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"I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy," Kennedy said. "I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion. President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions, and he wants to protect conscience exemptions." //
Was there something on Instagram, maybe multiple somethings, that made Planned Parenthood worried about their billions in grants from HHS? Has the advent of Mr. Kennedy, who (perhaps surprisingly for a guy who was a Democrat until about five minutes ago), made them worried about some social media posts, perhaps supporting "any abortion at any time, up through the fetus's high school graduation," endangering the HHS cash flow?
That may be. The sudden deletion of, apparently, every post that an organization made on Instagram, would seem to be the action of an organization with something to hide.
Billy Baroo
13 hours ago
Rank choice voting is as crooked as ballot harvesting. //
anon-rnsl
14 hours ago
Here is my solution as a Constitutional amendment:
If you're not eligible to vote for a candidate for public office, you cannot contribute to their campaign.... Period.
But this is a high bar indeed.
Better results might occur at the state level.... after all Sates, not the Federal Government, runs elections.
So here ya go....
You're not eligible to vote for an initiative, proposition, or candidate... you can't contribute to them.... Period.
FWIW - For Whatever Its Worth
mopani anon-rnsl
14 hours ago
I like it. Cuts out the outside money, helps focus the candidates on their constituents.
Slowly but surely, these multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration, often for exercising the barest amount of oversight of agency expenditures, are being settled. The Trump agenda is being slowed, but not as much as the first time around. The actions by the administration are much better planned and coordinated than they were in 2017, and the lawyering is much superior. When the dust settles, Trump will have had his way on these ridiculous ankle-biter cases, and I think he will score a huge win at SCOTUS that will crush the administrative state. More on that to come in a VIP post.
ConservativeInMinnesota
an hour ago
Ranked choice voting uses multiple rounds of voting. That’s effectively more than one vote per person. That arguably makes it unconstitutional. //
anon-rnsl
3 minutes ago
Here is my solution as a Constitutional amendment:
If you're not eligible to vote for a candidate for public office, you cannot contribute to their campaign.... Period.
But this is a high bar indeed.
Better results might occur at the state level.... after all Sates, not the Federal Government, runs elections.
So here ya go....
You're not eligible to vote for an initiative, proposition, or candidate... you can't contribute to them.... Period.
FWIW - For Whatever Its Worth
Cliff-Hanger
9 minutes ago
No matter how popular marriage is, it will always be the number one cause of divorce.
Thierry Breton @ThierryBreton
·
Welcome to Europe VP @JDVance.
With all due respect, in 🇪🇺, freedom of speech is a core value of our democracy — it is non-negotiable. Never was and never will be.
Proof? Even fake news are allowed (sadly, sometimes echoed by top US officials) :
EU/DSA has never canceled… Show more
6:02 PM · Feb 14, 2025. //
Visegrád 24 @visegrad24
·
Former European Commissioner Thierry Breton says the EU has mechanisms to nullify a potential election victory of the AfD:
”We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary”
11:32 PM · Jan 10, 2025
I have had the same problem with couple of Disc lite5.
After setting device as ap-bridge, it becomes invisible to winbox and ping.
Station side, I could connect to bridge-ap only by MAC.
AP side wise, ap-bridge was completely invisible.
Comparing setups I have found that interface list of station-bridge is fine but interface list of bridge-ap misses "bridge".
Add mannualy "bridge" and set as LAN.
After that, ap-bridge is fully available from both sides by IP or MAC.
The White House @WhiteHouse
·
Happy Valentine's Day ♥️
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Come here illegally
And we'll deport you!
4:44 PM · Feb 14, 2025
Alex Berenson @AlexBerenson
·
…and Trump’s approval rating goes up another five points
The White House @WhiteHouse
Happy Valentine's Day ♥️
6:12 PM · Feb 14, 2025. //
Cynical Optimist
7 hours ago edited
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We won all seven swing states
And the popular vote too
The country's a red one
The country's not blue
Trump can hire old Elon
And send aliens home too
They're cutting the spending
Cutting down on fraud too
If you were a recipient
There's nothing you can do
There'll be no more pronouns
Child sex changes too
No more trans in the military
DEI is all through
Oh, I see it all the time….
Actually, Elon called me, he said, you know they're trying to drive us apart. I said absolutely. No, they said, “we have breaking news that Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting at 8 o'clock.” [Musk cracks up in laughter at this point.]
And I say, it's just so obvious, they' so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it. They're actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I'd never be president. …I think nobody in history has ever gotten more bad publicity than me. I could do the greatest things. I get 98 percent bad publicity. //
Owen Gregorian
@OwenGregorian
·
Follow
TV Hits Trump With 85% Negative News vs. 78% Positive Press for Harris | mrcNewsBusters
One week before Election Day, a new analysis from the Media Research Center finds that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history.… Show more
11:17 AM · Oct 29, 2024. //
anon-x8p1 Maximus Decimus Cassius
2 hours ago
He just did [ridiculed the press], with the greatest one-liner of all.
In comments to Fox News Digital, Homan said that he was asking the Justice Department for their interpretation of the law regarding impeding and obstruction, and that he is "well aware of the Constitution, but I am also aware that DOJ gives legal interpretations on issues like this to ensure ICE acts in accordance of the law.". //
He then suggested Ocasio-Cortez read Title 8 USC 1324 and 8 USC 1325,"statutes enacted by Congress, of which she is a part of."
"It’s not OK to be in the U.S. illegally. It’s a violation of federal law to enter this country illegally. It is not OK to assist those in the U.S. illegally in furtherance of their illegal entry and unlawful presence. I thought I educated her on this several years ago during congressional testimony.," he said, referencing a viral clash from the first Trump administration at a congressional hearing.
"She can call it ‘advising those who are illegally in the U.S. of their constitutional rights.' But we all know it’s really about evading ICE and how not to get arrested and how not to adhere to a federal judge’s order to leave after receiving due process at great taxpayer expense," he said. //
AUH2O
7 hours ago
You can lead a horse to school, but you can’t make her think.
While the Democrats' stance on the matter is divorced from MAGA's—hardly news—what is notable is that it's also quite divorced from what was traditionally the Left's position on USAID.
Prolific mainstream and left-wing journals have reported on some of USAID's more nefarious dealings for many years, often posting critical coverage of the organization itself. Just a few weeks ago, an opinion article in American socialist magazine Jacobin kicked the organization while it's down as it became clear Trump aimed to gut it. Left-wing website The Grayzone published a similarly critical feature around the same time.
Though Democratic President John F. Kennedy established USAID in 1961 with humanitarian ambitions in mind, the organization has been distorted far beyond its intended use.
Over the years, USAID has indubitably used "humanitarianism" as a veil for regime change efforts in countries the U.S. sees political climates as unfavorable. //
Many suggest USAID also aided a regime change effort in Ukraine in 2004. This narrative came not from pro-Trump media, as one may expect it to—it was actually reported by The Guardian at the time. //
Onetime left-wing hero Matt Taibbi tore into USAID as far back as 1997 when he blamed it for making the world more hostile for American citizens because of its attempted manipulation of international politics. Furthermore, he suggested that on top of its shortsighted political engagements, it made life worse for those it intended to help. A February 3 tweet indicates he still feels largely the same about the organization. //
It's just another example of how Trump has so emphatically destroyed the traditional American political axis and recruited a cult of supporters so disillusioned with the federal government that they've gleefully adopted a traditionally left-wing viewpoint.
As for the Democrats, their marching in defense of a regime change tool that Trump's base is giddy to destroy is extraordinary, but unsurprising. The USAID saga is a further indictment that the party's messaging and actions have estranged portions of the Left—so much so that some of them are even in Trump's cabinet.
Rasmussen Reports has revealed that for the first time in two decades — two decades! — their Presidential Approval Roundup shows a majority of Americans believe the country is on the "right track."
The Biden administration had asked the State Department to explore interests by private companies to make armored EVs, leading to a public Request for Information to find interested EV-makers, a department spokesperson said, adding that only one company responded at the time.
An official solicitation for EV manufacturers to bid on making armored EVs is on hold with no current plans to use it, the spokesperson said, adding that the government has not awarded any contracts. [....]
Axios is confirming this sentiment in a focus group of swing voters that they surveyed. The focus group included 11 people who had voted for Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump in the 2024 election. Eight were independents, two were Republicans, and one was a Democrat.
Every Arizona swing voter in our latest Engagious/Sago focus groups said they approve of President Trump's actions since taking office — and most also support Elon Musk's efforts to slash government.
Vice President JD Vance appeared in Germany on Friday for the annual Munich Security Conference and didn't hold back against America's ostensible allies. In a blistering speech that drew groans from the crowd, Vance ripped European hypocrisy on democracy and freedom of expression, pleading with them to get their houses in order.
Greg Price @greg_price11
·
JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and roasted the entire continent of Europe for being petty tyrants and criminalizing freedom of speech, including a British man arrested for praying at an abortion clinic.
2:02 PM · Feb 14, 2025. //
VANCE: I'm here today not just with an observation but with an offer. Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump's leadership we may disagree with your views but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.
But if you were hoping to listen to it, and you were watching MSNBC as the swearing-in happened, you would have been out of luck. Here's host Katy Tur saying they're going to be listening to the event and what Trump has to say, and then cut to an "expert" for commentary about the event. But then, suddenly, she shifts and essentially says, "Oops, we're not going to be listening. Sorry, folks! We're just going to 'watch'" — without letting the people hear the ceremony or any of the important things they might have to say.
Margot Cleveland
@ProfMJCleveland
·
Follow
🚨🚨🚨Judge in ⬇️case denies stay pending appeal. Court's reasoning based on his huge walk back of what he really enjoined saying basically "oh, I've only ordered you to not do what you can't legally do." 1/. //
The pattern seems to be that judges respond immediately to requests for temporary restraining orders with overbroad language, then quietly walk the language back once the headlines pass.
For context, the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider, accelerates protons to an energy of 7 Tera-electronVolts (TeV). The neutrino that was detected had an energy of at least 60 Peta-electronVolts, possibly hitting 230 PeV. That also blew away the previous records, which were in the neighborhood of 10 PeV.
Attempts to trace back the neutrino to a source make it clear that it originated outside our galaxy, although there are a number of candidate sources in the more distant Universe. //
Neutrinos, to the extent they're famous, are famous for not wanting to interact with anything. They interact with regular matter so rarely that it's estimated you'd need about a light-year of lead to completely block a bright source of them. Every one of us has tens of trillions of neutrinos passing through us every second, but fewer than five of them actually interact with the matter in our bodies in our entire lifetimes.
The only reason we're able to detect them is that they're produced in prodigious amounts by nuclear reactions, like the fusion happening in the Sun or a nuclear power plant. We also stack the deck by making sure our detectors have a lot of matter available for the neutrinos to interact with.
US government-owned "moored passive acoustic recorder" was able to hear and record the 2023 implosion of the doomed Titan submersible—even though the recorder was 900 miles away from the dive site.
That implosion, during an attempted dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, killed five people, including Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company that built and operated the Titan.
The implosion audio was just released publicly by the US Coast Guard's Titan Marine Board of Investigation, which has been investigating the disaster in enormous detail. As part of that investigation, the Coast Guard obtained the audio from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the US Department of Commerce.
The audio isn't much to listen to—just some static followed by a staticky explosive noise that decays in swirling fashion for multiple seconds. The implosion itself, given the pressure the vehicle was under at the time, probably occurred in milliseconds, as you can learn from simulations of the event. //
Back in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, this kind of sonic technology was deeply important to the military, which used the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) to track things like Soviet submarine movements. (Think of Hunt for Red October spy games here.) Using underwater beamforming and triangulation, the system could identify submarines many hundreds or even thousands of miles away. The SOSUS mission was declassified in 1991. //
"At some point, safety just is pure waste," Rush once told a journalist. Unfortunately, it can be hard to know exactly where that point is. But it is now possible to hear what it sounds like when you're on the wrong side of it—and far below the surface of the ocean.
Scanning for data on infections that can arise in the three places she visited and align with her symptoms, they came up with a list of 10 possible infectious causes: eight parasites and two fungal pathogens. They went through them one by one, crossing things off the list that didn't quite fit with everything they knew of her case. They ended with angiostrongyliasis, caused by the nematode (roundworm) Angiostrongylus cantonensis, also known as rat lungworm. //
This nauseating roundworm is a known plague in Hawaii. In fact, it gained attention in recent years after sparking small outbreaks in the state. In 2017, there were 19 confirmed cases, but case totals in each of the years since have remained below 10. //
There are no clear treatment strategies for angiostrongyliasis, and some can recover fully without treatment after the larvae die off. In this case, the patient and her doctors decided to use a 14-day combination of the immunosuppressive steroid prednisone and the anti-parasitic drug albendazole.
Fortunately, the woman's symptoms cleared with the treatment, and she was discharged from the hospital after six days.