IST Saturday News Dump–21Feb26

Another week of stories not making the cut in the journalistic world.

Local–Our weather sucks….it is end of February and the temps are pushing 80 and very little rain.  The average high for this time of year is 60-65 our lows are 10 degrees higher the the average high….this is getting ridiculous.

Personal–To give my poor brain a rest I have been tuned in to the Olympics and was amused by the women’s cross country skiing when a dog joined the race.

A dog ran onto the track while the women’s heats were in progress, running alongside athletes as they crossed the finish line. The incident didn’t disrupt the competition, and the dog was cheered on by spectators. It later wandered to the finish area, approaching skiers as they completed their runs. Venue officials said a spectator had brought the animal into the venue despite a strict no-pets policy. The dog was secured near the finish line and its owner was asked to leave.

His name is Nazgul and I think we should make him famous on the internet.

I also think that the pup should get a medal for his finish.

Enough chit chat onto the meat of the subject.

Let’s start with aliens, the ET type,…..

One of the most bizarre accounts of a close encounter with a UFO hails from the former Soviet Union, where it’s reported that dozens of soldiers were turned into stone by irate extraterrestrials

According to a report from that era, in 1993, troops shot down an alien spacecraft flying over Siberia using a surface-to-air missile. Five beings reportedly emerged from the wreckage, merging into a fiery orb that emitted a beam of light, instantly petrifying 23 soldiers, leaving only a handful of survivors to recount the incident.

https://www.themirror.com/news/weird-news/declassified-cia-files-detail-soviet-1677938

That ought to keep the Ancient Alien freaks busy.

Let’s say that we find alien life….will we be able to talk?

We may not have found any definitive proof of extraterrestrial life just yet, despite plenty of hope among scientists.

But if we were to ever come to an answer in the form of alien biology or technology, breaking the news to the general public could be much more difficult than one might think. As Time reports, the subject comes with an enormous amount of baggage, from preconceived notions of what alien life could look like from popular culture to fears over the implications of confirming we’re not alone.

“The search for life in space isn’t just a science question,” Portland State University Brianne Suldovsky told the magazine. “It’s a moral question, it’s a philosophical question, for some it’s a religious question.”

Suldovsky compared communicating the unknowns and managing fear to lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Except, when it comes to xenobiology, “you’re talking about planetary protection.”

“Managing public fear is going to be incredibly challenging, however it is possible to communicate in a way that at least gives the public information about how afraid they should be and what they can do to protect themselves,” she said.

https://futurism.com/space/communicate-news-alien-life

That is enough of that silliness.

A little health news for those taking the GLP-1 treatments…..

Some patients taking popular weight-loss drugs are ending up with a condition associated with 18th-century sea voyages: scurvy. GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic suppress appetite so effectively that some users are consuming too little nutrient-dense food, researchers say, putting them at risk for vitamin deficiencies, which can affect bone, brain, gut, and skin health, as well as muscle mass, per People. Scurvy, caused by a severe lack of vitamin C, can lead to anemia, bleeding gums, easy bruising, and slow wound healing, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Musician Robbie Williams has said he developed scurvy after taking “something like Ozempic.” “I’d stopped eating and I wasn’t getting nutrients,” he told the Mirror last April. A new review from Australia’s University of Newcastle looked at 41 controlled GLP-1 trials involving 50,000 people over 17 years and found only two evaluated overall nutrition. And only one of the two studies had published the information, per the Australian Financial Review.

“Nutrition plays a critical role in health, and right now it’s largely missing from the evidence,” said Clare Collins, a nutrition and dietetics professor at the university, in a statement. She cited case reports of deficiencies in thiamine (vitamin B1) and protein on top of the scurvy cases being discussed anecdotally and urged health systems to act before deficiencies become common. She wants general practitioners’ chronic disease plans for GLP-1 users to routinely include referrals to dietitians. Because “when people are eating less, the quality of what they eat matters even more.”

Why not?  I want some of this grant money.

If you think you’re an outlier in the gas department, science has news: You probably aren’t. Researchers at the University of Maryland strapped “Smart Underwear” onto healthy adults for a week and found they passed gas an average of 32 times a day, though individual totals ranged from just four farts to nearly five dozen, reports Scientific American. The wearable device, fitted with chemical sensors, doesn’t care about sound or smell—it simply tracks gases like hydrogen, a by-product of gut microbes at work.

In a second experiment, participants were first put on a low-fiber diet for a few days, then given fiber supplements, and the device picked up the resulting jump in hydrogen, suggesting it can spot changes in microbiome activity in real time. Lead researcher Brantley Hall says that without a clear baseline for what’s normal, it’s tough to know when gas is truly excessive. In fact, previous farting estimates came in much lower, with a release suggesting that discrepancy could be tied to the perils of self-reporting, complete with faulty memory, missing farts while sleeping, and the subjectivity of what constitutes a fart, among other factors.

The findings, published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, challenge the idea that a single “typical” fart count can capture how human digestion works. Hall’s team is now building a “Human Flatus Atlas,” recruiting people across the spectrum—from low-gas high-fiber eaters to chronic farters—to better map gut function and, eventually, improve treatments for digestive issues.

I believe this is a good place to call it quits for the day.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Of The Democrats?

Another day of doctors and such….I will not be around for most of the day and I shall try to catch up as soon as possible….thanx for understanding.

College of Political Knowledge

This is part of the series I write looking at the Democratic Party and the upcoming election.

After the ass kicking the Dems took in 2024 they set about to change the way they approach elections (that was the lie they told then)….I wrote about it so I went back into my archives (that is why I have them) and found what I had written then….this from about a year ago….

What Happened To The Democratic Party?

After a year of lip service and lies things are not going well….so far all they have done is theatrics for the media and accomplished very little….some Dems have even sided with the GOP on some spending bills…..not much has changed….

Recent polls show approval of Donald Trump hovering in a deep unlit trough around 40 percent. Yet his dismal ratings have done little to bolster the reputation of the opposition party. Commentators across the political spectrum have overwhelmingly agreed that the Democratic brand is shot. The American Prospect called it “damaged.” NBC said it was “weak.” Rolling Stone said it was “cooked.” Semafor announced that “left-wing ideas” had “wrecked” it, and Bill Maher compared Democrats to has-been companies like Sears or Kodak that had “screwed themselves out of relevance.” The pejoratives aren’t confined to the armchair critics. Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego lamented, with only slightly more finesse than the news outlets, the “national brand problem.” Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, delicately agreed that the branding is “problematic.”

Is all lost for the Democrats, or is there opportunity in the shambles? When the only party offering a bulwark against Trump’s murderous, crackpot regime appears to be losing the vibes war—and as we approach the midterm elections that offer our last best chance to rein in the madness—these questions are not merely of political interest; they are a matter of existential importance.

And so, in a survey of 2,421 Democratic voters, conducted January 7–16 by Embold Research, The New Republic sought to explore what rank-and-file Democrats want to see from their candidates and elected representatives. Is it true, as one popular strain of criticism goes, that some of the party’s more liberal social ideas are a liability? How important to voters are housing, prescription drug prices, trans rights? How should we approach economic policy, foreign policy? How conciliatory or aggressive should party leaders be toward their foes? What, in other words, do Democrats want from Democrats?

https://newrepublic.com/article/206015/new-republic-opinion-poll-democrats-leaders-results

Not much is changing because the Dems are still in corporate pockets….the people mean nothing to these politicians no matter how much manure they spread none of it is true.

The Centrists are leading the way…..

Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party’s campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of “pro-growth” deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called “abundance” movement.

The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed “with an eye toward 2028” as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a “hub for center-left policy and advocacy.”

Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, said Next American Era plans to “air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won’t endorse candidates,” Axios reported.

Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share “many of the same principles as the Abundance movement,” a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance.

“She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit,” Axios reported

https://www.commondreams.org/news/cheri-bustos-next-american-era

Their aims are the aims of the GOP so how do these fools still wear the Democrat name tag?

I wish I could say that these fools are a minority….they are not even the minority leaders of both houses are wishy washy….

Democratic leaders in Congress are already backing down on one of their key demands in the fight to reform the federal immigration agencies terrorizing Minnesota and other parts of the country.

On Wednesday, Democrats laid out a list of 10 “guardrails” they said they wanted to see put in place to protect the public from abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, before agreeing to a new round of funding for their parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/jeffries-schumer-ice-masks

Was this an attempt at some form of bi-partisanship?  Or was it just cowardice?

Now look at the protests around Minneapolis….the Congressional Dems were quick for lip service but have done nothing to join the protests.

One Democratic lawmaker to whom Axios granted the veil of anonymity suggested that Democrats expect the base to “get upset” but believes the discontent will wash away because “then you’re going to have the real fight in two weeks.” Whether or not that period ends with any meaningful change in the status quo remains to be seen. Much of what Democrats seek would merely require various federal agents to obey rules and regulations that they’re already supposed to follow as a matter of agency directive—though enshrining these policies as laws would be a step in the right direction.

That said, there’s still the thorny matter of enforcing any new constraints that are imposed on ICE and Border Patrol. I hope I’m wrong about this, but by the time all is said and done, I don’t expect much in the way of material change where the president’s paramilitaries are concerned. At best, perhaps, people will see the faces of the thugs who are beating them—though not always, if Schumer has his way.

https://newrepublic.com/post/206262/democrats-join-civil-resistance-midterms

The Dems should be out there let the people see that their lives matter to them…..so far empty words and ill promises is all we have got.

So far the only ones that are stepping up are the true Progressives, not those that use the term to appear important, and I agree that working class politics is where this party should be centered not in the pockets of billionaires.

Speaking at a panel at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that decades of government failures such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2003 Iraq War had opened the door for demagogues such as Trump among working-class voters.

The only way to defeat this, she said, is to reorient progressive politics around social class.

“We have to have a working-class-centered politics if we are going to succeed,” she said, “and also if we are going to stave off the scourge of authoritarianism, which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally.”

Elsewhere during the panel, Ocasio-Cortez elaborated on the way economic inequality fuels the demand for authoritarian leaders.

“We’re seeing, in economy across economy around the world, including in the United States,” she said, “that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drives in a sense in authoritarianism, right-wing populism and very dangerous domestic internal politics. And that is a direct outcome of, not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver, the failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-munich

I agree!

The DNC has tried to eliminate any dissenting voices and embraced the corporate policies that Clinton championed.

This is not what the people of this country needs we already have a big business party, the GOP, we need a party of the people that will work tirelessly for the betterment of people’s lives……something we have not had for a generation.

Time to stand up and bring this party back to where it belongs….on the side of the working masses.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

The “Peace President” Is At It Again

Our self0identified ‘peace president’ has started more conflicts than he has hair on his head and now he is thumping his chest like some sex crazed primate to do it again with Iran.

The Trump administration is close to launching a major attack on Iran as it continues a massive buildup of military forces in the Middle East, according to a report from Axios reporter Barak Ravid.

Sources told Ravid that the potential US attack on Iran would likely be a massive multi-week operation, much bigger than the US operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. They said it would also be much broader in scope than the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran that was launched in June 2025. Reuters also recently reported that the US was preparing for a sustained, multi-week attack on Iran.

Israeli officials said that the Israeli government, which is pushing for the US to pursue regime change in Iran, is preparing for the possibility of the attack starting in the coming days, and CNN later reported that the US military is ready to start the war as soon as this weekend. Other sources put the timeline a little later, saying the war would likely start in a few weeks.

“The boss is getting fed up,” a Trump adviser told Ravid. “Some people around him warn him against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.”

The Axios report noted that there has been little public debate about the potential war amid the major US military buildup and said that Americans will likely be surprised by the scale of the coming attack.

All signs indicate that if the US bombs Iran, Tehran will not hold back in its response and could target multiple US bases and warships in the region, leaving open the possibility that the war could result in hundreds or thousands of US casualties. The conflict could also have a major impact on the global economy, as Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 31% of seaborne crude oil shipments passed in 2025.

The US and Iran held talks on Tuesday, and while the Iranian side said there was a “clear path” toward a deal, US Vice President JD Vance said that Iran was not acknowledging President Trump’s “red lines.”

Vance claimed the main US demand was that Iran must not pursue a nuclear weapon, but for many months, the administration had insisted the June 2025 US strikes on Iran “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, and there’s no sign Tehran can enrich uranium at the moment. Iran has also made clear it’s willing to enter a deal that would involve a commitment to low enrichment levels, and Iranian officials maintain they don’t seek a nuclear bomb.

The real goal of any US attack on Iran will likely be regime change or taking out Iran’s ability to fire missiles at Israel. President Trump said back in December, when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida, that he would support another Israeli attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic “continued” its missile program.

(antiwar.com)

I thought according to Donny we destroyed their capability to enrich when we bombed them last year so if it is true how are they pursuing nukes?

Did he lie to us?

Please do not answer that for the answer is too damn obvious.

I glad to see that Israel is pushing for us to do their dirty work for them…hop Donny hop!

We could be days away from yet another adventure in regime change….the neocons favorite activity.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Our House Divided

Most of us see the division in our country….it is really bad in our politics and this country is in trouble when the people that govern hates about half of the population.

At September’s televised memorial service for Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump commented on the conservative commentator’s character, saying, “He did not hate his opponents; he wanted the best for them.” He then added, “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.”

Like too much of the political class across the ideological spectrum, Trump is prone to despising those he disagrees with. It raises questions about why people should ever submit to the governance of those who hate them—and whether politicians realize they’re a big part of what brought us to this unfortunate moment.

“It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree,” Trump had told the nation on the day of Kirk’s assassination, at a perhaps more self-aware moment. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

…

Trump and his allies regularly accuse their opponents of anti-Americanism—”I really believe they hate our country,” Trump said in July. Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, dismissed her foes as a “basket of deplorables,” characterizing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.” As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama sniffed at many small-town dwellers as “bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

No matter which of the big political parties wins national office, around half the people over whom the victors exercise power know they’re governed by people who hate them—and they return the favor.

Among Americans, partisan hostility is intensifying. “About three-quarters (73 percent) of voters who identify themselves as Republican agree that ‘Democrats are generally bullies who want to impose their political beliefs on those who disagree,'” a poll by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics found in 2022. “An almost identical percentage of Democrats (74 percent) express that view of Republicans.”

https://reason.com/2025/11/06/politicians-make-political-tensions-worse/

I can understand the opposing of views but these days it has gone so much further…..it is entering into the twilight zone of hatred.

This cannot continue on this path or it will be curtains for sure.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Display Your Star

Remember in the dark days of Germany when jews had to wear the star of david….well it seems some strange GOPer has a similar idea.

There are many good reasons why Republicans are so eager to introduce voter ID laws, and it’s not because they’re on a moral crusade to preserve the integrity of democracy. In fact, quite the opposite.

Voter ID requirements have been repeatedly found to disproportionately affect minorities and those on limited or no incomes. These are voters considered more likely to vote Democrat, so laws requiring Americans to bring ID to the polls are a way for Republicans to reduce their opponents’ vote.

On top of that, there’s practically no evidence to support a wave of voter fraud in the first place. Bear in mind that Trump has spent years insisting that the 2020 election was stolen, and multiple agencies and MAGA devotees have devoted time and money to poring over every detail. The result?

Now, in disquieting news, South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds has told Fox News that Americans will be required to display a “little yellow star” to be able to cast a vote:

https://wegotthiscovered.com/news/republican-senator-says-americans-will-need-to-display-little-yellow-star-to-officials-to-be-allowed-to-vote/

They use the cover lie that they are protecting the sanctity of voting and preventing all the voter fraud from before.

This is for all those MAGA mental  midgets that believe in the voter fraud scam…..this from the person the Donny hired….

President Donald Trump has called on the federal government to “nationalize the voting” across the United States, baselessly claiming that major cities in swing states are conducting fraudulent elections. But one expert who Trump once hired to find proof of voter fraud says it’s almost nonexistent.

In a Wednesday interview on CNN, data specialist Ken Block said Trump’s rationale to have the federal government assume control of elections didn’t hold water. He also said the Trump administration’s recent raid of an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia harkened back to his prior work with the Trump 2020 campaign.

“The Trump campaign in 2020 hired me to look for evidence of voter fraud. And they asked me to review about 20 different claims of voter fraud that came into the campaign from everywhere around the world,” Block said. “Apparently, every one of the 20 claims they asked me to evaluate, I was able to show that they were false. And we did find small amounts of voter fraud, but never did we find enough voter fraud to have been able to change the outcome of any of the swing state elections in 2020.”

Block went on to say that despite Trump’s insistence that there was election fraud in Georgia in 2020, no evidence has ever surfaced proving him correct. He reminded viewers that some Trump associates – like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — were never able to substantiate any of their claims in court when asked to prove supposed fraud in the Peach State.

https://www.alternet.org/trump-voter-fraud-claims/

Got that you mindless boobs….the claims of voter fraud were lies!

Please move on to something constructive for this country.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ugliness Comes To Mardi Gras

Yesterday was the final day of the Mardi Gras season and now the faithful go into Lent for the next 40 days (what’s up with the number 40 in religion?).

Usually Mardi Gras is about the togetherness of the people to enjoy the parades and the events around the season but this year some ugly has creep into the celebration…..

A Mardi Gras group is investigating what it says was a “racist display” during a Friday parade in New Orleans. The Krewe of Tucks says it learned only after the parade that a float had included a Black doll apparently dangling by its neck from a strand of beads, per USA Today. A young Black girl caught the doll attached to the string, according to the City of New Orleans, which later shared photos of the girl in a birthday crown enjoying some lighter festivities with Mayor Helena Moreno.

In an initial statement, the krewe apologized for the doll display, which it described as “intolerable” and “completely contrary” to its values, and pledged that whoever is responsible “will no longer be permitted to have any association with the parade.” On Monday, the group said two members had been terminated after bringing 30 white dolls and 30 Black dolls to the parade “for the purpose of throwing them to young children,” per WWL. The group said its investigation is continuing and additional action might follow.

Moreno had denounced the imagery as “deeply offensive” and “unacceptable,” saying it runs counter to a city “built on respect, diversity, and inclusion.” City Council President JP Morrell called the doll a “disturbing effigy” meant to intimidate families and children and said no one is “above accountability.” City officials say they are working with krewe leadership to ensure consequences, as Carnival season heads toward its climax on Fat Tuesday.

It is pathetic and as well as disgusting that the hatred has creeped into this pseudo ‘religious’ celebration before Easter.

I have been around Mardi Gras for many many years and cannot remember any such racist crap before….I am not saying that it has not occurred just I cannot remember one.

Only a damn racist could mar a good time for all.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That Elusive Leader

Ever since the idiots in the admin have been trying to make antifa some sort of organization and to do this they need a ‘leader’ to point to if they want their accusations to appear legitimate….so far all they have done is show their ignorance.

This saga began in earnest back in Missouri with the death of a black man and the protests that followed….the government could not believe that the American people could be so audacious as to protest that massive…..so they began to look for a lie to blame for the actions taken and they came upon a little known (at that time) of a group that were already known for their confrontation….the antifa.

Thus the government set about turning this loose group of protesters into this international organization that thrived on confrontation.

Then came the Goon Platoon (ICE) into LA and the protests grew bigger and louder and the government hit upon turning antifa into the excuse for the protests and confrontation.

While trying to build their case they came upon a book written by Mark Bray, the Antifa Handbook, and he became the ‘leader’ of this group.  The problem was that the book was a history book of the anti-fascist movement not a how to book….but that did not matter they kept pushing Bray as the ‘leader’ of the group….it got so bad Bray had to take his wife and kids and go overseas to avoid all the hate that the government had generated.

Now the government had to look for a new ‘leader’ that they could blame for all the unrest…..and they finally tagged another individual as the mastermind of antifa….

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified 29-year-old Portland, Oregon resident Chandler Patey as “the leader of Antifa,” according to internal DHS documents leaked to journalist Kenneth Klippenstein. Klippenstein notes that Patey and other “Antifa protestors” identified in the federal documents demonstrate the shoddy reasoning the federal government will use to just to label any protestor as a domestic terrorist.

The DHS decided that Patey leads Antifa, which Trump has designated as a “domestic terrorist organization,” because Patey has been “seen in many videos advocating the principles of [anti-fascism]” and because he allows protestors to use his bathroom and medical supplies to rinse off tear gas inflicted by federal agents at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment facility near his downtown Portland apartment.

While Patey also provides medical equipment and gas mask filters that protestors might need after federal agents attack them for expressing their First Amendment rights, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and other right-wing media commentators have used these as a basis to claim that Patey is running an ominous-sounding “Antifa safehouse.”

In reality, Antifa is a decentralized political ideology with autonomous, local groups but no formal leaders. Antifa activists primarily oppose institutional fascism and racism in government.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/quick-hit-has-identified-the-leader-of-its-a-29-year-old-who-helps-tear-gassed-protestors/

So the lies begin again on some poor person that was a face in the crowd.

My biggest bitch is the term ‘domestic terrorist organization’…..organization implies an organized group with a leader, dues, headquarters, etc….antifa has NONE of these….more lies and bullshit from the sub-par mind of the Donny brigade.

STOP!  believing the bullshit….these are people that have had enough of racism and the fascist policies of Donny and his group of garden slugs.

You should be worried about the direction and the tactics of this government…..if not then you are NOT a true American.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Consumers Need To Bend Over

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!

This is just an FYI in case few are paying attention.

With Christmas behind us I have heard some say that it was not as expensive as predicted which was a good thing but now is the time to bend over for price hikes are coming.

Shoppers who enjoyed a brief pause in price hikes may want to brace themselves. After several months of relative calm—and holiday discounts—companies are again bumping up prices on everything from jeans to spices to software, the Wall Street Journal reports. The increases, often in the high-single-digit range, appear steeper than a typical January reset in prices, particularly for electronics, appliances, and other durable goods, economists say.

Levi Strauss, Columbia Sportswear, McCormick, and a host of smaller firms report they’re paying more for tariffs, wages, health insurance, materials, and shipping—and passing at least some of that along. Online data tracked by Harvard’s Alberto Cavallo and Adobe show the largest monthly jump in web prices in more than a decade, led by big-ticket categories.

Small businesses, facing thinner margins, are raising prices across the board or cutting products they don’t think customers will pay more for. A recent Vistage survey found more than half of small-business leaders plan near-term price increases, mostly in the 4% to 10% range, even as they worry higher tags could scare off buyers. Last week, economists at JPMorgan predicted that “inflation will re-accelerate for a time this year,” citing tariff-related costs being passed on to consumers and the “potential pass-through of the sustained weakening of the trade-weighted US dollar over the past year,” reports Reuters.

The president of Structural Systems Repair Group, a Cincinnati-based construction company, tells the Journal that tariffs pushed up steel prices 10% last year and healthcare costs for employees increased by around the same amount. “It’s not sustainable for us to tolerate that kind of increase without some sort of concession from our customers,” Bryan Erickson says.

Be prepared for the increases and think of ways to end this nightmare.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Political Polarization: Where Did It Begin?

I know in the past decade or so this subject has been examined by many…..but it is getting out of hand and deserves a closer look and often.

This is a report I read recently….it is a good look at what has been happening in this country for at least twenty years. (Personally I think it began way before their assertion)(I shall explain my disagreement later in this post)

This article posits that this polarization began in 2008 or the Obama years….

Forget Donald Trump. A new analysis suggests the U.S. public’s sharp lurch into polarization began in 2008, years before his first presidential campaign.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans’ views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008.

The research uses a machine-learning approach to move beyond party labels and better understand what actually drives Americans’ political views. Instead of relying on whether respondents identify as Republican or Democrat, the team grouped people based on patterns in what they believe across a range of issues, from abortion and “traditional family values” to race, inequality, and health insurance. That distinction matters because in many countries politically opposite parties do not exist, says David Young, a psychology researcher at the University of Cambridge, U.K., and one of the study’s authors. “You might even want to study countries where there are no parties, like Saudi Arabia,” he says.

The paper challenges the idea that polarization is solely a Trump-era phenomenon. It points to 2008 as the “major turning point,” a year that also included the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s election, and the widespread adoption of the iPhone-era internet. “Our ability to nail down when it starts is slightly divided by the fact that we only have data points every four years,” Young says. Still, “we know that this increase starts from our 2008 data point,” he adds. “That’s our best guess at the starting point.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91487819/political-polarization-started-a-lot-earlier-than-you-might-expect

Now my disagreement.

I say that the polarization began with the election of Reagan…..he weaponized the religious Right and emboldened every conspiracist that waddled out of the ether.

One could go back to the Goldwater years as the fodder that lit the flame of polarization.

We can say that conservatism is about free enterprise, smaller government, lower taxes, yada, yada…..but let’s be real in conservatism there is the privileged class and then us peasants…..we disguise it anyway we like but the simple fact is wealth knows best.

Thanks to Uncle Donny we see their true colors now….they no longer hide their distaste for the people.

This must be met with equal force by those that think that the people of this country are the important nay the only important issue.

Until then this slide will continue and god only knows where it will lead.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

FLASH! You Are Screwed!

As soon as Donny wiggled his way into the WH and announced his dumb ass idea of tariffs I have been trying to get people to see that the only loser in them are the consumers.

After his election and the talk about tariffs I had to make my feelings known…

The Real Cost Of Trump Tariffs

Well all the analysis has proven my predictions too be spot on…..

Americans, not overseas sellers, are paying almost all of President Trump’s tariff increases, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The report finds that roughly 90% of the cost of the administration’s import duties is falling on US consumers and businesses, undercutting Trump’s frequent claim that foreign exporters are footing the bill, Reuters reports. From January through August 2025, Americans absorbed 94% of the tariff burden, the Fed economists estimate; that share slipped to 92% in September and October and 86% in November, though it remained overwhelmingly domestic.

The findings align with a separate assessment from the Congressional Budget Office, which said higher tariffs raise the price of imported goods, thereby lifting costs for American households and companies. The CBO estimates that foreign exporters are covering only about 5% of the tariff tab. In the near term, it says, US businesses are likely to eat around 30% through lower profit margins, while passing the remaining 70% on to consumers through higher prices. A study released last month by a research institute in Germany produced similar findings, putting the share paid by US consumers and importers around 96%.

Tariffs have been a central element of Trump’s economic strategy, deployed to generate revenue, pressure trading partners, and encourage manufacturers to move production back to the US, per Reuters. The data shows that foreign suppliers sometimes cut prices in response to tariffs, per the New York Times, but that it’s a less common reaction. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 30, Trump said, “the data shows that the burden, or ‘incidence,’ of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the US.”

I cannot understand the support these disasters have even today with all the rising prices…..it does not bother them only thing they seem to care about is that brown skin people are been attacked.

There is a name for that…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”