Friday, November 18, 2022

Wake-Up Call: Nancy's Had Enough


The first female Speaker will continue to serve in Congress, representing California’s 12th district. “For me, the hour’s come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,” she said in a speech that garnered a lengthy standing ovation from Democrats and Republicans. The GOP clinched a narrow majority of seats in the House last night. Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York is seen as the front-runner to lead the caucus.

In an emotional speech before the House, Speaker Pelosi said she had enjoyed working with presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She did not mention Donald Trump.


  • Pelosi’s likely successor is Hakeem Jeffries, who is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and has represented a New York City district since 2013. 
The Democratic Party leadership in the House is undergoing a generational change. In addition to Pelosi, who is 83, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, 83, and Majority Whip James Clyburn, 82, are declining to seek party leadership positions in the next session of the House, which will be led by Republicans.

➤BIDEN PUSHES BACK ON IKRAINE CLAIMS: President Biden pushed back on Ukraine’s claims that a missile that struck Poland wasn’t its own. NATO previously said that the missile was likely from a Ukrainian air-defense system, and that there was no indication Poland was targeted. Russia denied responsibility. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his military ID’ed the missile as Russian and that Ukraine would apologize if evidence showed it was Ukrainian. Poland said it would be better for Europe if the missile wasn’t Russian because that would have forced a response. Meanwhile, Moscow agreed to renew an arrangement with Kyiv, Turkey and the U.N. to allow Ukrainian agricultural exports through the Black Sea.

➤ADMINISTRATION SAYS SAUDIA CROWN PRINCE HAS IMMUNITY:  The Biden administration told a U.S. court that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s status as a sitting head of government shields him from a civil lawsuit brought by the fiancée of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

➤UVALDE POLICE CHIEF RESIGNS: Mariano Pargas, who was acting police chief in Uvalde, Texas, during the Robb Elementary School massacre, has resigned from the force. He had been suspended while his conduct during the May 24 shootinge is being investigated. Media reports indicate that Pargas prevented his officers from entering the building during the critical period when some of the 19 child victims were still alive.

➤IDAHO STUDENTS URGED TO ‘STAY VIGILANT’: Students at Idaho University and residents of Moscow, Idaho, are being urged to stay vigilant as police continue to investigate the gruesome murders of four students in an off-campus house early last Sunday. No suspect has been identified and no weapon has been found.

 
➤KARI LAKE REFUSES TO CONCEDE LOSS: The Republican candidate for Arizona governor refuses to concede the election to Democrat Katie Hobbs. In a video released yesterday, Kari Lake said she has a team of lawyers “exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week.” Hobbs was projected to be the winner of the race on Monday, when the vote was 50.4% to 49.6% with 97 percent of the vote counted.



➤THE REPUBLICANS’ TOP PRIORITY: The top priority of Republicans now that they have won a majority in the House of Representatives will be investigating the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. In a press conference yesterday, top Republicans say they want to determine the extent of President Biden’s involvement in his son’s business affairs, including during his two terms as vice president. “The president’s participation in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order,” said James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

➤CHINESE HACKERS TARGETING U.S.: Chinese hackers have stolen more of Americans’ personal and business data than all other nations combined, said FBI Director Christopher Wray in testimony yesterday to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He called China “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, innovation and economic security.” Wray said China’s goal is to surpass the United States a global superpower.


➤MORTGAGE RATES TAKE SUDDEN DROP: Mortgage rates dropped by nearly a half-percent this week. That’s the biggest one-week decline in 40 years. Rates fell to 6.61 percent from 7.08 percent a week earlier. Demand for mortgages promptly rose by 4 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

META REPORTS TROUBLE WITH STAFFERS: Meta has fired or disciplined more than two dozen employees and contractors over the past year for allegedly hijacking user accounts. Some were contracted security guards given access to the Facebook parent’s internal mechanism for employees to help users having trouble with their accounts, according to people familiar with the matter and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. In some cases, workers accepted thousands of dollars in bribes from hackers to access accounts. A spokeswoman for Meta’s security contractor said it takes reports of conduct violations seriously.

🐶STUDY: FEEDING PETS DRY FOOD REDUCES THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:  Feeding your cat or dog is better for the environment if you feed them dry food (kibble or biscuits) rather than wet food, finds a new study. Researchers looked at Brazilian pets to evaluate their environmental impact. They found compared to dry pet food produced by companies, or a diet prepared at home by owners, wet foods produced by companies for cats and dogs had the greatest negative environmental impact. Homemade diets tended to have moderate environmental impacts, although water usage in homemade cat diets was similar to dry diets. Study authors estimate that a ten-kilogram dog (about 22 pounds) consuming on average 534 calories per day would be responsible for 828.37 kilograms of carbon dioxide released per year when fed a dry diet compared to 6,541 kilograms per year for a wet diet—an increase of nearly 700 percent. Dry diets were also found to provide the highest amount of energy per gram, while wet diets and homemade diets provided higher amounts of protein.


⚾AARON JUDGE IS AL MVP: No surprise here. New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is the American League’s Most Valuable Player of the year. The runners-up were Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels and Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros. Judge led the league in categories including home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and total bases. He’s the first Yankees outfielder to get the prize since Mickey Mantle won it in 1962.


⚾GOLDSCHMIDT GETS NL MVP: St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt got the National League's Most Valuable Player award. He received 22 first-place votes while runner-up Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres got seven and the Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado got one. Goldschmidt has finished in the top three in MVP voting three times but this is the first time he’s gotten the top honor.

🏈BUFFALO BILLS FLEE BUFFALO: Even the Buffalo Bills don’t want to be in Buffalo this Sunday. Their Week 11 match against the Cleveland Browns has been moved to Detroit to escape a huge snowstorm that is predicted for western New York this weekend.

🏈EAGLES ACQUIRE 2 DEFENSIVE TACKLES: The Philadelphia Eagles signed defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh to a one-year deal yesterday. Suh was number 2 pick overall in 2010 and most recently played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Just a day earlier the Phillies signed DT Linval Joseph, formerly with the Los Angeles Chargers. The new hires will shore up a defense that was weakened when Jordan Davis and Marlon Tuipulotu went on the injured reserve list.

⚾RECORD-SETTING HOME RUN BALL UP FOR AUCTION: The guy who caught Yankees’ star Aaron Judge’s record-setting 62nd home run ball in October is putting it up for auction this month. Cory Youmans declined a $3 million offer for the ball right after he caught it. The current top price for a baseball is $3.05 million, paid for Mark McGwire’s then-record 70th home run in 1998. The auction at collectibles house Goldin opens on November 29th.

🏀MISSTEP FOR LaMELO BALL: Charlotte Hornets star point guard LaMelo Ball may have reinjured his ankle in his first home game back with the team, according to a report in The New York Post. In the last seconds of the Hornets’ game against the Indiana Pacers, Ball stepped on a fan’s foot and hobbled back to the bench screaming in pain. The Hornets lost the game 125-113. Oddly, the Post does not mention how the fan Ball stepped on is feeling.

⛄BUFFALO BRACES FOR THE LAKE EFFECT: It’s snowing hard in the Great Lakes snowbelt, and the region could see record-breaking snowfall by the end of this weekend, according to The Weather Channel. Snow warnings are in effect east and southeast of lakes Erie and Ontario in western and upstate New York, northwest Pennsylvania and far northeast Ohio. In Buffalo, a phenomenon known as a “thundersnow” hit last night, and snowfall totals in “multiple feet” are expected before it’s over.


🌏STUDY: EARTH CAN REGULATE ITS OWN TEMPERATURE OVER MILLENNIA:  The Earth has managed to maintain life for 3.7 billion years, despite having some huge climate changes during that time—but how? A new study from MIT researchers confirms Earth has a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that has acted over thousands of years to “pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.” The theory is that this is possible due to a mechanism called “silicate weathering”—which basically is when slow and steady weathering of rocks involves chemical reactions that draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and traps it inside the rocks. This study found direct evidence that silicate weathering could be happening, and that there “appears to be a consistent pattern in which the Earth’s temperature swings are dampened over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years.” Researcher Constantin Arnscheidt says, “On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback. But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”




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