January 23, 2022

No Superbowl for Brady this year

30-27 Rams.

January 23, 2022

French adventurer, 75, dies attempting to row across the Atlantic solo

Jean-Jacques Savin, a 75-year-old French adventurer who was attempting to row across the Atlantic Ocean solo, was found dead inside his boat Saturday after he had sent out distress signals in the days before, his team said in a statement.

The Portuguese coast guard found the boat overturned near the Azores, the Portuguese archipelago, on Friday and dispatched a diver on Saturday.

Savin had activated his distress beacons Thursday night into Friday morning, the statement said. An earlier statement from his daughter, Manon Savin, was posted by his team to his Facebook page, saying that the beacons signaled a situation of “great difficulty.” French, Portuguese and American officials were immediately alerted, she said.

The team declined in the statement on Saturday to elaborate further about his death, as the full circumstances were not yet clear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/23/jean-jacques-savin-atlantic-rowing-french/

I guess rowing across the Atlantic mid-winter at 75 was on his bucket list.

January 23, 2022

The GOP has zero interest in bipartisanship

The GOP didn’t bother to write a platform for the last presidential election and has announced plans to skip debates for the next. Why bother?

It took Barack Obama four years to figure it out.

The 44th president was into his second term before some psychic switch seemed to click and he finally realized what had long been obvious to everyone else. Namely, that the Republican Party had zero interest in bipartisanship and, for that matter, no priority larger than demonizing him and frustrating his agenda. Not that Obama ever made a big deal out of it, but as more than one observer noted, he spent less time in his last four years seeking Republican buy-in.

Who could blame him? How many times can one reach out an open hand and draw back a bloody stump?

By that standard, it might be argued that President Joe Biden is a fast learner. He’s figured out in one year what took Obama four. Still, his announcement of same in his marathon news conference was hardly gratifying. “I did not anticipate,” he told reporters, “that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done. Think about this: What are Republicans for? What are they for?”

He did not “anticipate” it? Seriously? He didn’t know this was coming? Where has Joe Biden been the last decade and a half? What has he seen that made him think Republicans had the slightest interest in statesmanship?

As to what they stand for, that’s simple. They stand for ending access to abortion. They stand for unfettered access to guns. And they stand for exploiting whatever random flotsam of the so-called culture war — from critical race theory to COVID masks to the “War on Christmas” to an old book by Dr. Seuss — can be inflated into an existential threat to stampede their easily stampede-able base to the polls. And that’s about it.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/01/23/the-gop-has-zero-interest-in-bipartisanship-column/

January 23, 2022

Whaaduup Aaron Rogers?

Well, there's always next year...

January 23, 2022

A 73-year-old New York grandmother outsmarted scammers who pretended to be her grandson

A 73-year-old New York grandmother outsmarted scammers who pretended to be her grandson and said he needed $8,000 to be bailed out of jail-- complete headline

A Long Island grandmother outsmarted scammers who tried to steal thousands from her.

The woman from Seaford, who asked to be identified as Jean, told CBS2 that she received a call from someone claiming to be her grandson. The man said he was arrested for drunk driving and needed to be bailed out of jail.

"I knew he was a real scammer. I just knew he wasn't going to scam me," Jean, 73, told CBS2. "He starts calling me 'grandma,' and then I'm like, I don't have a grandson that drives, so I knew it was a scam."

The scam took several phone calls to play out and involved multiple unidentified males, police said in a press release. One person claiming to be a lawyer for Jean's grandson told her that he needed $8,000 to get out of jail. A third person called claiming to be a bail bondsman coming to collect the money.

https://news.yahoo.com/73-old-york-grandmother-outsmarted-201133711.html

Go Granny Go!

January 22, 2022

DOJ Task Force On Election Worker Threats Makes First Arrest

The Justice Department charged a man from Texas on Friday with threatening three government officials, the first criminal case brought forward by the department’s task force on combating violent threats against election workers.

According to the Justice Department’s announcement, 54-year-old Chad Christopher Stark of Leander, Texas was arrested by the FBI on Friday and charged with one count of making interstate threats.

Prosecutors alleged in a 4-page indictment that Stark posted an ad on Craigslist on Jan. 5 last year offering $10,000 for the deaths of the three officials, who were not named in the indictment.

The title of the alleged ad declared that it was “time to kill” one of the officials.

“Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors. It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges,” Stark allegedly wrote.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/doj-task-force-on-election-worker-threats-makes-first-arrest

This Texas "patriot" posted this on Craigslist? I suspect his Mensa Club membership has since been revoked...

January 22, 2022

United Flight Forced to Turn Around After 2 Passengers Reportedly Try to Sneak into Business Class

A United Airlines flight from Newark to Tel Aviv was forced to turn around on Thursday after two passengers reportedly attempted to sneak into business class seats.

The pair of passengers demonstrated unruly behavior after being asked to show proof of their assigned seats by the flight crew, according to Israeli news outlet N12. The disturbance forced the plane, which was near the U.S.-Canadian border at the time, to return to its origin of Newark Liberty International Airport.

A spokesperson for United Airlines confirmed that flight 90 had turned around "due to disruptive passengers on board" in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. Police met the plane upon its arrival, and the flight was ultimately canceled.

The spokesperson said the airline's New York/Newark team "provided our customers with meal vouchers and hotel accommodation and have made arrangements for customers to complete their journeys," following the incident.

https://news.yahoo.com/united-flight-forced-turn-around-220423738.html

January 22, 2022

Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Under Pressure To Return Looted Ancient Mesopotamian Stratocaster

CLEVELAND—With critics calling the instrument an essential part of Sumeria’s history of killer riffs and hot licks, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame came under pressure Friday to return to Iraq an ancient Mesopotamian Stratocaster that was plundered by British archaeologists during the colonial era.

“Dating from 3300 BC, this guitar, with its original terra-cotta hardware and perfectly preserved whammy bar, is a one-of-a-kind artifact that represents a vital piece of Iraqi heritage,” said activist Nasim Radi, who also criticized the museum for failing to relinquish a 4,500-year-old Egyptian Moog synthesizer, a rare pre-Columbian eight-piece drumkit from Mesoamerica, and a mysterious obelisk used in a staging of the first Chinese rock opera.

“It is a sacred relic of Mesopotamia’s hard-rocking past that was stolen and belongs back home. In a ritual performed to increase crop yields, Sumerian priests would unleash face-melting leads on this pre-CBS Fender Strat, a cultural advancement that continues to resonate with us today. Not to mention it has a really badass dragon carved on the back.”

At press time, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was reportedly negotiating the return of the Stratocaster in exchange for the right to retain possession of the original Assyrian sheet music for “Stairway To Heaven.”

https://www.theonion.com/rock-roll-hall-of-fame-under-pressure-to-return-loote-1848385651

January 22, 2022

Why pay TV operators are dropping Trump-loving cable networks

Earlier than One America Information Community host Dan Ball completed an interview with visitor Jim Jordan final week, he requested the Ohio Republican congressman for a favor.

“Please put some stress on AT&T and DirecTV for us,” mentioned Ball, whose nightly program “Actual America” airs nightly on the right-wing cable channel. “OAN would like to proceed broadcasting on that platform and we all know for a reality it’s all political behind the scenes on why they’re doing that to us.”

Earlier within the week, Ball solicited viewers to ship him “grime” on William Kannard, chairman of of the board for DirecTV dad or mum AT&T, together with any proof of marital infidelity. OAN’s 80-year-old founder, tech entrepreneur Robert Herring, additionally went on digital camera to plea with viewers to ask different cable and satellite tv for pc suppliers of their areas so as to add the channel to their lineups.

The determined requires assist — which might be thought of unseemly on a standard cable information outlet — observe DirecTV’s Jan. 15 announcement that it’s going to drop the San Diego-based OAN from its service in April. DirecTV, which AT&T spun off final summer season, accounts for almost half of the 35 million properties that may obtain OAN on cable or satellite tv for pc TV. The channel shouldn’t be broadly distributed sufficient to be measured by Nielsen.

The lack of DirecTV will deprive the channel of its main income and forged doubt on the way forward for the operation, the place President Biden’s administration is known as a “regime” and considerations concerning the COVID-19 pandemic are described as hysteria. OAN correspondents have promoted efforts to audit the vote counts within the 2020 election.

https://tellusdaily.com/2022/01/22/why-pay-tv-operators-are-dropping-trump-loving-cable-networks/

January 22, 2022

Election supervisors cite fraudulent signatures on Las Vegas Sands' casino petitions

Florida could be in the midst of one of the largest cases of election-related fraud in recent history.

Across the state, elections supervisors say they have been sent thousands of fraudulent petition forms supporting a constitutional amendment to expand casino gaming in the state. Although the forms are supposed to reflect real Floridians voicing support for a change to the state’s Constitution, many include the names of dead people or the forged signatures of real voters.

The petition drive is financed by Las Vegas Sands, whose late owner, Sheldon Adelson, was a megadonor to Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state Republican Party. Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson’s widow, has a majority stake in the company. Las Vegas Sands has spent $49.5 million trying to get an amendment on the November ballot that would allow card rooms in Florida to be converted to Vegas-style casinos.

The number of suspicious or hard-to-verify petitions has buried county elections supervisors and their staffs trying to sort through them. In one case, Marion County Supervisor of Elections Wesley Wilcox found both his and his wife’s signatures forged on petition forms.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article257481524.html

I'm sure DeSantis will get right on it...