Zorro
Zorro's JournalPence Says Mother Will Not Give Him Permission to Testify
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The special counsel investigating January 6th has received a letter from Mike Pence indicating that a person named Mother will not permit him to testify.
Mother, who is believed to be Pence’s wife, Karen, was “hopping mad” when he received a subpoena from the special counsel’s office, the letter revealed.
“When I told her I better go testify, Mother said, ‘Mike, are you some kind of idiot?’ ” the letter read. “ ‘What if you’re interrogated by a woman lawyer, and you’re alone in a room with her? Women are lawyers nowadays.’ ”
Pence recognized that refusing to testify could result in his being imprisoned, but added, “Mother said that as long as there are no women in the prison, she’s fine with that.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/pence-says-mother-will-not-give-him-permission-to-testify
Gentrification by Fire
The West’s new climate is exacerbating housing inequality in the quintessentially blue state of CaliforniaClimate change and its most extreme consequences are pushing up the price of homes throughout much of the American West, as fires and flooding carve into existing housing stock and restrict the amount of land suitable for future building.
Over several harrowing weeks in October 2017, the Tubbs Fire swept over this city’s eastern hills to destroy about 5,600 homes, an estimated 5 percent of the region’s already threadbare housing stock. Twenty-two people died in the flames.
It was the first mega-fire of California’s new mega-fire era, a flashing red light along the West’s path into a new climate. The Tubbs Fire was also the start of a new kind of economic gentrification, one caused by the increasingly harmful effects of climate change, the higher costs of rebuilding and insuring homes in fire-prone areas, and a housing stock diminished by fire and flooding.
The results have undermined California’s push to build more affordable housing, a goal set by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the rest of a state Democratic leadership, whose political ethic has made a priority of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, an imbalance particularly pronounced in the nation’s most populous state.
https://wapo.st/3DVnlwM
A deadly building flaw common in California brings destruction and misery to Turkey, Syria
As seismic engineers study the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that killed more than 20,000 people this week, it’s becoming clear that a significant cause of the destruction involved a building design common in California and other parts of the U.S.
The flaws of non-ductile concrete construction are found across the Golden State, with many buildings having not been evaluated or retrofitted and at risk of collapse in a serious earthquake.
It can be tempting for Californians to assume that their structures are inherently better than those in Turkey. But the state hasn’t been tested with a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in more than a century. And that event — the great 1906 earthquake — destroyed much of San Francisco.
It will take time for structural engineers to compile a comprehensive report on the damaged and destroyed buildings in Turkey and Syria. But several experts, looking at photos and videos of the pancaked structures, said the primary flaw is already obvious: They were non-ductile concrete buildings, which have an inadequate configuration of steel reinforcing bars that allows concrete to become brittle and explode out of the structure’s columns when shaken.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-10/california-buildings-share-deadly-flaw-as-those-in-turkey-quake
I Love You, but I Don't Want to Sleep With You
Snoring and conflicting schedules are top reasons couples decide to sleep in separate bedrooms. Sex therapists and marriage counselors have their doubts about the arrangement.Last spring, as Valerie Weisler was preparing to move to New York City to live with her partner, she realized she wanted her own bedroom. She’d been living alone while in graduate school in Ireland, and the idea of sharing a bedroom, even with a partner, filled her with dread. But the alternative filled her with self-doubt.
“Is there something wrong with me for wanting this?” Ms. Weisler, 24, recalled thinking. “You meet someone, you fall in love and you move in together. And moving in together means sharing a room. And that’s just what life looks like.”
Her partner, Ky Dates, 22, who was at the time finishing college in Pennsylvania, had assumed they’d sleep in the same bedroom — isn’t that what couples do? — and felt blindsided by the suggestion that they change course. “I was totally freaked out,” said Mx. Dates, who worried that this could be a sign of a relationship in trouble. “It was a lot of fear responses, for sure.”
After Ms. Weisler explained how she had come to value personal space during her time living abroad, Mx. Dates warmed to the idea. And in September, the couple moved into a four-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, sharing it with two roommates. Everyone has their own room.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/realestate/couples-separate-bedrooms.html?unlocked_article_code=--dgNBwQIr1Mxmk8qj5cKp2rwztcr-hCSge5SlrPLZLYa4XzOnz1pwpSkw7Aw-sm-HNapKBsiO0PKFivDHCPrPddGWbrdFyt4mq8q98brIKuw45OQrKxgPxQ9UDn7_dSTBDT31n3-vzupShshW3kltiJ8XYotYC2A8ogNhmMrems7tpSf4qlovBcMAWjrZgVD3A3UmmXfoNEeaonDpF_zfOTZBnDT-N05X_BEeB_X8YlO8DyjjckHgTNAwl1DQ57RjxINpH3AYI4uzM8MG8Skza7BeU64uiu1zC7IllQZfBh03J5P19ebYoifOVhXWbJz8a0aXXHFxqess00WQHsW5x0HlUhKw&smid=share-url
Rep. Nancy Mace scorches Washington in brutal roast: 'I love exercising 1st Amendment rights'
In her speech before the Washington Press Club Foundation on Wednesday night, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., launched into an uncommonly sharp comedic monologue that skewered just about everyone from gun-loving Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., to progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
At one point, she turned toward Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress. “He’s 25 years old,” she joked. “F*** you. I have stretch marks your age.”
Mace ended her routine with a risky joke about the violent Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol in 2021. “I know everyone thinks Republicans aren’t funny. But if you get a bunch of us together, we can be a real riot.”
Some laughed. Some gasped. So it went.
The following morning, she was praised by the New Republic for “genuinely solid quips,” although Axios suggested that her Republican-focused jokes “were so sick that it could put her in hot water” with GOP leaders, who have tended to be wary of her high profile and independence.
https://news.yahoo.com/rep-nancy-mace-scorches-washington-in-brutal-roast-i-love-exercising-1st-amendment-rights-180230548.html
NYC Woman Convicted of Trying to Kill Look-Alike With Poison Cheesecake
Subsequent testing revealed the dessert was laced with a powerful sedative. The target of the attempted murder plot was hospitalized and recovered.A New York City woman was convicted of attempted murder and other charges for poisoning another woman who looked like her with a sedative-laced cheesecake before stealing from her in a bizarre case that took place in 2016, prosecutors said Thursday.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that Viktoria Nasyrova, 47, of Voorhies Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn was convicted of attempted murder in the second degree, attempted assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree, unlawful imprisonment in the first degree and petit larceny. Sentencing will take place on March 21, at which time Nasyrova faces up to 25 years in prison.
The strange event unfolded on Aug. 28, 2016, said Katz, citing the evidence. On that day. Nasyrova visited the Forest Hills home of the then 35-year-old woman bearing a cheesecake as a gift.
According to the evidence, the victim and Nasyrova resembled each other at that time since both had dark hair, complexion and other physical traits. Additionally, both were Russian speakers.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/nyc-woman-found-guilty-of-attempted-murder-for-the-bizarre-cheesecake-poisoning-of-her-look-alike/4095465/
I mean, damn...
We're Not Being Cruel, President Biden. Just Careful.
Messages don’t come any more mixed.
An overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic believe that President Biden has done a good job — 81 and 78 percent, respectively, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. They can see what an increasingly ungovernable country we’ve become, how much he has accomplished despite that, how admirably he has kept his cool (for the most part) and how well he has honored his overarching promise: to put the puerile and corrosive drama of the Trump administration behind us. For Donald Trump, we needed noise-canceling headphones. For Biden, hearing aids.
The silence is golden.
Regardless, 58 percent of those same Democrats and independents said that they want a Democratic presidential candidate other than Biden in 2024. They seem to like him. They’re apparently grateful for him. Yet they’re ready to kick him to the curb.
It doesn’t add up. And the person to whom the arithmetic must feel strangest — and coldest — is Biden.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/opinion/biden-age-trump-.html?unlocked_article_code=LURLhTW4oFm7Ri2PXsEwggZy1oCfddCt-8oPBPOGx6IAcq2NYLO4hYeXvqbv0rMsIYF1bNhx2ZEVKQnW7WMXabhc-CrtFeg_7km2NDq7UhnCdb5rSD8Gu9nx4BPM6uAfZOujs4ruyDL5J1wDkDKYJJjoAiP5RrzlQsS-BSEidFNKbcs8-ZSplmaEtczzOpZbb7lumdV7fJ6i-cbveZj5P4Vpij3O3qULxKBm7p9-yUobRLRLjxVCq5xDJDfg5vSJdQt8-JsMBh9c2wWsTxvriMaObocZOG7z6CbXgssh_1xbXbiIM7PJSb9bWmzD5ATvsPqYg2HK8LIDjA&smid=share-url
NBC and MSNBC Staffers Walk Off the Job to Protest Layoffs
Source: Daily Beast
Unionized reporters and editors at NBC News staged a walkout on Thursday in protest of recent layoffs and the network’s handling of ongoing contract bargaining.
The staffers gathered out front of the network’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters, in a gated-off section of the sidewalk, holding signs and accompanied by an inflatable rat—a common prop for union protests—and a giant check railing against “stolen wages.”
Union leaders first promised the walkout earlier this week, specifically citing NBC’s decision to lay off seven unit members last month without notifying the union. The NBC Guild has since filed multiple unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, though it has grown impatient in waiting for a resolution.
“Today, I’m joining over 200 NBC News, MSNBC and TODAY Show journalists walking off the job to protest management’s decision to illegally lay off seven unit members and strip several others of their union protections without bargaining,” read one unit member’s out-of-office email reply when reached by The Daily Beast on Thursday morning. “NBC must stop breaking the law, reinstate our colleagues and let us all get back to work.”
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/nbc-and-msnbc-staffers-walk-off-the-job-in-contract-dispute
The world's oldest mouse? Meet Pat, who now has a place in the Guinness World Records
The tiny critter, named for actor Patrick Stewart, was officially recognized Wednesday at the San Diego Zoo Safari ParkIt’s official. The world’s oldest mouse in human care is a tiny critter living at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Michael Empric came from New York to the Escondido park Wednesday to bestow the title on Pat, a Pacific pocket mouse born at the park nine years and 209 days ago. The species is endangered, and Pat is part of a breeding program that has introduced some mice back into the wild.
The recognition is a first for the Zoo and Safari Park, which has earned world-wide acclaim for many things, but has never had an animal that was the oldest on record.
It also was a first for Guinness World Records, which previously had no category for world’s oldest mouse.
“There may be old mice, but they don’t have birth certificates,” Empric said at the ceremony held at Beckman Center for Conservation Research at Safari Park. “So what we needed was documentation.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/story/2023-02-08/the-worlds-oldest-mouse-its-at-safari-park-and-now-a-guinness-world-record
Corporations turn to ballot to combat California's progressive agenda, raising alarms
Twice in the last two weeks, major corporations have scored wins in their fights against progressive policies approved by Democrats at the California Capitol.
First, the Secretary of State announced that fast food companies had collected enough signatures to force a referendum on a state law meant to boost wages for restaurant workers. Last week, oil companies’ effort to overturn an environmental safety law that would ban new drilling projects near homes and schools similarly qualified for the ballot.
Both laws are now on hold until voters decide in November 2024 whether to uphold them.
That added to frustrations among California’s labor unions, environmentalists and good government groups, who alleged corporations are abusing the direct democracy process and intentionally misleading voters who signed petitions calling for the referendums.
“This is about corporations not being able to win in the Legislature and trying to hoodwink voters into taking away the progress that Californians have made,” said Tia Orr, executive director of the Service Employees International Union of California.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-08/oil-referendum-setbacks-california
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Gender: MaleHometown: America's Finest City
Current location: District 48
Member since: 2001
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