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WASHINGTON — U.S. warships and aircraft sank or heavily damaged six Iranian navy ships Monday as a major confrontation erupted in the Persian Gulf in the wake of the United States’ early morning strike against two Iranian oil platforms, the Reagan Administration said. U.S. and Iranian forces fired on each other in the broadest and most direct conflict yet, suddenly escalating what for months had been a war of nerves in the volatile waterway.

The New York Times suddenly made a major revision to a supposed bombshell piece late Sunday concerning a resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — hours after virtually all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates had cited the original article as a reason to impeach Kavanaugh. The update included the significant detail that several friends of the alleged victim said she did not recall the purported sexual assault in question at all. The Times also stated for the first time that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed, and has made no comment about the episode.

What do cop calls and E. coli have in common? They should both spur us to act on homelessness. Investigations by The Sacramento Bee have revealed some unsavory realities about life in a region struggling with a major crisis.

...We've been following the path toward fulfilling the American dream for one of those people for years now. He's an Iraqi man who served as an interpreter for the Minnesota National Guard while supporting U.S. forces in Basra in 2009. But, when the soldiers left, Khalid Awda became a marked man having helped American troops. For more than three years, his military comrade turned close friend, Sergeant Paul Braun, worked to bring Khalid to Minnesota. Khalid finally arrived in 2013, but his family couldn't come for a few more years, arriving in late 2016. The wait to become a U.S....

President says he’s ‘locked and loaded’ to attack Iran As President Trump warned that the US is “locked and loaded” to respond to the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil supply this past weekend, Senator Rand Paul warned that hitting Iran would be a “big mistake.” Appearing on CNN, Paul warned that any attack on Iran would constitute a “needless escalation” of war. “The Iraq War, President Trump has said, was the biggest geopolitical blunder of the last generation,” Paul said. “It destabilized the Middle East and increased the strength of Iran and tipped the balance toward Iran,” the Senator...

Drone attacks on two critical production facilities in Saudi Arabia wiped out over 5% of the world’s oil supply in one go, eliminating the spare capacity of the entire globe. The attacks, which targeted an oil processing facility at Abqaiq and the nearby Khurais oil field knocked out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude production, a whopping 50% of Saudi Arabia’s entire oil output. “This incident effectively eliminates the world’s spare capacity,” said Sarah Cottle, global head of market insight at S&P Global Platts. The attacks led at one point to oil prices spiking by 19%, the biggest leap since...

The California State Assembly voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation to require public universities in the state to offer medication abortion at on-campus student health centers. The body voted to pass Senate Bill 24 in a 55-19 voted on Friday, several months after the state Senate first voted to approve the measure in May. According to The New York Times, 34 college campuses in the state would be affected by the legislation, if passed, which seeks to require “each student health care services clinic on a California State University or University of California campus to offer abortion by medication techniques.” “The...

Morning "Partakers of the divine nature." 2 Peter 1:4 To be a partaker of the divine nature is not, of course, to become God. That cannot be. The essence of Deity is not to be participated in by the creature. Between the creature and the Creator there must ever be a gulf fixed in respect of essence; but as the first man Adam was made in the image of God, so we, by the renewal of the Holy Spirit, are in a yet diviner sense made in the image of the Most High, and are partakers of the divine nature....

FULL TITLE: Former Head of Planned Parenthood Accuses Organization of 'Stridently Political, Abortion-first Philosophy' Dr. Leana Wen, the recently fired head of Planned Parenthood, has not made her exit from the nation’s largest abortion provider a quiet one. In a letter to Planned Parenthood’s board of directors, which was leaked to The New York Times, Wen accuses the group of trying to “buy [her] silence,” by withholding her severance package as “ransom” to get her to sign a confidentiality agreement. “No amount of money can ever buy my integrity and my commitment to the patients I serve,” she wrote. The...

Not too long ago, I was privileged to represent a former big city police officer who had been charged with raping two young women of questionable virtue. He had met one of them through an online site where, among other things, prostitutes advertised their services. That purported victim had introduced him to her friend, who became the second complainant. It was no secret — and the prosecution was well aware — that the two young women were hookers. Nevertheless, despite the fact that my client had retired after being grievously wounded in the line of duty, he was arrested in...

A NEW POLL has shown just over half of people in Northern Ireland would vote for Irish unification if there were a border poll tomorrow. The poll, published by Lord Ashcroft, shows that 45% of those surveyed said they would vote to stay in the UK, while 46% said they would choose to leave and join the Republic of Ireland. This breaks down to 51% to 49% for unification when don’t knows and those who say they would not vote are excluded. “This is in fact a statistical tie, and well within the margin of error,” Lord Ashcroft said in...

LYONS, N.Y. - A New York farm worker will receive a 20-year prison sentence in the 2018 deaths of his girlfriend and her 1-year-old boy, officials said. According to WHAM-TV, 27-year-old Alberto Ebarado Gutierre-Reyes, aka Everardo Donoteo-Reyes, of Mexico, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter charges under a deal accepted last week, attorneys said. His sentencing is set for Nov. 7, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported. Gutierre-Reyes, of Mexico, originally faced second-degree murder charges in the deaths of Selena Hidalgo-Calderon, 18, and her son, Owen, WHAM reported. The mother and son vanished in May 2018, prompting a massive, multi-day search...

Post #8. With so many rats running for president in 2020 it's hard to keep up with who's in and who's out. Hopefully, this post will help. Below is a list of declared candidates, their occupation, the date they dropped from the race (if they did) and misc. notes. This thread will be reposted each week, likely on Monday, with the dropouts from the previous week and newly declared candidates noted. This post is virtually identical to the one from last week. The dust biter(s) from last week: disappointingly, none. Newly declared candidates from last week: none, thankfully, but ya...

<p>The Drudge Report, once a go-to site for Trumpism, now seems unapologetically anti-Trump, in its often trademark snarky style.</p> <p>Are Trump supporters then weary?</p> <p>The August jobs report “unexpectedly” reminds us that never have so many Americans been at work. The 3.7 percent unemployment rate continues to be the lowest peacetime unemployment figure in 50 years. Black and Hispanic unemployment remain at record lows. Workers’ wages continue to rise. Talk of recession is belied by low interest, low inflation, low unemployment, and a strong stock market. The result is that millions of Americans enjoy far better lives than they had in 2016.</p>

Bering Strait was a bluegrass/country music band from Russia. In 2003, the band was nominated for a Grammy Award and appeared on the TV show 60 Minutes. The group disbanded in 2006. The lineup on their first album was Alexander Arzamastsev (drums), Natasha Borzilova (lead vocals), Sergey "Spooky" Olkhovsky (bass guitar), Sergei Passov (mandolin, fiddle), Lydia Salnikova (keyboards, background vocals), Sasha Ostrovsky (steel guitar, Dobro) and Ilya Toshinsky (electric guitar, banjo).[ Bering Strait (Russian bluegrass band) covers Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun"

I’m convinced we all have a little pocket dragon.Not a demon exactly, more like a wizard who’s sometimes quiet and subdued but always there watching, smoldering – capable of igniting at any provocation. Mine’s name is Tempus Fugit and lately he’s been quite active. I feel him breathing down my neck even when at rest.As a temporary appeasement Raj and I are going an a vacation “up north” this week so posts will be short. But when we return he will require some form of ongoing accommodation so expect something along the lines of more “open threads” and fewer post-posts....

Election security is more than Russian hackers trying to change votes. We must secure the chain of custody of ballots, validate the identity of the voter, and maintain updated voter lists. Thus far, Democrats have shown no interest in any of that. Take, for example, the race between former Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democrat T. J. Cox in California’s rural 21st district. When polls closed, Valadao led Cox by 6,000 votes — or 8 percent. That margin was wide enough for media outlets to call the race for Valadao. However, late ballots delivered by third-party groups broke so heavily...

“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil” (Proverbs 16:6).

The Democratic Unionist party has for the first time signalled it is prepared to accept some post-Brexit EU rules for Northern Ireland as long as the Stormont assembly has a say. The party’s chief whip said it was looking at regulatory alignment with the EU in the agri-food sector as a way of avoiding a hard border with Ireland. “Where there is political will, there is certainly a way,” Jeffrey Donaldson told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland. “I think it is still possible to get that agreement.” He said the party still had great difficulty with the proposed backstop solution because it...

Its Swingin' Monday and we have Johnnie Lee Wills & His Boys with She Took (1952). Johnnie Lee Wills was Bob Wills younger brother. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/