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Sorry for the vanity post. I've been reading so much that it's hard for me to get a grasp on the actual vote count for the nomination. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Judiciary Cmte votes on Thursday to send Kavanaugh's nomination to the full Senate. Does anyone know what the current vote total is for the nomination? Have any GOP senators said they're voting NO? On both sides of the aisle, are they any holdouts - for example, Manchin, Collins, etc? If you had to guess, what will the vote for confirmation be? 52-48 in favor?...

Just as negotiators reached agreement on an extraordinary hearing for Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, a second allegation of sexual misconduct by the Supreme Court nominee put the White House and Senate Republicans on the defensive and fueled calls from Democrats to postpone further action on his confirmation. A dayslong back and forth over the timing and terms of a hearing with Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing him of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, appeared to end Sunday with the announcement that they would appear separately Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing promised...

Arminta “Cleo” Jeffryes wants Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott to realize some things are bigger than football. In a phone interview Wednesday, after spending 2 1/2 days in jail for protesting outside a Cowboys game over the weekend, the 25-year-old Lyft driver and self-described “radical” activist criticized Prescott for not following the example set by Colin Kaepernick. “He’s so wack for that,” Jeffryes said of Prescott. “As a black man you should want to speak out against police brutality and racial injustice. You have a black father. One day you will have black children.” Prescott told reporters in July that...

Hillary Clinton has a message for Donald Trump: You’re not above the law. On Friday, the former First Lady and Secretary of State discussed the legal challenge of indicting a sitting president, which Trump’s legal team has claimed cannot happen, on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Clinton was present to promote the paperback release of her best-selling campaign memoir, What Happened. “If you’re not president and you’ve committed a crime, you should be able to be indicted,” Clinton explains to Colbert. Trump and his campaign are under federal investigation for obstruction of justice and potential collusion with the Russian...

SDSS J1050+0017, also known as ClG J1050+0017, is approximately 6 billion light-years away from Earth. The gigantic mass of this galaxy cluster creates the fascinating phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing.SDSS J1050+0017’s gravity bends light coming from behind it in a similar way to how the base of a wine glass bends light.The effects of this lensing can be clearly seen as curved streaks forming a circular shape around the center of the Hubble image.Astronomers can use these distorted galaxies to calculate the mass of the cluster — including the mass of the dark matter within it — and to peer...

The Presidents of the United States of America - Volcano

With support for the Kremlin waning, repression is all it has left. General elections this month have revealed that the Russian public is frustrated, uncertain about the future and electrified by protest sentiment. Kremlin candidates struggled to win their gubernatorial bids, while high school and college students—people who haven’t even started working yet — took to the streets to protest plans to raise the pension age. Political analysts chalk this situation up to Kremlin errors. They believe that domestic policy chief Sergei Kiriyenko has loosened the political rules too much and has invested too heavily in the spectacle of the...

Al Matthews, the actor who played Gunnery Sergeant Apone in Aliens, has been found dead at his home in Spain. El Pais reports that a neighbour called the emergency services yesterday, who arrived at his home in Orihuela Costa, Alicante. The cause of death is unknown and will be determined by an autopsy. He was 75. He began acting following a career in the US Marines, serving in Vietnam and receiving two purple hearts, before becoming the first black soldier in the 1st Marine Division to be promoted to sergeant. Born in Brooklyn, he began his acting – and also...

Gary Kurtz, a producer on “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” has died. He was 78. According to a statement by The Kurtz/Joiner Archive, the producer died from cancer on Sunday in North London, England. “Gary Kurtz, Star Wars producer passed away on Sunday the 23rd of September at 4.47pm after living with Cancer for the last year,” read the statement. “We have him to thank for these wonderful memories that he made for us all. Gary Kurtz helped to create the force and it is with us always. Gary Kurtz left behind Clare Gabriel, Tiffany Kurtz, Melissa Kurtz,...

Republicans appear to be rallying to embattled President Trump and his call for a “red wave” of voters at the polls this fall, according to a new national survey that finds GOP “enthusiasm” for the midterm elections surging.

British Prime Minister Theresa May offered her views on everything from President Donald Trump and Brexit to the #MeToo movement in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News ahead of the start of the UN General Assembly.

A new storm of alleged sexual misconduct allegations has erupted against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as attorney Michael Avenatti said he had 'knowledge' that he targeted women for 'gang rape' with a high school friend.

A Kentucky woman tanning at a salon in Louisville was arrested when authorities discovered she allegedly left her two children inside a car with loaded guns. Monica Gentry, 25, from Shepherdsville, was arrested Tuesday after local authorities received a call about the two children -- a five-year-old and a five-month-old -- alone inside the car. When they arrived, they found the children inside the car with two loaded handguns. At least one of the guns was within reach of the older child, according to WDRB-News.

With unseasonably warm summer temperatures persisting over much of the world this year, it seems hard to believe that this is the week of the Harvest Moon, the full moon nearest to the autumnal equinox. Saturday, Sept. 22, was the first official day of autumn in much of the Northern Hemisphere, even though it will still officially be summer through the daylight hours. The moment of the equinox — the official end of summer and beginning of autumn — will not arrive until 9:54 p.m. EDT. East of the prime meridian, where the equinox occurs after midnight, the first day...

Ten years ago, it was too-easy credit that brought financial markets to their knees. Today, it could be a global debt of $247 trillion that causes the next crash. After a decade of escalating US household debt brought on by low wages and the national debt more than doubling over the same time frame, to $21 trillion, debt could soon put the brakes on this economic recovery, analysts warn. “We think the major economies are on the cusp of this turning into the worst recession we have seen in 10 years,” said Murray Gunn, head of global research at Elliott...

Under the terms of the deal, each Randgold shareholder will receive 6.1280 new Barrick shares for each share of the African rival, the companies said. Barrick shareholders will own about 66.6 percent of the new Barrick merged company while Randgold shareholders will own about 33.4 percent. Randgold's long-term chief executive Mark Bristow will retain that same role in the new merged company while Barrick's John Thornton will become the executive chairman. "The Boards of Barrick and Randgold believe that the Merger will create an industry-leading gold company with the greatest concentration of Tier One Gold Assets in the industry, the...

Among the more-than-ample reasons for acquiring a flotilla of diesel-electric submarines for the U.S. Navy: SSKs could help deter war by demonstrating American resiliency should war come in the Western Pacific. Deterrence comes from capability and visible resolve to use it. And from staying power. Foes blanch at starting a fight if they fear they can do little to blunt an antagonist’s warmaking capability. In short, resilient contestants deter. And should war come anyway, an artfully employed diesel contingent could help the United States and its allies—principally Japan—prevail in that war. To recap the case for conventionally powered submarines :...

An Antarctic greenhouse known as EDEN ISS not only survived the polar night but emerged from it with a harvest for local researchers, thus providing hope that future Mars colonists could also enjoy fresh food during their time on the Red Planet, German Aerospace Center (DLR) officials said in a statement. Regularly withstanding temperatures below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius), the greenhouse provided herbs, lettuce and other vegetables to 10 people who were riding out the winter in the remote station, called the Alfred Wegener Institute's Neumayer Station III. It's the first time the greenhouse operated through...

Is this credible? Hey, would a man who turned a porn star who reneged on a payoff into a paragon of civic virtue lie? Early this morning, Michael Avenatti publicly accused Brett Kavanaugh of running child-care centers in the 1980s where satanic abuse took place. Oh wait, wrong social panic! Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced a storm of new sexual misconduct allegations Sunday after attorney Michael Avenatti said he had knowledge that Kavanaugh and high school friend Mark Judge targeted women with drugs and alcohol in order to “allow a ‘train’ of men to subsequently gang rape them.” …...

On Friday, department officers went to pick up two pallets of donated fruit and quickly discovered something off about the weight of the boxes. “One of the sergeants just noticed one of the boxes didn’t seem quite right,” Jeremy Desel, department spokesperson, told CNN affiliate KTRK. This isn’t the first time drug smugglers have tried to use fruit to hide contraband. In 2017, almost two tons of marijuana was disguised as limes in a commercial shipment coming across the Texas-Mexico border. More than 34,000 of the fake fruit packages were discovered by an imaging inspection system and narcotics K-9 team....