Tracker

Got my double-double card today, so I'm OK and I'm not even a lumberjack.

Does that spell trouble?

We don't have enough page room.

Its the "frog in a pot of water" scenario. If you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, it ill jump out immediately. If you put the frog into pot of cool water and turn the heat up slowly, the frog will recalibrate again and again until it dies without jumping out.

Donald Trump's military coup didn't (quite) happen — but it was much closer than we knew Ever more damning revelations about Donald Trump's regime began first as a trickle, then became a persistent leak, eventually a torrent and are now seemingly a tsunami. For more than four years, many prominent public voices continued to deny that Trump led a neofascist movement that posed an existential threat to American democracy. Too many Americans, to protect themselves from trauma or to evade personal responsibility for their inaction or indifference or passivity, have also consistently denied the dangers of Trumpism. Even after Trump's attempted coup and his followers' attack on the U.S. Capitol, public opinion polls suggest that tens of millions of Americans would prefer to throw the horrors of Trumpism and the events of that day down the memory well. That will not save them from the reality of what has happened, and is still happening, as Trumpism, the Jim Crow Republican Party and the white right escalate their assault on American democracy and freedom. The proverbial flood waters are getting higher with each set of new "revelations" about the last days of the Trump regime. On Wednesday, CNN published excerpts from "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," the forthcoming book by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker. A lengthier excerpt followed in the Post on Thursday. CNN's explosive report focused on the possibility that Trump contemplated a military coup: The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN. The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised. Donald Trump's military coup didn't (quite) happen — but it was much closer than we knew | Salon.com "It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse," Leonnig and Rucker write. ... Milley felt "growing concerns," the report continues, that Trump had placed loyalists in positions of power after the November 2020 election, replacing both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William Barr. He feared these personnel moves "were the sign of something sinister to come":

Gezundheit.

I think that Dean was one of the players that blew out his knee earlier this week.

It has been the hallmark of PC governments that they cannot maintain any degree of integrity beyond one term. The current government of Saskatchewan is an anomaly in that respect, but the arrogance and disdain Conservatives hold the electorate in inevitably, sooner or later- almost always sooner, emerges.

Epidemiologists in the US are grimly expecting another wave in mid-to-late September that will arise in the south of the US, and leak out into the rest of the country as people flee from the plague areas.

In all of our lives, there is usually only one place that feels like home. I have lived in four provinces and Winnipeg is home to me. When we returned after three years in Alberta, the sense of being where I belonged was overwhelming and got better every day. Its an imperfect city in an imperfect province, but its home, now and forevermore.

And here I thought all along that it was alcohol.

'Is this real?': Trump leaves people stunned with 'insane' rant about his aides being 'made of garbage' In his eighth statement of the day, shared by spokeswoman Liz Harrington on Twitter, former president Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon appeared to take aim at associates who've given interviews to authors of several new damning books about his administration. "Nobody had ever heard of some of these people that worked for me in D.C.," Trump wrote. "All of a sudden, the Fake News starts calling them. Some of them — by no means all — felt emboldened, brave, and for the first time in their lives, they feel like 'something special,' not the losers that they are — and they talk, talk, talk! "Many say I am the greatest star-maker of all time," Trump added. "But some of the stars I produced are actually made of garbage." 'Is this real?': Trump leaves people stunned with 'insane' rant about his aides being 'made of garbage' - Alternet.org (If he was referring to his offspring, he may have a point)

Also: Top General Feared Trump Would Use Military To Stay In Power, Compared Him To Nazis: Book Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was deeply worried that then-President Donald Trump would refuse to leave the White House and warned colleagues he was afraid the man would try to use the military to stay in office, according to book excerpts published Wednesday. Milley, the nation’s top military officer, also compared Trump’s actions to the rise of Adolf Hitler, saying he viewed the president as a “classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose” after Democratic rival Joe Biden won the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes, CNN and The Washington Post reported. “This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “The gospel of the Führer.” The excerpts are from the forthcoming book “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” written by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, which is due out July 20. It chronicles the former president’s final year in office and includes several revelations about the chaotic waning days of his tenure. The pair said they interviewed more than 140 people, many of whom had requested anonymity so they could speak candidly about their experiences. Top General Feared Trump Would Use Military To Stay In Power, Compared Him To Nazis: Book | HuffPost ‘This guy’s crazy’: New book claims Nancy Pelosi feared Trump would launch a nuclear attack during his final weeks in office During his four years in the White House, paleoconservatives applauded former President Donald Trump for having an "America first" foreign policy they considered more isolationist and less hawkish than President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama. And when Trump supporters used the word "neocon" to describe Bush-era Republicans, they certainly didn't mean it as a compliment. But according to Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi feared that Trump would launch some type of nuclear attack during his final months in the White House. This revelation comes from Leonnig and Rucker's new book, "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," due out January 20 on Amazon. Pelosi, according to the book, shared her fears with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and told him, "This guy's crazy. He's dangerous. He's a maniac." Milley, in response, told Pelosi, "Mam, I guarantee you that we have checks and balances in the system." ‘This guy’s crazy’: New book claims Nancy Pelosi feared Trump would launch a nuclear attack during his final weeks in office - Alternet.org

The absolute worst mass-murdered was Genghis Khan. He and his hordes killed some 40 million people with good old fashioned spears, swords and arrows. It is. estimated that his victims were about 11% of the population of Asia and actually is reflected in the carbon records of that era. Only time and distance stopped his Mongols from rolling right over Europe as well. He was also a prolific breeder- I seem to recall that almost 10% of the population of east Asia are related to him. Makes me wonder when he had time to do all that pillaging.

There are several things going on here that prevent Republicans from believing that Biden legitimately won the election: first, is the "filter bubble" effect — the news conservatives trust tells them that Biden did not win legitimately and the news that they don't trust tells them that he did. It's easy to ignore the news that they distrust, they may never even hear the correct facts. Second, the "illusory truth" effect, which says that if something is repeated enough that people will believe it. Conservatives have heard since 2016 that Democrats cheat at elections, that they can't be trusted and Trump could only lose if they cheat. Third, the "self-sealing" nature of conspiracy in general. Once a conspiracy takes hold it can never be disproven. Fourth, motivated reasoning. Conservatives want to believe that they won, so that means that Biden had to cheat. Fifth, the issue falls into what persuasion theorists call the "latitude of rejection." When people have their minds made up about something, then they aren't open to persuasion — especially if they have their minds made up against something.

This is a shock- that a PC would have a conscience and a backbone.

Emails Reveal Cops Fanned Flames as FBI Debunked Antifa Hoax On Sept. 11, 2020, the same day the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a statement dismissing rumors that leftist activists were starting wildfires in Oregon, a sheriff in Washington state sent a very different message to other members of law enforcement. “One of the methods Antifa is using to start fires, is to take a mason jar with tinder placed inside the jar, put it in brush with the lid open, so the hot sun light will create a slow start which allows them to be out of the area before the smoke appears [sic],” Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer wrote in an email to officials throughout the state. The email, obtained by the government transparency group Property Of The People and reviewed by The Daily Beast, came as wildfires and misinformation swept the Pacific Northwest. Rumors like these, which falsely accused anti-fascists or Black Lives Matter activists of starting the wildfires after a summer of rage over racist police violence, were not without consequence. On at least one occasion, a family was attacked during a camping trip by Washingtonians who wrongly believed their converted camper-bus to be an “antifa” transport vehicle. Songer’s email blasted the bus-owner as “antifa/BLM,” months after their harrowing story made national news. Emails Reveal Cops Fanned Flames as FBI Debunked Antifa Hoax | Usa today news (usa-today-news.com)

Trump's DOJ attempted to seize records of WaPo journalist over report Russian leaks: report The Trump-led U.S. Department of Justice attempted to seize communication records for three Washington Post by way of legal action as a response to their reports on Russian interference, unsealed court documents reveal. According to Axios, the latest report is a critical piece of information because the court order was filed just one day before U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced his departure. The publication notes that the court order sought to obtain details about classified information included in a number of Washington Post articles written by Adam Entous, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima. The Trump administration wanted to find key details about the leaked information in the three articles, per the publication. Those items are as follows: "One article from May 2017 on conversations President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner had with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the U.S. A June 2017 report on how the Obama administration dealt with U.S. election interference by Russia's government. A July 2017 piece on discussions between Kislyak and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, who went on to become the Trump administration's first attorney general." Trump's DOJ attempted to seize records of WaPo journalist over report Russian leaks: report - Alternet.org

Apparently the aim was to deny girls access to the papilloma-preventing vaccination that would immunize them from this sexually-transmitted cancer. As we all know, once young people are protected against sexually-transmitted infections, they go completely wild and have orgies all over the place. This is such a noble cause that if a "few" die of COVID, it is an acceptable collateral damage.

Tennessee Health Officials Halt All Vaccine Outreach for Kids After Pressure From GOP ‘ Though coronavirus cases are soaring and the state lags the country in vaccinations, Republicans are pushing the state's health department to pull back. Jack Guez/Getty The Tennessee Health Department is stopping all vaccine-related outreach to minors amid pressure from Republicans in the state and rising coronavirus cases. The halted education efforts concern not only the COVID-19 vaccine, which the state has struggled to roll out, but all preventatives aimed at people under 18 for diseases like the flu or HPV. People over the age of 12 are eligible for coronavirus vaccines. If the agency does distribute information about vaccines, Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey informed staff to remove the department’s logo from any materials, the Tennessean reports. Tennessee Health Officials Halt All Vaccine Outreach for Kids After Pressure From GOP (thedailybeast.com)

Federal Judge Dismisses Roy Moore Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Roy Moore against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who ridiculed the former Alabama Chief Justice on his 2018 Showtime series “Who Is America?” U.S. District Judge John Cronan of the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment in favor of the comedian and dismissed Moore’s suit with prejudice so it cannot be refiled, according to AL.com. Showtime Networks Inc. and its parent company CBS Corporation were also granted summary judgment. The failed Alabama Senate candidate filed the suit in September 2018, accusing the comedian of defaming him by calling him a pedophile and a sex offender. Moore also alleged fraud in the court filing on the grounds that Baron Cohen tricked him and his wife into flying to Washington to accept a nonexistent award for his support of Israel. Moore, who lost a 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones after being accused of sexually assaulting multiple teenage girls, said Baron Cohen mocked him during the TV segment using a “device supposedly invented by the Israeli Army to detect pedophiles.” Federal Judge Dismisses Roy Moore Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen | HuffPost

The paucity of reports coming out of training camp is disappointing and annoying. Even the Free Press articles are really thin on details.

I have mixed feelings about this, but if increased revenue will allow teams to field better players and become more financially viable so that we don't stagger from one crisis of ownership to another, I think I can live with it. It might even bring a higher profile to the league and get more butts in seats. Everything costs something.