By Leika Kihara and Kaori Kaneko TOKYO (Reuters) - A spike in coronavirus infections in Japan is driving local households to do what they have always done in times of crisis: spend less and save more, stoking fears of a deeper retail recession and grinding deflation. Fifty-year-old Hiromi Suzuki is doing just that having quit her job at a Tokyo novelty store in December after the pandemic hit sales. "I try not to spend money," she said, walking her dog in the city. "Since I don't go out much, I don't buy cosmetics or clothes any more." Suzuki's case exemplifies the trouble Japan faces as COVID...
The conviction of former Donald Trump advisor Peter Navarro will make Walt Nauta think twice about whether he's willing to do time for the former president, a former federal prosecutor said on Thursday evening.
Joyce Vance, who spent 24 years as a federal prosecutor, appeared on MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, where she was asked about the Navarro case. Specifically, the host asked what the guilty verdict does to the "psyche" of Trump's codefendants in Georgia and Florida.
"Are they watching this and thinking, holy cow, this could be me next? And they're facing more serious charges than [Navarro]," Ruhle added.
Vance said the "Navarro situation is a little bit different," but explained the strength of the prosecution's case.
"This was always going to be a conviction," she said. "This really was the cleanest of all possible cases."
She added that she does think there will be a "subtle impact on some of Trump's codefendants," and particularly in the Mar-a-Lago case.
"People like Walt Nauta, who really has been quite literally the body man for the president, and he will now have to make a decision, is he like Navarro, willing to go to prison for Trump, or does he need to correct course now while he still has time?" she asked.
Former Robert Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissman tore into Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for his efforts to interfere with state prosecutors charging former President Donald Trump, on Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "The Last Word."
This comes as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis hits back at Jordan's attacks with a scathing letter arguing he lacks the authority to be stepping into the enforcement of state law.
"As prosecutors' letters go, to chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee trying to interfere with their investigations, of which I believe there are very few in American history, that one was about as hot as it gets," said anchor Lawrence O'Donnell.
"That is true," said Weissman. "Yet however, it was provoked. Just remember, the person who sent it is in a party that traditionally believes in states' rights and that local crimes are left to the states to prosecute."
"This is the second time, not the first, that Jim Jordan has tried to interfere with state criminal prosecutions brought by separate sovereign states," Weissman continued. "One was in New York, where he sent the same kind of letter to Alvin Bragg, the D.A. there, that he sent to Fani Willis. And the tone of the two letters is certainly different, but the strength of the case on substance, in terms of what Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis laid out, is identical. They really go to town on all of the ways that Jordan's request here is not just improper but is really interfering with the criminal justice system."
"So yes, a lot of her language is colorful," added Weissman. "But she and Alvin Bragg, I think, did a really terrific job in laying out the facts and legal position and why it's completely inappropriate for Jim Jordan to be weaponizing a committee in congress to interfere with those prosecutions."
On September 3rd, 2023, right-wing conspiracy theorist Allie Beth Stuckey
interviewed creationist Ken Ham on her Relatable podcast about dinosaurs a year after she claimed that the extinct creatures never existed.
Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis and the brains behind Kentucky's Creation Museum, which depicts humans riding dinosaurs and asserts that Earth is only six thousand years old.
Hemant Mehta notes in his Friendly Atheist newsletter, "Dinosaurs are real. We know they’re real. We have good ideas about what they looked like because their fossils sometimes include soft tissues that tell us, for example, if they were covered in feathers. We know how muscular they were and where their eyes may have pointed. Sure, some of our recreations involve filling in the blanks as best we can, but educated guesses aren’t the same as stabs in the dark. Yet even when scientists suggest we need to update our understanding of dinosaurs, Stuckey treats it as a giant game."
Mehta adds, "Stuckey could've made sense of all this through basic Google searches or by asking a paleontologist. But her career is built on passing off ignorance as insight. She’d rather ask stupid questions than discuss smart answers."
But that is not how Stuckey's chat with Ham went down. Instead,
Mehta observes, "Stuckey insisted she only 'jokingly talked about' not knowing what dinosaurs looked like in the past. (She was not joking. There is no wink to be found anywhere in her earlier comments.) She didn't directly bring up denying their existence. But when she asked Ham how he knew that they existed and what they looked like, he responded by… feeding her conspiracy complex."
Ham told Stuckey, "Well, first of all, you need to be skeptical about what they actually looked like, simply because, when they find dinosaur bones, they really only find a few. There's not that many," adding, "First of all, do I believe in dinosaurs? And the answer is yes, but let me explain…"
Paleontologist Dan Phelps lamented the willful ignorance:
Sadly, over 50,000 people have viewed the first part and 33,000 the second part of this insipid nonsense. No one would care, but [Answers in Genesis] and other Christian Nationalist organizations would be overjoyed to destroy public education and replace it with homeschooling and sectarian schools. Moreover, Kentucky Tourism is subsidizing the Ark Encounter by providing it a $1.825 million sales tax rebate incentive every year.
