Family Of Palestinian Slain By Israel Denies He Was Attacker
Family Of Palestinian Slain By Israel Denies He Was Attacker https://digitalalabamanews.com/family-of-palestinian-slain-by-israel-denies-he-was-attacker/
BEIT IJZA, West Bank — Relatives pushed back Sunday against Israeli claims that a Palestinian teacher intentionally rammed an Israeli police car before he was shot dead by security forces.
The family of 36-year-old Mohammed Abu Kafieh said he had no possible reason to carry out an attack, noting that he was a father of three and had just opened a new business. His relatives said they believe he accidentally crashed into a police car Saturday before troops opened fire.
“He is not the kind of man that commits attacks,” said Abu Kafieh’s cousin, Mohammed Nimer.
The army has said soldiers spotted a car attempting to ram them and then shot Abu Kafieh.
Photos of the incident published online by Palestinian media show an Israeli police car and another vehicle, both with smashed front ends.
Palestinian assailants have carried out dozens of attempted stabbings and car rammings in recent years. Palestinians and human rights groups say that Israeli troops often use excessive force, and in some cases, have shot people who did not pose a threat.
The incident took place near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank — the focal point of the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in the occupied territory since 2015.
While mourning together in the village of Beit Ijza near Jerusalem, family members told The Associated Press that Abu Kafieh was a loving father and well-liked in the community. He mentored students and had invited the community to an opening ceremony for a new business venture selling mobile phones and accessories.
He was on the road to Nablus to buy supplies for the opening of his shop when he was shot, his family said.
“The opening ceremony was today, he invited everybody,” Abu Kafieh’s sister Nuha said through tears while standing next to one of his three kids. “With God as my witness, he was not going to commit an attack or anything, he was looking out for his livelihood and the livelihood of his children.”
Dozens of people at the gathering of mourners paid respects beneath banners of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party. Another poster was a collage of Abu Kafieh alongside Abbas’ predecessor, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a key Islamic shrine as well as a Fatah-linked gunman recently killed in an Israeli raid in Nablus.
It was not immediately clear what Abu Kafieh’s relationship to Fatah or its armed offshoot was, if any. At times, factions lay claim to Palestinians killed by Israel during the mourning period.
Nimer said the family is awaiting the return of the body from the army and hopes to be able to view footage from surveillance cameras from the area of the incident.
The army did not immediately respond to questions Sunday about the body but said that there was no surveillance video.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry alleged that Israeli forces had engaged in a “criminal execution.”
Israeli troops have stepped up operations in the northern West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks inside Israel in the spring. Several attackers came from the area.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed, making 2022 the deadliest year in the occupied territory since 2015. Most of the Palestinians killed have been wanted militants or young men and teenagers who throw stones or firebombs at soldiers invading their towns.
But some civilians, including an Al Jazeera journalist and a lawyer who inadvertently drove into a battle zone, have also been killed in the violence.
In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a suspected Palestinian gunman during an arrest raid overnight in the northern West Bank, according to Israeli and Palestinian reports.
The army said it spotted a group of armed men traveling in a car and on a motorcycle during an operation near the city of Nablus and opened fire. The Den of Lions, a local militant group, said one of its members, Sayid al-Kuni, was killed in a “clash with the occupation forces.”
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Talty: Tennessee Looks Legit; Brooks Could Be Tide Top WR
Talty: Tennessee Looks Legit; Brooks Could Be Tide Top WR https://digitalalabamanews.com/talty-tennessee-looks-legit-brooks-could-be-tide-top-wr/
The hire felt a bit lazy at first glance.
After athletic director Danny White left Central Florida for Tennessee, he opted to take his head coach, Josh Heupel, along with him. Central Florida was coming off a 6-4 season at the time, and you could argue that the program was slipping under Heupel after reaching a 13-0 peak under his predecessor Scott Frost.
Was Heupel the right man to get a Tennessee program beset by NCAA issues and dysfunction back on track?
Flash forward more than two years later, and the answer looks like yes. Heupel might have been the “easy” hire, but he also looks like the right hire. That feels especially true after Heupel guided Tennessee to an important 38-33 win over rival Florida on Saturday, the Volunteers’ first over the Gators since 2016 and only the second in the last 18 years. In front of a packed house at Neyland Stadium and with College GameDay in town, Heupel delivered big.
“Man, what a great night on campus and on Rocky Top,” Heupel said. “Fanbase, unbelievable energy. Knew it would be that way, but it even surpassed my expectations. The Vol Walk was unlike anything I’ve ever seen as a college football player or college coach.”
Heupel isn’t flashy off the field. He isn’t going to generate headlines with funny tweets or spicy press conference quotes. But he’s a good football coach who has surrounded himself with a quality staff that has the Tennessee fanbase thinking big. After exceeding expectations with a 7-6 record in 2021, Heupel has Tennessee undefeated headed into October. If Tennessee can survive a challenging road game against LSU on Oct. 8, it could set the stage for an undefeated top 10 showdown against Alabama on Oct. 15. It has been a long time since the Third Saturday in October had that kind of juice and implications on the SEC.
What will give Tennessee a chance to win that game is a Hendon Hooker-led high-powered offense that is averaging 48.5 points per game. Hooker had another nice night against the Gators, throwing for 349 yards and two touchdowns and then rushing for another 112 yards and a touchdown. Heupel and offensive coordinator Alex Golesh do a great job of getting the most out of Hooker, who has an argument as the SEC’s best quarterback not named Bryce Young. Former Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III called him the “runaway Heisman favorite” after his performance against the Gators. Hooker put up all those numbers without star receiver Cedric Tillman, who was out with an ankle injury, which makes the performance even more impressive.
Tennessee has already given Heupel an extension and raise which would feel premature in any other industry, but will prove smart if he keeps delivering big wins like Saturday’s. There’s reason for optimism that he can, too, with the recruiting talent Heupel is attracting to Knoxville. The Volunteers have the nation’s No. 9 recruiting class in 2023, headlined by reported $8 million man Nico Iamaleava. Ranked as the nation’s No. 4 overall prospect, Iamaleava has the chance to be a transcendent prospect for Tennessee to keep the positive momentum rolling.
A week ago, I wrote about how Auburn going outside-the-box with Bryan Harsin has proven to be a disaster. Heupel is a good example of sometimes the best thing you can do is just go with what you know and not overthink it.
GOODMAN: It was an instant classic for the SEC’s village idiots
TALTY: Auburn should get Lane Kiffin because Harsin isn’t it
SEC quick hitters
–AL.com columnist Joseph Goodman and The Lede columnist Kevin Scarbinsky both wrote about Auburn so I won’t spend a lot of time on what might be the weirdest game I’ve ever watched. But two things stuck out to me: 1) Auburn Jesus is alive and well within Jordan-Hare Stadium and 2) Bryan Harsin’s days are numbered.
–The big concern after Alabama barely survived with a win over Texas was the Tide’s lack of top receivers to open up the downfield passing game. You don’t want to overreact over one game, especially when the opponent is Vanderbilt, but Ja’Corey Brooks looks to be emerging as Alabama’s No. 1 receiver. Bryce Young seems to trust him, and most importantly, Brooks is finding ways to get open. The 6-foot-2, 196-pound sophomore had six catches for 117 yards and two touchdowns against the Commodores. Alabama wanted to spread out its receivers and be more aggressive in the passing game, setting Brooks and others up for success. Brooks won’t get as many targets as Jameson Williams did last season — this still feels like more of a by-committee approach — but he looks to be the most capable to be Young’s go-to target when it matters most. And if Brooks can deliver a similar performance next week against a much better Arkansas team, I’ll be a full believer.
RELATED: Young, Brooks help as Tide offense ‘proved a little something’
–Speaking of Arkansas, that one is going to sting for a long time. The Razorbacks looked like the better team all night, and yet Texas A&M is the team leaving AT&T Stadium with a win. The unfortunate field goal off the top of the goalpost — Paul Finebaum Show producer Danny Bramlette brilliantly referred to it as the “oink doink” — was rough, but the ill-advised attempt to have K.J. Jefferson jump over the pile from about 3-yards out is a play that will be etched into my head for a long time. Jefferson fumbled the ball and Texas A&M returned it for a 82-yard touchdown that completely changed the game. Arkansas now faces undefeated Alabama in a game that has become must win if the Razorbacks want to stay in the College Football Playoff conversation.
–Georgia didn’t look great against Kent State, but there’s no real reason for concern. There will be some duds along the way, and you’d much rather it happen against an overmatched Group of 5 team that can’t capitalize than against Tennessee.
Most pumped fanbase: Texas Tech
This was the easiest choice of the season after watching Texas Tech fans stream onto the field after an upset win over Texas. I’m not ready to agree with Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire’s “Everything runs through Lubbock” sentiment after the game, but it is undeniably an important win for the first-year head coach in establishing his program. Texas Tech also reminded us Saturday that Texas is still not back.
Most panicked fanbase: Miami
One week after losing to Texas A&M on the road, Miami got its butt kicked by Middle Tennessee State at home. WOOF. There is no excuse for losing to a Middle Tennessee team that scored passing touchdowns of 98, 71 and 69 yards against the Hurricanes. Mario Cristobal will recruit well and obviously fits in well within the Miami culture as an alumnus, but all the goodwill from his homecoming will evaporate in a heartbeat if he loses more games like this one.
Ranking Week 5 SEC games:
1) No. 2 Alabama at No. 10 Arkansas (2:30 p.m. CT) : The toughest test yet for Alabama against an Arkansas team coming off a loss in a game it should have won. We’ll learn a lot about this Tide team from this game.
2) No. 8 Kentucky at No. 16 Ole Miss (11:00 a.m. CT): Both teams have fun offenses and are contenders to win their divisions.
3) No. 23 Texas A&M at Mississippi State (3:00 p.m. CT) : The Aggies are back on track after wins over Miami and Arkansas. Mississippi State is a pretty good team and will have a good opportunity here for a top 25 win if Mike Leach can outsmart A&M defensive coordinator DJ Durkin.
4) LSU at Auburn (6:00 p.m. CT): A game that almost feels guaranteed to get weird given the two teams involved. We can write this pretty much every week, but Bryan Harsin could really use a win here.
5) No. 1 Georgia at Missouri (6:30 p.m. CT): Brock Bowers is the best tight end in the country and one of the best offensive weapons, period. Tigers will have their hands full coming off a devastating loss to Auburn in overtime.
John Talty is the sports editor and SEC Insider for Alabama Media Group. He is the bestselling author of “The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama’s Coach Became the Greatest Ever”
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
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The City Of Philadelphia Could Decide The Pennsylvania Senate Race
The City Of Philadelphia Could Decide The Pennsylvania Senate Race https://digitalalabamanews.com/the-city-of-philadelphia-could-decide-the-pennsylvania-senate-race/
PHILADELPHIA — When the Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor of a predominantly Black church and host of a drive-time radio show, spoke at Senate candidate John Fetterman’s campaign rally in northwest Philadelphia on Saturday, he addressed the elephant in the room: that Saturday’s event was Fetterman’s first rally in Pennsylvania’s largest city since he began his run for Senate in February 2021.
Earlier in the day, Tyler had heard someone ask why it had taken Fetterman, a Democrat, so long to hold a rally in the city, the pastor recalled to over 600 attendees assembled in a Mount Airy gymnasium.
“I said, ‘That’s ridiculous! Everybody knows that you save the best for last,’” Tyler quipped, drawing roars of approval from the racially diverse crowd.
Fetterman’s inaugural Philadelphia rally was the capstone of a monthslong effort by the campaign to scale up its operations in the city of more than 1.5 million people.
That’s because while Democrats’ rising fortunes in the Philadelphia suburbs have justifiably elicited national attention, Fetterman’s team understands that high turnout in the city itself is a prerequisite for victory.
“The stakes are always incredibly high. Philly has to turn out at a high margin.”
– Brendan McPhillips, Fetterman campaign manager
“The stakes are always incredibly high,” Fetterman campaign manager Brendan McPhillips told HuffPost in a pre-rally interview. “Philly has to turn out at a high margin.”
Fetterman’s decision in June to hire McPhillips, a South Philadelphia resident who was President Joe Biden’s state director for Pennsylvania, was an early sign of the candidate’s eastward pivot following the Democratic primary.
McPhillips, in turn, prioritized bringing aboard Joe Pierce, a veteran Philadelphia Democratic strategist with close ties to Black elected officials and organized labor, as the campaign’s political director. Both men operate out of a second Philadelphia headquarters that the Pittsburgh-centered campaign opened following the primary.
The campaign’s legwork was apparent in the list of elected officials and union leaders who spoke ahead of Fetterman at Saturday’s rally, including Rep. Dwight Evans (D), who represents the congressional district of the neighborhood where the rally was held.
Tyler’s participation was especially remarkable. He has gone from being a critic of Fetterman’s during the Senate primary to an ally, who also recorded an interview with Fetterman on his radio show this past Thursday.
Speaking to HuffPost before the rally, Tyler waved away his past differences with Fetterman as insignificant.
“The bigger issue is, which of these two persons who are still standing is going to represent the interests of the people that I care about, and in my opinion, only one of them meets any of those boxes,” he said.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, greets supporters as he enters his first rally in Philadelphia on Saturday.
Ryan Collerd/Associated Press
Republicans Aim For Incremental Improvement
Philadelphia currently has just over 1 million registered voters, about 12% of the state’s entire electorate.
Given Republicans’ growing hold on rural swathes of the Keystone State, running up the margins in Philadelphia is a key part of any statewide Democrat’s strategy for victory. In every recent election cycle, even unsuccessful Democrats running statewide have gotten more than 80% of the vote in the city.
Turnout can be just as decisive as a candidate’s share of the vote, however. Donald Trump actually increased his share of the city’s vote from 15% in 2016 — when he won the state — to nearly 18% in 2020 — when he lost the state.
Higher overall turnout in the city is a key part of the reason Trump fell short the second time. President Joe Biden received nearly 20,000 more votes in Philadelphia than Hillary Clinton had four years earlier, even though Clinton picked up a higher percentage of the total.
Republicans are nonetheless eager to build on Trump’s modest inroads in the city. In March, the Republican National Committee debuted one of its new community engagement centers in a predominantly Black part of Germantown in northwest Philadelphia.
Brandon Brown, who is Black and grew up in the neighboring Mount Airy section of the city, is the center’s dedicated organizer. On Saturday, he led a team of six volunteers — all of them Black — and knocked on more than 240 doors on behalf of the GOP’s slate of candidates. Brown, whose central message is that Democrats have failed to control crime in Black neighborhoods, aims to have his team knock 1,000 doors and place 15,000 phone calls by Election Day.
That isn’t the kind of volume that’s likely to have a significant impact in a statewide race. But Republicans measure progress in Philadelphia very incrementally.
Given the possibility of lower turnout in the city overall in a midterm election year, a Republican candidate that can inch their way past Trump’s 2020 share of 18% might be unbeatable, according to Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based Republican strategist.
“Amongst Republicans, there is a belief on our side — and it may turn out to be wrong — that we can do better in Philadelphia in a meaningful way this election cycle,” said Harris, who does not represent Fetterman’s opponent Mehmet Oz or other statewide GOP candidates. “That’s super important.”
“Part of Republicans’ longer-term strategy to compensate for suburban losses has to be to do better in urban areas.”
– Mark Harris, Republican strategist
That might be what Oz was hoping to achieve when he held a series of events in Philadelphia last week, including a roundtable discussion on gun violence at a predominantly Black church in Germantown on Monday.
“Showing up matters,” Harris said. “Part of Republicans’ longer-term strategy to compensate for suburban losses has to be to do better in urban areas.”
In an unforced error that provided Oz with an unexpected public relations win, state Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat and Fetterman supporter, appeared onstage at the event. Under fire, Rabb claimed to have attended in solidarity with members of the community and said he stormed out in protest after being denied the right to speak. (The moderator of the panel disputed the latter point.)
Republicans have also had some success convincing previously registered Democrats to switch to the GOP in Philadelphia. So far this year, 4,499 Philadelphia Democrats registered as Republicans — a figure that is 3.6 times greater than the 1,245 Philadelphia Republicans who registered as Democrats over the same period, according to state data. That’s a bigger gap in party-switchers than the state’s overall shift toward Republican registration this year, where Democrat-to-Republican switches were about 2.9 times greater in number than Republican-to-Democrat switches were.
McPhillips characterized hopes of exceeding Trump’s 2020 showing in Philadelphia as a pipe dream, however.
“I don’t think Mehmet Oz is the same unifying electric figure for the right that Trump was,” McPhillips said. “People know that he’s not from here.”
During his remarks on Saturday, Fetterman also accused Oz of speaking out of two sides of his mouth in his effort to appeal to Black voters.
Oz unveiled his “Plan to Fight for Black Communities” at the event on Monday, which includes an endorsement of the bipartisan First Step Act legislation. The law, signed by Trump in December 2018, aimed to reduce the federal prison population by reducing prison sentences for some federal convicts.
The next day, Fetterman noted, Oz’s campaign again deployed “Inmates for Fetterman” — a group of people Oz pays to wear orange prison jumpsuits at Fetterman events — to a Fetterman rally in a rural county to depict him as soft on crime.
“He has no core,” Fetterman declared at the Philadelphia rally.
Mehmet Oz (second from right), the Republican Senate nominee, speaks at a roundtable on gun violence in northwest Philadelphia on Monday. State Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat and Fetterman supporter, is seated at left.
Ryan Collerd/Associated Press
Fetterman’s Big Philly Makeover
There are a number of reasons Fetterman has been slow to plant his flag in Philadelphia.
For one thing, Fetterman has been deeply rooted in southwest Pennsylvania for his entire career in public life. He got his start in politics as mayor of Braddock, an economically distressed steel town outside Pittsburgh.
Fetterman has also used his perch as lieutenant governor since 2018 to form relationships with people in largely rural communities who have historically received less attention from the party. During the primary this year, Fetterman sought to leverage that experience, emphasizing his ability to compete in all 67 of the state’s counties.
Sure enough, in a three-candidate primary, Fetterman won every county. In Philadelphia, he even defeated state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Black and openly gay lawmaker from the city’s northern precincts. Kenyatta, who was a fierce critic of Fetterman during the primary, is now an active surrogate for Fetterman.
“John is laying out real solutions” for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable residents, Kenyatta told HuffPost on Friday. “Dr. Oz doesn’t even know where to find the solution.”
“I admire him. He’s got strong values, a decent person.”
– William Dorsey, resident of Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood
Kenyatta, Tyler and other Philadelphia-based boosters for Fetterman tend to emphasize the policy contrast between Fetterman and Oz, a Trump ally who refuses to fully acknowledge the validity of the 2020 election results. They note that Fetterman supports their priorities — strengthening federal voting rights protections, protecting abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, and supporting labor unions...
A Small, Cruel Rally For Doug Mastriano https://digitalalabamanews.com/a-small-cruel-rally-for-doug-mastriano/
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Michael Daino smiled as he unloaded folding chairs from a car and lugged them up the Pennsylvania capitol building steps. “One of the sharks!” he said when I told him I was a journalist. “Circling the waters looking for bait.”
The activist from Delaware County was excited. He’d met Doug Mastriano at a 2020 COVID denial rally ― a “reopen” rally, he called it — in the early days of the pandemic, when Mastriano was just a state senator. Now, two years later, Daino was organizing this get-out-the-vote event on Saturday for Mastriano, the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor. How far they’d come together. Up to 2,000 people were expected here. Mastriano had posted a video urging folks to come to the “big rally.” He was going to give a speech.
But only 50 or so people turned up to hear Mastriano speak. An embarrassing showing. (“This was in my neighborhood and I didn’t notice,” one nearby resident tweeted. “Tremendously low energy.”) Daino told me the event must’ve been suppressed by tech companies, blaming Facebook for “shadowbanning” the event page ― a common gripe among the MAGA faithful.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the rally was such a bust. Maybe Mastriano didn’t advertise it enough? Or his hostility to the media meant little publicity? Or maybe his supporters were more interested in the Jan. 6 Truth Rally down in D.C.? Or just wanted to watch the Penn State game?
Or maybe Mastriano’s campaign, six weeks before the election, is losing steam.
What is clear is that the event once again demonstrated what an extreme figure Mastriano is; and how he and his supporters are animated by a cruel set of grievances ― against democracy, immigrants, trans people and the media ― that make his candidacy one of the biggest emergencies in American politics.
Among the first to arrive Saturday morning were three middle-aged white men who appeared to be working security. One wore a hat saying “Molon Labe,” an ancient Greek phrase meaning “Come and take them,” a common refrain for Second Amendment fundamentalists. The two others belonged to the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, wearing patches on their sleeves showing two AR-15s crossed over a map of the state and the Roman number III — a symbol for the Three Percenters militia movement, whose followers have been implicated in the insurrection, armed standoffs with the feds and terror plots.
These two Patriots wouldn’t give me their names.
As more people arrived, a Black man on the road below drove by in a truck and yelled “Get out of the twilight zone!” at the gathering crowd. “Turn the channel!” Harrisburg is a majority-Black city, but the crowd for Mastriano was almost completely white.
As was one man from York County who was there to sell MAGA merchandise, unfurling Blue Lives Matter flags across a folding table. There was also a stack of stickers, each with drawings of a diverse set of guns — pistols, AR-15s, rifles — and the words “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.”
“That one’s just… a joke,” he explained. He wouldn’t give me his name either. He did tell me he expects Democrats to try to steal this upcoming election from Mastriano, just like they stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump. There’s widespread voter fraud everywhere, he said, citing “2,000 Mules,” the widely debunked election denial film. He watches Fox News too.
Stickers for sale on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building during a rally for Mastriano.
Christopher Mathias for HuffPost
Jordan Klepper, the comedian and Daily Show host, stopped by the merch table with a camera crew, flipping through the posters on sale. “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A SOCIALIST COUNTRY,” declared one poster. “DEFUND THE MEDIA,” read another, replete with the logos of major media outlets, including HuffPost.
As Klepper and his camera crew tried to start an interview with someone at the merch table, a man in a white “Project Veritas” hat suddenly arrived, making it clear that this interview was over.
This man was Jeremy Oliver, a former producer for far-right, pro-Trump One America News Network. WHYY reported that the Mastriano campaign has paid over $80,000 to Oliver’s Onslaught Media Group, and that Oliver has since been a regular at Mastriano campaign events, working as a videographer. Oliver has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.
All day Saturday, Oliver menacingly followed Klepper’s film crew, sometimes holding up a handheld camera.
Mastriano still hadn’t arrived at the statehouse. The bees were vicious, buzzing around the trashcans on the statehouse steps before sometimes darting after the assembled demonstrators. A woman carrying a large poster of a fetus and the words “IT’S A BABY” swatted a bee from her face.
So did Joe D’Orsie, a Republican nominee for the Pennsylvania state House, shortly before lashing out at progressives who “demean women’s sports by allowing biological males on their teams.”
D’Orsie was among a handful of GOP hopefuls and other elected officials offering up speeches while everyone waited for Mastriano to arrive.
State Rep. Mike Jones lavished praise upon Mastriano, comparing the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor to Moses in the Bible — “and where he stood, the dying stopped,” Jones said, quoting the book of Numbers — in a speech dripping with Christian nationalism.
“There is no king here in America but Jesus Christ,” state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz told the crowd. (Last week Borowicz introduced a bill in the state legislature that would ban teachers from mentioning gender identity or sexual orientation, a more extreme version of Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.)
State Rep. Dave Zimmerman listed out “10 ways you’re being controlled.”
“They used the pandemic, that might’ve been a test drive….” he began, before listing off other apparent avenues of control, including climate change, schools and the FBI.
“Now they even use the FBI to scare us, and guys, I’m one of those. The FBI looked for me all day long but what they don’t know, is I turned my tracker off,” Zimmerman said, a seeming acknowledgement that he was among several Pennsylvania state legislators — whose names weren’t known — who recently received federal subpoenas.
HuffPost can report first that Zimmerman received a federal subpoena. It happened a “couple weeks ago,” he told me at the rally. The subpoena was part of a “witch hunt,” he said, launched by people who want to “shut us up.” He wouldn’t say what is in the subpoena, although it’s widely believed to be related to a federal probe into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Mastriano — one of the country’s foremost election deniers, who received his own subpoena earlier this year — finally arrived on the statehouse steps Saturday around 1:45 p.m., after his supporters had already been there for two hours. When he won the Republican primary this past May, it raised the alarming prospect that an insurrectionist could be the next governor of Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election.
He arrived with his running mate, Lt. Gov nominee Carrie DelRosso. She spoke first, saying “the Republican Party is the party of family and that’s exactly why we need to win. We need to restore our family systems in Pennsylvania and make sure that we are doing what’s right for our kids.”
“Separate bathrooms!” Del Rosso continued, a reference to banning trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. “Separate bathrooms! That is a safety measure.”
Del Rosso kept the anti-trans panic going. “Biological males should not be allowed to participate in biological female sports and take away our rights!” she said.
Finally, Mastriano took to the podium. It had been a long week. The media, rightly, had gone after him for campaigning with a self-described “prophet” and prayer coin salesman who calls President Joe Biden the “antichrist.”
Moreover, Mastriano had admitted in a video before the rally that needed cash because he’s losing support from national GOP groups. “We have not seen much assistance from them and we’re 49 days out,” he said.
And then there are the polls, which show Democrat Josh Shapiro in the lead.
Now here Mastriano was at this pitiful rally. (“It’s clear that Doug Mastriano’s desperate campaign is flailing as Pennsylvanians come together to reject his radical extremism,” Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for the Shapiro campaign, told HuffPost in response to the rally’s poor attendance.)
“So about my campaign,” Mastriano told the crowd, “it’s a vision for Pennsylvania in one word: freedom. On day one ‘woke’ is broke. On day one critical race theory will no longer be taught in Pennsylvania schools. On day one no more boys on the girls’ team. We stand with female athletes. On day one, no more boys in the girls’ bathroom. We stand with the young ladies and their safety. On day one — we’re blessed Pennsylvania, we’re blessed — on day one we’re gonna withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We’re going to open up our state lands and rollback regulations, and we’re going to drill and dig like never before.”
Later, Mastriano talked about other freedoms he wanted — like the freedom to use undocumented immigrants as pawns. After mentioning how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as part of a cruel stunt to make immigration an election issue, Mastriano laughed and said when he’s governor he’ll use “my Pennsylvania state police″ to send immigrants to President Joe Biden’s house in Delaware.
The few dozen Mastriano supporters waving a big flag on the statehouse steps as Courtesy of the Red White and Blue plays for the second time pic.twitter.com/tqjoolSDvD
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) September 24, 2022
Mastriano wrapped things up with a “Thank ...
Europe Holds Its Breath As Italy Prepares To Vote In Far-Right Leader
Europe Holds Its Breath As Italy Prepares To Vote In Far-Right Leader https://digitalalabamanews.com/europe-holds-its-breath-as-italy-prepares-to-vote-in-far-right-leader/
Italians are voting in an election that is forecast to deliver the country’s most radical rightwing government since the end of the second world war, and a prime minister ready to become a model for nationalist parties across Europe.
A coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, is expected by polls ahead of the vote to secure a comfortable victory in both houses of parliament while taking between 44 and 47% of the vote.
Meloni’s party is also set to scoop the biggest share of the votes within the coalition, which includes the far-right League, led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, meaning she could become Italy’s first female prime minister.
The coalition’s victory, however, raises questions about the country’s alliances in Europe, and while Meloni has sought to send reassuring messages, her conquest of power is unlikely to be welcomed in Paris or Berlin.
Germany’s governing Social Democratic party warned last week that her win would be bad for European cooperation. Lars Klingbeil, the chairman of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD, said Meloni had aligned herself with “anti-democratic” figures such as Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Earlier this month, Meloni’s MEPs voted against a resolution that condemned Hungary as “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”. Meloni is also allied to Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats and Spain’s far-right Vox party.
The 45-year-old firebrand politician from Rome received an endorsement from Vox towards the end of her campaign, and in response said the two parties were linked by “mutual respect, friendship and loyalty” while hoping victory for Brothers of Italy would give Vox some thrust in Spain.
“Meloni has an ambition to represent a model not only for Italy, but for Europe – this is something new [for the right in Italy] compared with the past,” said Nadia Urbinati, a political theorist at New York’s Columbia University and the University of Bologna. “She has contacts with other conservative parties, who want a Europe with less civil rights … the model is there and so is the project.”
Mattia Diletti, a politics professor at Rome’s Sapienza University, said Meloni would win thanks to her ability to be ideological but pragmatic, something that has allowed her to pip the French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, to the post of becoming western Europe’s model for nationalism.
However, she is unlikely to rock the boat, at least at the beginning, as she wants to secure continuing flows of cash under Italy’s €191.5bn (£166bn) EU Covid recovery plan, the largest in the EU. The coalition has said it is not seeking to renegotiate the plan, but would like to make changes.
Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni and Maurizio Lupi attend a political meeting organised by the rightwing political alliance in Rome on Thursday. Photograph: Riccardo Fabi/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
“Ambiguity is the key to understanding Meloni,” Diletti said. “She’s really interested in compromising with the EU on economic politics. But if the EU pushes her too much on the Italian government, she can always revert back to her safe zone as being a populist rightwing leader. She will do what she needs to do to stay in power.”
Salvini’s potential return to the interior ministry will also dampen hopes for a breakthrough in the EU’s long-stalled attempt to reform its migration system by sharing asylum seekers across member states. Salvini, who has close ties with Le Pen, said he “can’t wait” to resume his policy of blocking migrant rescue ships from entering Italian ports.
On Ukraine, Meloni has condemned Russia’s invasion and supported sending weapons to the war-torn country, but it remains unclear whether her government will back the eighth round of EU sanctions being discussed in Brussels. Salvini has claimed sanctions were bringing Italy to its knees, although he never blocked any EU measures against Russia when in Mario Draghi’s broad coalition government, which collapsed in July.
Voting started at 7am on Sunday, and turnout stood at about 19% by midday. The share of undecided voters was at 25% before voting began, meaning the rightwing alliance might win a slimmer majority than pollsters originally suggested. A leftwing alliance led by the Democratic party is predicted to get 22-27% of the vote.
Several seats in southern Italian regions, such as Puglia and Calabria, are also potentially in play after a mini-revival by the populist Five Star Movement, which regained support after promising to maintain its flagship policy, the basic income, if the party re-enters government.
There was a steady flow of voters to a booth in Esquilino, a multicultural district in Rome, on Sunday morning, but the mood was one of despondency.
“It feels as if we’re on a rudderless boat,” said Carlo Russo. “All we heard during the election campaign was an exchange of insults between the various parties rather than an exchange of ideas. And in moments of confusion such as this, people vote for the person who seems to be the strongest.”
Fausto Maccari, who runs a newspaper stand, said he won’t vote for the right but is unsure who he will back. “The choices are poor,” added Maccari, who is in his 60s. “For example, I look at Berlusconi and he reminds me of a comic character. At his age, he shouldn’t be doing politics. It would be like me, at my age, trying to be a footballer like Maradona.”
Many Italians who support Meloni are doing so because she is yet to be tried and tested in government, and are attracted by her determination and loyalty to her ideals.
“She presents herself as a capable, but not arrogant, woman,” said Urbinati. “She gets things done and is dedicated, but without this masculine adrenaline that wants power at all costs.”
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Who Is Afraid Of Donald Trump? https://digitalalabamanews.com/who-is-afraid-of-donald-trump/
When reading about United States politics, the reader should remember that the Democrats are the brainy party, but they are too brainy for their own good. While the Republicans are the stupid party, their economic policies place the prosperity of their people first.
I have chosen sources from remote states in the mid-west to show that Democrats have not succeeded in fooling the common people away from Washington, D.C.
Todays’ Orange County Register (21st September) in Southern California recounts the Democrats worst nightmare. After interviewing Democratic officials and voters who had supported President Joe Biden in 2020, a New York Times report found that Democrats from coast to coast were disappointed, worried, and fretting about Biden’s leadership and ability to handle a Trump candidacy in 2024.
Their worst nightmare was that Donald Trump would run again for the presidency in 2024.
Biden’s mishandling of the economy and immigration is discussed below.
Democrats were terrified that despite Trump’s character flaws, his economic policies had been a resounding success. With nothing to offer, the Orange County Register revealed that the Democrats secret plan was to concoct, by any means necessary, shenanigans which would find Trump in a jailhouse.
The plan starts with a kangaroo inquiry into 2020 January 6 demonstration in Washington, D.C.
A politically motivated grand jury has been empowered to indict as many as possible of the Trump supporters to put the fear of God into them.
Of course, the Democrats have made this “insurrection stuff” all up.
The Democrats have fooled no one. The Orange County Register mocks the Democrats and their mouthpiece, the New York Times.
“It’s generous of the Times to invite all of us into the Democratic Party’s strategy sessions. Now we know, not that we didn’t, that the one-sided “investigation” into the former president’s thoughts, words and actions on January 6 is just a desperate attempt to do what every investigation so far has utterly failed to do, which is find Donald Trump guilty of something, anything, to prevent the American people from having the opportunity to put him back in office.”
But Democrats will stop at nothing to achieve their aim, which is to stop Trump from running for the presidency. The West Fargo News (way in the US heartland) has not been fooled either.
On August 8th, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) disconnected surveillance cameras at Trump’s compound in the wee hours of morning and invaded the premises. The West Fargo News says the following words.
“The Democrats and the Deep State are desperate to eliminate Trump from running in 2024. It is very clear that the FBI has been weaponised by the current administration to go after anyone who disagrees with their positions and policies, even a former president. Fear is the agent of oppression in Russia, China, and other despots’ countries, not America.”
The intimidation of Trump supporters is thickening. Mike Lindell, a self-made pillow manufacturer, stopped by a Hardees Burger outlet on his way home from his factory in Minnesota. FBI agents blocked his car and took away his cell phone which monitors his hearing aid.
Elsewhere, in New York, Trump’s two sons have been indicted. Four of Lindell’s buyers have “unfriended” him after they had a pow wow with FBI agents.
The 73-year-old Allen Weiselberg, Trump’s Chief Financial Officer for thirty years has been found guilty of some financial malfeasance involving his handling of Trump’s taxes.
Why Democrats are afraid.
Biden gave a speech entitled the “Soul of America” which was patterned after former Democrat president Jimmy Carter’s speech entitled “The crisis of confidence, 1979.”
In 1979 as in 2020, Democrats interfered with the supply of oil. The fall of the Shah of Iran’s caused havoc to the oil supply lines in 1979. In 2020 Biden’s first action in office was to discontinue the Canadian oil pipeline.
Both actions caused havoc with interest rates (21% in 1979) and oil prices.
Biden said in his speech. “People are down, down (sic) The need for mental health in America, it has really skyrocketed, because people have seen everything upset. Everything they counted on, upset.”
Biden’s speech is nonsensical unless it is re-interpreted. He meant to say that Americans feel depressed because of the high inflation and the intellectual developments which they must now cope with. Americans somehow feel let down.
Biden suffers from malapropism. In less than a year since Biden assumed power, petrol prices rose from U$2 per gallon to U$6 per gallon. The schools struggled to keep abreast of Critical Race Theory, (CRT) a fashionable intellectual idiom that had been taught in the universities for three decades. CRT says white institutions are racist and it does not matter what or how the individual white person may behave, the result is toxic to blacks. Thirdly, there is a new-fangled idea by intellectual prostitutes who argue that gender is optional and should not be assigned at birth.
US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown refused to answer a simple question. What is the difference between a man and a woman? A woman has the capacity to carry a fetus within her body, you sluggard!
Fourthly, two million unregistered immigrants have been crossed the Southern border in one year alone. A country without borders is no country at all.
Carter told the American people in 1979 that, “I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.”
Democrats have learned nothing from the past, forgotten nothing and remembered nothing. Petrol is the lifeline of the US. Any mismanagement of petrol (and inflation) is a threat to Democracy, you sluggard.
Biden like Carter spoke about “growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives” and “the erosion of our confidence in the future threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” Like Carter Biden blames oil producing countries for inflation and loss of the American spirit.
Kenneth Mufuka is a Zimbabwean patriot. He writes from the US. He can be reached at mufukaken@gmail.com
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Schiff Says Any Criminal Referral For Trump By The January 6 Committee Should Be Decided Unanimously | CNN Politics
Schiff Says Any Criminal Referral For Trump By The January 6 Committee Should Be Decided Unanimously | CNN Politics https://digitalalabamanews.com/schiff-says-any-criminal-referral-for-trump-by-the-january-6-committee-should-be-decided-unanimously-cnn-politics/
05:04 – Source: CNN
Exclusive: Trump’s secret court fight to stop January 6 grand jury from getting information from his inner circle.
CNN —
US Rep. Adam Schiff, who serves on the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, says that if the panel makes a criminal referral for former President Donald Trump related to the riot at the US Capitol, it should be made unanimously.
“We operate with a high degree of consensus and unanimity,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It will be certainly, I think, my recommendation, my feeling, that we should make referrals, but we will get to a decision as a committee, and we will all abide by that decision, and I will join our committee members if they feel differently.”
CNN reported earlier this year that although the bipartisan committee was in wide agreement that Trump committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election, panelists were split over what to do about it, including whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department, according to four sources connected to the committee.
The internal debate spilled into plain view in June when the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, repeatedly told a group of reporters at the Capitol that the panel would not be issuing any criminal referrals, a declaration that several of his fellow committee members were quick to push back on.
Schiff said Sunday he wouldn’t disclose information about the focus of the select committee’s public hearing Wednesday, which will likely be its last until the panel releases its final report.
“I think it’ll be potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings, but it too will be in a very thematic – it will tell the story about a key element of Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the election,” he said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, another January 6 paneliist, said Sunday that the upcoming public hearing would share “details” learned by the committee since its last hearing in August.
The Maryland Democrat told NBC News that he expects Wednesday’s hearing to be the last presentation of its investigation, but he’s “hopeful” the committee will hold a hearing presenting recommendations to Congress. Raskin added that the goal of Wednesday’s hearing is for panelists to reveal the newest findings in the investigation to supplement the broader narrative they presented in earlier hearings.
Schiff, when asked by Tapper about the committee obtaining Secret Service communications related to the riot, said the panel was still going through them.
“We are still going through them because they are very voluminous. I will say they’re not a substitute for having the text messages that were apparently erased from those devices, and we are still investigating how that came about and why that came about. And I hope and believe the Justice Department on that issue is also looking at whether laws were broken and the destruction of that evidence,” Schiff said. “But we do have a mountain of information that we need to go through.”
Thompson said earlier this month that the communications turned over to the January 6 committee included “a combination of a number of text messages, radio traffic, that kind of thing. Just thousands of exhibits.” He added that the texts that were handed over were “primarily” from the day before and during the riot.
Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, added his voice Sunday to a growing group of lawmakers pushing back on Trump’s claim that he could simply declassify classified documents by “thinking about it.”
“No, that’s not how it works. Those comments don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind,” he told Tapper. “If you could simply declassify by thinking about it, then frankly, if that’s his view, he’s even more dangerous than we may have thought.”
He continued: “With that view, he could simply spout off on anything he read in a Presidential Daily Brief or anything he was briefed on by the CIA director to a visiting Russian delegation or any other delegation and simply say, ‘Well, I thought about it and therefore, when the words came out of my mouth, they were declassified.’”
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Republican in the chamber, also rejected Trump’s claim on Sunday, telling ABC News that he doesn’t “think a president can declassify documents by saying so.”
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Is A Beer Shortage On Tap? Inflation And Supply Chain Pressures On Brewers Are Intensifying
Is A Beer Shortage On Tap? Inflation And Supply Chain Pressures On Brewers Are Intensifying https://digitalalabamanews.com/is-a-beer-shortage-on-tap-inflation-and-supply-chain-pressures-on-brewers-are-intensifying/
Beer makers are facing many challenges as inflation and supply chain issues raise cost of brewing and shipping.
Shortages in aluminum cans and carbon dioxide, used in brewing, have hampered some brewers.
For consumers, beer prices are rising – up 5% so far this year – but not as fast as on other goods including food, which rose about 11%.
We have endured no shortage of shortages recently. There was toilet paper and computer chips, followed by tampons and baby formula. Could the next shortage involve beer?
The potential arises as beer makers, big and small, are under pressure from a confluence of inflation and several supply chain issues. Some breweries have found it challenging to get carbon dioxide (CO2), which is used to clean tanks and carbonate beer. When they do get it, the price is often higher, sometimes twice what they used to pay.
Also rising: the price of other ingredients such as malted barley and the cost to ship that and other products.
All this could lead to higher beer prices. And, it could result in some of your favorite beers being out of stock or not on tap.
“I don’t know if I can think of a scenario where there’d be no beer from a brewery, but I can understand a scenario where there would be a limited or smaller offering, as beer has a short shelf life,” said Chuck Aaron, owner and founder of Jersey Girl Brewing in Hackettstown, N.J.
The environment is challenging enough that it could force some breweries to close. “This could certainly be a factor in closures,” Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, told USA TODAY.
In a mid-year survey of the association’s membership – about 5,600 U.S. small and independent breweries – some brewers’ sentiments amounted to, “we’re selling as much beer as we were pre-pandemic, but making far less on that beer, and we’re unsure how long that is sustainable,” Watson said.
Gas prices go up after declines: Here’s where gas is cheapest and most expensive
What’s it mean for you?: Fed hikes interest rate 0.75 percentage point to tame inflation
Why could there be a beer shortage?
Because breweries, which are accustomed to some supply chain struggles, face a growing list of headaches. The price and availability of aluminum cans became increasingly volatile as cans became critical to breweries’ survival. Many had pivoted to curbside pickup and offsite distribution during the national shutdown brought on by COVID-19.
Similarly, the supply of CO2 has “remained tight since the shortages in the Spring of 2020,” Watson said in a recent report. Breweries have often got less than they ordered – or worse, not had promised amounts delivered at all.
Now, inflation has driven up the entire cost of breweries’ shopping list, just as it has for all Americans. That means breweries are likely paying more for CO2, cans, paper goods, malt (grains needed for making beer), and hops.
“What’s unprecedented is the number of areas where we are seeing challenges,” Watson told USA TODAY.
Inflation: No more steak. Ordering out less. Here’s how inflation is squeezing American diets.
Settle Down Easy Brewing Co. in Falls Church, Virginia hasn’t been hit hard by CO2 price increases, but is paying an additional two cents per can for its canning line, purchased during the pandemic, said co-owner Frank Kuhns.
But other price increases have hit harder including $150-$300 “gas travel” fees for each delivery from suppliers, and labor and equipment costs of 30% to 40% more than originally budgeted, for the construction of a second Northern Virginia location a few miles away in Oakton, Virginia.
So far, “we have made the decision to hold and not pass these increases onto the customer and instead look for new suppliers or cutting costs without sacrificing quality,” Kuhns said.
Despite the dilemma, the nation’s beer taps won’t likely run dry. But they could be tempered, he said.
“I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say there will be shortages. Individual producers may have issues, but this isn’t so widespread that you’re going to see empty beer shelves,” Watson said. “I think the beer brand that consumers want occasionally being out of stock is closer to accurate. And brewers might make different or fewer beers.”
Why is carbon dioxide needed to make beer?
Most beer lovers know that brewers use CO2 to carbonate beer. But CO2 also is used to clean fermentation tanks and keep oxygen out before they are refilled. “Oxygen is the devil of beer and will kill a beer if you have oxygen in it,” Aaron said.
But many breweries have had a devil of a time getting the CO2 they need. A main contributor is that a natural source of CO2, the Jackson Dome, an extinct volcano in Mississippi, “is facing a contamination issue with the raw gas from the mine creating a significant decrease in available food grade CO,” Watson told brewers in a July report.
High demand and some shutdowns at ammonia plants, which create and capture CO2 to sell to other industries, has compounded the shortage. So have rail disputes, which have disrupted deliveries, wrote Forbes columnist Richard Howells, a supply chain executive.
“Yes, you heard right,” Howells wrote. “In this era, of trying to reduce emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, we are actually going to have a shortage of the CO2 that provides the carbonation so loved by millions of concerned beer drinkers.”
How are breweries coping with the CO2 shortage?
Most have had to pay more for CO2, while many have had to find alternate suppliers. And if a brewer cannot get enough, that could lead to some beers not getting made, said Tomme Arthur, co-founder and chief operating owner of Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey in San Diego County, California.
“I don’t expect the grocery aisles to be missing 18 packs of lager,” he said. “But your local craft brewer is certainly at risk for having to adjust brewing schedules and deliverables based on this lack of CO2 and the need for it in so many of the brewing practices.”
At Jersey Girl Brewing, the cost has doubled over the the past year, from about 20 cents a pound to 44 cents.
Aaron said he has been “watching the invoice price creep up and up and up as we fill” the brewery’s bulk tanks capable of holding 1,500 pounds of the gas.
Aaron has also had to decide not to make some beers, such as a Helles lager, because the German grains needed were too costly with increased shipping prices. And some beers needing New Zealand International hops have not been produced.
“Hopefully once the prices come back in line, we’ll be able to reintroduce those into the market,” he said.
Earlier this week, Axios reported that a “U.S. beer shortage looms with gap in carbon dioxide supply.” It also noted that some breweries have equipment to capture the CO2 emitted in the brewing process, but it is very expensive.
Also vying for CO2: Other industries including carbonated beverage makers and food manufacturers. “As we have learned, brewers are a relatively small user of CO2 in the grand scheme of things,” Watson said.
What’s everyone talking about?: Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Could beer become more expensive?
It already has. The makers of Miller Lite and Coors Light, and Bud Light – as well as Stella Artois – have all raised prices recently. But beer prices are up far less than the cost of production.
The price of beer purchased to drink at home had risen about 5% as of August 2022, compared to August 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index. That’s higher than whiskey (3%), wine (2.5%), and other spirits (1.2%).
Another barometer of pricing: The average cost to consumers for beer has risen 3.4%, over the past year for the equivalent of a 24-pack of 12 oz. cans, based on prices for the week ending Sept. 10, 2022, according to Nielsen IQ.
Beer price increases have also remained below that of other consumer goods – overall, prices increased 8.3% compared to a year ago, and food rose 11.4%. Price hikes have not “stopped consumers from trading up to” craft beers, imported beers or canned cocktails and seltzers, said Bump Williams, a beverage industry consultant.
Consumers have also been buying more 12-packs and single-serving cans as they have been “changing their purchase behavior with inflation going up, interest rates going up, gas prices going up, and a declining stock market turning 401k’s into 201k’s,” Williams said. “So folks are managing their affordable luxury expenditures a bit differently today.”
Could the price of cans also affect beer supply?
Probably indirectly, since aluminum prices are just one of several costs brewers see increasing. Costs of cans “are still much higher than they were and I believe once prices go up the way we’ve experienced them, you tend not to see them come back down,” Aaron said.
While there has been less volatility recently, some breweries had to find a new supplier when Ball Corp., one of the nation’s largest can manufacturers, earlier this year raised its minimum requirements for customers, citing unprecedented demand.
“We were sent scrambling to find an alternative supplier,” which charges 1.5 cents more per unit, Arthur said. “A truck load of cans is approximately 156,000 units so the pennies add up,” he said.
“I have never seen this level of inflationary pressures combined with outright shortages. It’s bonkers to put it mildly,” Arthur said. “I suspect that nearly every brewery in town is being jammed on the same fronts.”
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
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Every Uncharted Game Ranked According To Metacritic
Every Uncharted Game, Ranked According To Metacritic https://digitalalabamanews.com/every-uncharted-game-ranked-according-to-metacritic/
For Uncharted, its small beginnings were a simple reveal trailer at E3 2006. Players were quick to dub the Naughty Dog title as “Dude Raider” for its resemblance to the Tomb Raider series in its treasure hunting themes and platforming. From those small beggings comes greatness as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was released in September 2007. Uncharted serves as a love letter to action-packed summer blockbuster films, putting its loveable and endearing characters through over-the-top action sequences in hopes to solve historical mysteries, fill their pockets with cash, and even save the world.
15 years later, the Uncharted series has become a hit franchise for Sony producing numerous sequels, spinoffs, and a live-action movie that is currently the fifth highest-grossing film based on a video game. While the future of Uncharted as a video game franchise is uncertain, fans can sleep soundly at night knowing that the story of Nathan Drake is complete.
Credit where credit is due, a digital collectible card game based on Uncharted is an inspired choice and one that mostly works. In Uncharted: Fight for Fortune for the PlayStation Vita, players battle using cards, weapons, and abilities based on the Uncharted series with treasure being the primary resource. Players can link their Fight for Fortune save file with Uncharted: Golden Abyss to further buff their cards as they pursue Golden Abyss’ platinum trophy.
Critics recognize the potential of Fight for Fortune, but were dissatisfied with the lack of depth and replayability in practice. Maybe someday Fight for Fortune will get a deserved second chance. Especially if that second chance includes other Sony properties like The Last of Us, God of War, and Horizon.
7 Uncharted: Fortune Hunter Draws From Lara Croft Go (77 Metacritic Score)
Uncharted and Tomb Raider have a mutually beneficial relationship. Uncharted drew inspiration from Tomb Raider as well as Indiana Jones in establishing the franchise. Tomb Raider later drew from Uncharted’s cinematic nature with its reboot. This exchange continued into the mobile realm with Uncharted: Fortune Hunter. Fortune Hunter is a mobile puzzle game that draws heavily from Lara Croft Go as players go from Point A to Point B while avoiding traps and gunfire.
Players could also unlock skins and Relics for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End’s multiplayer mode as they progress. Uncharted fans who may be learning about Fortune Hunter for the first time may be sad to learn that Naughty Dog shut down Fortune Hunter in early 2022, leaving it unavailable to be downloaded.
Sony’s promise of a console experience on the go with the Vita was quickly realized with its launch title, Golden Abyss. Golden Abyss is a prequel to the original Uncharted made by Sony Bend studios of Syphon Filter and Days Gone fame. Golden Abyss is very much an Uncharted experience containing just about everything players love about the console Uncharted games.
Golden Abyss includes a vast array of collectibles to amass with each being a part of a set, including sets that provide background to certain characters. Golden Abyss also takes full advantage of Vita’s motion and touch functionality, which received mixed reviews from critics and fans.
5 Uncharted: The Lost Legacy Proves There’s A Future Beyond Nathan Drake (84 Metacritic Score)
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is the most recent Uncharted game to be released, not counting the remasted Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection. The Lost Legacy initially began as a DLC expansion for A Thief’s End, but later became a standalone release after development got too ambitious. This is partially because The Lost Legacy contains far and away the biggest open world area in the Uncharted series.
The Lost Legacy stars Chloe Frazer, back after not appearing in A Thief’s End, alongside reluctant ally Nadine Ross, a former antagonist from A Thief’s End. Chloe and Nadine travel to India seeking the Tusk of Ganesh, which Chloe’s father had believed to be real, but died before he could find it. The Lost Legacy is a fun and exhilarating Uncharted title that proves that there’s a future for Uncharted without Nathan Drake.
Drake’s Fortune was released at a time when Sony was struggling to produce exclusives for its PlayStation 3 console. Back then, the ongoing joke was that the PS3 “had no games.” The release of Drake’s Fortune in 2007 was a significant step toward the resurgence of the PS3, which ultimately resulted in the PS3 outselling the Xbox 360.
Drake’s Fortune impressed both players and critics with its stunning visuals and the merging of motion capture and voice acting as voice actors physically acted out their roles. Drake’s Fortune is certainly showing its age, as most 2007 games do, but it’s tough to play Drake’s Fortune now without appreciating its place in gaming history and the franchise that was born from it.
3 Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Focuses On The Relationship Between Nathan Drake And Sully (92 Metacritic Score)
One of the biggest reasons Uncharted resonated with players was its main cast. Every main character in Uncharted is easy to grow attached to. There’s also so much chemistry between these characters that it would be easy to believe their voice actors were lifelong friends that stumbled upon the set and handed a script. One of the most fleshed-out relationships in Uncharted is that of Nathan Drake and his mentor Victor “Sully” Sullivan.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception puts that relationship front and center by depicting the duo’s first meeting in Cartagena, Colombia. Nathan Drake and Sully’s bond is tested throughout Drake’s Deception as their journey takes them to the Rub’ al Khali desert, the “Empty Quarter,” in search of the fabled “Atlantis of the Sands.”
All good things must come to an end. Yet in gaming, endings for characters either come too soon or too late. Naughty Dog and A Thief’s End, for now, have subverted that by concluding Nathan Drake’s story at the perfect time and in the perfect way.
While Drake’s Deception focused on Nathan Drake and Sully, A Thief’s End puts an emphasis on a previously unknown relationship: Nathan Drake and his presumably dead brother, Sam Drake. Sam pulls Nathan Drake out of treasure hunting retirement to resume their pursuit of the treasure of legendary pirate captain Henry Avery. Nathan Drake is faced with one final confrontation with his obsession for adventure as he risks losing everything he’s built up throughout his life, including his marriage with Elena Fisher. A Thief’s End was well-received for its narrative and conclusion as well as new gameplay elements such as larger areas and Nathan Drake’s grappling hook.
1 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Is One Of The Best Video Games Ever Made (96 Metacritic Score)
The best sequels in gaming history improve on every facet of the original and then some. That’s what made Uncharted 2: Among Thieves so special when it was released in 2009. Naughty Dog built upon the technical foundation of Drake’s Fortune while ramping up the stakes and action set pieces. The most memorable of these set pieces is the train sequence that pits Nathan Drake against an army as he fights his way up a moving train.
Unlike Drake’s Fortune, Among Thieves isn’t limited to a set location. Among Thieves is a globetrotting adventure that makes stops in places such as Borneo and Nepal in search of the lost city of Shambhala. On top of its main story, Among Thieves also includes a fun, and underrated, multiplayer mode that brings the explosive action of Uncharted online. Among Thieves isn’t just one of the best sequels ever made, it’s one of the best video games ever made.
NEXT: 10 Uses For The Right Analog Stick Besides The Camera
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Tropical Storm Ian Forecast To Become Hurricane Sunday As It Heads Towards Florida
Tropical Storm Ian Forecast To Become Hurricane Sunday As It Heads Towards Florida https://digitalalabamanews.com/tropical-storm-ian-forecast-to-become-hurricane-sunday-as-it-heads-towards-florida/
ABOVE: WESH 2 Meteorologist Eric Burris takes deep dive into the latest Ian modelsTropical Storm Ian was forecast to rapidly strengthen into a hurricane Sunday as it continues a path through the Gulf of Mexico and towards Florida.As of the 11 a.m. advisory, Tropical Storm Ian was 300 miles south-southeast of Grand Cayman and 570 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba. Ian is moving west-northwest at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. See the latest maps, models and paths here”We are expecting more rapid intensification over the next few days day with Ian forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane as early as Tuesday then weaken Thursday as wind shear is currently forecast to increase with a cold front on Thursday,” WESH 2 Chief Meteorologist Tony Mainolfi said. “Hurricane watches have been issued for parts of Cuba a full 60 hours ahead of arrival time and likely due to the Category 4 concerns. With that in mind, we could see watches issued for west coast of Florida Sunday night or Monday morning.”A turn toward the northwest at a similar forward speed is expected later today, followed by a turn toward the north-northwest on Monday and north on Tuesday. The center of Ian is forecast to pass well southwest of Jamaica Sunday, and pass near or west of the Cayman Islands early Monday. Ian will then move near or over western Cuba Monday night and early Tuesday and emerge over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday.WESH 2 Meteorologist Eric Burris stressed that the models still do not agree on specific landfall location and impacts to Florida and the NHC notes that there is a higher than usual degree of uncertainty with this forecast.”Regardless of Ian’s exact track and intensity, there is a risk of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, and heavy rainfall along the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle by the middle of the week, and residents in Florida should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place, follow any advice given by local officials, and closely monitor updates to the forecast,” the NHC said.Latest standard forecastWESH 2 Hurricane Survival Guide 2022Surviving the season: Everything you need to know this hurricane season in FloridaSUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:A Hurricane Warning is in effect for… * Grand Cayman * Cuban provinces of Isla de Juventud, Pinar del Rio, and Artemisa A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for… * Cuban provinces of La Habana, Mayabeque, and MatanzasA Hurricane Watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within the watch area. A watch is typically issued 48 hours before the anticipated first occurrence of tropical storm-force winds, conditions that make outside preparations difficult or dangerous.A Tropical Storm Warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area within 36 hours.The National Weather Service has urged Florida residents and visitors to gather supplies and keep tracking the forecast. Related: DeSantis declares State of Emergency for all of FloridaRelated: Seminole County begins sandbag preps ahead of tropical storm arrivalRelated: Where to get sandbags in Central FloridaKNOW WHAT TO DO WHEN A HURRICANE WATCH IS ISSUEDStay tuned to WESH 2 News, WESH.COM, or NOAA Weather Radio for storm updates.Prepare to bring inside any lawn furniture, outdoor decorations or ornaments, trash cans, hanging plants, and anything else that can be picked up by the wind.Understand hurricane forecast models and cones.Prepare to cover all windows of your home. If shutters have not been installed, use precut plywood.Check batteries and stock up on canned food, first-aid supplies, drinking water, and medications.The WESH 2 First Warning Weather Team recommends you have these items ready before the storm strikes.Bottled water: One gallon of water per person per dayCanned food and soup, such as beans and chiliCan opener for the cans without the easy-open lidsAssemble a first-aid kitTwo weeks’ worth of prescription medicationsBaby/children’s needs, such as formula and diapersFlashlight and batteriesBattery-operated weather radioWHAT TO DO WHEN A HURRICANE WARNING IS ISSUEDListen to the advice of local officials. If you are advised to evacuate, leave.Complete preparation activitiesIf you are not advised to evacuate, stay indoors, away from windows.Be alert for tornadoes. Tornadoes can happen during a hurricane and after it passes over. Remain indoors, in the center of your home, in a closet or bathroom without windows.HOW YOUR SMARTPHONE CAN HELP DURING A HURRICANEA smartphone can be your best friend in a hurricane — with the right websites and apps, you can turn it into a powerful tool for guiding you through a storm’s approach, arrival and aftermath.Download the WESH 2 News app for iOS | AndroidEnable emergency alerts — if you have an iPhone, select settings, then go into notifications. From there, look for government alerts and enable emergency alerts.If you have an Android phone, from the home page of the app, scroll to the right along the bottom and click on “settings.” On the settings menu, click on “severe weather alerts.” From the menu, select from most severe, moderate-severe, or all alerts.PET AND ANIMAL SAFETYYour pet should be a part of your family plan. If you must evacuate, the most important thing you can do to protect your pets is to evacuate them too. Leaving pets behind, even if you try to create a safe space for them, could result in injury or death.Contact hotels and motels outside of your immediate area to see if they take pets.Ask friends, relatives and others outside of the affected area whether they could shelter your animal.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
ABOVE: WESH 2 Meteorologist Eric Burris takes deep dive into the latest Ian models
Tropical Storm Ian was forecast to rapidly strengthen into a hurricane Sunday as it continues a path through the Gulf of Mexico and towards Florida.
As of the 11 a.m. advisory, Tropical Storm Ian was 300 miles south-southeast of Grand Cayman and 570 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba. Ian is moving west-northwest at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
See the latest maps, models and paths here
“We are expecting more rapid intensification over the next few days day with Ian forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane as early as Tuesday then weaken Thursday as wind shear is currently forecast to increase with a cold front on Thursday,” WESH 2 Chief Meteorologist Tony Mainolfi said. “Hurricane watches have been issued for parts of Cuba a full 60 hours ahead of arrival time and likely due to the Category 4 concerns. With that in mind, we could see watches issued for west coast of Florida Sunday night or Monday morning.”
A turn toward the northwest at a similar forward speed is expected later today, followed by a turn toward the north-northwest on Monday and north on Tuesday.
The center of Ian is forecast to pass well southwest of Jamaica Sunday, and pass near or west of the Cayman Islands early Monday. Ian will then move near or over western Cuba Monday night and early Tuesday and emerge over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday.
WESH 2 Meteorologist Eric Burris stressed that the models still do not agree on specific landfall location and impacts to Florida and the NHC notes that there is a higher than usual degree of uncertainty with this forecast.
“Regardless of Ian’s exact track and intensity, there is a risk of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, and heavy rainfall along the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle by the middle of the week, and residents in Florida should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place, follow any advice given by local officials, and closely monitor updates to the forecast,” the NHC said.
This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
We have noticed a slight shift in our ENSEMBLES since late last night.
It will be interesting to see if the Hurricane Center makes a subtle shift to the east or stay where they are based on the global models? Waiting on the 11am advisory for more detail. pic.twitter.com/3hCcYnPcnj
— Tony Mainolfi (@TMainolfiWESH) September 25, 2022
This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
I’ve seem many people yesterday say ‘oh it’s shifted west, we don’t need to worry’.
Let me be very clear. If you’re in the cone (just about all of us), you have an equal chance of having Ian cross over you.
The NHC is very transparent. They long range forecast is NOT set… pic.twitter.com/IYoEHBgm1L
— Eric Burris (@EricBurrisWESH) September 25, 2022
Latest standard forecast
WESH 2 Hurricane Survival Guide 2022
Surviving the season: Everything you need to know this hurricane season in Florida
SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:
A Hurricane Warning is in effect for…
* Grand Cayman
* Cuban provinces of Isla de Juventud, Pinar del Rio, and Artemisa
A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for…
* Cuban provinces of La Habana, Mayabeque, and Matanzas
A Hurricane Watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within the watch area. A watch is typically issued 48 hours before the anticipated first occurrence of tropical storm-force winds, conditions that make outside preparations difficult or dangerous.
A Tropical Storm Warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area within 36 hours.
The National Weather Service has ur...
Auburn Opens As Slight Home Favorite Against LSU https://digitalalabamanews.com/auburn-opens-as-slight-home-favorite-against-lsu/
Auburn Football
Published: Sep. 25, 2022, 9:16 a.m.
Sep 24, 2022; Auburn, Al, USA; Robby Ashford (9) celebrates after scrambling in for a touchdown during the game between Auburn and Missouri at Jordan Hare Stadium. Todd Van Emst/AU AthleticsTodd Van Emst/AU Athletics
Despite its shaky play through the first four weeks, Auburn opened as a slight home favorite for its Week 5 SEC tilt against LSU.
Auburn opened as a 1.5-point favorite against LSU on Sunday morning, according to VegasInsider.com. Auburn (3-1, 1-0 SEC) welcomes LSU (3-1, 1-0) to Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday for a 6 p.m. kickoff under the lights on ESPN.
Read more Auburn football: Robby Ashford’s injury against Missouri nothing “too bad”
Grading Auburn’s 17-14 win against Missouri
Bryan Harsin puts “fourth-and-1 mentality” to the test in SEC opener
Auburn has failed to cover the spread in four straight games to open the year, most recently with a 17-14 overtime win against Missouri. In that game, Auburn’s offense struggled to do much of anything after the first quarter, and Bryan Harsin’s team survived two close calls late — a missed 26-yard walk-off field goal attempt by Missouri at the end of regulation, and a fumble into the end zone mere inches before Missouri’s Nathaniel Peat crossed the goal line for what would have been the game-winning touchdown. Auburn recovered the ball in the end zone to survive its SEC opener and bounce back from a humiliating loss to Penn State at home a week earlier.
LSU heads to the Plains on a three-game winning streak. Brian Kelly’s team dropped its season opener to Florida State in New Orleans but has started to hit its stride, with wins Southern, Mississippi State and New Mexico, all at Tiger Stadium.
LSU’s trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium will mark the program’s first true road game of the season. For Auburn, it will be the last game of a season-opening five-game homestand before it hits the road for two straight weeks: at Georgia and then at Ole Miss.
LSU leads the all-time series with Auburn, 31-24-1, but Auburn has won each of the last two meetings between the SEC West rivals. Harsin’s team won in Baton Rouge, La., last season for the first time since 1999, while Auburn demolished LSU, 48-11, in Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2020. It was the most lopsided result in series history.
Auburn is also 13-8 all-time at home against LSU.
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
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If He Is The Nominee I Wont Be A Republican: Liz Cheney Wants Trump Far Away From 2024 Ballots
“If He Is The Nominee, I Won’t Be A Republican”: Liz Cheney Wants Trump Far Away From 2024 Ballots https://digitalalabamanews.com/if-he-is-the-nominee-i-wont-be-a-republican-liz-cheney-wants-trump-far-away-from-2024-ballots/
At Saturday’s Texas Tribune festival, Cheney said she’ll do everything she can to keep Trump from becoming nominee
Published September 25, 2022 10:47AM (EDT)
Liz Cheney and Donald Trump (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)
Liz Cheney had Trump on the mind during The Texas Tribune Festival held in Austin on Saturday, making it very clear that she wants his name nowhere to be found come 2024. In fact, the Wyoming GOP Rep. feels so strongly about this that she’s willing to switch political sides if Trump becomes a presidential nominee.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee,” Cheney said. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
When asked if she has plans to run for president herself, Cheney “dodged the question,” according to CNN‘s coverage of the festival.
“It’s not about me or making a decision about what I’m going to do,” Cheney said. “I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office.”
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
As far as action items that coincide with her goal of blocking Trump from running for president again in 2024, Cheney said “she will campaign for Democrats to ensure that Republican candidates who promote election lies do not get elected,” per CNN’s reporting.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected,” Cheney said, adding the Trump-endorsed candidate for Arizona Governor to her no-no list.
Although Cheney is willing to help Democrats in a joint effort to keep Trump off the ballot, and even lean Democrat herself, she pumps the breaks at the idea of Democrats keeping control of the House of Representatives after the midterms, believing there to be many “bad policies” coming from the Biden administration.
“I think it’s really important though, as voters are going to vote, that they recognize and understand what the Republican Conference consists of in the House of Representatives today.”
Kelly McClure is a journalist and fiction writer who lives in New Orleans. She is Salon’s Nights and Weekends editor, and her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Something is Always Happening Somewhere
MORE FROM Kelly McClure
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Odds & Ends: News/Humor (With A Who Lost The Trump/Putin Week? Poll)
Odds & Ends: News/Humor (With A “Who Lost The Trump/Putin Week?” Poll) https://digitalalabamanews.com/odds-ends-news-humor-with-a-who-lost-the-trump-putin-week-poll/
You tell ’em, Maynard G. Krebs
I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in Cheers & Jeers.
OK, you’ve been warned – here is this week’s tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and …… well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend …. and week ahead.
ART NOTES — an exhibition entitled Goya-Chagoya — matching drawings by the legendary Spanish artist Goya with modern re-interpretations by the Mexican-born Enrique Chagoya — will be at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri to February 12th.
Enrique Chagoya (born 1953)
YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay by David Dayen (Dday) on Lisa Epstein — an oncology nurse who fell victim to foreclosure fraud during the collapse of the housing bubble — and how her subsequent activism helped lead to a judgement against a fuel card company with hidden fees … without notifying customers.
THURSDAY’s CHILD is named Lilly the Cat — a suburban New York kitteh who went missing, but came home a week later: letting her family know she had returned by … activating the doorbell camera (that she knew about).
Lilly the Cat
IN RESPONSE to complaints from city residents (about noise from early morning trucks and the disruption caused by squads of deliverers on electric bicycles and scooters) France has is trying to crack-down on so-called dark stores — city-center food depots used only for instant home deliveries ordered over the internet — which have replaced actual stores (where people could shop).
FRIDAY’s CHILD is named Capone the Cat — a NYC stray who settled into a garbage pile, afraid to move and barely eating — but became an instant lap cat when rescued, and has now been adopted.
Capone the Rescued Cat
BRAIN TEASER — try this Quiz of the Week’s News from the BBC …… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at cat cafés — why they started in east Asia and how they function today in the West.
THIS WEEK’s POLL is a Trump/Putin World edition … next week will revert back to a more standard Who Lost the Fortnight? edition.
FATHER-SON? — NFL Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway and a soon-to-be University of Texas quarterback (and already being compared to Elway by some) — Arch Manning (in reality, the nephew of Peyton Manning, who played in Denver for team president Elway).
John Elway (born 1960)
Arch Manning (born 2004)
…… and finally, for a song of the week ………………………… no time for a full profile: instead, a short hymn sung by one of my favorite veteran musicians: Steve Winwood (of Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and solo fame).
During the height of the pandemic, he downloaded free videos of himself and other musicians (working remotely) on some of his catalogue — here, for instance, is such a rendition of his first big hit in the USA — Gimme Some Lovin’ (from 1966 with the Spencer Davis Group) which you can hear at this link.
Just recently, I heard a solo tune he recorded (in that difficult time) outdoors on his own property in August, 2020. Now the Green Blade Riseth is a British hymn for Easter (about the Resurrection, using springtime as an analogy) — often sung at funerals — set to the music of the French Christmas carol Noël Nouvelet. So it may seem oddly timed here, not to mention a departure from his normal work.
But it’s Steve Winwood … so of course he’ll make it work.
Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain
Love lives again, that with the dead has been
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain
Thy touch can call us back to life again
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green
Poll
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Who Lost the Week in Trump/Putin World?
Donald Trump, the focus of a NY State civil suit for falsifying loan and tax records, with the attorney general referring to the scheme as the Art of the Steal
The Trump adult children, also named (as part of the Trump Organization) as part of the NY State civil suit for their involvement in a massive fraud scheme
Doug Jensen, the Des Moines man seen at the front of the pack of rioters inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, found guilty of all seven charges against him
Donald Trump, as E. Jean Carroll, the writer who claims she was raped by Donald Trump decades ago in New York, is now planning to sue him for sexual battery under the state’s newly enacted “Adult survivors” law later this year
Trump judge Aileen Cannon, whose ruling granting Trump not only a special master but also delaying the examination of top-secret documents as he wanted – having the 11th Circuit unanimously overturn parts of her ruling: in one day
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a Jan 6th rioter who held a security clearance (and has dressed up as Adolf Hitler), sentenced to four years by a Trump judge who found his claim that he didn’t know Congress met at the Capitol … to be laughable
Donald Trump, as his hand-picked special master (Raymond Dearie) is ordering his attorneys to present (in court) what their client has emphatically stated (on conservative media) where there is no sworn testimony
State party leader Kelli Ward (R-AZ), whose lawsuit to block a subpoena issued by the January 6th committee (to obtain her phone records) was dismissed by a judge, as Ward organized a slate of fake electors in the 2020 election
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), hit with two lawsuits over his scheme to dishonestly lure migrants from Texas onto flights to liberal enclaves: one on civil rights grounds, another on using Florida taxpayer money to fund the scheme
Donald Trump, on general principles
Vladimir Putin, whose war effort is going so badly he has threatened to clamp down on international travel in order to prevent potential conscripts from fleeing Russia, afraid of its largest mobilization since WW-II
Multiple names listed – or a write-in – either way, please elaborate in a comment
0 votes Vote Now!
Who Lost the Week in Trump/Putin World?
Donald Trump, the focus of a NY State civil suit for falsifying loan and tax records, with the attorney general referring to the scheme as the Art of the Steal
The Trump adult children, also named (as part of the Trump Organization) as part of the NY State civil suit for their involvement in a massive fraud scheme
Doug Jensen, the Des Moines man seen at the front of the pack of rioters inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, found guilty of all seven charges against him
Donald Trump, as E. Jean Carroll, the writer who claims she was raped by Donald Trump decades ago in New York, is now planning to sue him for sexual battery under the state’s newly enacted “Adult survivors” law later this year
Trump judge Aileen Cannon, whose ruling granting Trump not only a special master but also delaying the examination of top-secret documents as he wanted – having the 11th Circuit unanimously overturn parts of her ruling: in one day
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a Jan 6th rioter who held a security clearance (and has dressed up as Adolf Hitler), sentenced to four years by a Trump judge who found his claim that he didn’t know Congress met at the Capitol … to be laughable
Donald Trump, as his hand-picked special master (Raymond Dearie) is ordering his attorneys to present (in court) what their client has emphatically stated (on conservative media) where there is no sworn testimony
State party leader Kelli Ward (R-AZ), whose lawsuit to block a subpoena issued by the January 6th committee (to obtain her phone records) was dismissed by a judge, as Ward organized a slate of fake electors in the 2020 election
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), hit with two lawsuits over his scheme to dishonestly lure migrants from Texas onto flights to liberal enclaves: one on civil rights grounds, another on using Florida taxpayer money to fund the scheme
Donald Trump, on general principles
Vladimir Putin, whose war effort is going so badly he has threatened to clamp down on international travel in order to prevent potential conscripts from fleeing Russia, afraid of its largest mobilization since WW-II
Multiple names listed – or a write-in – either way, please elaborate in a comment
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Five Things Republicans Would Do In A House Majority
Five Things Republicans Would Do In A House Majority https://digitalalabamanews.com/five-things-republicans-would-do-in-a-house-majority/
MONONGAHELA, Pa. (The Hill) — The sprint to Election Day is fully underway, but House Republicans are looking past November and eyeing what they’ll do in the likely event of winning a majority in the upper chamber.
They’ve hinted at parts of their agenda for months, but this week Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other members of House GOP leadership formally unveiled a package of proposed policy and messaging priorities for the next Congress.
McCarthy was joined by more than two dozen House GOP colleagues, with ideologies ranging from firebrand Freedom Caucus Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to moderate Republican Governance Group Chairman David Joyce (R-Ohio), at the rollout event at warehouse for an HVAC company about 45 minutes outside Pittsburgh.
Members answered friendly questions from some in the audience of around 150 parents, business owners, law enforcement officials and activists — with many news cameras and reporters watching.
Dubbed the “Commitment to America,” much of the written plan is vague, vowing to “curb wasteful government spending” and making a passing reference to abortion by saying the GOP will “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.”
But the plan broadly lays out Republican priorities less than seven weeks before voters go to the polls. Republicans have also proposed some specifics and say other details would be worked out in committees.
Republicans need a net gain of just six seats to win control of the House in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, an outcome election analysts say is likely.
Here are five things Republicans say they would do with that control:
Take aim at the IRS
House Republicans’ first bill, McCarthy announced at Friday’s rollout event, will aim to reverse the portion of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this summer, that provides $80 billion to the IRS and significantly boosts staff. The additional funds are largely to target high-income earner compliance.
“On our very first bill, we’re going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents,” McCarthy said.
Republicans have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 87,000 new IRS employees, which would be added over the course of a decade, will be “agents” and raised the specter of an enforcement army banging on voters’ doors. In fact, many will work as support staff, auditors and replacements for those who leave the agency.
Launch a flood of investigations
Perhaps the biggest tool for a GOP-led House with a Democratic president able to veto Republican bills would be the power to direct hearings and demand information and documents.
Republicans promise to “conduct rigorous oversight to rein in government abuse of power and corruption” and flaunted that they have already sent more than 500 requests for information and documents.
They plan to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 virus — with several House Republicans pledging to specifically investigate Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to Biden and longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — and policies on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We will give [Homeland Security] Secretary Mayorkas a reserved parking spot, he will be testifying so much about this,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also said that he would look into the Department of Justice (DOJ) as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
“The No. 1 thing is this weaponization of the DOJ against the American people,” Jordan said.
Those actions could also affect the DOJ’s investigation of former President Trump. After the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and seized classified documents, Republicans told Attorney General Merrick Garland to preserve his documents.
Republicans are also planning to probe the business activities of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, but lawmakers at the rollout event did not put focus on that.
Wade into school culture war issues
McCarthy’s plan calls to “defend fairness by ensuring that only women can compete in women’s sports,” and he has specifically said he would bring up the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
That bill would to define sex “solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” for purposes of Title IX in athletics. Support for the legislation ticked up as coverage of transgender athletes succeeding in women’s sports competitions, such as former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, increased.
Republicans also promise to “advance the Parents’ Bill of Rights,” legislation that was released last year in part as a response to frustrations about “woke” curriculum and COVID-19–related school closures that spilled over into heated school board meetings.
The bill would require school districts to post curriculum publicly, have teachers offer two in-person meetings with parents a year, have parents give consent before any medical exam at school and provide notice of any violence at school.
It is unlikely that either bill could pass in the Senate, or that Biden would sign it.
Push domestic energy and gas production
Republicans put a large focus on increasing domestic energy as a means of lowering fuel prices and increasing the number of well-paying jobs.
The platform calls to “cut the permitting process time in half to reduce reliance on foreign countries.” House Republicans unveiled an energy and climate strategy earlier this year that promotes oil and gas, mining for critical minerals and hydropower.
If a GOP bill on climate makes it to Biden’s desk and he vetoes it, that would be future campaign fodder for Republicans.
“What kind of message does it send if it does get through to his desk and he has to veto it?” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) told The Hill. “If that’s a choice he wants to make, well then he won’t win another term either.”
Scrutinize local crime policies
High crime rates have been a major midterm campaign topic, and an NBC News poll released this week found the GOP with a 23-point edge over Democrats when voters were asked who could better handle the issue.
Republicans promise to bring up legislation to give recruiting and retention bonuses to police departments in hopes of combating national police staffing shortages. They also plan to probe policies of local district attorneys.
“House Republicans will immediately ensure that we hire 200,000 more police officers across this country to make sure that our communities are safe,” said House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.). “We will go after the radical leftist prosecutors, DAs, who are refusing to abide by the rule of law, and are prioritizing criminals rather than the law-abiding citizens.”
The House passed four bills on Thursday that addressed policing, despite Democratic division.
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Philippines On High Alert As explosive Super Typhoon Noru Makes Landfall
Philippines On High Alert As ‘explosive’ Super Typhoon Noru Makes Landfall https://digitalalabamanews.com/philippines-on-high-alert-as-explosive-super-typhoon-noru-makes-landfall/
Emergency officials in the Philippines were on high alert Sunday as a rapidly intensifying tropical storm known as Super Typhoon Noru made landfall off the eastern shore of the capital, Manila, and made its way toward the main island.
Weather officials have warned of a potential “extreme threat” to life and property from Noru, also known locally as Super Typhoon Karding. The storm reached “super typhoon category after a period of explosive intensification,” they said. Super typhoons have peak winds of at least 150 mph.
Though the storm was expected to weaken into Monday as it crossed over the main island of Luzon, which includes Manila, and made landfall, the officials said it was “highly likely” to “remain a typhoon while crossing the landmass.”
As Noru approached the Philippines, its peak winds increased from 60 to 160 mph in 24 hours as it transformed from a tropical storm to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. This leap was among the fastest 24-hour intensification rates on record for any tropical cyclone.
Scientists say human-caused climate change is increasing the potential for such rapid strengthening.
In Manila, rescue workers on Sunday were preparing rubber boats and life vests as authorities started evacuating people from coastal areas.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Sunday canceled classes in public schools and closed down non-emergency government buildings in a bid to keep people indoors and out of the storm’s path, his office said on social media.
Local services were disrupted and dozens of international and domestic flights were canceled because of the weather, including a United Airlines flight to Guam, authorities said.
The U.S. Embassy rescheduled all consular appointments for Monday in Manila. Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, said his thoughts were with those in the Philippines as he shared a visualization of the storm rapidly growing in strength between Saturday and Sunday.
The typhoon is forecast to bring large waves, torrential rains and wind gusts of up to about 127 mph to the northern island of Luzon — home to a population of more than 64 million people — over the next 24 hours.
“Under these conditions, scattered to widespread flooding and rain-induced landslides are expected, especially in areas that are highly or very highly susceptible to these hazards as identified in hazard maps and in localities with significant antecedent rainfall,” the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said.
At 5:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, the agency said the eye of the storm had made landfall near Burdeos, a municipal area in the Quezon province of Polillo Islands.
It forecast “a high to very high risk” of storm surges of about 10 feet or more in the low-lying and exposed coastal areas of northern Quezon, the Polillo Islands and Aurora. It said to expect “heavy to intense with at times torrential rains” through Monday morning over Metro Manila, which includes Quezon City, nearby provinces and the north of Quezon.
After crossing Luzon, Noru is forecast to emerge in the South China Sea and regain strength early this week before making a second landfall in central Vietnam.
Noru is one of many tropical storms to hit the Philippines this year. The capital and northern provinces are recovering from a cyclone last month that caused floods and landslides and killed three people, according to Reuters.
One of the strongest storms ever to hit Canada slammed into Nova Scotia’s coastline on Saturday, leaving much of Nova Scotia and nearly all of Prince Edward Island without power. Former hurricane Fiona is the lowest-pressure land-falling storm on record in Canada, according to the Canadian Hurricane Center, which also reported hurricane-force gusts battering the area.
Meanwhile, a tropical storm known as Ian churned through the central Caribbean, a journey that weather experts say could culminate in a collision with Florida on Thursday as a hurricane.
Jason Samenow, Matthew Cappucci, Selena Ross and Sydney Page contributed to this report.
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ShoalsFest: What To Know About Jason Isbells Music Festival
ShoalsFest: What To Know About Jason Isbell’s Music Festival https://digitalalabamanews.com/shoalsfest-what-to-know-about-jason-isbells-music-festival/
From The Lede
Published: Sep. 25, 2022, 8:56 a.m.
Jason Isbell, Jimbo Hart, Sadler Vaden, Amanda Shires, Chad Gamble and Derrick DeBorja with Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit perform onstage. (Photo by Robb Cohen/Invision/AP)Robb Cohen/Invision/AP
Still on 43, Jason Isbell has already lived out many musicians’ daydreams.
He’s won four Grammys, owns a 1959 Gibson Les Paul worth several hundred thousand dollars, been cast in a Scorsese movie and married a talented and beautiful artist with whom he has an adorable young daughter.
And since 2019, Isbell’s had his own music festival too. The 43-year-old Americana superstar’s ShoalsFest returns for its third incarnation, Oct. 1 and 2 at Florence’s McFarland Park, address 200 James M. Spain Drive. (Like many live music events, in 2020 ShoalsFest was not held due to the pandemic.) The verdant location is situated alongside the Tennessee River. It’s a charming place for a small-but-potent festival.
Back when he was a teen, Shoals/Green Hill native Jason Isbell developed his guitar playing and songwriting chops working at FAME Studios and playing with local musicians, including members of storied studio-band The Swampers.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Muscle Shoals, and surrounding municipalities Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Florence, collectively referred to as The Shoals, had a big impact on popular music with what was dubbed the “Muscle Shoals Sound.” Artists ranging from soul-music pioneers The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to rock-stars like The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan came to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound, where they tracked some of pop’s most enduring songs.
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What Time Is Bears-Texans On TV Today? Live Stream Channel How To Watch Online
What Time Is Bears-Texans On TV Today? Live Stream, Channel, How To Watch Online https://digitalalabamanews.com/what-time-is-bears-texans-on-tv-today-live-stream-channel-how-to-watch-online/
The Chicago Bears and Houston Texans meet Sunday, Sept. 25. The game will be live streamed on DirecTV Stream (free trial) and fuboTV (live stream).
The Chicago Bears were riding high after a surprising victory over San Francisco in a rain-soaked season opener at Soldier Field, only to get taken down by Aaron Rodgers and the rival Green Bay Packers yet again.
They will try to bounce back when Lovie Smith — their former coach — and the winless Houston Texans visit Sunday.
Both teams have experienced their share of frustration. The Bears (1-1) have some big issues in their passing game, and the Texans (0-1-1) are simply searching for ways to win after failing to finish the first two weeks.
Houston settled for a 20-20 tie in the opener against Indianapolis after blowing a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter. The Texans also led entering the fourth last week against Denver, only to lose 16-9.
The Bears got their run game going in a 27-10 loss at Green Bay. But when it comes to passing, they’re not getting much.
Justin Fields, in his second season, is 15 of 28 for 191 yards. He has the fewest attempts in the NFL among qualifiers. Only Dallas’ Dak Prescott has fewer completions and yards, and he missed last week’s game following thumb surgery.
When is Bears-Texans?
The Bears play the Texans at noon (1 p.m. ET) Sunday, Sept. 25.
Live stream options
DirecTV Stream
DirecTV Stream offers a free trial.
There are four options of DirecTV Stream:
The Entertainment Package, which consists of 65+ channels, is $54.99 until the promotion runs out April 30. It’s the basic package for can’t-miss entertainment – including ESPN, TNT, Nickelodeon and HGTV.
The Choice Package has more than 90 channels and is $74.99 during the promotion. The channels in ENTERTAINMENT, plus MLB Network, NBA TV, college sports networks, and more. Enjoy Regional Sports Networks with no additional fees.
The Ultimate Package has more than 130 channels and is $89.99 during the promotion. Everything in CHOICE, plus Oxygen, Golf Channel, NHL Network, Universal Kids and more.
The Premier Package has more than 140 channels and is $134.99 during the promotion. Everything in ULTIMATE, plus HBO Max, SHOWTIME, STARZ, Cinemax and more.
DirecTV Stream offers a free trial that doesn’t require much effort.
To sign up, enter a phone number, email address and credit card, and you’ll receive five days of the service without charge.
In addition, enhance your experience with the DirecTV Stream device. While it doesn’t include a free trial, it give you access to thousands of apps like Netflix and more on Google Play. You can search using the voice remote with Google Assistant, and you can enjoy a traditional live TV channel guide. It is sold separately.
FuboTV
The game will be live streamed on fuboTV, which offers a free trial. The most basic of plans is the “fubo standard” package, which comprises 121-plus channels for $69.99 per month. Like all cord-cutting alternatives, there are plenty of options, especially for sports. It comes with more than 1,000 hours of cloud-based DVR, and up to 10 screens at once.
Will it be televised?
The Texans and Bears will be televised on CBS.
Preview
FAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS: Smith had nothing but good things to say about his time in Chicago.
“Absolutely. I get a chance to have my dream job here based on starting there,” he said. “A lot of great times, we still have a home there, friends. My wife is from Chicago. All positive, appreciative of everything that happened there during my time there.”
Smith led the Bears to an 81-63 record and a Super Bowl appearance from 2004-12. He was fired following a 10-win season.
The Bears have just one winning record and two playoff appearances since they let him go. They’re also on their fourth coach since, with Matt Eberflus in his first season.
CATCHING ON: Bears receiver Darnell Mooney isn’t ready to panic about his slow start.
“It’s Week 2, so don’t need to worry about it too much,” he said. “The team believes in me. Players believe in me, so whenever my opportunity will be there, I’ll take advantage of it.”
Mooney has just two receptions for 4 yards and has been targeted five times. It’s not what he or the Bears envisioned after he had 1,055 yards last season — his second.
Chicago also needs to get tight end Cole Kmet more involved. He has zero receptions.
DAMEON’S DRIVE: Though the Texans have had trouble finishing, one player who hasn’t had a problem doing so is rookie running back Dameon Pierce. Both Smith and Cooks raved this week about the fourth-round pick’s ability to finish.
“We as a football team need to finish. I haven’t said that an awful lot to Dameon,” Smith said. “He finishes plays … that toughness, extra effort, all those things you talk about, that’s exactly what we see from him every time he gets the ball.”
Added Cooks: “From the moment he stepped into the building, that’s what he’s all about. Even in practice finishing runs, even when he’s not touched, even when it’s hard out there. It’s a mindset.”
Pierce had 15 carries for 69 yards and was solid in pass protection a week after managing just 33 yards on 11 carries in his NFL debut. His yards rushing last week were the most by a Houston rookie since 2017.
GROUND GAINS: Chicago’s ground game took off last week.
The Bears ran for 180 yards and averaged 6.7 yards per attempt against Green Bay. David Montgomery played a big part in that with 122 yards on 15 rushes, after managing just 26 yards on 17 carries in a rain-soaked season-opening win against San Francisco. Khalil Herbert added 38 yards on four attempts.
BRITT OUT: The Texans are without center Justin Britt after he was placed on the reserve/non-football injury list this week. Britt started 11 games last season in his first year in Houston and started in the opener before leaving the team for what Smith called personal reasons.
Smith wouldn’t provide any details on why Britt was out this week. Scott Quessenberry, who started against the Broncos, will fill in at center.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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If Hes Elected The Stock Market Will Crash: Trumps 2020 Warning About Biden Comes True | The Daily Wire
‘If He’s Elected, The Stock Market Will Crash’: Trump’s 2020 Warning About Biden Comes True | The Daily Wire https://digitalalabamanews.com/if-hes-elected-the-stock-market-will-crash-trumps-2020-warning-about-biden-comes-true-the-daily-wire/
A clip of former President Donald Trump arguing that the election of President Joe Biden would lead to a plummeting stock market circulated online on Friday after Wall Street saw a bloodbath.
The Federal Reserve increased targets for the federal funds rate by 0.75% on Wednesday afternoon, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks 30 of the most prominent companies on American exchanges, tumbling more than 500 points. After stagnating on Thursday, the index fell another 500 points by early Friday afternoon to 29,400. On January 20, 2021, the day of Biden’s inauguration, the Dow had closed slightly above 30,900.
“They said the stock market will boom if I am elected,” Trump said during a 2020 presidential debate. “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.”
Nasdaq Performance 612 days in office
President Trump: +44.17
President Biden: -19.24%pic.twitter.com/DOitQP1a7h
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 23, 2022
According to conservative polling group InteractivePolls, which posted the clip from the debate to social media, the tech-heavy NASDAQ had risen 44% once Trump was 612 days into his first term. At the same point in Biden’s tenure, however, the index has fallen more than 19%.
Indeed, the United States economy has languished over the past two years under multiple disruptions — including labor shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine — all of which have contributed to worsening inflationary pressures.
Price levels between August 2021 and August 2022 rose 8.3%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, marking a slight moderation from an 8.5% year-over-year increase in July and a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June. Despite the moderation in year-over-year inflation, month-to-month prices for food, shelter, and medical services ticked upward, while core inflation — a metric that excludes food and energy, which tend to be more volatile — continued to rise.
Officials from the Biden administration have nevertheless claimed that the economy is strong. When Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy pressed White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on a poll showing that 83% of Americans believe the economy is “poor or not so good” earlier this year, she doubled down on the notion that the economy has improved since Biden assumed office.
“What I’m trying to say to you is that the economy is in a better place than it has been historically,” Jean-Pierre said. “And so, we feel, here at this administration and other experts as well … we feel that we are in a good position to take on inflation. We are in a good position to really start really working on lowering prices.”
A key factor behind inflationary pressures has been the cost of energy. Biden has pushed renewable power while leasing less federal land for oil and natural gas drilling than any of his predecessors since World War II. At the beginning of his tenure, Biden also nixed expansions to the Keystone XL pipeline project.
The Federal Reserve has repeatedly increased interest rate targets in response to rising price levels. Officials also announced interest rate hikes of 0.75% in June and July — moves meant to discourage inflation by increasing the cost of borrowing money for businesses and consumers. To stimulate the economy after the lockdown-induced recession, the Federal Reserve had formerly pegged a near-zero target interest rate and purchased government bonds from the market.
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Mike Pence's Former Chief Of Staff Said It's 'absurd' That Donald Trump Thinks He Can Declassify Documents By 'thinking About It'
Mike Pence's Former Chief Of Staff Said It's 'absurd' That Donald Trump Thinks He Can Declassify Documents By 'thinking About It' https://digitalalabamanews.com/mike-pences-former-chief-of-staff-said-its-absurd-that-donald-trump-thinks-he-can-declassify-documents-by-thinking-about-it/
A former Mike Pence aide said it’s “absurd” that Donald Trump claimed he can declassify documents with his mind.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified,'” Trump said earlier this week.
Marc Short, former chief of staff to Pence, said it would be “very difficult for the intelligence community to have a classification system if that was the case.”
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An ex-top aide to former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday threw cold water on Donald Trump’s claim that the former president declassified White House records using his mind.
Marc Short, who served as Pence’s chief of staff in the White House, said his claim is “absurd” in an interview with CBS News.
“I think it would make it very difficult for the intelligence community to have a classification system if that was the case,” he said.
Trump has so far denied all assertions of wrongdoing, saying initially that he had “declassified” the documents. He also said that “everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time.”
And on Wednesday, Trump said in a Fox News interview that presidents are able to declassify materials using just by thinking about doing so.
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump said. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”
Last month, the FBI executed a search warrant at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and recovered several boxes containing classified records that Trump took with him from the White House once he left office, according to the court records made public.
The search unearthed more than two dozen boxes containing some “11,000 documents and 1,800 other items from the office and storage room,” according to court filings. Some of the boxes were distinctly marked as “top secret,” Insider’s Sonam Sheth reported.
Some of those materials include private and potentially sensitive documents like medical, tax and accounting records, the court said.
In legal proceedings over the recovered documents, an appeals court earlier this week said that there is “no evidence that any of these records were declassified.”
Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records must be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration upon leaving office.
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Trump And His Lawyers Keep Ghosts Of Nixon And Watergate Alive And Haunting
Trump And His Lawyers Keep Ghosts Of Nixon And Watergate Alive And Haunting https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-and-his-lawyers-keep-ghosts-of-nixon-and-watergate-alive-and-haunting/
The building drama over documents that left the White House with President Trump provides fresh proof that the ghosts of old scandals never die – or at least not in Washington.
Watergate happened half a century ago, but its name and spirit are still with us, thanks in large measure to former President Donald Trump. He has not been charged and may never be charged, but memories of President Richard Nixon have been revived repeatedly by two impeachment proceedings and countless other scrapes and potential scandals. Trump has found himself at odds with Congress, federal courts and legal authorities in at least two states.
And yet it is the document dispute, which has been public since the FBI searched and seized documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Aug. 8, that brings the specter of Watergate to the fore with renewed force.
Operatives hired with money from Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and bugging the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex. Fearful of the fallout, Nixon ordered aides to cover up the connection and directed the payment of hush money to the burglars. Discussions of all this at the White House were caught on Nixon’s own taping system, and two years later those recordings would force him to resign on the brink of impeachment and removal from office.
But along the way, when it mattered most, Nixon and his crew found that people who might have been political allies in the past were not especially sympathetic to his case.
“Be careful what you wish for…”
When Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who had been pursuing him in the fall of 1973, the White House recruited a replacement who seemed likely to be more tractable. Leon Jaworski was a well-respected Texas prosecutor who had supported Nixon for president twice (and would later join a Texas-based group called “Democrats for Reagan”), Surely he would not be as dogged in seeking the White House tape recordings as Cox had been – or so people thought in the fall of 1973.
Special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski speaks with reporters outside U.S. District Court in Washington on May 16, 1974. (AP)
Wrong call. Jaworski proved a relentless pit bull as special prosecutor. He led a grand jury to indict nearly a score of White House personnel and name Nixon himself “an unindicted co-conspirator.”
The Nixon team had also thought they might find a relatively friendly courtroom when Federal Judge John J. Sirica took over handling the Watergate cases and trials. A former congressional staffer for Republicans, Sirica had been active in the GOP and rewarded with a federal judgeship in 1957 by Republican Dwight Eisenhower, while Nixon was vice president.
By 1972, Sirica was the senior judge on the District of Columbia circuit and could assign cases as he pleased. He assigned Watergate to himself. But from there on, nothing went quite as Nixon’s team might have hoped. Sirica sentenced the president’s chief of staff and his top domestic adviser to prison terms, along with Nixon’s first attorney general and his former White House counsel and others.
Sirica was responsible for the pivotal ruling that Nixon could not claim executive privilege to withhold the critical tape recordings Jaworksi wanted to use as evidence at criminal trials. Sirica eventually ruled that the tapes also had to go to the House Judiciary Committee as it weighed Nixon’s impeachment.
When Nixon took that on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Jaworksi presented the argument for Sirica’s ruling and won a unanimous judgment (including the votes of three justices whom Nixon had appointed).
The tapes were released to Congress; and 16 days later, Nixon was gone.
Déjà vu all over again
In recent days we have seen a beleaguered former President Trump struggling to find a legal response after an FBI search of his home that found scores of classified and even top-secret documents that his lawyers had told the authorities he no longer had.
Throughout his business and political careers, Trump has relied on the legal advice he got early on from one of his life mentors, the renowned attorney Roy Cohn. Having been the lead counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and thereafter an attorney for prominent New Yorkers (including sports and entertainment celebrities and Mafia dons), Cohn had an approach to all disputes. “Don’t tell me what the law is,” he would say, “tell me who the judge is.”
When Trump finally got his legal team together after the Mar-a-Lago search, they wanted a court to appoint a “special master” to review the documents and weigh Trump’s claim to keeping them. The idea was to slow and possibly derail any plan to prosecute the former president.
But they did not go to the judge who issued the search warrant or to one of the other federal judges in the same courthouse, the closest federal court to Mar-a-Lago. Instead, they went 70 miles to the outer edge of the same judicial district, where they might have hoped to find a more receptive judge. There their case was assigned to Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, still in just her second year on the federal bench. Cannon was one of the last of Trump’s appointees to be confirmed by the Senate.
She gave the Trump team most of what they wanted, including an order that the Department of Justice stop looking at the documents they had seized or using them in any way. She also ordered appointment of a special master, directing Justice and Trump’s team to each suggest two candidates. Trump’s team rejected both of Justice’s candidates, but Justice was willing to accept one of the two names offered from the other side. That’s the one Cannon chose.
But then things began to go awry. On Tuesday of this past week, the special master Cannon chose, Raymond Dearie, came to court in Brooklyn N.Y. and told the Trump team they needed to show evidence for Trump’s claim that the documents had been declassified. Trump’s lawyers said they wanted to hold any such evidence back for now, to leave the question open and then possibly use the declassification issue as a defense later on.
Dearie would not let them have it both ways. The documents were either classified or they were not. Put up or shut up, some might say. “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Judge Dearie said.
Later in the week, things got even more problematic for Trump when a three-judge panel on the Federal Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta overruled Judge Cannon and said the Justice Department could continue using the classified documents in its investigation after all.
That panel included two of Trump’s own appointees, and in their ruling they treated Cannon’s previous ruling rather dismissively.
The 11th Circuit could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, so we await the result there. But we have seen some of Trump’s three appointees on that court vote against him as well during his fruitless objections to the 2020 election outcome.
The momentum of the case is decidedly not encouraging from the standpoint of the former president. And his own lawyers strongly implied to Judge Dearie that they foresaw Trump dealing with an indictment in the document case.
We are a long way from resolving this or several other legal matters pending against the former president. And the federal cases are unrelated to the proceedings in New York where the state attorney general has sued Trump and three of his adult children and the Trump Organization over fraudulent filings to deceive banks and tax authorities.
They are also unrelated to continuing testimony being taken by a grand jury in Georgia weighing charges against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in that state.
But as harvest time arrives, and as all these cases hover over the political season, one can sometimes hear echoes of “Watergate” wafting in the autumn breeze.
Copyright NPR 2022.
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Tropical Storm Ian: What Does Alabama Need To Know?
Tropical Storm Ian: What Does Alabama Need To Know? https://digitalalabamanews.com/tropical-storm-ian-what-does-alabama-need-to-know/
Tropical Storm Ian is expected to strengthen quickly today and become a hurricane as it heads for the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center is forecasting Ian to become a hurricane tonight as it nears western Cuba, then cross over Cuba and make it into the Gulf by Tuesday. There it could get even stronger — possibly Category 4 intensity — as it heads northward, paralleling the west coast of Florida, and toward the Florida Panhandle, possibly making landfall there as a weaker storm but still a hurricane on Friday morning.
As of 7 a.m. CDT Sunday, the center of Tropical Storm Ian was located about 320 miles south-southeast of Grand Cayman, or 590 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba, and was tracking to the west-northwest at 12 mph.
Ian had 50 mph winds, unchanged from Saturday night. Hurricane-force winds begin at 74 mph.
Hurricane center forecasters stressed that there was a “significant” amount of uncertainty about Ian’s track — especially as it nears landfall.
The long-range forecast cone, which shows where the center of the storm could go, stretched from the eastern part of coastal Alabama eastward to the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday morning. Forecasters said that effects from the storm — damaging winds, storm surge and flooding rain — could be a factor for areas that aren’t even in the cone.
Not only is part of the Alabama coast in the cone — so is a chunk of southeast Alabama, which could face the storm once it makes landfall.
The National Weather Service offices that cover Alabama were watching Ian carefully on Sunday.
The weather service in Mobile urged those along the Alabama coast to not let their guard down and continue to keep up to date on the forecast for Ian the next few days.
Regardless of where Ian makes landfall, there will be a high risk of rip currents for Alabama and northwest Florida beaches starting on Tuesday night and lasting through at least Thursday.
The weather service highlighted the uncertainty about Ian in the forecast discussion on Sunday, saying “The uncertainty is such that the forecast area could end up dry and fairly quiet through much of the period or see much higher rain chances along with wind impacts. Either way, we continue to expect a high risk of rip currents along with heavy surf conditions through much of the period. Hopefully, uncertainty in the track forecast will improve over the next 12 to 24 hours.”
If Ian follows the current forecast track it could be very windy along the Alabama coast as well — both before and after the storm arrives.
The weather service in Birmingham was also keeping tabs on Ian and said with all the uncertainty in the forecast it’s too soon to be specific about Ian’s possible effects on central Alabama’s weather.
Rain chances will be on the rise from Thursday into Friday as Ian nears the region — based on the current forecast track.
“There`s quite a bit of uncertainty in the track this far out, so any specific weather impact to our forecast area in Central Alabama also remains uncertain,” the weather service said Sunday morning.
The weather service in Huntsville was also watching Ian closely on Sunday. Forecasters said that based on the current track showers could begin to affect north Alabama on Friday if the center of the storm tracks into Georgia.
The weather service said the biggest concern right now for north Alabama would be heavy rain and gusty winds, but widespread flooding isn’t anticipated because it’s been so dry lately.
Forecasters urged all Alabamians to keep watching the forecast because it can change drastically based on the track of the storm.
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Tropical Storm Ian https://digitalalabamanews.com/tropical-storm-ian/
Authorities and residents in Florida were keeping a cautious eye on Tropical Storm Ian as it rumbled through the Caribbean on Sunday, expected to continue gaining strength and become a major hurricane in the coming days on a forecast track toward the state.
Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for all of Florida the previous day, expanding an initial order that had covered two dozen counties. He urged residents to prepare for a storm that could lash large swaths of the state with heavy rains, high winds and rising seas.
“We encourage all Floridians to make their preparations,” DeSantis said in a statement.
President Biden also declared an emergency, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance to protect lives and property. The president postponed a scheduled Sept. 27 trip to Florida due to the storm.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Ian was moving across the central Caribbean Sea, and expected to pass southwest of Jamaica by Sunday evening. By early Sunday, it was located 320 miles south-southeast of Grand Cayman, moving west-northwest at 12 mph. It had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
“Ian is expected to become a hurricane later today or tonight and reach major hurricane strength by late Monday or Monday night before it reaches western Cuba,” the NHC said.
Ian was forecast to pass west of the Cayman Islands early Monday, and then near western Cuba Monday night, the NHC said. It could reach Florida by Tuesday, bringing the possibility of flash flooding to the Florida peninsula and the Florida Keys, the agency added.
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Tropical Storm Ian over the central Caribbean on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. NOAA via AP
“Additional flooding and rises on area streams and rivers across northern Florida and parts of the Southeast cannot be ruled out, especially in central Florida,” the NHC wrote in its Sunday morning advisory.
John Cangialosi, a senior hurricane specialist with National Hurricane Center in Miami, said it is currently unclear exactly where Ian will hit hardest in Florida. He said residents should begin preparing for the storm, including gathering supplies for potential power outages.
“Too soon to say if it’s going to be a southeast Florida problem or a central Florida problem or just the entire state,” he said. “So at this point really the right message for those living in Florida is that you have to watch forecasts and get ready and prepare yourself for potential impact from this tropical system.”
In Pinellas Park, near Tampa, people were waiting in line at a Home Depot when it opened at 6 a.m., the Tampa Bay Times reported. Manager Wendy Macrini said the store had sold 600 cases of water by the early afternoon and ran out of generators.
People also were buying up plywood to put over their windows: “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,” Matt Beaver, of Pinellas Park, told the Times.
On Friday, DeSantis signed an executive order issuing a state of emergency for 24 Florida counties that could be in the storm’s path. On Saturday, the state of emergency was expanded to cover the entire state. The order also places the Florida National Guard on standby.
The storm poses risk of “dangerous storm surge, heavy rainfall, flash flooding, strong winds, hazardous seas, and isolated tornadic activity for Florida’s Peninsula and portions of the Florida Big Bend, North Florida, and Northeast Florida,” DeSantis said in his executive order Saturday.
He encouraged all Floridians “to make their preparations.”
Meanwhile, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands could receive anywhere from 3 to 6 inches of rain, the NHC forecasted. Cuba could see 4 to 8 inches, while southern Florida and the Florida could receive 2 to 4 inches.
High terrain areas in Jamaica and Cuba are at risk of flash flooding and mudslides, the NHC said. Cuba could see storm surges of 9 to 14 feet above normal when Ian hits Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
In:
Storm
Weather Forecast
Tropical Storm
Ron DeSantis
Florida
Hurricane
Hurricane Fiona
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Gold: Should Investors Hold It In A Bear Market? Experts Weigh In
Gold: Should Investors Hold It In A Bear Market? Experts Weigh In https://digitalalabamanews.com/gold-should-investors-hold-it-in-a-bear-market-experts-weigh-in/
The precious metal often labeled a ‘hedge against inflation’ and commonly known as a ‘safe haven’, is looking dull.
Gold (GC=F) is 23% off from its peak in March, and 10% down year-to-date.
In our series, ‘What to do in a bear market’, we asked the experts to tell us if there is value to holding gold in this environment.
Why hasn’t gold performed better this year?
“First, with major central banks around the world tightening their policies, this has helped to send bond yields to multi-year highs. Yield-seeking investors have been better off to hold government bonds to get some guaranteed return rather than holding zero-yielding assets like gold,” Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index and FOREX.com told Yahoo Finance.
“Second, the strengthening US dollar has weighed heavily on nearly all major buck-denominated assets, including gold. Would-be buyers earning in foreign currencies are having to pay more, and so they are being discouraged to invest in gold,” he continued.
Should investors hold gold in their portfolios, and if so, how much?
This is where fund managers and strategists really differ.
“We do not recommend a fixed allocation to gold unless investors want to speculate on currency rates or have some other short-term bull thesis that could cause gold to appreciate,” Jay Hatfield, portfolio manager of the InfraCap Equity Income Fund (ICAP) ETF told Yahoo Finance.
Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. bank wealth management generally recommends “little to no permanent gold or metals exposure for portfolios given the price volatility and no consistent income stream.”
“Investors may consider very modest exposures if they are particularly concerned about trend in the value of the U.S. dollar reversing, which could unhinge inflation pressures further and support gold prices,” said Haworth.
Others support a small exposure in a portfolio.
“In general, although each investor’s situation is unique, we believe a 3-5% allocation to gold products would seem adequately sized to capture the benefits of holding gold as an asset class,” says Imaru Casanova, deputy portfolio manager/senior gold analyst at VanEck
Mohit Bajaj of WallachBech Capital tells Yahoo Finance he’s a “big proponent of always allocating across the board in all sorts of asset classes. Anywhere from 5-10%… should be more than sufficient.”
For investors who want to hold the yellow metal, which is better: Physical gold or paper gold (investments that cover gold ETFs) ?
Some experts bring up safety and storage concerns when it comes to physical gold.
Louis Navellier, founder, and chief investment officer of Navellier & Associates tells Yahoo Finance he doesn’t recommend physical gold, but he does have a tip for those who insist on holding it: “There is a big markup on coins, so Credit Suisse bars are typically sold with a smaller markup.”
As for ETFs, Navellier says, “I do not recommend gold ETFs, since I do not like to pay the ETF spreads.”
But Bajaj of WallachBech recommends the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), “if you want to get access to gold without having to physically buy the metal.”
GraniteShares Gold Trust (BAR) “is another one that we’ve seen a lot of strong demand in,” said Bajaj.
“From a price standpoint, it’s only like $16 or $17, so for those who are novice investors who want to put their foot into the space, they can buy that without having to expend as much capital,” he added.
Ines is a markets reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @ines_ferre
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Analysis | 4 Charts That Show The GOPs 2022 Popularity Gap
Analysis | 4 Charts That Show The GOP’s 2022 Popularity Gap https://digitalalabamanews.com/analysis-4-charts-that-show-the-gops-2022-popularity-gap/
A month ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said out loud what many Republicans were undoubtedly feeling. Effectively, the message was: We’ve got a shot at a good 2022 midterm election, but some of these Trump candidates could screw it all up for us.
At the time, there was evidence of a GOP candidate problem — especially in the lagging poll numbers of some key Senate candidates.
Today, there’s considerably more.
An increase in public polling at the tail end of the primary season reinforces McConnell’s point — and not just in the races he and others might have had in mind. While it doesn’t count the GOP out of potentially winning the House and Senate and some key governor’s races, candidate popularity presents a significant and unnecessary hurdle in what should, historically speaking, be a good election for Republicans.
Where it’s perhaps most evident: when you look at the image ratings for the candidates — i.e. whether people view the candidate favorably or unfavorably.
The Washington Post reviewed more than 20 recent polls across the most competitive states in the 2020 presidential election, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And in most cases, the Trump-aligned candidates that observers have pegged as being potential liabilities in those states look like exactly that.
Oftentimes, the polls show voters in these states will be pretty evenly divided on which party they want in power when it’s presented as a generic choice — but then they’ll side with the specific, more popular Democrat.
Here are some big races where these popularity gaps could come into play in November.
The gap is perhaps most pronounced in Pennsylvania, where both GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano have trailed consistently in the polls.
Oz was broadly unpopular during the GOP primary, and he doesn’t appear to have improved his standing too much. In three recent polls — from Muhlenberg College, CBS/YouGov and Monmouth University — the percentage of people who viewed him unfavorably was double-digits higher than those who viewed him favorably. The Muhlenberg poll showed 29 percent of people liked him, while 53 percent disliked him. And the CBS/YouGov poll shows even 36 percent of Trump voters dislike him.
Oz’s opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), has middling approval numbers. But in each poll, Fetterman’s net favorability (i.e. positive views vs. negative ones) is more than 20 points higher than Oz’s, which helps explain Fetterman’s consistent edge in the race, which stands at around nine points in the FiveThirtyEight average.
The story is similar in the governor’s race, where Mastriano’s image ratings are about as bad as Oz’s; he’s also double-digits underwater in all three polls. (Monmouth, his best of the three polls, puts him at 36 percent favorable and 48 percent unfavorable.) And thanks to running against a Democrat who’s more popular than Fetterman, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Mastriano’s net image rating is consistently more than 30 points worse than his opponent.
Mastriano’s current average deficit is more than 10 points.
Perhaps the other two Senate races where this really comes into play are Ohio and Arizona.
Two recent polls show Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) with a net image rating 12 and 20 points better than Republican J.D. Vance. One of them — from Marist College — shows Democrats view Ryan by a favorably by a 76-point margin (79-3), but Republicans view Vance favorably by just a 45-point margin (58-13).
Ohio, unlike other states we’re focused on here, is increasingly a red state. But for these reasons, it’s looking like a headache for the GOP to win a race that should be in its column. The race is neck-and-neck.
In Arizona, there’s less quality public polling. But GOP nominee Blake Masters’s net favorability in a recent bipartisan AARP poll is minus-17 (37 percent favorable to 54 percent unfavorable), while Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is slightly popular. In both that and another poll, Masters’s net image rating is around 20 points worse than Kelly’s.
A McConnell-linked super PAC pulled out of the race this week, canceling $10 million in ad buys. Kelly leads by an average of 7.5 points.
Another nominee some have suggested could hurt the GOP is Kari Lake in the Arizona governor’s race. The evidence on that is less clear, and the race is polling tighter than the Senate race. But the same AARP poll showed Lake 10 points underwater (43 percent favorable to 53 percent unfavorable), while her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, was slightly popular.
This popularity gap could also be important in a few other races.
One is the Michigan governor’s race, where Trump-backed Tudor Dixon was double-digits underwater in two recent polls — including an EPIC-MRA poll that pegged her favorable rating at just 24 percent and her unfavorable rating at 44 percent. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) remains popular, with a majority approving of her job performance. In both polls, her net image rating is 28 points better than Dixon’s, and she leads by double digits in the head-to-head matchup.
Another is the Wisconsin Senate race, where both a recent Siena College poll and a Marquette Law School poll showed fewer than 40 percent of voters like two-term incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes’s (D) net image ratings are nine and 15 points better. But the race is very tight.
In the similarly tight Wisconsin governor’s race, Trump-endorsed GOP nominee Tim Michels is less popular than Gov. Tony Evers (D) by similar margins.
Georgia and New Hampshire
In the final two races we’ll spotlight, the gap is less pronounced — but still exists in a way that could matter.
Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker is consistently both underwater and less popular than Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), but the gap is usually between five and 10 points — which might help explain why he’s not underperforming as much as some of these other candidates, despite running a very uneven campaign. (Walker does lag behind GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s performance in various polls, though. And the CBS/YouGov poll found a much larger gap in which candidate people like personally.)
And in New Hampshire, new GOP nominee Don Bolduc is 17 points underwater in a new University of New Hampshire poll (26 percent favorable to 43 percent unfavorable), compared to Sen. Maggie Hassan’s (D-N.H.) minus-nine image rating. Hassan led in that poll by eight points and has led Bolduc in every poll.
One thing we’ve alluded to — and which you’ll notice if you dig into these polls — is that these popularity gaps are often bigger than the margins in the actual head-to-head matchups. And there’s one main reason for that: partisanship.
As The Post’s Philip Bump recently wrote, the CBS/YouGov poll showed Fetterman led Oz on several key issues when it comes to voters’ decisions, often by double digits. Yet Fetterman led by just five points on the ballot test. That’s because party often wins out on voters’ decisions.
Even more telling: The same pollster showed that, in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, a majority of people supporting the Democrat said they were doing so primarily because they liked their candidate. But 8 in 10 supporters of the Republican said their vote was primarily about supporting their party or voting against the other candidate.
That’s undoubtedly in part because those Republican candidates aren’t exactly setting the campaign trail on fire. But those numbers also show that how much voters like a particular candidate is hardly their only consideration at the ballot box — and often, nor is it the most important one.
Indeed, what these polls suggest is that if Republicans can win in these states — and by extension win the Senate — it’ll be in large part because of a favorable environment and the ever-present pull of partisanship.
And it will apparently be in spite of some of the candidates they’ve put forward.
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Check Your Facts About Trump Santa Barbara News-Press
Check Your Facts About Trump – Santa Barbara News-Press https://digitalalabamanews.com/check-your-facts-about-trump-santa-barbara-news-press/
James Buckley disputes points made by a lifelong Republican who wrote to cite lies by former President Donald Trump.
The first rule in reporting is to “check your facts.”
In relating the incident in which Mr. Trump mocked a disabled Washington Post reporter, Mr. Buckley defends Mr. Trump’s denial he had done this, claiming the man was “groveling,” and adding, “I do not know what he looks like.” The Washington Post version cites the reporter himself as having said, “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years.”
As for Mr. Buckley’s claim that Mr. Trump “has shown much respect for military families,” he must not recall the furor over the well-documented statement by Mr. Trump that members of the military were “suckers” and “losers.” Are not soldiers members of these “military families?” My husband served during the Korean War and he is not a “loser.” He was a patriot who stepped forth in the service of his country.
Again, Mr. Buckley should do his research before defending Mr. Trump against claims of his lies.
As for his refusal to call John McCain a “hero” because he’d been a POW for five years during the Vietnam War, I would say that the many medals Sen. McCain earned before being shot down gave him the status of “hero,” as would the description “4F draft dodger” fit Donald Trump. Valor versus cowardice.
Mr. Buckley’s puzzling refusal to accept that Mr. Trump is a man who lies is a serious flaw in his own thinking. Where is his objectivity? He seems to think that Mr. Trump is “right,”no matter what Mr. Trump does that is clearly “wrong.”
Mr. Buckley’s defense of Mr. Trump’s attacks on our hallowed institutions — whether the intelligence community, the Justice Department, our carefully-structured voting system that protects the vote of all of us as American citizens, the integrity of the Fourth Estate through his “Fake News” claims — as well as Trump’s attempts to dismantle and disrupt these bulwarks of our democracy — make me wonder if Mr. Buckley is thinking clearly about these crucial challenges to our Republican system of government.
A question I have for Mr. Buckley is, “Do you stand with Donald Trump in his embrace of QAnon theory as espoused in his rally in Ohio?”
Where is his breaking point in his blind loyalty to the worst man to ever inhabit the presidency?
Joanne O’Roark
Santa Barbara
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Conservative Buries GOP For Standing By Trump's 'garbage' Candidates
Conservative Buries GOP For Standing By Trump's 'garbage' Candidates https://digitalalabamanews.com/conservative-buries-gop-for-standing-by-trumps-garbage-candidates/
By Matthew Choi, The Texas Tribune
Sept. 24, 2022
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney said she would do “whatever it takes” to make sure former President Donald Trump is not the GOP presidential nominee during the 2024 elections, including stumping for Democrats running against election deniers running as Republicans.
When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith if she would consider running for president toward that end, the Republican congresswoman reiterated she would do everything in her power to prevent the former president from representing her party in the next presidential election.
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“I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office,” Cheney said during the closing night of The Texas Tribune Festival.
Cheney, who lost to a Republican primary challenger in August but will continue as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 Committee until she leaves office in January, said she continues to identify as a Republican, celebrating the legacy of the likes of Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But she said she would no longer be a Republican if Trump gets the party’s nomination in 2024.
“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he’s not the nominee,” Cheney said. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trump’s legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.
Cheney excoriated Trump for his failure to call off rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said without equivocation that any decision by the investigating committee about whether there should be criminal prosecution would be unanimous across the seven Democrats and two Republicans. She did not say whether the committee would decide in favor of a criminal prosecution.
“One of the things that has surprised me the most about my work on this committee is how sophisticated the plan was that Donald Trump was involved in and oversaw every step of the way,” Cheney said. “It was a multipart plan that he oversaw, he was involved in personally and directly.
“While leaders in Congress were begging him, ‘Please, tell the mob to go home,’ Donald Trump wouldn’t,” Cheney said. “And just set the politics aside for a minute and think to yourself, ‘What kind of human being does that?’”
The committee is gearing up to wrap up its work in the coming weeks and is slated to meet this Wednesday for another public hearing, offering no details about what will be discussed then. She said next week’s hearing is unlikely to be the committee’s last, despite committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., suggesting the opposite earlier this week.
When asked if she would like Trump to testify before the committee, she paused for a moment before offering the following: “Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalty of perjury.”
Cheney suffered a precipitous loss in the Republican primary for her Wyoming seat for her role on the committee, and she said Saturday that she would not vote for the Republican nominee for her seat, Harriet Hageman, in the general election.
But she challenged the audience not to question her ability to keep fighting against Trump after she leaves the House.
When asked about her own presidential ambitions, Cheney demurred.
“It’s really important not to just immediately jump to the horse race and to think about what we need as a country,” Cheney said.
Her criticisms aren’t limited to the former president. Cheney also flatly said she does not believe House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy should ever become Speaker of the House, which would put him second in line to the presidency behind the vice president.
“At every single moment, when our time of testing came and Kevin had to make a decision … he’s made the politically easy-for-him, or the politically expedient, decision instead of what the country needed,” she said.
But Cheney didn’t give up hope in her party, saying: “I think we have to have a Republican Party that can be trusted to fight for” issues such as limited government and strong national security.
Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is another vocal opponent of Trump. He called the former president a coward and the greatest “threat to our republic” in history in a campaign ad supporting his daughter’s primary run. Liz Cheney said that her father offered her a piece of advice on New Year’s Day this year: “‘Defend the republic, daughter.’ And I will,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/24/liz-cheney-texas-tribune-festival/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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Auburn Professor Kelly Dean Jolley Publishes Detective Novel Set On The Plains
Auburn Professor Kelly Dean Jolley Publishes Detective Novel Set On The Plains https://digitalalabamanews.com/auburn-professor-kelly-dean-jolley-publishes-detective-novel-set-on-the-plains/
JOHN WEST
When one thinks about detective stories, the mind often turns to the hard-boiled streets of New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
Not Auburn and Opelika.
But for Auburn University professor Kelly Dean Jolley, 56, the Plains was the perfect place to set “Big Swamp,” his new noir detective novel.
“It’s a detective novel set here in Opelika and Auburn,” Jolley said. “I’d spent so much time thinking about and reading detective novels, and of course this is where I live, so I just thought this is what I should do: I should just write the detective novel, and I should put it in the place that I know.”
Jolley says he has been interested in detective stories since he was a kid. He points to Raymond Chandler and Norbert Davis as early influences. But when writing “Big Swamp,” he wanted to do something a little different, he said, and both Jane Austen and the television show “Chuck” influenced the book.
Jolley calls “Big Swamp” a “comedy with shadows.” The novel is his first published work of fiction and was released in August.
“On the whole, there’s a good bit of lightheartedness,” Jolley said. “I like noir detective novels, but as a person, my tastes run much more to comedy than to tragedy.”
The story follows protagonist Ford Merrick, an Opelika-based detective, as he tries to unravel a mystery based around an old plantation home in Auburn.
“The whole story, as the cover of the book sort of reveals, circles around Noble Hall, that antebellum house out on Shelton Mill,” Jolley said.
“Big Swamp” features many familiar locations, including Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum and other Auburn University sites. The Lee County Courthouse, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church and even Well Red Book Store make appearances. Other locales are based on real places but adjusted to accommodate Jolley’s needs for the story.
“There’s a barbecue shop in Opelika that’s called Ford’s, but that’s actually Chuck’s,” Jolley said. “There’s a point at which Detective Ford and his client Rachel end up going to Ford’s to have lunch. But anyone who knows Chuck’s will recognize where they really are because Ford shows her the sign out front, and it’s got the slogan underneath the name that’s the same slogan as Chuck’s.”
Jolley is originally from Gallipolis, Ohio, but has lived in the Auburn area since 1991. The Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion at Auburn, he has taught philosophy and religion for 31 years. For Jolley, there is a definite similarity between philosophy and detective work.
“Philosophical problems, the way I think about them have the form of mysteries,” he said. “So, there’s a sense in which what the detective is doing on the mean streets is something like what the philosopher is doing on the page or on the blackboard because it’s an activity of problem solving. That’s, I think, an important part of it.”
Ultimately, those philosophical underpinnings find their way into “Big Swamp” as well.
“It’s another way in which it’s kind of peculiar as a noir novel, because at its heart is this concern with faith, hope and love,” Jolley said. “And Ford is concerned with what each of those is and what they’re asking of him as the plot unfolds.”
“Big Swamp” is available at Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers, Well Red Book Store and online.
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Italy Expected To Look Right As Voters Head To Polls In National Election | CNN
Italy Expected To Look Right As Voters Head To Polls In National Election | CNN https://digitalalabamanews.com/italy-expected-to-look-right-as-voters-head-to-polls-in-national-election-cnn/
02:57 – Source: CNN
Ultra-conservative likely to become Italy’s first female prime minister
CNN —
Italians are voting Sunday in national elections in which the far-right Brothers of Italy party – led by Giorgia Meloni – appears poised to make big gains after the collapse of two governments since the last election.
Her ultra-conservative party, whose origins lie in post-war fascism, currently controls just two of Italy’s 20 regions, having won just 4.5% of the vote in the 2018 elections.
But since the collapse of former Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s coalition earlier this year – which triggered the snap election – the Brothers of Italy have only surged in popularity, with recent polling suggesting nearly a quarter of the electorate backs her.
By midday, voter turnout in Italy was slightly lower than during the previous election in 2018, according to data published Sunday by the Italian Interior Ministry.
Polls remain open until 11 p.m. local (5 p.m. local). The 2018 vote resulted in a hung parliament.
Meloni, a 45-year-old mother from Rome who has campaigned under the slogan “God, country and family,” leads a party whose agenda is rooted in Euroskepticism, anti-immigration policies, and one that has also proposed weakening LGBTQ and abortion rights.
Her astronomical rise in popularity is a reflection of Italy’s longstanding rejection of mainstream politics, seen most recently with the country’s support of anti-establishment parties such as the Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini’s League.
Meloni’s partners in Italy’s center-right political alliance, Salvini and Forza Italia’s Silvio Berlusconi, are partly responsible for her popularity.
In 2008, as prime minister, Berlusconi named her as his sports minister, making her the youngest minister to hold that position.
And in the 2018 election, Meloni was Salvini’s junior partner in the center-right alliance. But this time, she’s in charge, and has hinted that, if elected, she may not give Salvini a ministerial portfolio – which would strip him of the power to potentially bring her government down.
Trailing behind in recent polling is the center-left coalition, led by the left-wing Democratic Party and centrist parties +Europe. The parties formed an alliance with another centrist party, Azione, following Draghi’s resignation to counter a lurch to the right, but it broke down shortly after it was formed, further opening the door to Meloni.
The election build-up has been dominated by hot-button issues including Italy’s cost-of-living crisis, a 209-billion euro package from the European Covid-19 recovery fund and the country’s support for Ukraine.
Meloni differs from Berlusconi and Salvini on a number of issues, including Ukraine, and has no connection to Russian President Vladimir Putin, unlike her partners, who have said they would like to review sanctions against Russia because of their impact on the Italian economy. Meloni has instead been steadfast in her support for defending Ukraine.
The Democratic Party, led by former prime minister Enrico Letta, strongly opposes Putin and his war in Ukraine, openly supports LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage – which was made legal in 2016 – and legislation to combat homophobia.
If her party wins, Meloni could also become Italy’s first female prime minister. However her politics do not mean that she is necessarily interested in advancing women’s rights.
Emiliana De Blasio, adviser for diversity and inclusion at LUISS University in Rome told CNN that Meloni’s politics are more important than her gender, but that she has not proven herself to be a feminist first.
“We need to reflect on the fact that Giorgia Meloni is not raising up at all questions on women’s rights and empowerment in general,” she said.
The Italian elections come as other far-right parties in other European countries have marked recent gains.
In France, despite far-right candidate Marine Le Pen losing the French Presidential election to Emmanuel Macron in April, her supporters were heartened at her share of the popular vote, which shifted France’s political center dramatically to the right.
And in Sweden, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, are expected to play a major role in the new government after winning the second largest share of seats at a general election earlier this month.
If Meloni’s party wins, it might very well confirm that a resurgent populist wave that’s been sweeping across Europe is here to stay.
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