Month: April 2021

Closing Thought–27Apr21

I stated several times during the last four years that I thought that the last president surrounded himself with morons as advisers…..and the biggest moron was a economic anchor on CNBC, Larry Kudlow…..basically he played an economist on TV.

As someone who studied economics I heard nothing from this person that would have lead me to feel confident that the last guy had good advice.

Over the weekend this toad opened his mouth and spewed stupid.

To the point hat I shot coffee out my nose.

He was helping spread the bullsh*t that Biden’s climate change ideas would eliminate red meat from our diets……of course this is just a BS line because they have nothing else but lies and disinformation.

And now for the stupid from yet another Trump moron…..

Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business host and former Trump economic advisor, raged against the idea of “plant-based beer” on his Friday-night show and falsely claimed that President Joe Biden’s climate plan would require Americans to give up meat.

“Get this: America has to stop eating meat, stop eating poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats,” Kudlow said. “OK, you got that? No burgers on July 4. No steaks on the barbie. I’m sure middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts?

“So get ready: You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4 green,” Kudlow said.

(businessinsider.com)

Think about his last statement….a plant based beer.

What does this moron think beer is made from?

To be fair FOX has walked back this amount of stupid…..

The network has since walked back Kudlow’s claims. Fox News’ John Roberts told viewers on Monday that Kudlow had highlighted a study from the University of Michigan and wrongly linked it to Biden’s plans to mitigate the climate crisis.

“On Friday, we told you about a study from the University of Michigan to give some perspective on President Biden’s ambitious climate-change goals,” Roberts said. “That research from 2020 found that cutting back how much red meat people eat would have a drastic impact on harmful greenhouse-gas emissions. The data was accurate, but a graphic and a script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.”

AS typical conservs making something out of nothing…..a lie that becomes news.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Biden’s Paid Leave Plan

I will have to hand it to Biden he is presenting the Congress with a wide array of plans that they should consider….but will they?

He has offered up a Federal Paid Leave Plan……

Among the many problems made even more acute by the Covid-19 pandemic is how difficult it can be to take time off work — even if you or a family member is sick with a deadly disease.

Federal law currently offers only unpaid family or medical leave, making the US the only developed nation to not provide any paid leave. Based on federal statistics, only 21 percent of US workers have access to paid family leave and 40 percent have access to paid medical leave.

This is part of the gap in “care infrastructure” that experts and activists argue the pandemic has revealed: Between taking care of kids with schools closed and working from home, more Americans have found that it’s not easy to juggle the responsibilities of a career, family, and personal health, especially for people working low-wage jobs with less generous benefits.

So many Americans have effectively been given a choice: Keep your job or take care of yourself and your family. That’s one reason women, often playing the role of caregivers, have disproportionately lost jobs throughout the Covid-19 recession. In one survey, more than 8 million Americans cited caring for a child not in school or day care or caring for an older person as a reason for not working.

https://www.vox.com/2021/4/23/22399439/biden-paid-leave-america-families-plan

The fact sheet on what this will do is out….https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/21/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-call-on-all-employers-to-provide-paid-time-off-for-employees-to-get-vaccinated-after-meeting-goal-of-200-million-shots-in-the-first-100-days/.

More on this plan……https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2021/02/05/495504/quick-facts-paid-family-medical-leave/

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A State With A Great Idea!

It is no secret to the readers and visitors to IST that I am an antiwar activist and have been since the 1970s…….and finally some small movement on the state level is a great idea…..

The state in question here is Montana which has recently passed an antiwar legislation….

The Montana state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan and unprecedented resolution Tuesday calling on the federal government to end endless wars. The resolution passed 95-3 in the House and 47-2 in the Senate.

House Joint Resolution 9, sponsored by Rep. Ron Marshall (R-Hamilton), is the first of its kind to be introduced by any state and is currently being used as a model for other states across the country.

The resolution specifically urges President Joe Biden and the United States Congress to “end the endless war in Afghanistan,” repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, resist sending U.S. troops into combat without a declaration of war from Congress or specific authorization to do so, and to “execute a prudent foreign policy.”

Concerned Veterans for America, a veteran-run organization, endorsed the resolution and plans on utilizing it at the national level. The organization’s Deputy Director Russ Duerstine said in a statement that “the passing of the Endless War resolution is a firm statement—a strong message on behalf of Montanans that there is a better way than continuing to fight endless wars.”

Montana Becomes First State To Pass Resolution Against Unconstitutional Wars

Like I stated….a great idea!  Now time for the rest of the country to join in and help stop these endless wars and endless confrontations that could lead to war.

Will this help wake up the antiwar movement?

The push back should be something to see…..

Bravo for Montana!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

From The “Can’t Fix Stupid” Files

Closing Thought–26Apr21

The Georgia legislature has a solution to crime and shootings…..make daylight savings stupidity permanent……

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has signed a bill that would make the state have daylight saving time all year, according to multiple reports. 

The Republican governor signed Senate Bill 100 earlier this week, on April 21, according to WSB-TV. The bill was greenlit by the Georgia General Assembly in March and aims to prevent residents from switching their clocks two times a year, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  

Image

“This state, including all political subdivisions thereof, shall observe daylight savings time year round as the standard time of the entire state and all of its political subdivisions,” the bill states. 

According to the AJC, Congress still has to approve the bill. As Insider’s Grace Panetta previously reported, lawmakers in many states have been pushing to make daylight savings time permanent, but have not seen action from Congress. Daylight saving time has been associated with sleep deprivation, car crashes, heart attacks, and strokes.

https://www.insider.com/georgia-gov-brian-kemp-signs-daylight-savings-bill-2021-4

Are the politicians really this lame?  Or is it that the Georgia voter is just that stupid?

Yet another prime example of you ‘can’t fix stupid’…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

They Came To Destroy

It is 2008 and a black man, Barack Obama, is elected president of the United States….part of the country rejoiced and proclaimed a new ear for the nation……and part went into a conspiracy spiral of doom and gloom.

This doom and gloom gave rise to the Tea Party and the election of many adherents to the precepts of this movement…..fiscal conservatism of lower taxes and debt reduction…..all noble causes that I can understand and even embrace in some part.

It then devolved into limited government, unapologetic U.S. sovereignty, and constitutional originalism.

But who were these original supporters?

In those days the Tea Party says it champions principles over politics…..on that statement I can completely agree…..sadly that was only a statement for political leverage….none of those elected had any intention of principles over politics.

Then the first appearances of guns at rallies….basically to intimidate politicians into compliance.

Yet another de-evolution of the American experience.

Finally the Tea Partyers get their chance by being elected to Congress and as usual principles meant nothing….they did their part to bring the Congress to a standstill by using the technique of obstruction.

What is political obstruction…..it is the practice of deliberately delaying or preventing a process or change.  Obstructionism can also take the form of widespread agreement to oppose policies from the other side of a political debate or dispute. 

So now you see what is going on in the GOP which by the way has been totally taken over by politicians who never intended to govern but rather their sole purpose is to disrupt and close down the government.

These slugs are accomplishing nothing that would assist this country to progress into the 21st century.

As long as the American voter keeps falling for carp and lies and electing total morons to Congress these divisions will continue to tug at the very fabric of our country.

If Americans truly want all this obstruction to end then the best place to start is with the rich bastards and think tanks that are allowed to dictate policy….not the people…..that is if they want this country to become a country again as opposed to the 50 separate little dictatorships that we have now.

I want a unified country….how about you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

I’ve About Had Enough!

It seems that the American people have lots to say about the killings in routine traffic stops….lots to say…..but that is as far as it goes….talk and as the old saying goes ‘talk is cheap’.

This last trial as it was waiting a verdict another young black man was killed not 10 miles away from the courthouse….the verdict will change nothing….do you comprehend the term ‘NOTHING’?

All the words typed by me and others and all the words uttered by so-called pundit and experts means NOTHING….again does that word mean anything to you?

For example while I was typing this draft….

Body camera footage and 911 audio released late Friday appeared to show that an unidentified Virginia deputy mistook a cordless house phone held by a Black man for a gun before the deputy shot him repeatedly, per the AP. Family members said Isaiah Brown, 32, was in intensive care with 10 bullet wounds following the shooting outside a home in Spotsylvania County early Wednesday, WRC-TV reported. The body camera video shows the deputy arriving at the scene and yelling at Brown to show his hands. The deputy then yells, “drop the gun,” multiple times and appears to say over his radio, “he’s got a gun to his head.” The deputy then yells, “stop walking towards me, stop walking towards me” and “stop, stop” before firing at least seven shots.

The deputy had earlier given Brown a ride home after his car broke down. At some point later, 911 was called. Isaiah Brown is heard on the call saying his brother won’t let him into his mother’s room in the house. Brown then says, “alright, give me the gun” to which his brother is heard in the background saying, “no.” The dispatcher asks what’s going on, and Brown replied “I’m about to kill my brother.” The dispatcher says “don’t kill your brother,” and asks Brown multiple times if he’s armed. He says no. The deputy arrived shortly after and can be heard yelling at Brown on the 911 audio. After the shots are fired, the deputy is heard rendering aid to Brown and instructing the brother to get a first aid kit out of his patrol vehicle. It’s unclear whether the deputy knew Brown told the dispatcher he wasn’t armed. The deputy has been placed on administrative leave.

Nothing will change because the culture remains.

The police culture needs to change….not reformed…..reformed does nothing to prevent these types of killings from occurring……

Lots of ink has been given to the verdict and what it means.

It means that a murderer was convicted not an indictment of the police…..the police is the problem and no one wants to tackle the necessity for a cultural change.

Right now the story in the media is the verdict and the aftermath….but that will soon wane as the story line gets pushed off the front page so to speak.

But why is this festering cancer of police killings allowed to continue?

This article was written while the Chauvin trial was in process…..

Police officers have long disputed that they treat people of color differently based on race despite available historical, statistical and anecdotal evidence showing the opposite, as my colleague Perry Bacon Jr. reported last year. While we don’t have a ton of data on the political views of police officers, a 2016 survey from the Pew Research Center of 8,000 police officers nationwide found that 67 percent believed the deaths of Black people during police encounters were isolated incidents, compared with only 31 percent who saw it as signs of a broader problem. This was the exact opposite of how the general public felt: Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults said they thought the killings were isolated incidents versus 60 percent who felt it was indicative of a broader problem. And Black Americans were even more likely than white Americans to say police killings were a sign of a broader problem, 79 percent to 54 percent. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found last year that nearly half of Black Americans — 48 percent — have very little to no confidence at all that local police treat Black and white people the same; just 12 percent of white Americans had the same view. 

The pressure on local lawmakers to enact lasting change is fleeting, depending on the news cycle and current events. Even at the height of calls for police reform, getting bills turned into laws takes time, said Rashawn Ray, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies police-civilian relation. Ray told me there was an uptick in calls for police-related reforms at both the local, state and federal levels after Floyd’s death since the Black Lives Matter movement became mainstream. “[Black Lives Matter] wasn’t a global movement in 2014,” he said, referring to the year Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. “People have become more aware of what’s happening. … The movement for Black lives and the attention to mistreatment by police has led to this moment.”

How Views On Black Lives Matter Have Changed — And Why That Makes Police Reform So Hard

Even if a federal law is passed (not going to happen in this Congress) there still leaves all the states and their states rights BS that need to change as well.

Will it?

Not in my lifetime.

If the people are not willing to force change….then maybe the best thing to do is STFU!

More reading for this subject…..

Is It Police Reform….Or Defund….Or Abolition?

Police Reform?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files

We all know of the insurrection on 06 January 2021 and the search by law enforcement for some of the over-weight in-bred cowards that participated……they have even asked the public for their help identifying some of the culprits.

Well another coward has been identified this time on a dating site….

When a man on a dating app boasted about storming the Capitol, the woman he messaged told him, “We are not a match,” prosecutors say. She then got him a date with the FBI. According to court papers, upstate New York resident Robert Chapman chatted to the woman on the Bumble app a week after the Jan. 6 riot, saying, “I did storm the capitol. I made it all the way to Statuary Hall.” The woman shared the messages with law enforcement the same day and investigators found more evidence on social media, the Washington Post reports. Chapman was arrested Thursday and charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct on restricted government property, per NBC 4.

Investigators say they identified Chapman from police body camera footage after the tip from the Bumble user. Prosecutors say law enforcement also received tips about Chapman’s posts on social media, where he didn’t exactly cover his tracks—his Facebook profile picture was a selfie taken inside the Capitol, and another selfie was shared on a friend’s page, according to court documents. “My Dear friend and Brostar Robert made it in the Capitol building at the protest yesterday,” she wrote. “Wooo Hooooooooo!!!!” Authorities say Chapman was released on his own recognizance after a telehearing in federal court Thursday. The Post notes that soon after Chapman was reported, dating apps started banning users who shared images from the riot.

This macho little slug will get what he deserves.

I told you these lumps of crap were stupid….this guy proves my assertion.

Another fine example of how the rioters are swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Another prime example of….’can’t fix stupid’…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Sunday’s Sciencey Stuff

If it is a Sunday then it must mean science stuff.

The age old question…”do you want to live forever”?

If so then there may be a way…..

Russian transhumanist Alexey Turchin has shared a new “roadmap to immortality,” which proposes several different plans (with backup plans!) for extending human life through technology. Here’s the gist, as he explains it:

Scientist proposes new plan to “resurrect” the dead with a Dyson Sphere, kind of

Dr. Frankenstein would be pleased.

If you do not think that first question was age old then maybe this one will suit your fancy….”are UFOs real”?

These are 23 of the best reasons that they are…….

1. “Aliens are long gone.”

“The odds that humans will cross paths with another intelligent life form are slim. What if the aliens we are looking for are an extinct race of beings that existed millions of years ago? Maybe their civilization peaked during the age of the dinosaurs or even earlier. Who knows? They may have visited Earth when the most complex life was a single-cell organism and just moved on.”

—u/Reno83

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewziegler/ufo-theories

If you are interested in UFOs then you have most likely seen the video that has been said ‘proof positive’ of their existence…..or does it?

A fascinating clip of what appeared to be triangular or “pyramid” shaped UFOs flying over a US Navy warship circulated online earlier this month.

The footage, obtained by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, shows the mysterious objects caught on a night vision camera aimed at the skies over the warship.

“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel,” Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough told Futurism last week.

The incident left plenty of questions unanswered. What were these stranger pyramid-shaped objects, or were they some type of optical illusion? If they were real, where did they come from?

https://futurism.com/this-theory-could-explain-many-military-ufo-sightings

Appears that all the tension with the West and Russia has  new casualty….the ISS…..Russia wants to go it alone….

Relations on Earth between Russia and the West are strained at the moment, with the country mired in controversy over the health status of dissident Alexei Navalny and the buildup of Russian forces at the Ukraine border. Now, there could soon be a distancing in outer space, too: The head of Russia’s space agency has announced that it may ditch the International Space Station in 2025, then launch its own space station by 2030, reports Reuters. “If … we can put it into orbit, it will be a colossal breakthrough,” Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said Wednesday, per Interfax. “The will is there to take a new step in world manned space exploration.” Russian cosmonauts have collaborated with counterparts from the US and more than a dozen other nations on the ISS since 1998, but that space station is aging, and the country’s contract regarding it ends in 2024.

“We can’t risk the lives [of our cosmonauts],” Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said on state TV, per the BBC, adding that the current space station’s creaky state could eventually lead to “catastrophe,” and that the country will reassess ISS’ condition in 2024 and make further decisions from there. Russia would manage the building of the new space station, though it would be open to partners helping with construction, Borisov noted. One big anticipated difference with the new space station: It wouldn’t be able to be manned year-round like the ISS, as its planned orbital path would mean radiation would be much higher. The Moscow Times notes the project, which is expected to cost more than $5 billion, hasn’t yet been approved, per Interfax. Futurism features a video of work on the first base module.

I truly like honey….I eat it a lot…..but recently I read something disturbing about my favorite sweetener…..

Some cesium with your chamomile tea? If you use honey, there’s a distinct possibility you may have ingested the radioactive version of the element, thanks to nuclear fallout from decades-ago bomb tests that’s showing up in US honey, per Science. In research published last month in Nature Communications, scientists took samples of locally produced raw honey from the eastern US, all the way from Maine to Florida, and tested it for radiocesium. The radioactive material was ejected into the upper atmosphere from nuclear bombs tested in the 1950s and ’60s—in Nevada, New Mexico, and the Marshall Islands, among other places—then swept across the world by wind, before drifting back to Earth as microscopic pieces. Of the 122 samples collected, 68 of them were found to have more than 0.03 becquerels per kilogram of radiocesium, with one sample in Florida coming in at 19.1 becquerels per kilogram. Samples with the highest levels seemed to come from the Southeast.

Even though the nuclear tests decades ago took place out west, wind and rain patterns brought the fallout to the East Coast. Popular Mechanics notes that levels in Southeast may be particularly high because there isn’t as much potassium there for plants to suck up as in other regions, leading them to grab radiocesium instead, which has similar properties. So how concerned should honey lovers be about this development? Not very, the FDA says, as 1200 becquerels per kilogram would be the level where safety concerns would emerge. “I eat more honey now than I did before I started the project—and I have kids, I feed them honey,” study co-author James Kaste tells Science. Still, a University of Utah geologist notes it’s still important to track how nuclear fallout circulates so we can keep tabs on the health of agriculture and ecosystems, and to see if radioactive elements may be harmful to other species, like bees. “We need to pay attention to these things,” says Thure Cerling.

The disturbing thing is I live in the Southeast where the levels are highest….but this should not stop my from my favorite sweet…..

This concludes the sciencey stuff…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Things That Never Existed

The weekend is a good time to step away from the silliness of the news…..so I try to do just that from time to time…..

Some channels on the “boob tube” make a living selling the idea that some things are out there and waiting to be found and exploited…..things like El Dorado, the Round Table, and so on…..

But let’s look at a few of the things that did not exist….

Everyone loves a good story, but not everyone loves history. So what is a frustrated historian or museum curator to do when folks just aren’t interested? They make things up, of course.

Yes, it turns out history is just bursting with little bits of fiction someone threw in for flavor at some point. Of course, misunderstanding and good old-fashioned ignorance played their parts, but at the end of the day, we are left with a “history” littered with landmines of utter nonsense. Take for instance . . .

https://listverse.com/2017/03/19/10-of-historys-most-iconic-things-that-never-existed/

I disagree with the premise that the “Gardens” never existed…..my studies leads me to believe that they did but not in Babylon but further North in the Assyrian empire…..

I also disagree with the “Babel” thingy….it was a large structure in Sumeria known as a ziggurat, a stepped tower…. the inflated height was most likely literary license for the book.

I wrote about this awhile back…..https://lobotero.com/2016/12/11/hanging-gardens-of-babylon/

More things that never existed…..https://www.toptenz.net/more-famous-things-that-never-actually-existed.php

Then this from the Smithsonian on the Tower…..https://aleteia.org/2017/05/02/evidence-that-tower-of-babel-really-existed-is-discovered/

https://www.livius.org/articles/place/babylon/etemenanki/

Do you have any thoughts on these?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Armenian Genocide?

One hundred and six years Armenians have been waiting.

During the night of 23–24 April 1915, at the orders of Talat Pasha, hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders—including many of Talat’s former political allies—were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This order, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, resulted in the torture and eventually murder of most of those arrested, who were forced to confess to a nonexistent Armenian conspiracy against the empire.

And so it began!

And some say 1.5 million Armenians died on this  removal.

Since the end of World War One the Armenians have been trying to get acknowledgement of the atrocities that were committed against the Armenian people…

For those that are scratching their heads over that statement…..https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/timestopics/topics_armeniangenocide.html

For a hundred years American presidents have given the situation lip service….appears the Pres. Biden is about to change from lip service to action…..

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to declare the slaughter of more than a million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire a genocide but failed to do so as president. President Biden made the same promise on the campaign trail, and sources tell the New York Times and CNN that he plans to keep it. The Times‘ sources say Biden plans to make the announcement on Saturday, when Armenians worldwide will mark the 106th anniversary of the beginning of a series of massacres and forced marches that killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, mostly in what is now Turkey. Measures recognizing the 1915-1923 killings as genocide passed the Senate unanimously and the House by a 405-11 vote in 2019.

If Biden does use the word genocide, it will be certain to anger Turkey, which maintains that the killings were not genocide and estimates the number of deaths at 300,000. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that “if the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.” Insiders say that while Biden might still change his mind before Saturday’s declaration, he has apparently decided that demonstrating America’s commitment to human rights is worth potentially damaging ties with Turkey. Dozens of other countries, most of them in Europe, have already declared that what happened was genocide.

Turkey will get all butt hurt over this decision by Biden…..and how will that effect the situation in the Middle East….is the next question.

Biden wants to show that the US stands up for human rights….well except in Israel….I say stand up for human rights for all or sit the Hell down and shut up.

But will this acknowledgement by the US be enough?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”