NBC anchorman Lester Holt interviewed President Joe Biden on the first day of the Republican convention. In the past, that would be seen as impolite, for one party’s nominee to intrude on the other party’s convention week. That’s why NBC offered that deal to Donald Trump—should he choose to accept it. Holt’s interview wasn’t a sappy softball interview, but the versions that aired on “NBC Nightly News” and “Today” were carefully emptied of Biden’s anger. Holt’s evening introduction said the interview “comes as President Biden decries political violence, but [he’s] not backing down in his characterization of former President Trump.” Biden clearly wasn’t interested in “lowering the temperature” after Trump was shot. He’s worried that Democrats still want to force him into quitting the race. You’re left with whirling hypocrisy. As NBC’s Peter Alexander tried to explain it, the challenge is “how sharply he can make the case against Donald Trump that he is a threat to democracy, while still casting himself as a calming force.” Trump will kill democracy, but have a nice day? To his credit, Holt focused on Biden’s fierce words, that he told his supporters before the shooting that Trump was an “existential threat” and they should put Trump in the “bull’s-eye.” Biden said it was a mistake, and then launched into an attack on Trump, saying he had many lies in the debate and that “I’m not the guy who said I want to be a dictator on Day One.” That would be a lie. When Sean Hannity asked if Trump would be a dictator (as Democrats claim), he joked, “Only on Day One.” Holt didn’t do any “fact-checking in real time,” even as sites like PolitiFact softly said Biden was “missing context” here and there. Despite these smears, Alexander’s story on “Today” touted Biden lamenting the ugliness of the political climate, decrying “big Trump signs saying ‘F Biden’ and a little kid standing there putting up his middle finger. That’s the kind of stuff that’s just inflammatory and a kind of viciousness.” That’s inflammatory and vicious? And saying Trump is an “existential threat” to America is not? But the most shameless NBC omission was Biden’s bitter outbursts at Holt and at the press: “Why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18 to 28 lies he told? Where are you on this? Why does the press never talk about that?” He leaned in at Holt: “Twenty-eight times confirmed that he lied in that debate. … Seriously, you won’t answer the question, but why won’t the press talk about all the lies that he has told?” Holt sheepishly said, “We’ve reported many of the issues.” Biden said, “No, you haven’t.” To assert that the media didn’t trash Trump for “lies” in the debate strongly suggests you didn’t watch them at all. Then when Holt noted Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attacked Biden, he shot back, “What’s with you guys? Come on, man!” Once again, Biden obviously wants the “bull’s-eye” of press attention on Trump, not on him. But there are rougher questions Biden could receive. I’d try this: “At the debate, you mocked Trump as a convicted felon, but during these weeks after the debate, your son Hunter has been a close adviser to you, and he is also a convicted felon. So why do you think you can trash-talk Trump as a felon when your own top adviser is a convicted felon?” Imagine the volcanic Biden outburst at a real hardball. This interview may have helped with Democrats, but it underlines that when Biden doesn’t look like a feeble bumbler, he often looks like an egotistical, mean-spirited, groin-kicking jerk. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post NBC Omits Biden Scolding Lester Holt as a Trump Enabler appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Baltimore School Revolt Over AP African-American Studies Course

Springtime in Canada. Its large lakes have spent many many months completely frozen, but they are finally starting to thaw. From the shore it may not look like much, but a little prodding reveals that the ice is made up of tightly-packed, vertically floating candle-shaped ice sticks. Not something you see every day.Candle ice, also known as needle ice, is a form of rotten ice, but that doesn’t sound nearly as appealing. The formation of candle ice starts in winter, when the body of water freezes. The crystallization into sticks is due to supercooling, the cooling of water below freezing without solidifying. Large ice crystals then form very rapidly. Interestingly, the presence of wind during the crystallization can lead to the formation of horizontal candle sticks, making the ice look darker.Come springtime, melting begins at the border of individual columnar crystals where the ice contains more impurities. This separates the thick ice sheet into a packed mass of candle ice.     To get the beautiful vertical candles you therefore need: supercooling, relatively still water, and the presence of some impurities in the water. That’s why this type of crystallization most often happens in lakes in very cold places: in Canada, Alaska, Lakes Michigan and Superior, Japan, and Russia, like the beautiful Siberian Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world. IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Candle ice is also known to make a beautiful clinking sound when disturbed, as if the lake had turned into a floating chandelier. A feast for the eyes and the ears.  IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Just a word of caution: only explore a lake of candle ice by boat (kayak or canoe), or in a wetsuit if you can brave the cold. Its lack of horizontal structure means it will not support you if you try to walk on it!Now, go book your tickets to Canada for next spring. 

Astronomers have made new discoveries in the atmosphere of Venus, adding to the compelling complexity and debate over recent discoveries of the molecule phosphine there, and what it means. The unexpected presence of phosphine continues to perplex scientists, but the idea of life in the clouds of Venus continues to be a tantalizing possibility.From the start, the discovery of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has been a revolutionary (and much debated) find. The reason for the uncertainty, however, is simple. Phosphine is a biosignature, which means that its presence could indicate life (and we don't mean Missy Elliot) – and as far as we can tell, there is no life on Venus or among its clouds. Multiple follow-up investigations have observed the presence of this molecule. Now, the team has presented new evidence for this molecule even deeper in the cloud of Venus, and possibly ammonia too.There are a number of weirdnesses in Venus's atmosphere. Phosphine is just a new one that's come along.Dr Dave ClementsThe potential presence of this molecule deeper in the planet's clouds has been introduced before. Recent analysis of data from NASA’s Pioneer Venus Multiprobe launched in 1978 found compelling hints for the presence of phosphine at around 55 kilometers (34 miles) of altitude in the clouds. The higher the pressure a molecule experiences, the broader the line will appear in the light spectrum, and such a feature was seen on the phosphine line.“We haven't properly sorted out the atmospheric modeling for this yet, but there are some broad lines at the level that suggest parts per million level of phosphine at around 55, 56, 57-kilometer altitude, consistent with the pioneer Venus probe data,” Dr Dave Clements, from Imperial College London, told IFLScience.                       The observations come from the JCMT-Venus project, which uses the James Clerck Maxwell Telescope to detect and monitor not just phosphine but a variety of other molecules, including sulfur dioxide (SO2) and water. Dr Clement’s PhD student Wei Tang looked at the variation of water (using heavy water as a tracer) in the atmosphere of the second closest planet to the Sun.“There are a number of weirdnesses in Venus's atmosphere. Phosphine is just a new one that's come along," Dr Clements told IFLScience. "Amongst the other strange things is the way that the amount of water and the amount of SO2 in the atmosphere vary over time. It's not known why. The variations haven't been to a great extent, but it's known that there are variations on time scales from at least days to years."The team is continuing the analysis of the data they have collected over three observation campaigns. There are challenges when it comes to confirming the presence of these molecules, so they are making sure that their analysis is not creating lines where it shouldn’t as well as using other independent observations to make the results very robust, including data from Pioneer Venus Multiprobe, which had also seen hints of ammonia.In fact, ammonia might be the next big thing for Venus. The team also report the first tentative detection of ammonia up in the clouds. While ammonia can be easily produced even in a high school lab, its presence on a rocky planet is considered a good biosignature because there is no significant known source of ammonia in terrestrial worlds that does not come from life. This doesn’t mean that it is certain that there’s life on Venus – it means that we do not know yet how it came to be. We're trying not to overstate, but yeah, it's really exciting.Prof Jane Greaves“There are other models coming along all the time, other explanations saying ‘Oh, you could get ammonia and phosphine and all sorts of other unexpected chemicals this way unrelated to life’ so we're trying not to overstate, but yeah, it's really exciting,” Professor Jane Greaves, from the University of Cardiff, told IFLScience.Still, it was the possibility of life that inspired Greaves and the team to check for ammonia. Chemist William Bains has suggested the possibility for living organisms to use this chemical to counteract the acidity of the clouds of Venus, making little droplets of water livable.“If there are any microbes in the Venus clouds, they might make certain gases that you wouldn't expect. And ammonia came up as they could use it as a way to neutralize the acid,” Professor Greaves told IFLScience. “We've detected it slightly above the region which we think is warm enough for life. Either it hasn’t got anything to do with life or the gas is perhaps produced by something living but it drifts upwards where it's a bit easier for us to detect.”The observations come from the Green Bank Telescope in the US, however, given the brightness of Venus, it was hard to calibrate the instrument, so the team is being cautious and calling this a tentative observation of ammonia.So no confirmation of life yet, but the work done by Greaves, Clements, and their team is extremely exciting and tells us just how complex Venus is as a planet. It is not just “Earth’s evil twin” but a changing world with volcanoes, bone-crushing atmospheres, hellish temperatures, and something truly bizarre going on in its clouds. There's much more to find out about this fascinating world, and luckily both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to go back there soon.NASA's DAVINCI mission, which is also set to study Venu's atmosphere, is currently on schedule to launch at the end of the decade, and this mission will certainly look for phosphine as it flies through the clouds of Venus.The goal of EnVision, the European mission, is to understand the relationship between the peculiar atmosphere and geological activity, in particular, to find out where Venus went "wrong" compared to Earth.But we will not have to wait that long for more Venus insights. The team is continuing observation campaigns across multiple telescopes, and not just in the range to see phosphine. Currently, there is a real push to understand Venus and its atmosphere better.In terms of close encounters, the Rocket Lab Probe, part of the Morning Star Missions, is expected to launch in January 2025 and be the first private mission to another planet. It will enter Venus's atmosphere and hopefully detect some of these intriguing molecules. On top of that, the team hopes to convince ESA's JUICE mission to turn the spacecraft instruments on as it flies by Venus next year on its way to Jupiter.Papers on the new insights on phosphine, water, and ammonia on Venus are in preparation and the results were presented in a special session presented at at the National Astronomy Meeting this week.

New York Times politics writer Jonathan Weisman made Sunday’s New York Times with a typically snide take on the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in “The Attempt to Kill Donald Trump, Caught in Real Time, Stuns the Country.” After chiding the fast-moving conspiracy theories in the age of social media, Weisman brought up, but quickly denigrated, the idea that the online left was spouting conspiracy theories regarding the shooting, while chiding the right wing.. Within minutes of the first televised images of Mr. Trump grabbing his wounded ear on Saturday, voices on the left were calling it staged, though they were hardly household names. Not long after, far bigger names on the right, including Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a finalist to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, had settled on the argument that Democrats had set the stage for an attempted assassination by framing the 2024 election as a battle between the forces of democracy and the soldiers of fascism. Of course someone was going to take a shot, these conservatives said. Before anyone knew a thing about the man who had pulled the trigger, Mr. Trump’s most senior surrogates, including Mr. Vance and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, were blaming President Biden and Democrats. Weisman worked in a little inaccurate gun-control propaganda (an AR-15 is not an “assault weapon,” the word used for fully automatic firing), then lamented that Republicans dug deep (or perhaps just checked Twitter) for obnoxious anti-Trump comments from supposedly obscure personalities on the left. Democratic leaders, including Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, broadly condemned political violence. An AR-15-type rifle was found near the man believed to be the shooter, which could have fueled more Democratic calls for an assault weapons ban, but the party’s leaders held their tongues. But in the internet era there is always someone who doesn’t. Republicans dug deep to find more obscure voices on the left, such as London Lamar, a Democratic state senator in Tennessee, who framed a different message. Ms. Lamar wrote, then deleted, “the extremism from the MAGA regime has brought us to this moment,” but not before conservatives had grabbed screen shots and sent them flying around the internet. Hmm. The Times didn’t find Democratic state senators “obscure” last year when it made heroes out of them after some were expelled after a decorum-wrecking gun-control protest on the statehouse floor. More obscurity: An obscure aide to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, became a casus belli for some on the right for suggesting, “please get you some shooting lessons,” even as actual members of Congress were lobbing their own fire bombs from the right. Metaphorical “fire bombs,” of course. And would a Republican aide get the benefit of that adjective “obscure,” the subtext being that such anecdotes (which just happen to reflect badly on Democrats) aren’t newsworthy? Incidentally, Thompson’s aide resigned, so perhaps praising an attempted assassination is a big deal on Capitol Hill. Incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally, her boss Thompson sponsored legislation that would have denied Secret Service protection to politicians convicted of felonies, a partisan trick that would have applied to a single person -- former President Trump. Weisman’s trademark snide tone came through: Arch conspiracy theories came from heroes of the far right, like the activist James O’Keefe, who suggested that the Secret Service was somehow in on it through the “Deep State Intel Community.” X posters and internet sleuths even named the shooter -- incorrectly. The man was in fact a soccer journalist in Italy.

It’s a challenging task but we here at NewsBusters are going to try to sift through all the crazy, angry and ridiculous observations made by leftist journalists every night of the Republican National Convention coverage and pick one for Worst of the Night. So without further ado, the Worst Media Outburst for Tuesday night goes to PBS’s Jonathan Capehart for taking offense to the term “illegals” instead of “undocumented migrants,” as he skeptically sneered about a “kinder, gentler version” of the GOP veering more into “outright racist....dog-whistling.”     It’s one thing to present a kinder, gentler version of the Republican Party and they might veer into outright racist or dog-whistling or bull-horning. But you also have to pay attention to who’s sitting in the room, Tucker Carlson, who’s taking the stage and the language that they’re using. Bernie Moreno, who’s running for Senate in Ohio, used the term “illegals” when talking about undocumented migrants coming over the border….This is where we’re going to see whether this unity theme, whether this kinder-gentler version of the Republican Party is going to come through and I have no confidence that they’re going to be able to do that.— PBS contributor/Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart on night two of PBS’s live coverage of the Republican National Convention, July 16.   MONDAY’S WORST OF THE NIGHT:     “The greatest purveyor and promoter of political violence really [Donald Trump], you know, since anyone can remember, since George Wallace...and people are concerned...we will allow Donald Trump as he is, you know, bathed in the glory and grandeur of his party, to rewrite himself as both a hero and a victim. That people who are the most vulnerable to not just the things he’s done but the things he’s promising to do, and that that will then happen without a guardian saying, ‘Wait, stop,’ and that the media will acquiesce to this rewrite.”— MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid on night one of MSNBC’s live coverage of the Republican National Convention, July 15.     Please return to this space for the rest of the week to find out who had the most obnoxious take of the night. 

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — BLM protesters gathered in King Park on Tuesday evening to express their anger toward the city of Milwaukee and the Columbus, Ohio, police department after its officers shot and killed a knife-wielding man who was actively fighting another man. The Columbus Police Department is one of many police departments that are in Milwaukee to provide extra security for the Republican National Convention. Around 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Columbus bicycle patrol officers noticed two men were in the street fighting each other. Released body-camera footage shows the officers racing toward the fight, realizing one of the men had a knife. The officers drew their handguns and ordered the man multiple times to drop his two knives. The assailant refused and started to lunge at the other man. That is when the officers opened fire, killing him. The shooting took place almost a mile away from where the RNC is being hosted. 'Blood is on the city's hands. Blood is on MPD's hands.' The March on the RNC, which organized the main protest against Trump on Monday, called for its followers to show up near the scene of the incident to demand that the extra police leave their city. Protesters identified the deceased man as Samuel Sharpe, a homeless man who lived at a nearby encampment. Protesters said the police were in the wrong because they were away from the RNC and did not know the people in the neighborhood. Alan Chavoya, spokesman for the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression, led the protest, saying that while he loved Milwaukee, Tuesday's shooting showed the city does not love the people back. — (@) "You can see Columbus, Ohio, officers with their guns drawn over 30 feet away from where Samuel Sharpe was. You mean to tell me they could see the supposed knife that Samuel Sharpe had ... from 30 feet away? And before they could even confirm it, he already had to have his gun drawn," Chavoya said. "We were over eight blocks away from the barricade of the RNC. How does the Milwaukee Police, how does the Milwaukee city allow officers from Columbus, Ohio, to be unattended, unguarded, off their leash here so far into Milwaukee? We told them this would happen," Chavoya continued. "Blood is on the city's hands. Blood is on MPD's hands." After lighting candles and hearing from a few speakers, the small group of protesters marched around King Park. The crowd stopped and held a moment of silence at the spot where the shooting took place. The Columbus Dispatch reports the five officers who fired their guns have been sent back to Columbus, but the remaining officers are still in Milwaukee for their security mission. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Amber Rose is an OnlyFans model and SlutWalk organizer who skyrocketed to fame after her highly publicized relationships with famous rappers like Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa. Now, she’s making headlines again — but this time as a speaker at the Republican National Convention. “I’m here tonight to tell you, no matter your political background, that the best chance we have to give our babies a better life is to elect Donald Trump president of the United States,” Rose told the crowd in her five-minute speech. Allie Beth Stuckey is not impressed with the decision. “Look, I’m happy to have her vote. I’m happy to have the votes of other people like her. I’m not saying that we should gate keep and say you can only be one way to vote Republican, but do we need a person like that speaking at the RNC?” Stuckey says. Stuckey also finds it a little less than charming that Rose also once praised Satanism in an interview. “I’m not a Satanist,” Rose said in the interview. “Satanists are just atheists as well, but they're just more political. OK. They, they have, like — it's actually a very rational, logical religion. They help a lot of people, a lot of women to get abortions in Southern states that, you know, where they're illegal.” “She is an adult performer,” Stuckey says. “She’s not someone who used to be one and then, you know, reformed. She still is currently. And she is pro-abortion. Just recently she was on a podcast where she said that she actually really relates to and respects Satanism as a religion because Satanism helps women get abortions.” While Rose is an atheist, Stuckey has hope for her. “Anyone can be redeemed, of course. And I would be happy to befriend this person and talk with her, and I hope that Christ saves her,” she says. Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Community Notes Wrecks NH Dem's Claim About Project 2025 and JD Vance's Wife

REPORT: Chuck Schumer Drove to Delaware for 1-on-1 Meeting With Joe Biden