I watched hours of the RNC and I cannot stomach more than a couple minutes of the DNC.
I agree about Obama. His image is precision curated and he limits his public appearances which adds to his mystique. Michelle comes off masterfully too. They’ve got it.
Not an allegation but the best I got:
So horrified was he by the Tiananmen Square incident that he chose the date for his checks notes wedding day
<<Indeed, Mr Walz has often spoken publicly about his horror at the crushing of the Tiananmen protests, and in 2009 he co-sponsored a resolution in Congress marking its 20th anniversary.
<<His wife Gwen has said that the events had such an effect on Walz, that he chose 4 June - the day Beijing sent the troops in - as the date of their wedding five years later. She said that "he wanted to have a date he'll always remember".>>
BBC reporting
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a153a1de-d9e5-4a63-b4de-8664154b9abb.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
TIL about this guy Karl Bushby of Hull, England. He has been on a 25 year trek around the world on foot. He gets to the Caspian Sea and has to cross it because he can’t go around to the south because Iran and he can’t go north because Russia. IDK I think he should try. My guess is either country would let him in but his home country might fuck with him, freeze his money, stuff like that. The line in the TikTok video says, “Iran…where just having a British passport can get you detained.”
Edit-fixed link
I think you were looking for this
I don't think there's much there there beyond an ever-flexible lib narrative and squishy journalism. This is the pull-quote: "Throughout the war, U.S. officials have assessed that President Vladimir V. Putin is loath to expand the war beyond Ukraine’s borders."
They are doing a Law & Order parody on the DNC right now.
Donald Trump. Guilty. Dun-dun.
I got recommended this YouTube video (Venezuela’s most dangerous beach) and this hype man gets on a packed bus speaking rapid spanish and he says “the last one to greet me with enthusiasm is a Maduro supporter.” He draws a few chuckles.
Found it
Im shit-talking but who is the main negotiator for “Israel”?
Of course, but there’s a good chance the person who made this community note is voting for Kamala.
TIL there’s a place called Mayo. (Sorry Irish hexbears)
Was the food (fruit) a flex too?
In my head and heart I imagine a massive coalition is building
Good to know. I either didn’t know or remember that.
The Samantha Bee episode came out in Oct 2016.
The development of that segment is described here.
Random thought. The first time I encountered the Russian Meddling story was on the Samantha B show. I was still a lib (rad-lib whatever) and took it mostly at face value. I did think to myself that seems like a cool gig in a region where opportunities are limited. But how the hell was Samantha B the one to “break” this. I assume it was fed to her and the show’s producers.
I just had dinner with a friend from there. Midtown where a couple of these hotels are, like the Roosevelt.
Friend is supposedly Democrat but sounds Republican on so many things.
He was like, I support immigration (migrants and asylum seekers) but why should we have to pay for it!! He said there were extra taxes and surcharges in NYC, like for the subway I think. (I looked it up and couldn’t find evidence of this.)
He said there’s increased crime, specifically drug dealing.
Oh and he mentioned the cut-backs on library spending.
Remember Adams closed them all on Sunday a while ago.
Meanwhile they spent blobs on surveillance tech that was probably made in Israel.
He is first gen Indian immigrant. Naturalized citizen. He said everyone in his neighborhood shares his POV.
Would Greenwald and Taibbi also fit in the last category?
This reminds me of a theory about the would-be Trump assassin. That his motive was anti-Epstein, anti-pedo and that Biden and Trump were both targets, but that Trump was closer, only about an hour away from where the shooter lived.
Average redditor/radlib, etc
“If both parties align on this particular issue [ie genocide - my note], it makes the most sense to vote for the lesser of two evils.”
In the same thread:
“I can agree with you that 5 evil is less than 10 evil. But 5 plus infinity evil (genocide) is equal to 10 plus infinity (genocide).”
And this gem: “There will always be single issue voters. At least genocide is a better single issue than most.”
Or the opposite. What if they (Russia) retain SMO label for activities in Ukraine, but call Ukraine/NATO’s breach of their border an act of war.
How hilarious would it be if one of the “bad” countries hosted the real-US-president-in-exile and gave them the Guido treatment.
Many such cases
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/568d41bc-d377-4c43-8c51-fece697d15b8.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
found on r-blackwolffeed
On a related note, r-ChapoDogHouse is the last remaining chapo (in the name) sub that I know of. There was a porm themed one that lasted a while, but it got nuked eventually.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/82448ae7-7b35-4307-9ba8-aff81d433c68.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
Based.
Text
The Justice Department on Thursday announced the arrests of three people in a complex stolen identity scheme that officials say generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.
The scheme involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are dispatched by the government to live abroad and who rely on the stolen identities of Americans to obtain remote employment at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive corporate data and lucrative paychecks.
The fraud is a way for heavily sanctioned North Korea, which is cut off from the U.S. financial system, to take advantage of a “toxic brew” of converging factors, including high-tech labor shortage in the U.S. and the proliferation of remote telework, Marshall Miller, the Justice Department’s principal associate deputy attorney general, said in an interview. The Justice Department says the cases are part of a broader strategy to not only prosecute individuals who enable the fraud but also to build partnerships with other countries and to warn private-sector companies of the need to be vigilant about the people they’re hiring. FBI and Justice Department officials launched an initiative in March and last year announced the seizure of website domains used by North Korean IT workers.
“More and more often, compliance programs at American companies and organizations are on the front lines of protecting our national security,” “Corporate compliance and national security are now intertwined like never before.”
The Justice Department says the conspiracy has affected more than 300 companies — including a high-end retail chain and “premier Silicon Valley technology company” — and generated more than $6.8 million in revenue for the workers, who are based outside of the U.S., including in China and Russia.
The three people arrested include an Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, who prosecutors say facilitated the scheme by helping the workers obtain and validate stolen identities, receiving laptops from U.S. companies who thought they were sending the devices to legitimate employees and helping the workers connect remotely to the company. According to the indictment, Chapman ran more than one “laptop farm” where U.S. companies sent computers and paychecks to IT workers they did not realize were overseas.
At Chapman’s laptop farms, she allegedly connected overseas IT workers who logged in remotely to company networks so it appeared the logins were coming from the United States. She also is alleged to have received paychecks for the overseas IT workers at her home, forging the beneficiaries’ signatures for transfer abroad and enriching herself by charging monthly fees.
The other two defendants include a Ukrainian man, Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors say created fake accounts at job search platforms and was arrested in Poland last week, and a Vietnamese national, Minh Phuong Vong, who was arrested Thursday in Maryland on charges of fraudulently obtaining a job at a U.S. company that was actually performed by remote workers who posed as him and were based overseas.
It was not immediately clear if any of the three had lawyers.
Separately, the State Department said it was offering a reward for information about certain North Korean IT workers who officials say were assisted by Chapman. And the FBI, which conducted the investigations, issued a public service announcement that warned companies about the scheme, encouraging them to implement identity verification standards through the hiring process and to educate human resources staff and hiring managers about the threat.
CW for gems like, “This week’s election results mark a shift back to the center.”
text
San Francisco, Washington and New York City are among the municipalities where policymakers are backing harsher policies.
San Francisco’s liberal voters just endorsed drug screenings for welfare recipients. Washington’s progressive City Council passed a crime package Tuesday that will keep more people in jail while awaiting trial. And New York’s governor on Wednesday ordered hundreds of National Guard troops to deploy inside the city’s troubled subway system.
The country’s biggest, bluest cities are embracing tough-on-crime policies that would have been politically heretical just a few years ago — ratcheting up criminal penalties and expanding police power amid fear and anger over a rash of brazen crimes like carjackings and retail theft.
These Democrat-led policy changes mark a stark reversal from 2020, when the growing influence of progressives fueled a national effort to curb police powers and scale back law enforcement budgets following the murder of George Floyd.
Now the left is in retreat on criminal justice.
“I don’t believe it’s progressive to allow people to get assaulted on the streets at night. I don’t believe it’s progressive to allow people to sleep in tents,” Mark Farrell, a moderate Democrat challenging San Francisco Mayor London Breed, said on Tuesday. “This is not the city I grew up in. It’s not a city I recognize right now.”
Blue cities are pushing these harsher policies even as crime has ticked down significantly nationwide, following big spikes during the pandemic — although that trendline has been slower to emerge in some major cities like Washington and San Francisco. It’s the perception of increased crime that is driving many of these changes as Republicans continue to pillory Democrats as weak on law enforcement in the run-up to the presidential election.
“What we’re seeing now is a recognition that we have to lean in and do more as government to provide for the safety and well-being of our residents,” said Democrat Brooke Pinto, the Washington councilmember who championed the crime package. “We didn’t do a complete 180 from where we were, but instead we looked at the practical realities on the ground and sought to right-size many of those reforms.”
California has epitomized the ebb and flow of criminal justice politics. After championing stringent penalties for decades that filled prisons to capacity, the state has spent the last several years swinging in the other direction as its politics and urban centers became ever-more Democratic.
This week’s election results mark a shift back to the center.
In San Francisco, voters passed Breed’s ballot initiatives to lift restrictions on police operations and screen welfare recipients for drug use — two traditionally conservative proposals that nevertheless resonated with an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, illustrating voters’ frustration with public drug use.
“You’re saving the Democratic Party from itself,” San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, a moderate Breed ally, told activists at the mayor’s election-night party on Tuesday.
Breed and Democratic San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan have also endorsed a statewide referendum, intended for the November ballot and backed by prosecutors, that would increase penalties for drug and property crimes. That would roll back a 2014 sentencing-slashing ballot initiative that passed thanks in part to broad support from Democratic officials.
“You get these kinds of corrective or over-corrective acts. Some of it’s political,” said Tori Verber Salazar, a progressive former San Joaquin County District Attorney. “You’ve got a mayor that’s in big trouble, likely not going to be mayor again, so she’s throwing some hail marys out there.”
In Los Angeles, progressive District Attorney George Gascón is limping into his reelection bid. Four years ago, Gascón channeled a racial justice upsurge to topple an incumbent on a platform of reducing incarceration and prosecuting more police officers. His win was a signal victory for a national movement to elect liberal prosecutors.
But his standing has eroded badly since then, and in a Tuesday primary packed with challengers Gascón won around a fifth of the votes counted so far — a dismal showing for an incumbent. He will match up with former prosecutor Nathan Hochman in a replay-in-miniature of the state’s 2022 attorney general race, when Hochman challenged progressive incumbent Rob Bonta.
And in Alameda County, where Oakland’s crime woes have prompted a state intervention, embattled progressive District Attorney Pamela Price is likely to face a recall election before her first term is up — an echo of the 2022 ouster of then-San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Democrats on the East Coast are also distancing themselves from progressive policies viewed as soft-on-crime.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday she is deploying the national guard to New York City’s subway system after a violent string of transit attacks, including one instance where a subway conductor was slashed in the neck while on the job.
Hochul’s announcement, which also includes increasing the numbers of state and Metropolitan Transportation Authority police in the subways, comes two days after she doubled down on her commitment to fighting crime.
On Monday, the governor lauded state officers for increasing gun seizures and driving down violent crimes and carjackings upstate.
“This is not just a one off; this is the type of aggressive policing that our state police has been engaged in every single day,” Hochul said.
During that announcement, she firmly separated herself from changes to bail laws passed by former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which were used by Republicans to cast Hochul as soft-on-crime during her 2022 gubernatorial election.
That race proved to be surprisingly — and, for Democrats, embarrassingly — competitive. Hochul beat former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin by the smallest margin of victory in three decades of any New York governor’s race.
As she looks toward her 2026 reelection, Hochul’s campaign told POLITICO they are keen to continue promoting her work to strengthen bail laws and drive down crime.
“I cannot have people that committed a crime being turned out again because we don’t have the standards in place,” Hochul said Monday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams — a former NYPD captain who ran a tough-on-crime campaign for office — is making similar moves to crack down on crime in the country’s largest transit system, which saw a 45 percent spike in serious incidents in January, largely driven by theft.
In response, the Democratic mayor flooded stations with more officers who have focused on boosting arrest numbers to historic levels. Over the course of February, transit crime subsequently fell 15 percent compared to the year before.A heavier police presence, Adams argued, is also key to changing perceptions about crime that do not always align with the statistics.
“Nothing encourages the feeling of safety more than having a uniformed officer present from the bag checks when you first come into the system to watching them walk through the subway cars to the platforms,” he said during a Wednesday interview on FOX 5.
The aggressive moves by New York officials to address subway crime quickly sparked denouncements from progressives.
“These heavy-handed approaches will, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and Brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight out of the Giuliani playbook,” New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement responding to Hochul’s announcement.
The nation’s capital has also been beset by angst over crime, including the highest number of murders in more than two decades last year. A series of high-profile crimes in recent months have further heightened anxiety.
In October, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was carjacked at gunpoint just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Then last month, Mike Gill, a former city election official who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations, was shot and killed while picking up his wife in downtown Washington.
The headline-grabbing incidents have led to Republican denunciations of the city’s purportedly lax criminal justice policies.
“No section of this city can be considered safe anymore,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) said during an October congressional hearing. “The Washington, D.C., City Council has passed laws that emboldened criminals and hamstrung the police.”
While city officials dismiss such characterizations as baseless fear mongering, they’ve nonetheless dramatically changed their approach in recent months. Most significantly, that included passing a major criminal justice package on Tuesday — with all but one member of the City Council backing the bill — that toughens penalties and expands police powers.
They’re responding to constituents who are fed up with the city’s crime problems. Two members of the City Council — Charles Allen and Brianne Nadeau — are facing recall campaigns, spurred by anger over their support for liberal crime policies. Both backed the crime package on Tuesday.
“A collective sigh of relief I think is the sense that I’m feeling from people who are reaching out,” City Council member Pinto, the chief sponsor of the “Secure D.C.” package, said of the response. “I have heard from so many residents in the last 24 hours who feel like finally their calls for action and change have been heard and we will start to have a safer and more secure city.”
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a81f9222-e6ca-492c-91c1-f866db8da11f.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
CW for the topic: self-harm
>"Many of us like to ask ourselves, "What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?" The answer is, you're doing it.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/fc6c3217-c2c6-4898-b833-f41c91c5bd41.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
Do we brigade any more? The comments section is horrible.
Here’s the top comment.
> Funny how no one mentions that Egypt (an Arab nation) also has an Iron Curtain style border with Gaza, yet they don’t get shit when people are talking about the Gaza blockade.
Link but CW Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ahahtb/gaza_strip_blockade/
(edit: image failed to upload the first time)
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/794b591f-ee1e-411f-ba1c-26f8610162ae.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
No, you can not have little a healthcare with your imperialism.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/3e4080f4-9a3b-4a95-9a2f-ed5bee3d966c.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
I TOLD YOU WHAT IS TO BE DONE !lenin-rage
Things that are so obvious and ingrained that no one even thinks about them.
Here’s a few:
All US americans can go to Mexico EASILY. You’re supposed to have a passport but you don’t even need one (for car/foot crossing). Versus, it’s really hard for Mexicans, who aren’t wealthy, to secure a VISA to enter the US. I’m sure there are corollaries in other geo-regions.
Another one is wealthy countries having access to vaccines far ahead of “poor” countries.
In US, we might pay lip service to equal child-hood education but most of the funding pulls from local taxes so some kids might receive ~$10000 in spending while another receives $2000. I’m not looking it up at the moment, but I’m SURE there are strong racial stratas.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6a4e588c-a10a-4acb-809d-dc19420de088.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
https://x.com/ylecun/status/1724570628538421444
https://nitter.net/ylecun/status/1724570628538421444
Or so says US Commerce Secretary
![China can't produce those 7nm Huawei phone chips 'at scale'](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/1a56b6bc-5d7d-4df3-abdf-4e387f34edf9.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Surprisingly good comments section. Even got one poster saying “Comeonguys, stop being so anti-US.”
Or so says US Commerce Secretary
![China can't produce those 7nm Huawei phone chips 'at scale'](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c922518e-c44a-46e2-80fc-90040dea8771.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Surprisingly good comments section. Even got one poster saying “Comeonguys, stop being so anti-US.”