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Cuomo faces new calls to resign as harassment investigation looms

Anna Ruch, 33, told the New York Times that she had never met the governor before, yet he still put his hand on her bare back, clasped her head in his hands and said: “Can I kiss you?”...
The Times published a photograph accompanying its report which shows Cuomo looking down at Ruch with her head between his hands. According to the paper the photo was taken on Ruch’s own cellphone by a friend.

Presidential lies

Prof Ginsberg says "whoppers" that lead to military action are the most harmful of all, and that Trump is not as blame-worthy as some of his predecessors in this respect.

The political science lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore adds: "The problem is the American presidential selection process is fundamentally flawed and produces monsters.

"It requires years of campaigning, and only the most arrogant, ambitious and narcissistic individuals would possibly be willing to do such a thing."

The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists

Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean people from it.
...Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”

In regards with weaning, it looks like I share my doubts with Randall Munroe

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The Life-Spans of Empires

Using the data set of lifetimes of 41 empires from 3,000BCE to 600 CE (see Appendix), I found that imperial life-times can be fit to an exponential distribution,λ=e^−λt, with a parameter value of λ=0.46 and an expected mean imperial lifetime of approximately 220 years (see figure 1)

Well my call for predictions for QAnon and March 4 resulted in remarkably few predictions but here I am undeterred for the follow-up!

No violence so far so that's good. Things could change but it does appear unlikely.

A smallish group of QAnoners did show up at the Capitol to watch the Re-Inauguration of Trump but, alas, Biden is still President.

My prediction was pretty spot-on thankyouverymuch!

I think I'm going to try something different from my usual posts, and ask a personal question to each of you.

Soylentils, if you had to pick one sentence, one phrase, one quote, to put all of your heart and soul into, what would it be? What single sentence best represents who you really are as a person, deep inside? It can be a quote from you or someone else, a song lyric, or anything else, as long as it's one single sentence.

Let's hear it.

Your papers, please!

“tidal wave of voter suppression”: 253 restrictive bills in 43 states

Republicans across the country responded to record voter turnout by unleashing a flurry of legislation aimed at restricting ballot access, citing concerns over unfounded allegations of rampant voter fraud that they themselves stoked for months.

At least 253 bills with provisions restricting voting access have been introduced, pre-filed, or carried over in 43 states, mostly by Republicans, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, dwarfing the number of similar bills filed at this point in 2020.
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"Republicans are doing this because they think they can gain an electoral advantage from making it harder for Black, brown and young voters to participate in the process," he said, adding: "This is the reaction of a party that knows it can't compete for a majority of the votes. So it is acclimating itself to minority rule through a number of tactics. Gerrymandering is one piece of it. But certainly, voter suppression is a big piece of it."
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"Voters who have less economic flexibility, less job flexibility, that's going to make it harder for them to vote," Sweren-Becker continued. "A bill that is going to require a particular kind of voter ID typically burdens voters of color. Voters of color tend not to have whatever the required voter ID is in higher numbers than white voters, for example. I think you can't divorce the current method of restricting voting access from the long history of voter suppression and racism in this country, where voter suppression measures were directly intended to stop Black voters in particular from being able to cast their ballots."

Georgia and Arizona lawmakers have been particularly aggressive, introducing 22 bills in each state to restrict voting access. Even Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who debunked many of Trump's lies about the state's elections despite supporting certain voting restrictions, said many of the bills introduced in the state legislature are "reactionary to a three-month disinformation campaign that could have been prevented."

Hmmm.. how about declaring the Monday and Tuesday "voting days" and make them a federal public holiday - "the Democracy Days" or something - I'd like to see who will openly vote against celebrating democracy.

According to QAnon, Donald Trump will be reinstated on March 4th.

January 6 was the previous prediction for Trump's reinstatement and the kickoff date for "the Storm."

Place your March 4 predictions in the comments below!

Monday, what other better day to procrastinate? Need to get over this, tho, so maybe purging whatever varia I found while procrastinating will help me to get over it.

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Fact check: Joe Biden did not predict or manipulate the weather that caused the Texas freeze
Say... what? There have to be a special type of insanity to actually believe that.

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Ah, BTW. The science of making rain - Sabine Hossenfelder's overview of the cloud seeding seems to show that the effect amounts to an extra 15% of extra rain considered over long term averages. She points to the fact that, even with science involved, it is still hard to control ("If you would not have seeded, how can you know that it wouldn't have rained anyway?" - not very different a question from the one involving the rainmaking cons).

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After acquittal, Trump 2024? Maybe not so fast

If Trump chooses to run for the White House in 2024, opponents are likely to call on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War to try to stop him. The Supreme Court could have the final say.
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The drafters of the 14th Amendment wanted to keep former officials who joined the Confederacy from resuming public service, without an explicit vote from Congress restoring their eligibility. Section 3 was enforced for several years at both the state and federal level, according to Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. But in 1872, by a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate, Congress lifted the prohibition against most who had been barred from office.
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At least two Democrats in Congress say they are working on it. Rep. Steven Cohen, D-Tenn., ... Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
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Even if Congress does nothing, though, state elections officials, or even state courts, might say that Trump cannot appear on their ballots because he engaged in insurrection, the professors said.

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People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests

Cambridge University team say their findings could be used to spot people at risk from radicalisation
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The study, built on previous research, included more than 330 US-based participants aged 22 to 63...
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Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making, according to the study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
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A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.

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Almost half of Republicans would join Trump party: poll

Meh, last time they tried it was with The Tea Party. Very likely they'll flop in 2024 and fall into nothingness in 2028.

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Trump to speak at CPAC next week

• The former president will criticize what he'll argue is the Biden administration's "disastrous" amnesty and border policies, and vow to remain a key leader in the conservative movement to fight against Biden.
• His speech comes after Trump ripped into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, promising to battle the GOP leader's 2022 midterm picks.
• The New York Post first reported on Trump's plans.

* what?!? Has Trump gone sane? No more "stop the steal", no more birthers conspiracies? Just the little they want your cookie old trick?
* Runaway may rejoice having the occasion of seeing superspreader events, featuring rock star politicians. Unless, of course, Biden conjure a big freeze over Florida, you just can't trust those liberals.

Related: Pence declined invitation to attend CPAC: reports. Ummm... have Trump hooked the evangelical fish, so he can dispense of Pence bait?

Thanks to uzzard for the idea.
Why?