Day: January 14, 2022

Closing Thought–14Jan22

The problems return.

Have you noticed at your favorite supermarket that there seems to be fewer and fewer items on the shelves?

Well the culprit at least according to the ‘official’ sources are pandemic, weather and the food chain…..

Benjamin Whitely headed to a Safeway supermarket in Washington, DC, on Tuesday to grab some items for dinner. But he was disappointed to find the vegetable bins barren and a sparse selection of turkey, chicken, and milk. “Seems like I missed out on everything,” Whitely, 67, said. “I’m going to have to hunt around for stuff now.” Shortages at US grocery stores have grown more acute in recent weeks as new problems—like the fast-spreading omicron variant and severe weather—have piled on to the supply chain struggles and labor shortages that have plagued retailers since the coronavirus pandemic began, the AP reports. The shortages are widespread, impacting produce and meat as well as packaged goods such as cereal.

And they’re being reported nationwide. US groceries typically have 5% to 10% of their items out of stock at any given time; right now, that unavailability rate is hovering around 15%, according to Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman. Part of the scarcity consumers are seeing on store shelves is due to pandemic trends that never abated—and are exacerbated by omicron. Americans are eating at home more than they used to, especially since offices and some schools remain closed, and are thus buying more at the grocery store. A historically high deficit of truck drivers that started building before the pandemic also remains a problem. And shipping remains delayed, impacting everything from imported foods to packaging that is printed overseas.

The omicron variant has also taken a toll on food production lines. Sean Connolly, the president and CEO of Conagra Brands, which makes Birds Eye frozen vegetables, Slim Jim meat snacks and other products, told investors last week that supplies from the company’s US plants will be constrained for at least the next month due to omicron-related absences. Worker illness is also impacting grocery stores. Stew Leonard Jr. is president and CEO of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that operates stores in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. Last week, 8% of his workers—around 200 people—were either out sick or in quarantine. Usually, the level of absenteeism is more like 2%. And weather-related events, from snowstorms in the Northeast to wildfires in Colorado, also have impacted product availability and caused some shoppers to stock up more than usual.

I know let’s blame the workers, the drivers, etc…and the weather is a convenient culprit as well…..

Inflation is on the rise for the consumer…..

Prices paid by US consumers jumped 7% in December from a year earlier, the highest inflation rate since 1982 and the latest evidence that rising costs for food, gas, rent, and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households, reports the AP. The Wall Street Journal reports this is the third consecutive month where inflation has topped 6%. What’s known as the core price index, which doesn’t take into account food and energy, was up 5.5% in December over the prior year. That tops November’s 4.9% and marks the highest rate since 1991.

Not to worry food costs still soar and no one is DC seems to give a crap….as long as the give some silly boring and totally ineffective speech all is well for them.

Have you had enough of the excuses?

Time for you to show you disapproval.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

2022–From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files

Almost daily I hear something that just keeps reminding me the no matter how we try we just cannot fix stupid…..

A regular culprit from spreading Stupid is Rep. Taylor-Green and her newest rant is just as stupid as one might think…..

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed support for penalizing those who move from Democratic-controlled states to Republican-controlled states by temporarily stripping their right to vote or imposing an extra tax.

The idea, she said, would be possible in a “National Divorce scenario,” though Greene appeared to be musing about the idea rather than promoting a specific piece of legislation.

“After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida,” Greene said.

Pedro Gonzalez, an editor at Chronicles magazine with populist views, proposed a transplant penalty in response to a viral Twitter thread from a man moving from the Bay Area to Miami, Florida, who criticized California’s policies but was “apprehensive” about his destination’s “worse politics.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/national-divorce-scenario-marjorie-taylor-greene-floats-tax-and-voting-penalties-for-those-fleeing-blue-states

She was not finished with her stupidity….another mouth open and stupidity flies out…..

Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Monday lashed out at “the Democrats” for what she said was a Covid-19 strategy that left white people without proper treatment.

Greene made her remarks on the Joe Pags Show after it was reported that the Biden administration will allow hospitals to use ethnicity when determining who is at “high risk” for severe illness. The “high risk” label allows a patient to more quickly qualify for monoclonal antibodies like sotrovimab.

Conservatives have criticized the policy as “racist.”

https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-monoclonal-antibodies/

She opens her mouth and manure flies out.

MT-G is not alone as a batcrap crazy dirt bag….there is a candidate, GOP of course, that demonizes libraries…..

A key component to the rise of authoritarian movements is the hijacking of education, along with the widespread disdain for intellectualism and expertise.

Today’s Republican party has that in spades. Republican elected officials and political candidates have repeatedly demonized educators by painting teachers as radicals and encouraging citizens to intimidate school board officials. One Republican candidate, Steve Lynch, urged his supporters to gather “20 strong men” and forcibly remove school board members. Far-rig

ht Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance says professors are “the enemy,” despite his professor at Yale Law School convincing him to write the book that gave him a modicum of relevance in the first place.

And this week, right-wing congressional candidate Heidi St. John displayed a hatred for libraries that’s only rivaled by the fictional residents of Pawnee, Indiana.

https://secondnexus.com/heidi-john-libraries-evil-organizations

Seriously?

Libraries are evil?

These GOPers keep talking and keep proving just how stupid they are….I guess the statement of “Can’t Fix Stupid” is one of the most prophetic statements uttered.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mississippi Secedes–1861

This is for all my Civil War history buffs.

My state of Mississippi officially secedes from the Union on 09 January 1861…..I offer up this resolution for their actions on that day….this is the official statement…..

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

That is word for word the declaration for the cessation of the state of Mississippi from the United States……now you tell me what the reason for this was…..it is clear to me no matter what they narrative has become….there was NO ‘Lost Cause’ it was preserve the institution of slavery…..

I offer this up because the schools in the South are failing to teach what lead to the Civil War that killed so many Americans.

In social studies standards for 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, discussion of Reconstruction is “partial” or “non-existent,” according to historians who reviewed how the period is discussed in K-12 social studies standards for public schools nationwide. In a report produced by the education nonprofit Zinn Education Project, the study’s authors say they are concerned that American children will grow up to be uninformed about a critical period of history that helps explain why full racial equality remains unfulfilled today.

https://time.com/6128421/teaching-reconstruction-study/

The history lesson is done….you may now return to your normal drudgery.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”