Before the Eagles were the Eagles, they were Linda Ronstadt’s backup band. Here they are performing Desperado.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB6qQmDi9Y
Billionaire Leon Cooperman asked Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exactly what it is that he has done wrong. They refused to answer him.
The Washington Post recently published this article on billionaire Leon Cooperman.
The article states:
He… wrote letters to politicians such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) whenever they criticized billionaires in their speeches, because he couldn’t understand: What exactly had he done wrong? What rule had he broken? He’d been born to poor immigrant parents on the losing end of a capitalist economy. He’d attended public schools, taken on debt to become the first in his family to attend college, worked 80-hour weeks, made smart decisions, benefited from some good luck, amassed a fortune for himself and for his clients and paid hundreds of millions in taxes to the government. He had a wife of 57 years, two successful children, and three grandchildren who were helping him decide how to give most of his money away to a long list of charities. “My life is the story of the American Dream,” he’d said while accepting an award at one charity gala, and he’d always imagined himself as the rags-to-riches hero, only to now find himself cast as the greedy villain in a story of economic inequality run amok.
Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez have all refused to answer Cooperman’s question.
YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON TELEVISION (1979-1990) – Gone But Not Forgotten
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scSyaRXcHp4
Here’s more proof that San Francisco is pro-crime. They just released a guy who is allegedly responsible for half of the city’s anti-Asian hate crimes that occurred last year. The voters are getting exactly what they voted for.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 30, 2022
Derik Barreto has allegedly been a very busy guy.
He is allegedly single-handedly responsible for half of all the anti-Asian hate crimes that were committed in San Francisco last year.
Under a system of traditional justice, he would be in jail for a very, very long time.
But the voters of San San Francisco are against traditional justice.
Instead, the voters of San Francisco support something that they refer to as “social justice.”
Under this system of “social justice,” serial criminals cannot be kept in prison, because to do so would be “racist.”
So instead of putting this serial criminal in a “racist” prison, they are allowing him to roam free, committing as many hate crimes against Asians as he wants.
The voters of San Francisco are getting exactly what they voted for.
Video from Georgia shows election cheater making video of his cheating so he could get paid $10 for each vote
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 30, 2022
In Georgia, this guy made a video of himself illegally dropping other people’s ballots into dropboxes so he could get paid $10 for each vote.
The organization that made the video of the guy making the video says it has enough videos of enough people dropping off enough of other people’s votes, illegally, in enough states, that the total number of these votes is big enough in enough states that if they were all rejected due to their illegality, Trump would be the winner of the election.
Here’s the tweet where I got the video from:
https://twitter.com/GAballots/status/1487209392915288064
And in case Twitter deletes the video, I have uploaded it to my BitChute account at this link: https://www.bitchute.com/video/zfZWXlX6u4EQ/
Credit to Gateway Pundit for bringing the video to my attention.
In California, the leftists who see “racism” everywhere are now claiming that their own rooftop solar program creates “racist” “inequities.” Their contradictory “solution” is to create a new tax on the very same solar power that they are subsidizing.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 30, 2022
For more than 20 years, California has been giving homeowners financial incentives to install rooftop solar panels on their homes. The goal here is to encourage the use of solar power.
Because whatever you subsidize you get more of, the program has more than achieved its goal of one million solar rooftop installations.
That should be a cause for celebration.
Except that we’re talking about leftists here. And leftists always find something to complain about.
In this particular case, they are claiming that their own very successful program, which they have been supporting for more than two decades, has created “racism” and “inequities.”
And their proposed “solution” to this “racism” and “inequity” is to create a new tax on the very rooftop solar installations that they have been subsidizing for more than two decades.
Just as subsidies lead to an increase in whatever is being subsidized, taxes lead to a reduction in whatever is being taxed.
So instead of celebrating the success of their own solar rooftop program, the left is now trying to discourage the very same thing that it had been encouraging for more than 20 years.
NEW VIDEO: VoterGA Releases Video of Georgia Ballot Trafficker Holding Up His Ballots and Taking a Photo Before Dumping Them in Ballot Dropbox
NEW VIDEO: VoterGA Releases Video of Georgia Ballot Trafficker Holding Up His Ballots and Taking a Photo Before Dumping Them in Ballot Dropbox
By Jim Hoft
January 29, 2022
https://twitter.com/GAballots/status/1487209392915288064
On Friday, VoterGA investigator David Cross released a sample of Gwinnett County drop box surveillance footage that his group acquired via FOIA request.
In the video, you can clearly see the man snapping a photo of his hand filled with ballots before he dumped them in the ballot dropbox.
Now, why would he do that?
Via The Storm Has Arrived.
This ballot trafficker was just one of 242 alleged ballot traffickers identified by the True the Vote investigation. There is a possibility of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of ballots that were stuffed into the ballot boxes in Georgia alone.
Heather Mullins from Real America’s Voice commented on her Telegram page.
According to Heather, “He fans out ballots, takes a photo, and places them in the dropbox. “It’s been reported that illegal ballot harvesters were paid $10 per ballot, and had to show proof.”
Liberty Overwatch added: True the Vote has compiled layers of evidence of organized ballot tracking in 6 states. In Georgia, they allege there were 242 traffickers who made 5,662 trips to ballot drop boxes between the early morning hours of 12 AM and 5 AM, potentially unloading hundreds of thousands of illegally harvested ballots over the course of several weeks.
Reminder — As TGP has reported earlier this week we recently signed an agreement with True the Vote that includes never before seen ballot dropbox surveillance video, 24 Terabytes of footage, with the election integrity group in their ongoing investigation.
Orcas observed devouring the tongue of a blue whale just before it dies in first-ever documented hunt of the largest animal on the planet
https://www.yahoo.com/news/orcas-observed-devouring-tongue-blue-092922554.html
Orcas observed devouring the tongue of a blue whale just before it dies in first-ever documented hunt of the largest animal on the planet
By Bethany Dawson
January 29, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7g7AVxOw5g
A study from Australia is the first to scientifically document the killings of blue whales by orcas.
Orcas were observed devouring the nutrient-rich tongues of the giant blue whales.
“This is the biggest predation event on this planet,” said a marine scientist.
For the first time, a pack of orcas — also known as killer whales — have been observed hunting and killing blue whales, the largest animal on the planet.
According to a report published in Marine Mammal Science, the scientific community has long debated if orcas can hunt the massive blue whales.
But this question has now been answered after three instances of packs of orcas attacking blue whales off the coast of Western Australia were recorded by marine scientists from Cetrec WA (Cetacean Research). It includes details of how the killer whales swam inside the mouth of the enormous whales to eat their nutritionally rich tongue just before they died.
“Here we provide the first documentation of killer whales killing and eating blue whales: two individuals killed, 16 days apart in 2019, and a third in 2021,” researchers wrote in the paper. “Notably, the first whale taken appeared to be a healthy adult.”
Researchers arrived at the first killing of a 72 foot-long blue whale to see large chunks of skin and blubber having been gouged its body and with most of the dorsal fin having been bitten off.
It was followed by relentless attacks by the orcas, where three lined up against the blue whale and pushed it underwater, while two attacked its head.
The study explains that 50 orcas joined the pack for six hours to feed on the carcass.
A few weeks later, the next attack occurred when a blue whale calf was targeted. Twenty-five orcas attacked the 40-foot long animal.
The final attack recorded by the study was on a 45-foot long blue whale, chased for 15 miles in a 90 minutes hunt. Again, the orcas hunting strategy was to push and ram the whale under the water while others attacked its head and tongue. A 50-strong pack devoured the remains of the kill.
Mother orcas are the lead aggressors
Previous studies thought that orca attacks had to be executed by the biggest killer whales — who are male and can grow to 30 feet in length— to be successful. However, the breakthrough study documented these killings were led by female orcas, with the study saying that the drive to feed their offspring may make them more aggressive.
“This is the biggest predation event on this planet: the biggest apex predator taking down the biggest prey,” study co-author Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, told National Geographic. “We don’t have dinosaurs anymore, so for me as a whale biologist and a zoologist. It’s an amazing thing.”
Speech Therapist: 364% Surge in Baby and Toddler Referrals Thanks to Mask Wearing
Speech Therapist: 364% Surge in Baby and Toddler Referrals Thanks to Mask Wearing
Young children developing cognitive problems due to widespread use of face coverings.
By Paul Joseph Watson
January 27, 2022
A speech therapist says that mask wearing during the pandemic has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers.
Jaclyn Theek told WPBF News that before the pandemic, only 5 per cent of patients were babies and toddlers, but this has soared to 20 per cent.
Parents are describing their children’s speech problems as “COVID delayed,” with face coverings the primary cause of their speaking skills being seriously impaired.
As young as 8 months old, babies start learning how to speak by reading lips, a thankless task if parents and carers smother themselves with masks to comply with mandates.
“It’s very important kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,” said Theek.
The news report featured one such mother, Briana Gay, who is raising five children but having speech problems with her youngest.
“It definitely makes a difference when the world you’re growing up in you can’t interact with people and their face, that’s super important to babies,” said Gay.
According to Theek, since the pandemic, autism symptoms are also skyrocketing.
“They’re not making any word attempts and not communicating at all with their family,” she said.
As we previously highlighted, Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma.
A study by researchers at Brown University found that mean IQ scores of young children born during the pandemic have tumbled by as much as 22 points while verbal, motor and cognitive performance have all suffered as a result of lockdown.
Michael Curzon noted that two of the primary causes for this are face masks and children being atomized as a result of being kept away from other children.
“Children born over the past year of lockdowns – at a time when the Government has prevented babies from seeing elderly relatives and other extended family members, from socialising at parks or with the children of their parent’s friends, and from studying the expressions on the faces behind the masks of locals in indoor public spaces – have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born before, according to a new U.S. study. Tests on early learning, verbal development and non-verbal development all produced results that were far behind those from the years preceding the lockdowns,” he wrote.
Perhaps all the virtue signalers who think of themselves as such morally upstanding people for wearing masks will change their behavior given they are literally contributing to causing major cognitive problems in children.
Or maybe they simply won’t care, given that the mask is now a political status symbol above anything else.
Black Mothers Launch Microschools to End School-Prison Pipeline
https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-mothers-launch-microschools-end-121500237.html
Black Mothers Launch Microschools to End School-Prison Pipeline
By Marianna McMurdock
January 26, 2022
In the Arizona desert, a new school model has Black parents driving across city lines to drop their children off each morning.
Frustrated with what they say is their public schools’ failure to provide quality education and nurturing environments for Black children and fearing the persistent school to prison pipeline, a group of mothers, many public school teachers, have created a network of their own schools.
Launched mid-pandemic just one year ago, the mothers’ goal is to grow the seven micoschools into 50.
“We could be advocating 24/7, and still not make the impact that we wanted to see. So, what do you do, do you go charter? Do you try to keep working in the public school system? Nope, nope, not us. We said, well, we can do it ourselves,” said Debora Colbert, executive director of the Black Mothers Forum, a Phoenix-based parent advocacy group.
In mixed-grade classes, students learn at their own pace and are guided by two teachers. Restorative discipline techniques, not punitive strategies, are the norm.
The Forum’s approach to learning has caught the attention of Arizona Governor Doug Ducey in a state where high school graduation rates hover about 8 percent below national averages and less than half of the graduating class went on to college in 2020.
With little to keep them there, students who do go onto higher education often leave the state and don’t look back, Colbert said.
In Phoenix-area churches, nonprofits and shared school buildings, 42 students comprise the first microschools launched last January with preliminary guidance from national microschool giant Prenda. The Forum’s sites have since made the transition to public charter schools within local network EdKey Sequoia Choice. (Arizona’s attorney general reportedly opened an investigation last year into Prenda’s operations with a separate, online EdKey school. Prenda lawyers say the investigation has since closed. The Attorney General’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Many of the Forum’s teachers, dubbed “learning guides” per the Prenda model, are religious leaders and parents from the community — many of whom left their placements in traditional schools for the opportunity.
Founders of the schools hope to change perceptions of the community they’ve so often heard from young people: “There’s nothing to keep me in Arizona, or Phoenix, to realize my dreams and my goals,” said Colbert.
“That’s not okay. We’re on a mission to kind of track where our children are, where they’re going, whether they are successful, and how to keep them connected to their communities,” she said.
Gov. Ducey has committed nearly $4 million in the last year to help grow its network of microschools to 50.
The forum has advocated for school reform since 2016, after nationwide violence against Black children and a series of high-profile police brutality cases involving Black Americans. Their mission became eliminating low expectations for Black children and school discipline policies that often end with Black children funneled into prison.
While the learning pod movement swept across the country’s white, affluent areas during the pandemic, outrage grew as the pandemic afflicted Black communities more than any other group and academic gaps grew along racial lines.
The moment became an opportunity for the Black Mothers Forum to formally launch and recruit for their own schools in January 2021.
Forum teacher and mother Tiffany Dudley believes having teachers who “looked like” her children at the microschools have made all the difference for her sons, Xavier, 7, and Jeremiah, 10.
“I kind of underestimated how much of a difference my child, being in an environment where he had people with the same skin color… how much of an impact mentally that had on him,” said Dudley.
Dudley often got calls from Xavier’s previous schools’ teachers about the “little things,” like how he played with his shoe laces instead of participating in a group activity. Mornings used to bring protests because he hated going to school.
After four months of microschooling, Xavier calls his out-of-state grandparents to recap school projects.
“Just literally being there in that environment changed how he perceived learning, and changed how he saw himself,” Dudley said.
Now a learning guide for a third through eighth grade cohort, Dudley said the student to teacher ratio, 10:2, is critical to help students transition from traditional schools.
There’s no hiding behind a dozen other peers who may be more vocal in the classroom, for example. Instead students are asked to problem solve, with support from teachers like Dudley:
“‘Okay, did you try this? How about we ask a friend?’ We’re just giving them strategies to teach them how to think critically to be able to solve problems because they are very used to being spoon fed answers,” she said.
The smaller classes allow their “connect, redirect” model, a complete departure from the no-excuses disciplinary policies many other charters adopted, to be the norm. When a student disrupts class or has trouble with an assignment, one guide talks with the child to uncover what might be affecting them. They then connect them to time, space, a venting session, food, counseling.
“They’re not going to be punished — this is an opportunity to figure out what’s going on … giving them that sense of ownership in that redirection, they are part of this process, that takes time,” Black Mother’s Forum Founder Janelle Wood said. “That’s why we need two learning guides in the space. If one child is having a problem, all of them may not be having the same problem. They can continue on with what they’re doing, but this one child may need some extra attention.”
In crafting schools with Black families at its center, the Forum also reimagined their physical locations. Instead of operating out of a family living room or garage, schools and community organizations were more realistic because their families didn’t have the extra space to host classes.
Renting church and nonprofit space provides added benefits, too: kids stay connected to Phoenix, and community groups that lost revenue during the pandemic are supported financially.
And since last school year, they’ve added an hour of instruction to each school day. The extra time preserved their morning wellness circles — students start each day by talking through their emotions — and independent reading, with which many struggle.
In perhaps the starkest intentional departure from traditional schools, students learn via the mastery approach in blended classrooms of students of different ages and grades, separated into K-2 and 3-8.
Through online learning tools like Zearn and iReady, some work grade levels ahead, others spend necessary time with foundational concepts like multiplication, as guides check in one-on-one.
Wood recognized their efforts had “to start at the school level, because that’s where our children, Black and brown children, are being negatively impacted at the highest level.”
Raina Chamblee, now a third grader at one of the microschools, recalled how her former Wisconsin public school was a particularly negative experience.
Diagnosed with ADHD, a new medication she was trying made her drowsy. She’d fall asleep in class, taunted and teased by classmates — behavior left unchecked by the teachers.
Once, a teacher lashed out at her directly.
“I colored a pink polar bear and then one of my teachers crumbled it up and threw it in the garbage,” Raina said.
Dudley said some of the difficulties Black children experience in school stems from the assumption that “‘this is a behavior problem’ […] instead of looking deeper to see, really see, the child.”
It’s why, she said, the miscoschools’ personal approach and connect-redirect models are necessary.
Detailing the last few months in Phoenix, Raina said her new school has made a difference in her learning. New teachers “push” and “help,” she said.
Her mother, Kylie Chamblee, noticed a difference in her ability to teach, too. She’s making deeper connections with her students.
When a student needs extra time with reading comprehension and is ahead in geometry, she can work with them more freely.
“That’s what I really like about our model for kids,” said Chamblee. “Because it can be challenging but then it can also be rewarding, because they’re getting what they need.”
How 1,500 Nuclear-Powered Water Desalination Plants Could Save The World From Desertification
How 1,500 Nuclear-Powered Water Desalination Plants Could Save The World From Desertification
By James Conca
July 14, 2019
About 20% of the world’s population has no access to safe drinking water, and this number will increase as the population continues to grow and global freshwater sources continue to decline. The worst-affected areas are the arid and semiarid regions of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
UNESCO has reported that the freshwater shortfall worldwide will rise to 500 trillion gallons/yr by 2025. They expect water wars to break out in the near-future. The World Economic Forum says that shortage of fresh water may be the primary global threat in the next decade.
But 500 trillion gallons/year only requires about 1,500 seawater desalination plants like the ones being built in California and Saudi Arabia. At a billion dollars a pop, that’s a lot cheaper than war and starvation.
Unfortunately, we presently desalinate only 10 trillion gallons/year worldwide.
As reported in the Tri-City Herald and NYTimes, stock exchange mutual funds have even formed surrounding water scarcity and have done quite well, like the AllianzGI Global Water Fund. This fund has averaged almost 10% since 2010 compared to under 6% for its average peer fund. These companies mainly deliver, test and clean drinking water.
In California, the MegaDrought, that ended in 2017 ran for five years, severely straining water supplies, agricultural needs and wildlife. It clarified the need to build new desalination plants like every other modern arid population in the world. Most of Abu Dhabi’s gas-fired power plants provide electricity to their huge desalination plants that deliver over a billion gallons of drinking water a day, at about 40¢/gallon. And it tastes good, too, I’ve tried it.
California needs 30 large desalination plants to deal with future megadroughts. They did recently build one in Carlsbad, but it’s not nearly enough.
Desalination technologies are capable of treating water from a wide variety of sources, including brackish groundwater, surface water, seawater, and domestic and industrial wastewater. While the wastewater from desalination is itself problematic, MIT has developed a process to turn it into useful products.
The two main types of desalination are:
– thermal desalination (using heat energy to separate the distillate from high salinity water), represented by Multiple Effect Distillation (MED), Multi-Stage Flash distillation (MSF) and Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC), the latter primarily used to desalinate highly salty waters and industrial wastewater for industrial use, not necessarily for drinking.
– reverse osmosis (RO) membrane separation, which uses a membrane barrier and pumping energy to separate salts from the water. These are common in homes and businesses.
Electrical energy is used for membrane-based systems and thermal energy is used for distillation systems. Some hybrid plants combine both membrane and distillation.
Most desalination plants in the world use fossil fuels to power them, but it’s even better to power them with nuclear energy. The new fleet of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) are ideal as they produce both thermal energy and electrical energy without producing greenhouse gases.
But only 15 out of the thousands of desalination plants operating today worldwide are powered by nuclear. A small one is at the Canyon Diablo Nuclear Plant in California, slated to be closed soon. The plant could power several huge desalination plants for decades that could desalinate its own cooling water, removing the most commonly stated problem with the plant.
In contrast, all nuclear-powered naval vessels routinely use nuclear energy to desalinate seawater.
SMRs, like NuScale’s, allow places with smaller electrical grids and limited infrastructure to add new electrical and water capacity in small increments and allow countries to site them as needed at many distributed locations. NuScale’s small power module is in its last stages of licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and will be ready in only a few years.
NuScale’s small power modules are about 60 MW each and up to 12 of them can be put together to make a power plant up to 720 MW – a 12-pack. They use standard 17×17 PWR fuel assemblies, but only at half the height, with an average U235 enrichment of only 3.8%. A single NuScale nuclear power module is 76-feet tall and 15-feet in diameter, and sits in a plant covering 32 acres or only 0.05 square miles.
Refueling of any SMR does not require the nuclear plant to shut down. The small size and large surface area-to-volume ratio of the reactor core, that sits below ground in a super seismic-resistant heat sink, allows natural processes to cool it indefinitely in the case of complete power blackout, with no humans needed to intervene, no AC or DC power, no pumps, and no additional water for cooling.
This reactor cannot melt down.
Studies by Ingersoll and others show how nuclear power and desalination can be coupled, and how much it costs. They coupled a NuScale power plant with eight modules to each of the desalination technologies – Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) and Multi-Stage Flash distillation (MSF) with either high pressure (HP) steam taken before admission into the turbine, medium pressure (MP) steam taken from a controlled extraction of the turbine, and low pressure (LP) steam taken from the exhaust end of the turbine, and reverse osmosis (RO).
They sized the desalination plant to have a production capacity of 50 million gallons per day (190,000 m3/day) of drinking water, typical of a large municipal desalination plant like the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, and that can support a population of 300,000.
The table below summarizes their economic analysis. For drinking water, the NuScale-RO design is the cheapest and produces the most water per energy used, with LP-MED distillation a close second. Since a NuScale power plant will last at least 80 years, the payback is even better.
There are other technologies that have been, and are being, used as well, including the more economical water reuse. The City of Redlands in California is using a membrane bioreactor technology from GE that recycles over 6 million gallons/day of municipal wastewater.
Whatever technologies are selected, southern California needs to build the equivalent of 30 desalination plants the size of Carlsbad’s to produce over a billion gallons a day, solving most of the water problems of southern California. The Central Valley would need another 30 plants to deal with its agricultural needs as its groundwater is becoming increasingly salty.
Powered by SMRs, these plants would more than pay for themselves by their own revenue, although a small water tax would get them started faster.
California better get moving. It’s been a reasonable two years, but more MegaDroughts are on the way.
Cuban Goes to Home Depot for FIRST TIME – DREAM CAME TRUE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLsscvpsH8E
Sotomayor’s false claim that ‘over 100,000’ children are in ‘serious condition’ with covid
Sotomayor’s false claim that ‘over 100,000’ children are in ‘serious condition’ with covid
By Glenn Kessler
January 8, 2022
“Those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did. … We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, during oral argument at the Supreme Court, Jan. 7
Several readers questioned these remarks by Sotomayor, made during a hearing on whether the Biden administration’s nationwide rules ordering a vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers were constitutional. Her remarks came during an exchange with Ben Flowers, Ohio’s solicitor general, as he referred to a brief filed by the American Commitment Foundation, which argued that the rise of the omicron variant had made the vaccine rules less relevant because vaccines do not appear especially effective against it.
The Facts
The brief in question sought to update the court on latest scientific and technical information on the omicron variant, as that had emerged with force after the mandate was proposed. Epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Andrew Bostom, who says he is affiliated with Brown University, helped advise on it.
Its key argument, citing data from countries such as South Africa and Denmark, was that omicron cases were 80 percent less likely to get hospitalized (South Africa) and three times less likely to end up with hospital admissions than the delta variant (Denmark). Moreover, the brief argued, the case fatality rate in South Africa plunged dramatically when omicron became dominant.
Flowers, who said he had been twice vaccinated and received a booster, participated remotely after testing positive for covid. His symptoms were said to be “exceptionally mild.”
“My presence here as a triple vaccinated individual by phone” suggested “vaccines do not appear to be very effective in stopping the spread or transmission,” he said, though he added that vaccines are effective at preventing “severe consequences.” That’s when Sotomayor interrupted him to assert “those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did.” She argued that “saying it’s a different variant just underscores the fact” a workplace rule was needed.
Actually, as we have shown, that’s not what the brief said. In fact, it even argued that vaccinated individuals might be more likely to catch covid rather than unvaccinated individuals. (The brief refers mainly to people with two vaccine doses as “vaccinated,” not people who also received a booster.) The brief suggests “this may be because unvaccinated, covid-recovered patients have better protection versus omicron than vaccinated patients who never previously had covid.”
Nevertheless, the spike in cases has led to increased hospitalizations, Sotomayor noted during the exchange. Almost 30 percent of intensive-care beds are filled with covid patients as of Jan. 8, according the Health and Human Services Department data.
But then Sotomayor went off the rails: “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
That’s wildly incorrect, assuming she is referring to hospitalizations, given the reference to ventilators. According to HHS data, as of Jan. 8 there are about 5,000 children hospitalized in a pediatric bed, either with suspected covid or a confirmed laboratory test. This figure includes patients in observation beds. So Sotomayor’s number is at least 20 times higher than reality, even before you determine how many are in “serious condition.”
Moreover, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been less than 100,000 — 82,843 to be exact — hospital admissions of children confirmed with covid since Aug. 1, 2020.
Still, the current seven-day average (Dec. 30-Jan. 5) is 797, which is a sharp increase from the week before (441) and represents the peak seven-day average for children, the CDC said. So Sotomayor is not wrong to suggest the rate of pediatric admissions is cause for concern. On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported a sharp rise in pediatric cases, with many of the children unvaccinated. (Some children are hospitalized for other reasons and then test positive for covid through screenings at the hospital.)
The Supreme Court media office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Pinocchio Test
It’s important for Supreme Court justices to make rulings based on correct data. There has been a spike in pediatric cases with covid, even if the omicron variant appears less deadly. But Sotomayor during an oral argument offered a figure — 100,000 children in “serious condition … many on ventilators” — that is absurdly high. She earns Four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
Student debt forgiveness should be funded by fraudulent colleges that sold worthless degrees, instead of by innocent taxpayers
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 17, 2022
Democrats think that innocent taxpayers should be forced to pay off student debt.
I think this is a horrible idea.
I’m a Libertarian, which means that I am against punishing innocent taxpayers.
It also means that I, unlike Democrats, understand the horrible incentives that would be created if innocent taxpayers were forced to pay off student debt. Such a policy would encourage colleges to raise their tuitions even more than they already have, and would also encourage future students to borrow even more money than what had been borrowed by past students. This would make the problem of student debt worse, not better.
By comparison, my proposal would not do these harmful things. On the contrary, my proposal would cause colleges to think very hard before they encourage their students and potential students to borrow money. It would also encourage colleges to reconsider their current policy of offering worthless majors that cause their graduates to end up working at Starbucks.
HUGE INSULT to Kathleen Kennedy HIDDEN in Book of Boba Fett – PROOF Kennedy’s Power is GONE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx9_ftsmzEE
Idiot smoker kills 12 people in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
A 5-year-old boy who escaped the fire that killed 12 people in a Fairmount apartment Wednesday told investigators the blaze started after he accidentally lit a Christmas tree on fire while playing with a lighter, according to police records obtained by The Inquirer.
I don’t blame the child for this.
I do blame the smoker who left their lighter within reach of the child.
Belgian surgeon sentenced to ten months in prison over sexist speech
Belgian surgeon sentenced to ten months in prison over sexist speech
Cosmetic surgeon Jeff Hoeyberghs insisted he was only speaking ‘the truth’ when he called women ‘hysterical, lazy, weak, stupid’
By Justin Stares
January 4, 2022
A cosmetic surgeon from Belgium has been handed a ten-month prison sentence for a lecture in which he complained that women were no longer willing to give sexual favours in exchange for protection and money from men.
Judges in Flanders said the speech by Jeff Hoeyberghs, 60, merited the prison sentence, half of which is suspended, on the grounds that he not only intended to incite discrimination, hatred and violence against women but also refused to apologise.
Hoeyberghs insisted he was only speaking the “truth”, while some politicians claimed his freedom of speech was being curtailed.
In his 2019 speech at Ghent University, Hoeyberghs called women “hysterical, lazy, weak, stupid” and “dirty creatures, who seek money and protection from men to whom they owe sex”.
Women served “to satisfy men sexually and perform household chores”, he said, but “don’t want to open their legs anymore”.
Women could be compared to “animals” with “udders”, the surgeon told his postgraduate audience.
Specific women, including students in the auditorium, a TV broadcaster, and green activist Greta Thunberg, were targeted with insults.
Women were “worthless” in the role of doctors, judges, teachers, scientists, journalists, and business executives, Hoeyberghs said.
‘Stupid and outrageous’
Hoeyberghs, who qualified as a cosmetic surgeon in the UK and is a frequent TV commentator in Belgium, was invited to speak by the university.
The speech, which was filmed by students and broadcast live on Facebook, resulted in more than 1,500 complaints.
In court, Hoeyberghs’ lawyer said none of those personally targeted had sued for defamation.
The accusations, the surgeon claimed, were evidence of a “well-oiled international machine of communist signature and with Western state subversion as the ultimate goal”.
Judges dismissed his arguments, ruling that Hoeyberghs’ “criminal behaviour threatens a peaceful society where there is room for all people, regardless of their gender.
“It creates a hostile atmosphere in society and contributes to even more strife, discord, conflict and violence”.
But Bart De Wever, mayor of Antwerp and leader of the nationalist New Flemish Alliance Party, said: “Hoeyberghs’ statements were stupid and outrageous. But reprehensible is different from punishable. Freedom cannot be protected by restricting it”.
Hoeyberghs has said he will appeal.
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