Friday, January 29, 2021

In the news, Friday, January 22, 2021


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JAN 21      INDEX      JAN 23
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from ABC News (& affiliates)
TV Network in New York, New York

The order is among many executive actions taken in his first days in office.
President Joe Biden plans to sign a pair of executive orders Friday aimed at expanding food assistance for tens of millions of Americans and launching a process that will require federal contractors to pay their workers a $15 minimum wage and provide emergency paid leave. The moves come on Biden's second full day in office, and continue a string of executive actions he's taken to jumpstart his agenda and set the tone for his administration amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has left families struggling economically.

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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

On Thursday alone the US registered 4,045 new deaths and more than 192,000 new cases
In his first full day as US president, Joe Biden tackled his country’s staggering coronavirus caseload with a spate of new measures, including mask-wearing and quarantining requirements, as EU leaders “strongly discouraged” their constituents from non-essential travel. Before signing 10 executive orders to strengthen the US fight against Covid, Biden confirmed earlier in the day that he had reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s decision to quit the World Health Organization (WHO).

America's relations with the rest of the world, and especially Europe, will take a lot of work to fix
The confirmation of Antony Blinken as US secretary of state by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a foregone conclusion. That makes his opening statement at the Senate hearing on Tuesday an important document. Blinken did not throw away the baby with the bathtub, as it were, when he marked a distance from the previous Trump administration’s foreign-policy record on China, but he dissented on how Washington had gone about it. On the other hand, while avoiding any indulgence in American exceptionalism, he didn’t reject it, either. That is not surprising. The America that President Joe Biden will work for is unrecognizable from that of the Barack Obama era, and, more importantly, the world has changed phenomenally during the past four years.

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

A panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 on January 19 to vacate the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which repealed and replaced the Obama administration’s marquee climate policy, the so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP). The case is titled American Lung Association v. EPA. 

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Our twentieth Center of Progress is Vienna, nicknamed the “City of Music.” From the late eighteenth century through much of the nineteenth century, the city revolutionized music and produced some of the classical and romantic eras’ greatest works. The sponsorship of the then-powerful Habsburg dynasty and the aristocrats at Vienna’s imperial court created a lucrative environment for musicians, attracting the latter to the city. Some of history’s greatest composers, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, lived and created music in Vienna. Many of history’s most significant symphonies, concertos, and operas thus originated in Vienna. Even today, pieces composed during Vienna’s golden age continue to dominate orchestral music performances worldwide.

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from The Inlander
Media/News Company in Spokane, WA

From a former Spokesman-Review editor to the current one: Spokane does not need a community cheerleader. It needs a community watchdog.

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from NationofChange
FAR-LEFT BIAS, MOSTLY FACTUAL, news and activism NPO based in Albuquerque, NM

Allowing them and their followers to distance themselves from what happened would be the kind of strategic blunder we too often see from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party.
When MAGA protesters forced their way into the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, January 6th, those watching events unfold on cable news saw what appeared to be a highly disorganized mob breaking windows and aimlessly wandering around the building posting evidence of their crimes to social media. As more information has come out about the actions and intentions of some of those there that day, what happened has begun to seem a little less chaotic and more sinister.

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from Orthodox Christianity – orthochristian.com
Religious Organization in Moscow, Russia

On the occasion of Joe Biden’s inauguration to the presidency, “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko of the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” (KP) wrote to the new president to congratulate him, recall their many meetings together, and entreat his protection. Biden has shown himself a friend of Constantinople’s schismatic movement in Ukraine, which was focused on the person of Philaret Denisenko for 30 years. While Philaret has departed from the main schismatic body, he still has hopes that his personal connection with President Biden will prove beneficial for him and his KP.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from The Western Journal
 RIGHT BIAS, MIXED, Media/News Company in Phoenix, Arizona

Angered at reports that their National Guard troops were shunted off to a Washington, D.C., parking garage after having come to protect Congress, three governors have said they will bring their troops home. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a terse tweet Thursday after initial reports surfaced that the Guard was booted from the Capitol when not on duty. “I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state. @TexasGuard,” the Republican governor tweeted. On Friday, Abbott was joined by two fellow Republican governors — Ron DeSantis of Florida and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.

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In the news, Thursday, January 21, 2021


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JAN 20      INDEX      JAN 22
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on January 13 published its long-awaited final rule on New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new fossil fuel power plants. This was the Trump administration EPA’s last major regulatory action. To the surprise of many observers (myself included), the new rule does not revise the standards adopted by the Obama EPA’s October 2015 final rule, nor does it revise the best system of emission reduction (BSER) analysis on which those standards are based.

The Biden “Modernizing Regulatory Review” plan is about gutting the restraint of the past four years, and if you read statements from the proponents of hyper-regulation, they aren’t coy about that. The new memorandum poses as a reinforcement of longstanding E.O. 12866 (from 1993) on reviewing the costs and benefits of significant regulations. But that order itself had changed a Reagan administration directive that benefits “exceed” costs to the one prevailing now that benefits “justify” costs. And the modern left and progressives do not want to keep even watered-down 12866 either. 

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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

From CO2 emissions to jobs to investment, the president’s move will have the opposite of its intended effect.
1. Blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline May Actually Increase CO2 Emissions
2. Thousands of Jobs Will Be Lost
3. Regulatory Uncertainty Will Discourage Future Business Investment

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from Huffington Post
LEFT BIAS, MIXED, news and commentary site headquartered in New York City

The Texas senator got hit with an instant fact-check on Twitter.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is already bashing President Joe Biden, slamming his decision to reenter the Paris Agreement, a multinational pact on climate change. Cruz recycled a line that former President Donald Trump had used, tweeting: "By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans." But there are two problems with Cruz’s message. First, the deal isn’t about protecting the citizens of Paris. It’s named that because the international agreement was adopted by most nations of the world at a meeting in the French city. And second, Cruz himself made it clear he had no interest in the views of Pittsburgh earlier this month, when he was part of a failed attempt to reject Pennsylvania’s election results on behalf of Trump.

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from The Inlander
Media/News Company in Spokane, WA

Two days after U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler voted to impeach President Donald Trump, local Republicans in her southwest Washington district were busy planning her ouster. "It's already underway," says Brandon Svenson, the chair of the Lewis County Republican Party, who said dozens of people had contacted him between Wednesday and Friday upset with Herrera Beutler's vote. Elsewhere in the state, Republican leaders in Central Washington were similarly fuming over U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse's decision to support impeachment of the outgoing president. Debra Manjarrez, the chair of the Yakima County Republican Central Committee, says Newhouse's vote on impeachment would "absolutely" fuel a primary challenge to the Republican incumbent congressman in 2022.

Veracity is demanding, often requiring restructuring — new agreements, accountability, power distributions, resource allocations and vulnerability. Though demanding, inevitably truth has always been the better choice. The times I ignored intuition, blamed the other, took comfort in contrived conspiracies, or deluded and denied remain the most unflattering, the cause of many deep regrets. Inauthenticity severs connection — between the self and others. What-ifs, disassociation, shame, unavailability, misplaced aggression, abdication and avoidance are harmful tools and byproducts of dishonesty. An awful lot of heartbreak happens when we are silent about what really matters.

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from RedState
Joe Biden signed a boatload of executive orders on his first day and I’m going to do a breakdown later about how much it’s going to cost us. But immediately there was a big cost to one of those orders: killing the Keystone Pipeline. Now it makes no sense to kill it, except to pander to the left. Killing it also kills 11,000 jobs there would have been this year for Americans and will probably cost a rise in the gas prices for everyone. It will also impair the energy independence that President Donald Trump succeeded in achieving. All while we’re still in a pandemic, with a lot of people are still out of work and businesses hurting. Just to note, this also benefits Russia as did many other moves during the Obama/Biden administration. Oh and foreign energy companies like oh, I don’t know, Burisma?

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Amazon won’t be forced to immediately restore web service to Parler after a federal judge ruled Thursday against a plea to reinstate the fast-growing social media app, which is favored by followers of former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said she wasn’t dismissing Parler’s “substantive underlying claims” against Amazon, but said it had fallen short in demonstrating the need for an injunction forcing it back online.

Pricey burgers are coming to a store near you. A spike in corn prices is keeping cattle out of feedlots, where they fatten up on the grain for months before going to slaughter. That means fewer animals coming to the market in the months to come – conditions that can result in expensive beef at grocery stores. “Higher prices for the next two to four years are pretty much set in stone,” Rich Nelson, chief strategist at Allendale Inc., said of both beef and cattle.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate home loan eased to 2.77% from 2.79% last week. By contrast, the rate stood at 3.60% a year ago. The average rate on 15-year fixed-rate loans, popular among homeowners seeking to refinance their mortgages, declined to 2.21% from 2.23%.

U.S. home construction jumped 5.8% in December to 1.67 million units, a 14-year high that topped the strongest annual showing from the country’s builders in 15 years. The better-than-expected December gain followed an increase of 9.8% in November when housing starts climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.58 million units, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The December pace was the strongest since the building rate reached 1.72 million units in September 2006. For the year, construction began on 1.45 million units, up 4.8% from 2019 and the best pace since construction starts totaled 1.8 million units in 2006. That period included a massive U.S. housing boom that eventually burst, kicking off the catastrophic 2007-2009 recession.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 900,000, still a historically high level that points to ongoing job cuts in a raging pandemic. The Labor Department’s report Thursday underscored that President Joe Biden has inherited an economy that faltered this winter as virus cases spiked, cold weather restricted dining and federal rescue aid expired. The government said 5.1 million Americans are continuing to receive state jobless benefits, down from 5.2 million in the previous week. That suggests that while some of the unemployed are finding jobs, others are likely using up their state benefits and transitioning to separate extended-benefit programs. More than 10 million people are receiving aid from those extended programs, which now offer up to 50 weeks of benefits, or from a new program that provides benefits to contractors and the self-employed. All told, nearly 16 million people were on unemployment in the week that ended Jan. 2.

Amazon is offering its colossal operations network and advanced technologies to assist President Joe Biden in his vow to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations to Americans in his first 100 days in office. “We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” wrote the CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer division, Dave Clark, in a letter to Biden. “Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort.”

Apricots aren’t the easiest tree to grow in our region. They often bloom very early in the spring and get hit by frost which kills the flower. Take heart though, with careful variety selection, you can assure yourself of a good harvest most years. The key to selecting the right variety is to look for ones that bloom later than other apricots. Normally, apricots bloom at the end of April. Late-blooming varieties bloom closer to mid-May, a timeframe that can avoid the last of the killing frosts. Another [key] is whether the variety is self-fertile or needs another apricot variety nearby to cross pollinate with.

Emergencies don’t usually have anniversaries, but we are fast approaching one. Last year on Feb. 29, Gov. Jay Inslee acted within his responsibilities to declare a state of emergency to protect “life, health, property or public peace” in Washington when a novel virus emerged in the U.S. For a while, we really were all in it together.

Census advocates were heartened Wednesday by President Joe Biden’s quick revocations of Trump’s order to produce citizenship data and the former president’s memo attempting to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment count. The Biden administration also has pledged to give the Census Bureau the time it needs to process the data.

Seven Democratic senators on Thursday asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the actions of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “to fully understand their role” in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

In the days before Joe Biden became president, construction crews worked quickly to finish Donald Trump’s wall at an iconic cross-border park overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which then-first lady Pat Nixon inaugurated in 1971 as a symbol of international friendship. Biden on Wednesday ordered a “pause” on all wall construction within a week, one of 17 executive orders issued on his first day in office, including six dealing with immigration.

The Biden administration announced Thursday a 60-day suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for U.S. lands and waters, as officials moved quickly to reverse Trump administration policies on energy and the environment.

The United States will resume funding for the World Health Organization and join its consortium aimed at sharing coronavirus vaccines fairly around the globe, President Joe Biden’s top adviser on the pandemic said Thursday, renewing support for an agency that the Trump administration had pulled back from.

President Joe Biden has proposed to Russia a five-year extension of a nuclear arms treaty that is otherwise set to expire in February, the White House said Thursday. Biden proposed the extension even as he asked the intelligence community to look closely into Russia’s cyberattacks, its alleged interference in the 2020 election and other actions, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

With a burst of executive orders, President Joe Biden served notice Thursday that America’s war on COVID-19 is under new command, promising an anxious nation progress to reduce infections and lift the siege it has endured for nearly a year. At the same time, he tried to manage expectations in his second day in office, saying despite the best intentions “we’re going to face setbacks.” He brushed off a reporter’s question on whether his goal of 100 million coronavirus shots in 100 days should be more ambitious, a point pressed by some public health experts.

Wearing mittens made out of recycled materials and a warm winter jacket, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders pulled off a casual inauguration outfit – and vibe – that only he could.

The Biden administration has moved quickly to remove a number of senior officials aligned with former President Donald Trump from the Voice of America and the agency that oversees all U.S.-funded international broadcasting. The actions address fears that the U.S. Agency for Global Media was being turned into a pro-Trump propaganda outlet. The agency announced Thursday that VOA’s director and his deputy had been removed from their positions and that the head of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting had resigned.

World leaders breathed an audible sigh of relief that the United States under President Joe Biden is rejoining the global effort to curb climate change, a cause that his predecessor had shunned over the past four years. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron were among those welcoming Biden’s decision to rejoin the the Paris climate accord, reversing a key Trump policy in the first hours of his presidency Wednesday.

President Joe Biden has confidence in FBI Director Chris Wray and plans to keep him in the job, the White House press secretary said Thursday. Wray was appointed in 2017 by President Donald Trump following Trump’s firing of James Comey. Wray later became a frequent target of Trump’s attacks, including by publicly breaking with the president on issues such as antifa, voter fraud and Russian election interference. The criticism led to speculation that Trump might fire Wray after the election.

Europe’s top human rights court on Thursday found Russia responsible for a swath of violations in Georgia’s breakaway regions after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. Georgia hailed the verdict by the European Court of Human Rights as a major victory. The August 2008 war erupted when Georgian troops tried unsuccessfully to regain control over the Moscow-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia, and Russia sent troops that routed the Georgian military in five days of fighting.

Sawsan Al Zouabi used to stand on her balcony and count the bombs falling on the horizon. So she’s certain of this – there were seven or eight bombs falling every day around her village for six months before her family fled Syria. After taking refuge in Jordan for three and a half years, the family arrived in Spokane in 2016, mere months before then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order dubbed “the Muslim ban” on Jan. 27, 2017. Wednesday, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden reversed that decision in his own executive order.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office has lifted an evacuation order for Warden residents near a fire at the Washington Potato Facility after about a third of the town was threatened by an ammonia tank that could have exploded in the blaze.

Salmon and steelhead advocates returned to court to again ask a federal judge to overturn the government’s plan to operate dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers in a way that pushes the fish closer to extinction. The National Wildlife Federation and several other conservation groups, including Idaho Rivers United and the Idaho Conservation League, contend a biological opinion issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and associated documents and decisions by the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration violate the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Nearly a year after launching a research effort to study why moose populations in Idaho have been declining, researchers with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are starting to get some answers. According to a Fish and Game news release, the agency partnered with researchers from the University of Idaho to attach radio tracking collars to 112 adult cow moose in early 2020 to study survival rates and causes of death.

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In the news, Wednesday, January 20, 2021


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JAN 19      INDEX      JAN 21
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from Anglican Journal

Jung said that there is something very real yet mysterious which we call God, but the images of God we all hold differ from God’s very real nature and defy human description. “I do not believe in the existence of God, I know that God exists,” he said in an interview. This is not “blind faith” (as some new atheists such as Richard Dawkins have declared) but, according to Jung, is a truth and certainty based on evidence that science can help to verify.  His practice as a psychotherapist and his mythological research convinced him of God’s existence because of what he observed in people’s lives.

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from Basilica News Agency (basilica.ro)

More than 340 million Christians were severely persecuted in 2020 and the phenomenon worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, announced last week Portes Ouvertes, the French partner of Open Doors International. The numbers have gone up since the 2019 report, which found 260 million Christians persecuted globally.

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

In one of the Trump Department of Energy’s (DOE) last regulatory actions, the agency on January 15 revised the energy efficiency standards for residential furnaces in a way that will expand consumer choice and reduce costs. But the rule has already come under attack from activists and likely will be targeted by the incoming Biden administration. Under the 1975 Energy and Policy Conservation Act, DOE has authority to set and periodically revise energy and water efficiency standards for home appliances. By now, everything from air conditioners to dishwashers to water heaters to clothes washers and dryers to lighting to furnaces and more has been subjected to multiple rounds of successively tighter standards.

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from The Inlander
Media/News Company in Spokane, WA

While Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers accused the left of trying to "silence" conservatives, she acknowledged that Republicans like her had "excused and defended" Trump's behavior: "For Trump supporters like me, it meant turning a blind eye to arrogant, prideful, and bullying behavior," McMorris Rodgers wrote. "We all need to take some responsibility, tone down the rhetoric, stop silencing anyone and everyone who might disagree with us, and do better."

A lot has happened since Jan. 5 when Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers told the Spokesman-Review she planned to object to the Electoral College results showing Joe Biden had been elected president. A mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. McMorris Rodgers reversed her vote on the Electoral College. Trump was impeached, again. The local media wanted more than just press releases. They wanted answers. The Spokesman-Review, the Inlander, KXLY and the Seattle Times all reached out with interview requests for McMorris Rodgers, but struggled to get access. The Inlander didn't get any response to multiple phone calls and emails. "She’s frustrating," Spokesman-Review Managing Editor Joe Palmquist says. "We’ve expressed that. It’s very hard for us to accept the fact that she doesn’t want to get back to us... Sometimes all we get are these statements. They’re the bane of our existence. We hate them!" Yet on Monday, McMorris Rodgers did reach out — but not to the Spokesman-Review's reporters. Instead, according to Palmquist, she reached out to Editor-in-Chief Rob Curley bearing a personal invitation. Her guest for Joe Biden's inauguration couldn't go. Would Curley be her plus-one instead?

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from The Jerusalem Post

Key moments with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates in 2017 and 2019 led to last year’s deals
As the administration of president Donald Trump exits stage left, it’s time to take stock of the four normalization deals that Israel has already signed. But there is a crucial piece of the story that has not been emphasized.

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from Salon

Arizona Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs reportedly asked former President Donald Trump for pardons relating to their involvement in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol. He turned them down. On Tuesday, CNN reported that the two Arizonans were among a number of GOP lawmakers who sought clemency in Trump's final days in connection to the rally in front of the White House that flowed into the deadly riot. The former president, who still faces an impeachment trial in the Senate for his own role in the insurrection, reportedly declined to grant the requests after a lengthy meeting with legal advisers over the weekend.

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from Slate
LEFT BIAS;  HIGH

Biden Has Already Fired Three of Trump’s Worst Appointees
Many of Donald Trump’s most notorious appointees, including his Cabinet secretaries, resigned shortly before Joe Biden took office. But myriad officials whom Trump installed in the executive branch remained in spite of their antagonism toward the new president’s agenda. Hours into his presidency, Biden has already ousted three of his predecessors’ most unqualified and corrupt appointees. This clean break sends a clear message that Biden will not tolerate hostile Trump holdovers in his administration, including those with time remaining in their terms. First, Biden terminated Michael Pack, who was confirmed to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June. Second, Biden sacked Kathleen Kraninger, who was confirmed as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2018. Third, Biden demanded the resignation of Peter Robb, who was confirmed as the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel in 2017.
 
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Tuesday, January 19, 2021


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JAN 18      INDEX      JAN 20
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from Anglican Journal

The only Orthodox theological programs in Canada accredited by the Association of Theological Schools are offered at a historically Anglican college—a fact that may seem counterintuitive. But as Fr. Geoffrey Ready, an Orthodox priest and co-director of the Orthodox School of Theology (OST) at Trinity College says, it is also “far from accidental.” Ready was the chief driving force behind the creation of the OST in 2015, when Trinity College extended the Orthodox and Eastern Christian studies program it had offered since 2006 to include an MDiv degree. Canon David Neelands, former dean of divinity at Trinity College, says that before Trinity offered its Orthodox and Eastern Christian studies program, the Orthodox church had no real presence at the University of Toronto.

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from Forbes

Bookending four years of its infamous one-in, two-out requirement for issuing significant new regulations, the Trump administration quietly just released its status roundup called “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2020.”  According to the administration, agencies in the 2020 fiscal year issued 145 deregulatory actions and 45 significant regulatory actions, for an out-to-in ratio of 3.2 to one. Of those deregulatory actions, 58 were deemed “significant” by agencies and the administration. Comparing significant-in to significant-out still gives a ratio of 1.3 to one. This regulatory streamlining requirement was one of the earliest 2017 moves of the Trump administration, put in place by Executive Order 13771. A Biden administration will kill it on “Day One,” as the incoming supervisors like to say.

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from NPR (& affiliates)
Nonprofit Broadcasting & Media Production Company

400 Lights, For 400,000 Dead, Illuminate Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Four-hundred lights around the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool were lit Tuesday evening to honor the 400,000 people in the U.S. who have died from COVID-19. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris both spoke. Other cities across the country are making their own tributes on Tuesday to those lost to COVID-19. The Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle are among the buildings being lit.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Monday, January 18, 2021


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JAN 17      INDEX      JAN 19
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from Plough

Excerpts from King’s speech “Where Do We Go From Here?,” delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.

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from Reuters
International news agency headquartered in London, UK

Police stopped a car of Black men and confiscated two of their guns at Virginia’s annual “Lobby Day” on Monday while white gun rights activists defied local laws unimpeded in the state capital of Richmond. In a day with racial tensions on display, Black protesters denounced what they called a double standard in a state where people are free to openly carry firearms.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Sunday, January 17, 2021


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JAN 16      INDEX      JAN 18
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from Haaretz.com

Exactly three decades ago, the Israeli public - sheltered in safe rooms and donning gas masks - entered a new type of war. Forty-three Scud missiles and 77 fatalities (mostly from heart attacks) later, Israel would never be the same again
On January 18, 1991, Israelis were awakened at 2 A.M. to the familiar wail of emergency sirens. Within seconds, this sound was replaced by another, unfamiliar one in the Tel Aviv region and the Haifa Bay area: the landing of eight surface-to-surface Soviet Scud missiles. They were launched from west Iraq and landed at four sites in Israel: on Haifa’s outskirts, and in northern and southern Tel Aviv.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to impeach US President Donald Trump by 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining the Democrats in support of the outgoing president's second impeachment for “incitement of insurrection.” Now the question is whether the Senate will convict Trump when the impeachment reaches the upper house. On Friday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned fellow Senators of the possibility that roughly one third of Republican voters would leave the Republican Party if they convict President Donald Trump of "incitement of insurrection". The remarks came in an interview on Fox News’s Ingraham Angle in which Paul, who previously criticized the deadly 6 January US Capitol riot and voted against objections to the 2020 presidential election, claimed that "impeachment is a wrongheaded, partisan notion."

On 6 January a mass protest occurred in Washington as the certification of the Electoral College vote was being held. Trump's supporters violently stormed the Capitol and interrupted a joint-session of Congress, causing 5 deaths. The FBI is probing the alleged foreign “trail” in the 6 January riot, NBC News reported on Saturday, citing FBI officials. According to sources, the bureau is attempting to examine whether the rioters were funded by foreign governments, organisations or individuals.

Earlier in the day, Iranian media reported that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had launched long-range ballistic missiles as part of its annual military drills, striking maritime targets 1,000 miles downrange. Long-range missiles launched by Iran landed some 100 miles away from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz strike group and around 20 miles from an unspecified commercial vessel, Fox News claimed, citing sources. Anonymous US officials reportedly told the outlet that at least two rockets exploded when they hit the waters of the Indian Ocean, "sending shards of debris in all directions".

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In the news, Saturday, January 16, 2021


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JAN 15      INDEX      JAN 17
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from Axios
LEFT-CENTER BIAS,  HIGH,  news website

1 big thing ... "Off the rails": Swan series on Trump's final days
President Trump started choreographing election night in early October, including acting out a premature victory speech, Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu report in Episode 1 of "Off the rails," an Axios series taking you inside a president's collapse.

1 big thing: What business wants from Biden
With four days to the inauguration of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris, here's a special Deep Dive on the incoming administration's plans and team.

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from New York Magazine

One of the things that helped Senate Republicans unite (with the exception of Mitt Romney) during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial early in 2020 was that his public support was relatively robust. As the trial unfolded, Gallup placed his job-approval rating at 49 percent, equaling the highest level of his presidency, with 92 percent of Republicans giving him a thumbs-up. That’s not going to be the case the second time around. Ever since Election Day and the beginning of his disgraceful effort to overturn the results, Trump’s job-approval ratings have been steadily falling. At FiveThirtyEight his average rating was at 44.7 percent the day Joe Biden’s win was “called” by all the media outlets. It’s at 38.0 right now, the lowest since December of 2019 when he was reeling from his unsuccessful effort to repeal Obamacare. We don’t have any Gallup data for the last several weeks. But if a new Pew survey taken from January 8-12 is any indication, the bottom is falling out for Trump since the spectacle of January 6.

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from The Orca
News & Media Website in B.C.

How Cariboo Gold launched the richest men in the world.
Daniel Marshall: I remember traveling years ago into the sublime landscape of the Comstock Lode country of Nevada, anticipating my soon-to-be quenched thirst – both for a drink, but also for history. This had been the 19th century’s “Silicon Valley” – a place so rich in silver as to have made some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs of their day – the legendary Bonanza Kings of California. Rolling past the ruins and passing Boot Hill cemetery, we made our way to an old saloon in historic Virginia City – a quite wonderfully preserved gold, or more correctly, silver rush town – a boomtown that sprung up shortly after the Fraser River gold rush of 1858. So many who flooded into British Columbia during the Fraser and Cariboo gold rushes made their next stake in Nevada’s White Pine District in the 1860s. Samuel Clemens had lived here for a time; in fact, in Virginia City he adopted his more famous nom de plume, Mark Twain.

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from Rolling Stone

National harmony is impossible without true accountability, especially when a major political party enables sedition and white-supremacist terrorism
Many a Republican this past week brushed away the seditious January 6th attacks as they sought to keep their president from being impeached by the House for a second time. The word “unity” may seem newly robbed of meaning when wielded by people who have themselves been, very recently, trying to overturn an election. In our current dystopian politics, these words are now opiates for the masses, intoxicating us daily with notions of American exceptionalism even as scourges of our nation grow more dangerous.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

On Tuesday, the outgoing US president, Donald Trump, known for his tough stance on immigration, warned that if his policies are reversed, as Biden has pledged to do, "a tidal wave" of illegal migration will follow. A migrant caravan of reportedly thousands is heading to the United States from Honduras, asking the incoming Biden administration to "honor its commitments", apparently referring to the president-elect's pledges to reverse most of Trump's immigration policies, according to media reports. According to a statement issued by the migrant rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras ["People Without Borders"], and cited by Fox News, the caravan expects the Biden administration to provide them with a warmer welcome than the outgoing administration offered.

Earlier this month, the United States Capitol Building was stormed by a group of Trump-supporters, who believed the outgoing president's claims that the November 2020 election was stolen through fraudulent means. Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal compared the violent pro-Trump rioters to Al-Qaeda*, suggesting that both movements had a "powerful leader" who "justified their violence'", and warned that radicalism in the US could result in an insurgency. McChrystal, who formerly commanded US troops in Afghanistan, suggested specific parallels between the rise of the Islamist terrorist group and those who stormed the US Capitol last week, a violent attack that killed five.

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden said that he would consider returning the United States to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) treaty, if Iran will comply with the conditions of the deal. Officials with the incoming Biden administration have began setting the ground for talks with Iran over a possible US return to the nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA, as there are only a handful of days left until the Democrat's inauguration, Israel's Channel 12 reported on Saturday, adding that US officials allegedly updated Tel Aviv on the matter.

After officially wining the November election, former Vice-President Joe Biden is set to be inaugurated on 20 January. Outgoing President Donald Trump has ruled out attending the ceremony. President-elect Joe Biden faces an uphill struggle to live up to his pledge to unify the United States, Donald Trump's former chief of staff said on Saturday. Mick Mulvaney told LBC that the "centrist" former vice president "might have been ideally suited to play a unifying role" in the past but he's now "well past his prime." He explained that internal divisions with the Democratic Party will also make it hard for Biden to keep him promise. 

On Saturday, 57-year-old Baron Benjamin de Rothschild unexpectedly died from a heart attack, leaving behind four daughters. He was president of the family-owned Edmond de Rothschild Holding SA and considered one of the richest members of the Rothschild family. Europe’s most famous banking dynasty, the Rothschilds, started with the rise of 18th century German Jewish banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild before splitting into different branches and scattering across the Continent.

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from Vox
LEFT BIAS, HIGH, Media/News Company based in Washington, D.C. 

In the wake of the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol that President Donald Trump heavily promoted on social media, platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and others finally moved to ban the president. The result? A sudden drop in the online spread of election misinformation. According to research by Zignal Labs, which the Washington Post reported on Saturday, online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent in the weeklong period following Twitter’s decision to ban Trump on January 8.

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Thursday, January 21, 2021

In the news, Friday, January 15, 2021


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JAN 14      INDEX      JAN 16
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from CNN

The review of US Capitol security in the wake of this month's riots will be handled by retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, the widely praised former commander of the First Army who became a household name as he coordinated relief efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

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from Rolling Stone

“I am demanding answers from the Trump Administration. I am shocked and appalled that they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown said.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Vanity Fair

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the images circulating on social media of members of the National Guard in the halls of the Capitol are worth a thousand fears. After a seditious mob of Donald Trump supporters—counting QAnon followers, election-fraud truthers, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists in its ranks—descended on Washington last week, breaching police barriers and desecrating symbols of American democracy, counterterrorism professionals warn that the threat of violence in the days leading up to and during Joe Biden’s inauguration has hardly dissipated. Rather, sources I spoke with fear that it may be higher than ever. “They simply can’t treat this as a normal inauguration,” a former senior counterterrorism official told me. “The threat environment we are in remains highly volatile, and I think the concern of law enforcement professionals is that we’re going to see more violence in not only the days ahead, but the weeks and months ahead.” 

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In the news, Thursday, January 14, 2021


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JAN 13      INDEX      JAN 15
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

There is a lot of conspiracy theory garbage floating around. On January 6, it took a violent turn. Five people died in a coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, over obviously false claims of a stolen election. It is important to understand what causes this behavior in order to prevent future violence, and to prevent a future breakdown of liberal institutions.

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from The Inlander
Media/News Company in Spokane, WA

A tribute to Deb Abrahamson, a prominent Spokane activist, who died Jan. 1 at age 65

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from Plough

Fredrik Backman’s My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, and A Man Called Ove
Reading Fredrik Backman rekindled my love for fiction. I first read one of his novels following my completion of four strenuous years of graduate school. I couldn’t remember the last time I had read fiction, or even enjoyed enough leisure time to consider doing so. But by the time I turned the final page of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, I had purchased all of his published works to start reading as soon as they arrived. His stories begin playfully with casts of memorable characters, but as each plot advances, Backman leads readers step by step beyond the exterior measurements of a person. He opens his characters, exposing their wounds and joys to confront readers with the true value of a human being.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

The US House of Representatives voted 232-197 on Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for alleged "incitement of insurrection" in connection with the deadly riots that rocked the Capitol Hill in Washington DC on 6 January. In a historic move on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted 232 to 197 in favour of approving impeachment for Donald Trump, making him the first president in the history of the United States to be subjected to the procedure twice. Among those to support the move to oust the president from power were at least 10 Republicans, who had broken ranks to vote with the Democratic opposition.

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