#WheresCricket
Friday, April 26, 2024
And Another'n
It may be worth noting: In politics, more often than not, assholes have the upper hand simply because they're willing to be assholes.
Kern County supervisor stabbed by own child, under investigation for alleged sexual assault
BAKERSFIELD, CA – A Kern County supervisor was allegedly stabbed by his child and is now under investigation over allegations of sexual assault involving a separate child, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told reporters Thursday.
Youngblood said deputies seized 30 firearms, boxes of documents and electronic devices that may have captured the alleged assault at the home of Supervisor Zack Scrivner in Tehachapi, a city less than an hour east of Bakersfield. No charges have been filed.
Deputies were called to Scrivner’s home late Tuesday with reports he was allegedly “armed and suicidal.”
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, who is Scrivner’s aunt, contacted the sheriff himself in distress, Youngblood said. She believed Scrivner was suffering a “psychotic episode.” When authorities arrived, they found Scrivner had been stabbed twice “in the upper torso.”
An early investigation revealed the stabbing occurred over allegations that Scrivner sexually assaulted one of his four children, the sheriff said. When pressed on those allegations by a reporter, the sheriff responded: “I wouldn’t be standing up here if we didn’t believe something occurred.”
Youngblood said it appeared one of Scrivner’s children was defending a sibling when the alleged stabbing occurred. The names and ages of the children, who are minors, were not released to protect their identities, Youngblood said.
Evidence collected by the sheriff’s office will be processed outside of Kern County due to Scrivner’s relation to Zimmer, the district attorney. The California Attorney General’s Office was contacted to review the criminal case.
Scrivner was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Kern Medical Hospital. Youngblood declined to say whether the supervisor had been detained for mental health reasons.
Deputies seized a small quantity of psychoactive mushrooms but no other illegal substances were found at the Kern County leader’s home, the sheriff added.
An attorney for Scrivner told local media after Youngblood's press conference the information the sheriff released was "not reliable."
"It's remarkable that the sheriff would come out at this point without conducting a full investigation and make allegations like that," Attorney H.A. Sala said.
Sala did not disclose where Scrivner was Thursday, and did not say whether Scrivner would resign or remain as county supervisor.
He disputed the allegation of sexual assault of a minor as "absolutely not reliable," and said he had reason to believe no evidence to prove the allegation was taken from the home. He also said an altercation at Scrivner's home involved a "disarming" of Scrivner, adding that a gun was taken away from him so he would not use it against himself.
Scrivner’s wife filed for divorce last month, according to court records. Scrivner was first elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 2010.
Chairman David Couch said it was “inappropriate” to comment on the case involving his colleague pending the criminal investigation, according to a statement.
Kern County supervisor stabbed by own child, under investigation for alleged sexual assault
BAKERSFIELD, CA – A Kern County supervisor was allegedly stabbed by his child and is now under investigation over allegations of sexual assault involving a separate child, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told reporters Thursday.
Youngblood said deputies seized 30 firearms, boxes of documents and electronic devices that may have captured the alleged assault at the home of Supervisor Zack Scrivner in Tehachapi, a city less than an hour east of Bakersfield. No charges have been filed.
Deputies were called to Scrivner’s home late Tuesday with reports he was allegedly “armed and suicidal.”
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, who is Scrivner’s aunt, contacted the sheriff himself in distress, Youngblood said. She believed Scrivner was suffering a “psychotic episode.” When authorities arrived, they found Scrivner had been stabbed twice “in the upper torso.”
An early investigation revealed the stabbing occurred over allegations that Scrivner sexually assaulted one of his four children, the sheriff said. When pressed on those allegations by a reporter, the sheriff responded: “I wouldn’t be standing up here if we didn’t believe something occurred.”
Youngblood said it appeared one of Scrivner’s children was defending a sibling when the alleged stabbing occurred. The names and ages of the children, who are minors, were not released to protect their identities, Youngblood said.
Evidence collected by the sheriff’s office will be processed outside of Kern County due to Scrivner’s relation to Zimmer, the district attorney. The California Attorney General’s Office was contacted to review the criminal case.
Scrivner was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Kern Medical Hospital. Youngblood declined to say whether the supervisor had been detained for mental health reasons.
Deputies seized a small quantity of psychoactive mushrooms but no other illegal substances were found at the Kern County leader’s home, the sheriff added.
An attorney for Scrivner told local media after Youngblood's press conference the information the sheriff released was "not reliable."
"It's remarkable that the sheriff would come out at this point without conducting a full investigation and make allegations like that," Attorney H.A. Sala said.
Sala did not disclose where Scrivner was Thursday, and did not say whether Scrivner would resign or remain as county supervisor.
He disputed the allegation of sexual assault of a minor as "absolutely not reliable," and said he had reason to believe no evidence to prove the allegation was taken from the home. He also said an altercation at Scrivner's home involved a "disarming" of Scrivner, adding that a gun was taken away from him so he would not use it against himself.
Scrivner’s wife filed for divorce last month, according to court records. Scrivner was first elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 2010.
Chairman David Couch said it was “inappropriate” to comment on the case involving his colleague pending the criminal investigation, according to a statement.
Mr Fearless
Trump is afraid of nothing - except maybe a strong woman, or a strong wind.
What is happening with Trump's hair here? pic.twitter.com/UWe9Oxe2Zf
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 25, 2024
Modeling The Behavior
There are some very disturbing things to consider here.
Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book
South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’
In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.
In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”
Charitably: Maybe Noem really is just trying to tell us she's capable of handling the shitty things the rest of us don't want to deal with ourselves.
But what exactly are those shitty things? And who is she willing to do those shitty things for?
Politics is not a strictly face-value proposition. There's almost always something behind or underneath everything a politician says or does.
Plainly stated, this smells a whole lot like, "I'll dispose of the undesirables for you."
Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book
South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’
In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.
In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”
These fuckin' people.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Today's Ryan
This is excellent is a couple of ways.
- He follows up on his own post, in order to make corrections and point out a possible error on his part
- He looks at it from an angle that's way out of his usual frame of reference
This is just good work.
Hey There, Elmo
- Handles well
- People look at it
- It's fun to kick
- Cool that Tesla had the balls to make something this stupid
A Small Win
It's kind of a minor thing, but when the whole world is digital, Net Neutrality can have a huge impact on keeping the playing field level.
Net neutrality restored as FCC votes to regulate internet providers
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FCC on Thursday restored “net neutrality” rules that prevent broadband internet providers such as Comcast and AT&T from favoring some sites and apps over others.
The move effectively reinstates a net neutrality order the commission first issued in 2015 during the Obama administration; under then-President Donald Trump, the FCC subsequently repealed those rules in 2017.
Net neutrality is the principle that providers of internet service should treat all traffic equally. The rules, for instance, ban practices that throttle or block certain sites or apps, or that offer higher speeds to customers willing to pay extra.
“In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement ahead of the vote.
The telecommunications industry opposed the reintroduction of the rules, as it has before, declaring it an example of unnecessary government interference in business decisions.
The measure passed on a 3-2 vote split by party lines, with Democratic commissioners in favor and Republicans opposed.
Obama supported Net Neutrality, Trump shit on it, and now it's re-instated under Biden.
BOTH
SIDES
DON'T
Net neutrality restored as FCC votes to regulate internet providers
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FCC on Thursday restored “net neutrality” rules that prevent broadband internet providers such as Comcast and AT&T from favoring some sites and apps over others.
The move effectively reinstates a net neutrality order the commission first issued in 2015 during the Obama administration; under then-President Donald Trump, the FCC subsequently repealed those rules in 2017.
Net neutrality is the principle that providers of internet service should treat all traffic equally. The rules, for instance, ban practices that throttle or block certain sites or apps, or that offer higher speeds to customers willing to pay extra.
“In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement ahead of the vote.
The telecommunications industry opposed the reintroduction of the rules, as it has before, declaring it an example of unnecessary government interference in business decisions.
The measure passed on a 3-2 vote split by party lines, with Democratic commissioners in favor and Republicans opposed.
Another'n
I can't keep track of all this shit - which I'm sure is partly the point - that's why they run around doing this all over the fuckin' place.
PHOENIX — A top leader of the national conservative group Turning Point Action, which has amplified false claims of election fraud by former president Donald Trump and others, resigned Thursday after being accused of forging voter signatures on official paperwork so that he could run for reelection in the Arizona House.
State Rep. Austin Smith (R) — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to Smith’s handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said.
The complaint was sent to the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the Arizona attorney general for review. State election officials do not assess the veracity of allegations made against candidates. A spokesperson for the state prosecutor’s office, which runs a team that focuses on claims of voter and election fraud after widespread claims following the 2020 election, declined to comment. Both state offices are overseen by Democrats.
So, my apologies if I've hit this one before.
Turning Point Action official resigns after accusation of election-related fraud
State Rep. Austin Smith (R) — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to Smith’s handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said.
The complaint was sent to the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the Arizona attorney general for review. State election officials do not assess the veracity of allegations made against candidates. A spokesperson for the state prosecutor’s office, which runs a team that focuses on claims of voter and election fraud after widespread claims following the 2020 election, declined to comment. Both state offices are overseen by Democrats.
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