https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/kyle-rittenhouse-bail.html
CHICAGO — Bail for Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois teenager accused of killing two men during protests over a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis., was set at $2 million on Monday as Mr. Rittenhouse made a first appearance in a Wisconsin court.

The father of one of the men who died urged the court not to allow Mr. Rittenhouse’s release, warning that he is a flight risk. “Kyle Rittenhouse thinks he’s above the law and he’s been treated as such by law enforcement,” said John Huber, the father of Anthony M. Huber, who was killed in the shooting.

Mr. Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre for conservatives who insist he acted in self-defense, and donations have poured into a legal defense fund on his behalf. Even President Trump suggested shortly after the shooting that Mr. Rittenhouse’s actions were legitimate. “He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like,” Mr. Trump said in a news conference in August.

Mr. Rittenhouse, 17, has been charged with six criminal counts, including first-degree intentional homicide, for the shooting on Aug. 25 that left two protesters dead and a third injured. The shooting occurred after a clash between demonstrators, who were protesting a white police officer’s shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black Kenosha resident, and armed civilians with guns who said they had come to downtown Kenosha to protect businesses and private property after two nights of fires, looting and destruction.

I think if no one wins election by large margin on Election night, November the 4th will be the worst day US had ever experienced.

If DJT wins, he will certainly invoke insurrection act and quell the protest momentarily but it may backfire.

Any thoughts?


https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/928791633/guns-protests-and-elections-do-not-mix-conflict-experts-see-rising-warning-signs

Who's up for some good old fashion mass killing by conservatives?

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/31/trump-study-coronavirus-rallies-433760

President Donald Trump's campaign rallies between June and September may have caused some 30,000 coronavirus infections and more than 700 deaths, according to a new study by Stanford University economists.

The working paper, released late Friday, examined the impact of 18 rallies held between June 20 and Sept. 30 by comparing spread of the virus after each event to parts of the country that didn't host rallies. The findings illustrate the risks of not heeding public health warnings to wear masks and avoid large gatherings to mitigate the risks of Covid-19, the authors — including B. Douglas Bernheim, the chair of Stanford's economics department — wrote.

“The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” they wrote. Fifteen of the 18 events studied were held outdoors.

Trump has drawn criticism for continuing to hold events with large, tightly packed crowds in states that are experiencing outbreaks. Many in attendance, including Trump, have not worn masks.

Bernheim told POLITICO he hopes the study will help inform policymakers understand the tradeoffs around holding large public gatherings during the pandemic.

"There's currently this very important debate going on about the costs and benefits of lockdowns, restrictions and so forth," Bernheim said. "It's important that debate be informed by good information."

Joe Biden's campaign seized on the findings Saturday as evidence Trump hasn't taken the ooronavirus pandemic seriously. "He's even costing hundreds of lives and sparking thousands of cases with super spreader rallies that only serve his own ego,” Biden spokesperson Andrew Gates said.

Former President Barack Obama also cited the study on Saturday during an appearance with Biden in Michigan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/young-conservative-group-tied-fake-accounts-attacked-biden-facebook-says-n1242623

Facebook said Thursday that it has taken down hundreds of fake accounts created by a marketing company that worked with the young conservative group Turning Point USA to invade the comments sections of mainstream publishers and denigrate Democratic politicians.

The marketing company, Rally Forge, worked on behalf of Turning Point USA to create 200 fake identities on Facebook and 76 on Instagram, as well as 55 Facebook pages, the social media giant said in a blog post.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said that Rally Forge’s “action on behalf of [Turning Point USA] was largely politically focused, directly around the election.”

The accounts lingered in comment sections of Facebook pages of mainstream news sources including The Washington Post, The New York Times and MSNBC, and attacked Joe Biden and left-leaning politicians while praising President Donald Trump. NBCUniversal is the parent company of MSNBC and NBC News.

The identities “used stock profile photos and posed as right-leaning individuals from across the U.S.” and their “sole activity on our platform was associated with this deceptive campaign,” Facebook said.

One of the accounts pushed false claims about mail-in voting, erroneously claiming "a dangerous amount of ballots will be lost or won't arrive in time" in response to a Des Moines Register article.

The announcement adds to concern that domestic misinformation campaigns are now a larger threat to the integrity of the upcoming election than foreign interference, which continues to be the subject of intense analysis.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/27/us/penguin-couple-steals-nest-at-zoo-trnd-scn/index.html

In their ongoing quest to raise a chick, a couple of African male penguins that rose to viral fame last year for stealing an egg from a heterosexual penguin couple have now stolen the nest of two female penguins.
The zoo announced the development on social media last week. Homosexuality is more common in this bird species, a tweet from the zoo explains, adding that the two male penguins are taking turns guarding the nest, which contains two eggs.
"After obtaining an egg to hatch last year, they managed to hijack an entire nest this year at an unguarded moment," zookeeper Sander Drost is quoted as saying in a news release.

The two penguins are "a dominant couple" among the 17 penguins in the zoo's care, Drost told Dutch News.
Drost called the male penguin couple "very determined" -- but their desire to become fathers might still not come to fruition, because the eggs were taken from a same-sex female couple and therefore are most likely unfertilized.
Last year, after the two penguins stole the single egg, it turned out that egg was also unfertilized. The heterosexual couple whose egg was stolen laid another one after the heist, the zoo said in a news release at the time.
"Maybe one day we will welcome a chick that has been hatched by a gay couple. Who knows, they might succeed next year," Drost said in the most recent news release.
There have been several reports of same-sex penguin couples around the world pursuing fatherhood or motherhood.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643

Republicans have turned alleged liberal bias in Silicon Valley into a major closing theme of the election cycle, hauling tech CEOs in for virtual grillings on Capitol Hill while President Donald Trump threatens legal punishment for companies that censor his supporters.

But a POLITICO analysis of millions of social media posts shows that conservatives still rule online.

Right-wing social media influencers, conservative media outlets and other GOP supporters dominate online discussions around two of the election’s hottest issues, the Black Lives Matter movement and voter fraud, according to the review of Facebook posts, Instagram feeds, Twitter messages and conversations on two popular message boards. And their lead isn’t close.

As racial protests engulfed the nation after George Floyd’s death, users shared the most-viral rightwing social media content more than 10 times as often as the most popular liberal posts, frequently associating the Black Lives Matter movement with violence and accusing Democrats like Joe Biden of supporting riots.

People also shared conservatives’ most-read claims of rampant voter fraud roughly twice as often as they did liberals’ or traditional media outlets’ discussions of the issue, the analysis found. The conservatives’ tactics included spinning mainstream media coverage on voting irregularities into elaborate conspiracy theories, sometimes echoed by Trump, that Democratic lawmakers are trying to steal November’s election.

An hour after Donald Trump assumed the presidency Friday, his administration indefinitely suspended a pending rate cut for mortgage insurance required for FHA-backed loans, which are popular with first-time home buyers and those with poor credit.

>The move by the Department of Housing and Urban Development — one of the first acts of Trump’s administration — reversed a policy announced in the waning days of the Obama presidency that would have trimmed insurance premiums for typical borrowers by hundreds of dollars a year.

>An hour after Donald Trump assumed the presidency Friday, his administration indefinitely suspended a pending rate cut for mortgage insurance required for FHA-backed loans, which are popular with first-time home buyers and those with poor credit.

>The move by the Department of Housing and Urban Development — one of the first acts of Trump’s administration — reversed a policy announced in the waning days of the Obama presidency that would have trimmed insurance premiums for typical borrowers by hundreds of dollars a year.

>Some Republicans expressed concern that the rate cut could cost taxpayers if the loans started to go sour and the Federal Housing Administration was unable to cover the losses. The agency needed a $1.7-billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury in 2013 after it expanded its role last decade after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

>The FHA does not issue loans, but instead insures mortgages and collects fees from borrowers to reimburse lenders in case of default. Borrowers can qualify for an FHA-backed mortgage, with down payments as small as 3.5%, even with a credit score as low as 580, which could signal a past bankruptcy or debts sent to collection.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-fha-cut-20170120-story.html