all but eliminated. A single powerful ad in which a black New Yorker recalls the humiliation of being stopped and frisked for no good reason could be worth more than a billion dollars' worth of Bloomberg's spending.
|
| GOP Sen. Romney faces awkwardness, 'abuse' for defying Trump on impeachment Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:03 PM PST  Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator to vote to convict in the Trump impeachment trial, is a test case for the party's willingness to tolerate dissent.
|
| Did Russian-Made Missiles Strike an Israeli Stealth F-35 in 2017? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:54 PM PST  Probably not. Here's what we know.
|
| Chinese tech giant Baidu has made a maps app that shows the location of coronavirus patients Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:54 AM PST  The app shows the location of both confirmed and suspected coronavirus patients, as well as travel disruption caused by the oubreak.
|
| Man who ran down 2 students faces manslaughter charges Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:13 AM PST  A man was charged with manslaughter Friday in the deaths of two suburban Oklahoma City high school cross-country athletes whom he hit with his truck as they ran on a sidewalk just a day after his own son was killed in a traffic accident. Max Leroy Townsend, 57, is accused of running over six Moore High School cross-country runners in front of the school Monday afternoon, killing senior Rachel Freeman and sophomore Yuridia Martinez. Townsend was also charged Friday with leaving the scene of a fatality accident, driving under the influence causing great bodily injury, and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury, District Attorney Greg Mashburn said.
|
| Texas executes man convicted of killing five family members in 2002 Posted: 06 Feb 2020 04:12 AM PST  Abel Ochoa, 47, was executed with lethal injection and pronounced dead at the state's death chamber in Huntsville at 6.48 p.m. CST (1248 GMT), 17 years after a jury found him guilty of capital murder, according to a statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Ochoa was the third inmate in the United States and the second in Texas to be executed in 2020. Texas, which executed nine people in 2019, has executed more prisoners than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
|
| Mexican president: Raffle winners will get $1M — not the presidential plane Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:50 AM PST  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday gave details about a raffle aimed at covering the cost of a luxury presidential plane he has struggled to sell, clarifying that winners will get $1 million in cash rather than the plane itself.
|
| Coronavirus: Cruise ship passengers in New Jersey loaded onto ambulances and tested for virus Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:33 AM PST  Passengers on a cruise ship docked in New Jersey have been seen being placed in ambulances as they are reportedly sent for testing of the deadly new Wuhan coronavirus, according to multiple reports.The passengers in question had a history of having recently travelled to China, one official with the Centre for Disease Control told CNN. The outbreak of the mysterious illness was believed to have originated in a market in Wuhan, China.
|
| Officials warn of drug called "gray death" Posted: 06 Feb 2020 06:11 PM PST  "You don't want to touch this," police said. "If at all possible you don't even want to put it on your hands."
|
| She pulled her vote when she found out Pete Buttigieg is gay. He says`I'm running to be her president too.' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:10 AM PST  Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg responds to the Iowa woman who was captured on video withdrawing her support after learning he's gay.
|
| Fox News warns Fox News about spreading pro-Trump 'disinformation' on Ukraine Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:58 AM PST  An internal report from the Fox News research department warns that several prominent Fox News guests, aided sometimes by omissions from Sean Hannity, have spread "disinformation" about Ukraine. The briefing, written by senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy and titled "Ukraine, Disinformation, and the Trump Administration," was first disclosed in a series of tweets from former Fox News freelancer Marcus DiPaola, then obtained in full by The Daily Beast. Murphy compiles reports for the Fox News "Brain Room," a research arm of the network's news division.The report specifically points to "disinformation" on Ukraine from President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Fox News contributor and Hill columnist John Solomon, and married legal team Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.DiGenova and Toensing are part of Trump's legal circle and also represent Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, a fact not disclosed last fall when they were "spreading disinformation" on Fox News and "parroting ... beneficial narratives while employed by Firtash," Murphy wrote. Giuliani had a "high susceptibility to disinformation" from Firtash and former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, he added, and Solomon, an opinion columnist typically referred to as an "investigative reporter" by Hannity, "played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign." Trump cites Solomon's work, now under review by The Hill, while defending himself in the Ukraine scandal.Mitch Kweit, senior vice president of the Brain Room, told The Daily Beast that "the 200 page document has thousands of data points, and the vast majority have no relation to Fox News — instead it's now being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network." Read more at The Daily Beast.More stories from theweek.com Elizabeth Warren's last chance American democracy is dying How to watch the New Hampshire Democratic debate
|
