Trump sending bombers over Persian Gulf

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States flew strategic bombers over the Persian Gulf on Wednesday for the second time this month, a show of force meant to deter Iran from attacking American or allied targets in the Middle East.

One senior U.S. military officer said the flight by two Air Force B-52 bombers was in response to signals that Iran may be planning attacks against U.S. allied targets in neighboring Iraq or elsewhere in the region in coming days, even as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. The officer was not authorized to publicly discuss internal assessments based on sensitive intelligence and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The B-52 bomber mission, flown round trip from an Air Force base in North Dakota, reflects growing concern in Washington, in the final weeks of President Donald Trump’s administration, that Iran will order further military retaliation for the U.S. killing last Jan. 3 of top Iranian military commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s initial response, five days after the deadly U.S. drone strike, was a ballistic missile attack on a military base in Iraq that caused brain concussion injuries to about 100 U.S. troops.

Iran, however, has appeared wary of Trump’s intentions in his final weeks in office, given his focus on pressuring Tehran with sanctions and other moves that have further damaged the Islamic Republic’s economy.

“Trump will bear full responsibility for any adventurism on his way out,” Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, wrote on Twitter Dec. 24.

Adding to the tension was a Dec. 20 rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by Iranian-supported Shiite militia groups. No one was killed, but the volume of rockets fired — possibly 21, with about nine landing on the Embassy compound — was unusually large. Days later, Trump tweeted that Iran was on notice.




https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-iran-air-force-persian-gulf-tensions-617ac5dd2e642b20e33370f420802617

New COVID-19 strain found in California.

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Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on 'Gilligan's Island', dies from COVID-19-related causes

LOS ANGELES — Actress Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on the popular 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” has died at the age of 82. Her publicist announced her death to several media outlets and said it resulted from causes related to COVID-19.

Wells represented Nevada in the 1959 Miss America pageant, and made appearances in other TV series before being cast in “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964.

She reprised her role of Mary Ann in several TV movies and spinoff series.

On Christmas Eve, Wells sat to record a "Christmas greeting," she posted on Facebook, and urged her followers to "keep your heart light and share a few laughs and conversation with someone near and far."




https://www.wxyz.com/entertainment/dawn-wells-who-played-mary-ann-on-gilligans-island-dies-from-covid-19-related-causes

The Latina Progressive Who Faced Down Texas Republicans

In late April, Lina Hidalgo stood at a microphone in the Harris County emergency operations center in Houston and pushed up the teal fabric face mask that had slipped off her nose. Her voice was slightly muffled as she spoke. Next to her, an American Sign Language interpreter translated for an audience that couldn’t see her lips. But there was no need to worry her message would be lost. Soon it would become the subject of debate across the country—and so would she.

Hidalgo, the county judge of Harris County—the top elected official in the nation’s third-largest county—announced that millions of people in the Houston area would be required to wear a face covering in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus. People who didn’t comply would risk a fine of up to $1,000. Behind her, charts and graphs told the statistical story that had led Hidalgo to this moment. Since early March, when the state’s first case of Covid-19 had been identified in Houston, the urban heart of Harris County, the number of infected people in the county had climbed to 3,800. That day, the death toll stood at 79 and Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, warned that number could “exponentially increase.”

Hidalgo had been bracing for the disease for weeks. She had sought advice from officials in King County in Washington state, the nation’s first hot spot. Armed with their insight, she rallied her own emergency management and public health officials to prepare a response and on March 16 ordered the closure of bars and restaurant dining rooms. Initially, state officials followed suit. Three days after Hidalgo’s order, Gov. Greg Abbott declared a public health disaster for the first time in more than a century. Texans huddled indoors. But by early April, pressure was mounting on Abbott to end the lockdown. Hidalgo was pulling the other way.

What has transpired over the past several months in Texas is more than an object lesson in public health. The larger battle over the response to the coronavirus—epitomized by the policy disputes between Hidalgo and Abbott—has revealed rifts in a once deeply red state where Republicans have long ruled statewide elections but where demographic shifts in its big cities have offered Democrats reason to think they can compete in the most important races. Hidalgo’s forceful if controversial handling of the pandemic in the state’s largest metro area has provided Democrats with an example of what the youthful progressive wing of their party can do when it has the power to make decisions on the ground in a life-and-death situation.




https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/02/latina-progressive-texas-lina-hidalgo-407001

Valerie June - If And

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Trump's worst pardon is one you haven't heard about

Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner, Stephanie Mohr. You’ve probably heard about President Trump’s odious pre-Christmas pardons for the first three — and nothing about Mohr, a former Prince George’s County police officer. But Mohr’s pardon — for violating a homeless man’s civil rights by unleashing her K-9 on him — is equally, if not more undeserving. Of all the acts to pardon in a year that witnessed the killing of George Floyd, it is the most insensitive and inflaming.

I know; I was part of the team at the Justice Department’s civil rights division that helped prosecute Mohr in 2001.

In the middle of the night on Sept. 21, 1995, a local Prince George’s County police burglary stakeout unit found two homeless men on the empty roof of a business, eating food they had found in the trash in Takoma Park, Md. Ordered down from the roof, Ricardo Mendez and his friend willingly climbed down. Lit by a police helicopter above and facing a brick wall, the two men were surrounded by police officers, some with guns drawn, and Mohr holding her German shepherd on a leash. Both men obeyed commands and stood facing the wall with their hands up.

A police sergeant later testified that he was approached by Mohr’s supervising officer who said, “Hey Sarge, we got a new dog. Mind if it gets a bite?” The sergeant gave consent, and Mohr set her dog to attack Mendez, an undocumented immigrant whose only crime was seeking a safe place to eat and sleep. Mohr testified that she was doing her job as trained, and the victim needed “only 10 stitches.”

Think about that: only 10 stitches. Mohr disregarded her training to give her dog a taste of flesh and blood.

This was no accident or split-second mistake. It was a willful and deliberate act of police brutality. It was also not Mohr’s first — and there was a pattern to the violence. Evidence at trial showed that Mohr had previously released her dog on a Black teenager sleeping in a hammock in his own backyard. She had threatened the relatives of a fugitive that she would let her dog attack their “black ass” if they did not tell her where he was. There were other incidents that the jury did not even learn about, including one in which Mohr put her dog into a trash dumpster to attack a man who had fled from police.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/29/trump-pardons-stephanie-mohr-prince-georges/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main

Anthony Warner's girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Police were warned Anthony Warner was making bombs in his RV more than a year before his Christmas morning attack in downtown Nashville.

The tip came from Warner's distraught girlfriend in August of 2019.

Police went to Warner's home the day of the complaint, but were unable to make contact with him.

The case was later closed as unfounded.

The police report from August 21, 2019, shows police responded to the home of a woman who had threatened to kill herself.

She told officers that her boyfriend - Anthony Warner - "was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence."



https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/warners-girlfriend-warned-police-he-was-building-bombs-in-his-rv-last-year

Kelly Loeffler's Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported

As she campaigns for reelection in the January 5 run-off, Kelly Loeffler, the super-wealthy former corporate executive and Republican donor who was appointed in late 2019 to a vacant US Senate seat in Georgia, has had to deal with bruising revelations about her personal finances and business dealings. These include the fact that when she entered the Senate in January 2020, she was given a spot on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees government regulators of the Fortune 500 business where she was recently a top officer. The company, Intercontinental Exchange (known as ICE), owns and operates a number of financial and commodity exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which falls under jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee.

Loeffler’s assignment to the committee seemed a whopping conflict of interest: She still owned between $5 million and $25 million in ICE stock, and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is its CEO. Worse, Loeffler was placed on the committee’s subcommittee on commodities, which has direct oversight of the CFTC. In response to criticism, she left the subcommittee in May but remained a member of the full committee.

Yet one piece of this tale has received little notice. Her conflict of interest was even more pronounced, for while Loeffler was on the commodities subcommittee, the CFTC took several actions that impacted ICE. This means Loeffler was overseeing regulators at the same time they were engaged in activity affecting a company she was intimately tied to as a current shareholder, former executive, and spouse of its CEO. That’s very swampy.

The CFTC is highly important for ICE. As the firm’s annual report put it, several of its exchanges are “subject to extensive regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.” The Wall Street Journal noted that the CFTC’s “rule-making agenda can have a major impact on the company’s operations.” While a senior exec at ICE, Loeffler criticized the CFTC for proposing “excess regulation.”





https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/kelly-loefflers-conflict-of-interest-is-even-worse-than-reported/