Cyberscam...

A Nigerian influencer who posted photos of his life of luxury amassing 2.5 million Instagram followers was arrested by the FBI.

The FBI and Dubai police stormed the 37-year-old's apartment in the city seizing more than £30 million in cash, before the pair appeared in a Chicago court on July 3.

In June Ramon Olorunwa Abbas - known to his followers as Ray Hushpuppi - and another man -  Jacob Ponle (aka Mr Woodberry) - were both arrested in Dubai under suspicion of a £350 million cyberscam.

A statement posted on Facebook, the Dubai police said that the FBI director had thanked them for extraditing Abbas.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice told the BBC that the accused was expelled from Dubai, rather than extradited, reportedly telling the broadcaster 'you'll have to ask them about why they called it an extradition'.

Commutation...

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley rejected the characterization of criticism from Sen. Mitt Romney and CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin regarding the commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence by President Trump.

“Jeff Toobin just said that the Stone commutation is ‘the most corrupt and cronyistic act in all of recent history.‘

Toobin stated ‘This is simply not done by American presidents they don’t pardon or commute sentences of people who are close to them or about to go to prison. It just does not happen until this President.’ 
Turely:
That is unfortunately not true. History is replete with such examples for presidential interventions for friends, allies, and some of the most dubious figures in history. The record of this power is hardly pristine. To the contrary, this barely measures up to some of the most infamous cases," Turley said.  

Turley mentioned former President Bill Clinton pardoning his own brother, as well as Marc Rich, a Democratic donor and fugitive.

Supersede...

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has reinstated Phase 1 reopening guidelines after a steady surge in coronavirus cases.

In following Phase 1 guidelines, residents should wear face masks, restaurants should close dining rooms, non-essential city facilities should close and individuals are encouraged to leave home only for essential trips. 

The Phase 1 guidelines conflict with guidance from the state level, where Gov. Brian Kemp has encouraged mask-wearing but asked cities not to mandate it. According to the governor’s office, Bottoms’ Phase 1 guidelines are unenforceable. Kemp’s executive orders legally supersede the mayor’s guidelines. 

Kemp released a statement critical of the mayor’s plans.

Opt-out......

The Supreme Court ruled that the  administration acted within its authority when it expanded exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement for employers to provide insurance coverage that includes contraception -- in a victory for Little Sisters of the Poor, the Catholic group that has been at the center of the national debate over the mandate.

The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the Trump administration and the Catholic charity that cares for the elderly in two related disputes against Pennsylvania, which sued over the validity of a rule from the Trump administration that allowed religiously-affiliated groups and some for-profit companies to opt-out of providing contraception coverage to employees.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled that the Trump administration's challenged rulemaking was aboveboard, and hailed the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Buy your own contraceptives.  Just a thought.

Reaction...

Mayor Park Won-soon’s body was discovered in hills in northern Seoul, more than seven hours after local authorities launched a massive search for him.

His daughter called police and said her father had given her “a will-like” verbal message before leaving their home hours earlier. She said she decided to contact authorities because she couldn’t reach her father on the phone.

Seoul-based SBS television network reported that one of Park’s secretaries had lodged a complaint with police over alleged sexual harassment such as unwanted physical contact that began in 2017.

The SBS report said the secretary told police investigators that an unspecified number of other female employees at Seoul City Hall had suffered similar sexual harassment by Park.  

Park, 64, a longtime civic activist and human rights lawyer, was elected Seoul mayor in 2011. He became the city’s first mayor to be voted into a third term in June last year. A member of President Moon Jae-in’s liberal Democratic Party, he has been considered a potential presidential candidate in the 2022 elections.

Paint...

*The mayor announced the plan to paint “Black Lives Matter” in front of Trump Tower last month after earlier saying the slogan would be painted on streets at several locations around the city. 

*NYC Cop retirements are surging in the wake of a cut in overtime hours and the burgeoning social justice movement that seeks to defund the police.  

According to NYPD statistics, 179 officers of all ranks filed for retirement between June 29 and July 6 —more than five times the 35 who did so during the same time frame last year.

*The city logged 125 shootings in the first three weeks of the month, more than double the number recorded over the same period last year, police data show. Gunmen opened fire during house parties, barbecues and dice games, and carried out coldly calculated street executions.

Just a thought.

Model...

Mediaite reported on Wednesday that Stony Brook professor Helmut Norpoth is doubling down on his "Primary Model,” which has correctly predicted five out of the past six elections since 1996 and every single election but two in the past 108 years.

“The Primary Model gives Trump a 91 percent chance of winning in November,” Norpoth said. "This model gets it right for 25 of the 27 elections since 1912, when primaries were introduced."

According to Norpoth, Biden is in a much weaker position than Trump because of his poor showing in the first two primary races.

Norpoth's model, which correctly predicted Trump's victory roughly nine months before the 2016 election, suggests that the president will win by even a wider margin in the electoral college with 362 electoral votes versus the 304 he earned against Hillary Clinton.

Immovable...

 No one - not even the most brilliant "experts" in the world - holds the foresight or wisdom to make such far-reaching decisions over the daily lives of ordinary people.

In his Nobel Prize Lecture in December 1974, world-renowned economist Friedrich A. Hayek condemned the economic theories that had, for generations, dominated global commerce (namely, the Keynesian school). In an excoriation of what he called the "pretense of exact knowledge." 

Hayek issued a timeless warning against the "scientistic" approach to economic policy, that is, the habit of applying the immovable axioms of the hard sciences to the spontaneous fluctuations of the market, which he argued "will hardly ever be fully known or measurable."

Of course it's no secret just how out of touch the political class is from the headaches their policies inflict on the good, hardworking men and women of this country. But how much longer are we really prepared to tolerate their efforts to subdue our civil liberties and economic well-being? Will it really be (as they've promised us again and again) just a few more weeks when the virus is, according to their "expert" definition, "under control"?

 "It's important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert, and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur.  One thing is for certain. We either believe in liberty in times of crisis, or we don't believe in liberty at all.
Rand Paul told that to Fauci.

Face...

A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans.  

Humans can adopt a facial expression voluntarily or involuntarily, and the neural mechanisms responsible for controlling the expression differ in each case. Voluntary facial expressions are often socially conditioned and follow a cortical route in the brain. Conversely, involuntary facial expressions are believed to be innate and follow a subcortical route in the brain.

The eyes are often viewed as important features of facial expressions. Aspects such as blinking rate can possibly be used to indicate whether a person is nervous or whether he or she is lying. Also, eye contact is considered an important aspect of interpersonal communication.  

Wearing a face mask will take most of the communication and facial expressions out of the equation, thus limiting human communication greatly.   Just a thought.

Convey...

Psychotherapist Lucy Beresford explains we crave touch because it plays a fundamental role in our very existence. “Touch is part of our life from the very beginning, at birth, and conveys love and care without words,” she says. ... We can even feel bereft, as though we have lost our loved ones in some way,” she adds

Physical intimacy is sensual proximity or touching. It is an act or reaction, such as an expression of feelings (including close friendship, platonic love, romantic love or sexual attraction), between people. 

A hug or touch can result in the release of oxytocin hormone and in a reduction in stress hormones.

Physical contact from someone you care about can make you feel all kinds of things — excitement, arousal, peace. 

We immediately feel safe and secure when touched by a partner who loves us. There's a sense of calm stability.