[CBS News] A blind prisoner convicted of killing his estranged girlfriend by setting her on fire in her car was put to death Thursday in Tennessee's electric chair. Lee Hall, 53, became only the second inmate without sight to be executed in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the nation's death penalty in 1976.
Hall was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. at a Nashville maximum-security prison, prison officials said. He chose the electric chair over Tennessee's preferred execution method of lethal injection ‐ an option available to inmates in the state who were convicted of crimes before January 1999. He also became the first blind inmate in U.S. modern history to die by electrocution.
A witness to the execution said that Hall's final words were that "people need to learn forgiveness and love and make the world a better place." Old Sparky just did
#2
Nearly 30 years from conviction to execution. I agree that capital punishment should only be invoked when the facts are absolutely clear, but that;s friggin' ridiculous.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/06/2019 12:05 Comments ||
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#5
Nah, bring them down to Texas, put them in glass jars to back in the Houston Sun. Put the jars someplace nice and public with each jar having a sign listing their crimes. Allow them water but no food. Setup up cameras so people can watch online. I'm sure Vegas will have a betting pool on who winds up crispy first.
[USA Today] Four people died in a shootout Thursday after jewelry robbers stole a UPS truck and led Florida police on a high-speed chase, the FBI said.
The truck driver, a bystander and both suspects were killed in Miramar, about 20 miles from the site of the initial robbery, FBI Special Agent in Charge George Piro said during a news conference.
Police in Coral Gables responded to the robbery at a Regent Jewelers store shortly after 4 p.m., Chief Ed Hudak said, and were met with gunfire from two suspects.
The suspects then fled in a truck and hijacked the UPS delivery truck about 20 minutes later, Piro said, taking the driver as a hostage. Police chased the suspects until they stopped in one of the middle lanes of a busy roadway, caught behind a wall of other vehicles waiting for a red light to turn green.
Police approached the truck, and the suspects opened fire amid rush hour traffic. Piro said the suspects had shot at police during the chase, too.
#3
Ref #1: Some may view this as 'virtue signaling' but I have set my prejudices aside and discounted the involvement of the fringe Lev Tahor (Pure Heart). Jeffrey Epstein is already dead, so he can be taken off the list was well.
Cousins Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill died along with UPS driver Frank Ordonez and an unidentified bystander during Thursday's gun battle with police. (WFAA News Dallas)
#7
The FBI is investigating whether the two gunmen killed inside the UPS truck were involved in two previous robberies in South Florida, according to CBS Miami's Jim DeFede.
Ordonez's brother, Roy, said he had been with UPS for five years, CBS Miami reported. A coworker told the station that Thursday marked Ordonez's first day as a driver after having completed his training.
According to Ordonez's Facebook page, he leaves behind a 1-year-old daughter, CBS Miami reported.
Local 804, a union that represents UPS workers in New York, have created a GoFundMe to help Ordonez's family with funeral costs.
NAIROBI (AP) ‐ Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
He knew Lacchin, the name on his Kenyan birth certificate, was his dad’s name. He knew that Mario Lacchin abandoned him and his mother.
When he was older, he learned that his father was an Italian missionary priest ‐ and that in leaving, he had chosen the church over his child.
What he did not know is that less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, another man was on a quest to prove that Mario Lacchin was his father, too.
These two men would find each other thanks to an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page of Kenya’s main newspaper. All agreed that they bore a marked resemblance, but they underwent genetic testing to be certain.
Were they indeed half-brothers ‐ sons of the same Father?
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Russia is ready by the end of this year to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty without extra conditions and further discussion, President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... said on Thursday, Interfax news agency reported.
The New START accord, which expires in February 2021, is the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States and limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy.
The pact, which was signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama teachable moment... and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers.
The treaty, which can be extended by another five years, envisages a comprehensive verification mechanism to check compliance, including on-site inspections of each side’s nuclear bases.
Its expiration would remove any limits on Russian and US nuclear arsenals for the first time in decades.
Arms control advocates have argued that the failure to extend the pact would be highly destabilizing at a time when Russia-US relations have sunk to the lowest levels since the Cold War.
Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly voiced concern about Washington’s reluctance to discuss the treaty’s extension.
"Our proposals have been on the table, but we have got no response from our partners," Putin said.
In Washington, a Pentagon brasshat suggested the Trump administration is not interested in an immediate extension and sees no rush anyway as New Start doesn’t expire until February 2021.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Commies
#1
The COBRA BALL is an Air Force airborne intelligence platform (RC-135) which carries infrared telescopes for tracking ballistic-missile tests at long range. The COBRA BALL aircraft, operating out of Eielson AFB AK, allow the United States to monitor every reentry vehicle flown from Russian test ranges, to determine the capabilities of each Russian missile, new or old.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/06/2019 9:36 Comments ||
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#3
And according to the MSM, Trump is going to rip food stamps away from 700,000 poor, deserving souls. Looks like they'll only have about three months to find work.
"...The labor force participation rate has never been higher than 67.3 percent, a level achieved in the early months of 2000. The Trump-era high was set last month at 63.3 percent. Economists say retiring baby boomers account for some of the decline since the turn of the century...."
A lot of people think the reason for the decline in the labor force participation rate from 2000 is because the Obama regime loosed the disability rules (intentionally to make the Unemployment rate better). Once people start getting disability, it takes a lot for them to leave that money stream behind and go back to work. This makes the current situation more remarkably in that while about 9 million people are on SS disability (and receive an average of over $1k per month), the rate of application has decrease substantially during the Trump admin. It peaked at about 2M during 2010 and is now about 1.5M. In fact, the total number of people on disability has actually decreased during the Trump admin despite the aging population.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/06/2019 11:00 Comments ||
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#5
the total number of people on disability has actually decreased during the Trump admin despite the aging population.
They went on disability because they couldn’t find work, in many cases. Now they’ve reached age 62, when they can get Social Security pension instead — more money and no questions makes that very attractive.
#8
That would be 266,000 people buying things and paying sales taxes they might not have been able to do before. Possibly even paying some income taxes as well. All around, good news.
#12
although most conversions from SS Disability to SS regular are at 65 and older,
Final daughter’s father just turned 62, and is very pleased that even at the reduced rate he gets at that age instead of waiting, he gets more income and better health care than he did on disability.
[Forbes] Topline: China is to waive tariffs on some U.S. soybeans and pork imports as the world’s two biggest economies worked on an interim deal to end the 17-month-long trade war.
China placed tariffs of 25% on the agricultural products in July 2018, in response to the White House’s move to impose tariffs on Chinese goods over the alleged theft of American intellectual property.
Beijing had promised in September to lift the tariffs that lifted taxes on soybeans imports to 33% from 3% but the new tax exemption only applies to some firms and some imports.
China’s finance ministry has not shared any further detail on the waiver of the agricultural tariffs.
Washington and Beijing are currently ironing out an interim "phase one" deal to wind down the trade battle that has rattled markets, and cost Chinese exporters and American farmers billions.
The waiver was announced just days before a new set of U.S. tariffs on $160 billion of Chinese goods kicks in on December 15.
Key background: China’s tariffs on soybeans, the U.S.' most valuable farming export, have resulted in U.S. sales to China falling 90% since 2017. As a result, the Trump administration has forked out some $28 billion in aid to American farmers hit by the sales drop. It has also pressed China to raise its imports of soybeans from U.S. as a goodwill gesture in anticipation of a trade deal.
China has moved to increase imports of soybeans from Argentina and Brazil to lessen its reliance on the U.S. but a an outbreak of African swine fever may have forced Beijing’s hand on pork imports. Hundreds of millions of pigs have been culled, or died, from the disease in China sending domestic pork prices through the roof.
Additional fact: China is the world's largest importer of soybeans, bringing in tens of million on tonnes each year.
#4
"Beijing had promised in September to lift the tariffs that lifted taxes on soybeans imports to 33% from 3% but the new tax exemption only applies to some firms...
It is worth noting that the US's ADM controls the world market for soybeans.
#6
China is hurting bad from the trade war. You don't hear about it, because obviously the mainstream media would rather eat glass than report that Trump is succeeding at anything.
Pork, the staple of Chinese cuisine, is through the roof right now.
The US is the Saudi Arabia of food. We have the most intensely fertile ground on the planet and the best transportation system to get the food to market. Hell, we're the Saudi Arabia of oil, too. We're self-sufficient, which means we can tell the whole world to fuck off with their bullshit.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 9:28 Comments ||
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#7
..the DeBeers of soybeans?
Agricultural Snark of the Day
the mainstream media would rather eat glass than report that Trump is succeeding at anything.
The local hippy weekly was blasting Trump for driving up the price of French wine via tariffs, but last I looked that has not happened yet.
#10
What d’you suppose someone could charge them for prime wild boar in a variety of sizes from suckling to Old Man? Get it inspected and approved, and make money at both ends by charging the landowners for clearing their property of the pests.
#18
Found that one out when I tried to buy deer sausage and the butchers looked at me like I had grown a third eye.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 15:18 Comments ||
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#19
It's feral, not wild, TW.
You are talking dictionary definitions, g(r)omgoru, not marketing. But I can work with free range instead. Have President Trump sign a regulation permitting the sale of safely harvested and inspected free range boar meat exclusively for the foreign market for the duration of this emergency. As long as the emergency is not specifically defined as Chinas’s (what — you don’t think the destruction caused by free range boars is an emergency wherever they spread?), everyone will be happy until Congress gets around to passing an actual law making it permanent.
Texas has a program which takes captured wild and processes them for food banks, under the inspection of the USDA to prevent the processing of diseased hogs.
You can find stuff like deer sausage at local or craft butchers, likely farm raised. However, especially where hunting is popular, some butchers will process the day's hunt and may offer truly wild game and meat items.
Perishable shipping has come a long ways. They may only ship Monday, and you may have to purchase the 2-day shipping rate, but I have never had a problem. Middle of Summer, purchase meat from Louisiana, shows up not just totally frozen, but like it could have been fine three days later. After a few orders you have a nice collection of freeze bags to use in your own cooler and do away with sloshing ice. Also these operations tend to be Mom & Pop businesses who employ a number of locals.
#23
Can't sell wild game at retail. Agricultural products only.
Posted by Herb McCoy
Because starving Chinese demands standards in Herb's world
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 18:25 Comments ||
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#24
China has tough regulations on all imports. What, you think they're stupid? They want to spend money on imports when they could keep the cash circulating inside their own economy?
More playground insults. Keep 'em coming, children.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 18:28 Comments ||
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#25
tough regs on things they want to restrict, idiot. They need the food, NOW. They'll take whatever they have to to keep teh masses fed and non-revolting. FOAD trollboy
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 18:30 Comments ||
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#26
More playground insults
"Your dad wants to return to the gold standard!"
"Oh yeah? Well, your mom looks like Miltion Friedman!"
Ah, those golden school days...
[Ynet] In a deal, worth some $115 million, 8 radar systems capable of detecting incoming targets - from a mortar shell to a ballistic missile - are expected to be supplied to the NATO nation over a period of 8 years
These people are nuts who believe in magic money trees.
[AlAhram] French rail operator SNCF announced that 90% of high-speed trains will be canceled on Friday due to the strike.
French police fired tear gas and charged hooded protesters on Thursday at a demonstration in Gay Paree against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform plan.
The tensions broke out close to the place de la Republique square in the east of Gay Paree, where thousands had massed to protest planned pension reforms.
A construction trailer was overturned and set on fire, sending a huge plume of smoke into the sky.
Authorities said around 285,000 people had taken part in rallies across the country by midday, a figure that did not include the several thousand at a Gay Paree march that began at 2:00 pm.
Gay Paree deployed 6,000 police for the march.
Railway workers, teachers and emergency room medics launched on Thursday one of the biggest public sector strikes in La Belle France for decades, determined to force Macron to abandon plans to overhaul the country's generous pension system.
Public transport unions said they would extend until at least Monday their open-ended strike.
Union leaders are demanding that Macron scrap his plan for a "universal" system that would do away with 42 "special regimes" for sectors ranging from rail and energy workers to lawyers and Gay Paree Opera employees, which often grant workers higher pensions or early retirement.
Critics say the changes would effectively require millions of workers in both the public and private sectors to work beyond the legal retirement age of 62 if they want to receive the full pension they have been promised.
French rail operator SNCF said Thursday that it had cancelled 90 percent of all high-speed TGV trains and 70 percent of regional trains for Friday amid the strike.
SNCF said that services would "still be very disrupted" on the second day of the biggest transport strike in the country in years, with the Eurostar service to Britannia and the Thalys service to northern Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... set to be "very heavily disrupted".
Also French Civil Aviation Authority instructed airlines to reduce their flight scheduled by 20% on Friday, Dec 6, to and from Charles De Gaulle, Gay Paree-Orly and regional airports.
The Eiffel Tower and the Orsay museum were shut because of staff shortages, while the Louvre, the Pompidou Centre and other museums warned that some wings and exhibits were closed.
And "yellow vest" protesters, who have staged weekly demonstrations since last year demanding improved living standards, blocked roads in several cities including Le Havre on the Atlantic coast, where the heavily used port was also shut according to the CGT.
Someone tell me why we're allied with these assholes again?
[ElPais] Spain will press ahead with the creation of a tax on certain digital services as soon as a government is formed, according to sources from the caretaker executive. This so-called "Google tax" could, however, raise the ire of the United States, which has already threatened France with reprisals over a similar levy.
Sources close to the caretaker finance minister pointed out that the planned Spanish legislation does not target companies according to their country of origin, and argued that the ideal approach would be for such measures to be approved on a joint basis across either European Union (EU) or OECD countries. But there are no plans for this to happen before the end of 2020 at the earliest. That is why countries such as France have already come up with their own regulations, which has in turn prompted a response from Washington. After US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 100% on French products, on Monday the EU closed ranks, announcing that it would respond "united" to a measure of this kind. Russia resurgent, yawn. China enlisting European countries in B&R, snooze. Huawei installing equipment all over Europe, zzz. Americans retaliating against unfair European protectionism? THAT'S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE, FUCKERS! That's where Europeans get angry and start passing legislation. I swear, we can't get out of NATO fast enough.
The levy designed by Spain included a tax rate of 3%, which would be applied to certain digital services from tech giants whose global revenues exceed €750 million and whose earnings in Spain are greater than €3 million. The decree defined three taxable factors in which the participation of end users is decisive for the creation of value: advertising aimed at the users of a digital interface (webpage, technological platform, software or social network); the supply of a platform that allows users to locate other users to trade with them (such as online retailer Amazon); and finally, the sale or transfer of data collected from the users of a website or platform. Custom-crafted law just for American companies. Fuck you assholes. Make your own fucking companies - oh, but you can't. All you pricks can do is sit and watch while we innovate and then get angry about it.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] Indian police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a vet in the southern city of Hyderabad last week, the BBC reported on Friday. The men had been in police detention.
Police said the men had been taken to the scene of the alleged crime and were shot after they tried to attack police there, BBC Telugu said. And I, for one, believe that's just how it happened.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2019 00:00 ||
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apart from gratuitous anti Trump inserts and some PC stuff about how hoax hate crimes hurt minorities (it is the WaPo after all), it is a pretty good report -- it covers how the cop figured out it was a hoax and how he got the perp to confess
‘Heil Trump’ and an anti-gay slur were scrawled on an Indiana church right after Trump’s election. The investigation led to an unlikely suspect — and the discovery of a hate crime hoax.
That’d be Nathan Stang, the gay, Trump-hating music director of the vandalized St. David’s Episcopal Church.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/06/2019 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
NAIROBI (AP) ‐ Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Dhaka Tribune] Indian police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a vet in the southern city of Hyderabad last week, the BBC reported on Friday. The men had been in police detention.
