One of the dumbest ideas that comes from the mental midgets on the Right….the banning of books…..and it is reported that it has hit an all-time high…..
As kids, teachers and librarians head back to school this fall, bookshelves around the country are a bit emptier than usual.
According to data collected by PEN America, 1,145 books have been banned by school districts across the United States between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022.
These numbers are at a historic high, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who has tracked and analyzed book bans across the country during her more than two decades with the American Library Association (ALA).
Caldwell-Stone, currently the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the ALA, said in the past, the norm was for one or two titles to be challenged per year in schools. Today, it’s common for four to six unique books to be challenged each day, she said.
The uptick is part of a culture war taking center stage in political races, on social media and at school board meetings — between those who believe that parents should have a greater say in school curricula; those who think that certain histories and narratives should not be taught in classrooms; and others who resist censorship of any form, encouraging all titles onto shelves.
Caught in the middle of the debate are questions along legal, geographic and economic lines — mainly, how book bans really relate to the First Amendment, their impact in the internet age (more significant than you would guess) and consequences of bans — both intended and unintended.
The elections are less than 2 months away and time for us all to think about politics. So the big question is what do Americans really know about politics?
As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election.
Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil.
But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what Americans know – and, less obviously, what they think they know – about politics.
In recent research, I studied how Americans’ perceptions of their own political knowledge shape their political attitudes. My results show that many Americans think they know much more about politics than they really do.
Knowledge deficit, confidence surplus
Over the past five years, I have studied the phenomenon of what I call “political overconfidence.” My work, in tandem with other researchers’ studies, reveals the ways it thwarts democratic politics.
Political overconfidence can make people more defensive of factually wrong beliefs about politics. It also causes Americans to underestimate the political skill of their peers. And those who believe themselves to be political experts often dismiss the guidance of real experts.
Political overconfidence also interacts with political partisanship, making partisans less willing to listen to peers across the aisle.
The result is a breakdown in the ability to learn from one another about political issues and events.
Try carrying on a political conversation and it will turn into a debate…..we all know we are right and refuse to see anything but what we believe is true.
So the next question is will this election be an asterisk election?
It’s still not terribly likely Democrats win control of the House. But it also means that a GOP takeover is far from a foregone conclusion. So, let’s talk about that 20 percent chance.
Democrats started out with 222 House seats following the 2020 election, four more than the number required for a majority. According to our model, there’s a 7 percent chance that Democrats wind up with fewer than 222 seats after November but still enough seats to maintain a narrow majority. Meanwhile, there’s a 13 percent chance that they actually gain seats.1 Those numbers combined give them their 20 percent chances.
Time for a quick historical gut check. In 19 midterm elections since World War II, the president’s party lost fewer than five seats in the House once, in 1962. And they gained seats twice, in 1998 and 2002. That means three out of 19 times the president’s party would have a successful enough midterm to keep the House, or 16 percent of the time. That squares pretty well with our model’s 20 percent estimate. Of course, the closer we get to the election, the more we can rely on data specific to this year — but it’s good that we’re somewhere in the ballpark.
Looks like my state of Mississippi has become a trend setter….and not in a good way…..keep in ind Mississippi gave us the overturning of Roe…..and now reinforced the Jim Crow law….in case you missed it….
Appears another Southern state has jumped on the bandwagon….Florida (go figure)…..
Some 130 years ago, white lawmakers gathered in Jackson, Tallahassee, Richmond and other state capitals across the former Confederacy and rewrote their state constitutions to enshrine white supremacy.
Over the last week, Mississippi and Florida have offered modern-day examples of Jim Crow-era voter suppression that endures to this day — enacted by state legislatures, enabled by governors with White House ambitions and enforced by federal judges — and that continues to keep hundreds of thousands of citizens, disproportionately Black, from the polls.
Felony disenfranchisement, along with poll taxes, literacy tests and byzantine voter registration procedures, was among the most effective tools used by racist Southern legislators to effectively nullify the Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution across the old Confederacy and prevent Black citizens from actually exercising their supposed new rights. Lawmakers turned crimes they believed most likely to be committed by poor Black people — such as petty theft, burglary and forgery — into felonies, and then then stripped anyone convicted of those crimes from casting a ballot.
Boris has gone from the halls of power in the UK and the Conservative Party has picked its new leader……Liz Truss.
Britain’s Conservative Party has chosen Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as the party’s new leader, putting her in line to be confirmed as prime minister. Truss’ selection was announced Monday in London after a leadership election in which only the 180,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote. Truss beat rival Rishi Sunak, the government’s former Treasury chief, by promising to increase defense spending and cut taxes, while refusing to say how she’d address the cost-of-living crisis.
Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to formally name Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday. The ceremony will take place at the queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland, where the monarch is vacationing, rather than at Buckingham Palace. The two-month leadership contest left Britain with a power vacuum at a time when consumers, workers, and businesses were demanding government action to mitigate the impact of soaring food and energy prices. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had no authority to make major policy decisions since July 7, when he announced his intention to resign.
My personal thought is that the people of the UK should be very worried…..why?
Easy Truss said she would push the nuke button without pause…..
Here’s something to think about when you’re drifting off to sleep tonight – the person likely to be our next prime minister is prepared to nuke us all into annihilation and says it’s an ‘important part’ of the job.
Liz Truss has emerged as the favourite in the Tory leadership race, and has now said she was “ready” to hit the nuclear button if required.
The Foreign Secretary was talking at the hustings event at the NEC in Birmingham on Tuesday evening when she was asked about the prospect by host John Pienaar.
Pienaar said the idea of pressing the button would make him “physically sick”, but Truss said it was an “important duty”.
“One of the first things that will happen when and if you become Prime Minister, you’ll be ushered into a room, a very private room at Number 10, and there will be laid out in front of you what are called the letters of last resort,” Pienaar said.
“Your orders to our Trident boat captain on whether you, prime minister Liz Truss, is giving the order to unleash nuclear weapons,” he added.
“It would mean global annihilation. I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick. How does that thought make you feel?”
Truss answered by saying: “I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do that… I’m ready to do that.”
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised – especially after Truss’s name became synonymous with nuclear escalation for a brief time earlier this year.
The first Monday of September and it is the holiday, Labor Day….the unofficial end of Summer…..
This is a short history lesson for those that do not have any idea what the US Labor Day is all about….
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States that is dedicated to honoring the contribution of American workers in prospering and strengthening the country. It is typically celebrated annually on the first Monday in September.
Historically, Labor Day was instigated in the late 19th century by the trade union in an endeavor to commemorate workers. Shortly after that, the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor endorsed Labor Day by arranging a parade in the city of New York. In 1887, Labor Day was declared as an official holiday in the state of Oregon – making history as the very first state to recognize Labor Day. It was not until 1894, however, that Labor Day officially became a federal holiday across the entire country.
And that is Labor Day!
Just a heads up for my readers…..with the mid-term elections less than 2 months away IST will be focusing on the possibilities and observations on the elections.
Today I shall post once and spend the day with my daughter and granddaughter….a little schmoozing and a lot of grill food……
I hope everyone has a good holiday and enjoys whatever pursuit they chase …..
We all know that the daily newspaper is going the way of the dodo….
My local daily has shutdown and the building is up for sale….it is printed in limited edition of 4 to 6 pages and done so about 100 mikes away and shipped in…..of course there is the on-line edition.
I am an old fart and enjoy holding a book and enjoying the smell and the experience…..the same for a newspaper….there is some satisfying about the physical aspect of a newspaper.
That brings us to the new paper on the market….it is Ralph Nader’s baby…..The Capitol Hill Citizen….
Speaking of reading, the new pilot issue of Ralph Nader’s print only newspaper, Capitol Hill Citizen, is fresh off the press. This terrific 40-page issue features some familiar writers, including Carol Miller, Jefferson Morley, Russell Mokhiber, Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon and, of course, Ralph, himself. Here’s the backpage…
If you enjoy the satisfaction of holding your reading material….then maybe check out this as a possible enjoyment that maybe missing in your reading life these.
AS we begin the Labor Day weekend….I set aside the boring humdrum news of the day for something different…..
First a bit of good news for my area….NOT since 1997 has there been NO named storms in the Gulf for the month of August….
Have you ever wondered why hippies are almost always ‘tree huggers’?
There maybe an answer…..
People who have undergone a mystical experience after consuming a psychedelic substance are more likely to engage in behaviors aimed at protecting or conserving the environment, according to new research published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.
Psychedelic drugs can cause drastic alterations in consciousness, and research has indicated that the substances can produce lasting changes in personality. The authors of the new research sought to better understand whether these changes had implications for people’s relationships with the natural world. They were particularly interested in whether the mystical qualities of a psychedelic experience played a role in influencing pro-environmental behaviors
Mars is not a good candidate for colonization because of the lack of oxygen….but that is becoming less of a problem…..
The comparisons are small scale at the moment: A device the size of a toaster generated oxygen comparable to that of a modest tree. But given that this took place on Mars, the implications are of the large-scale variety. In a study published in Science Advances, NASA researchers report that the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) was able to turn carbon dioxide—which accounts for 96% of the Mars atmosphere—into breathable oxygen, reports Space.com. MOXIE has done so seven times since April 2021, each time converting the CO2 into about 6 grams of oxygen per hour, per CNN.
“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” says researcher Jeffrey Hoffman in a news release from MIT. “It’s historic in that sense.” The Washington Post spells out the significance: Before humans can explore Mars in person, NASA has to figure out how to supply them with oxygen. The ongoing MOXIE experiment—part of the Perseverance rover mission—suggests a blueprint for doing so.
The process would have to be scaled up by a factor of several hundred times, meaning NASA would have to send much larger devices to the planet ahead of a human mission, per CNN. But that is both feasible and necessary: In addition to helping humans breathe while on the planet, oxygen also would be needed as a fuel propellant for the trip home. “To support a human mission to Mars, we have to bring a lot of stuff from Earth,” Hoffman tells the Post. “But dumb old oxygen? If you can make it there, go for it—you’re way ahead of the game.”
With all the legal issues in the news these days…I thought I would look into what is illegal…..
A bit more good news for this Saturday…..for those that drink tea, especially a black tea…….
When it comes to the potential health benefits of tea, the green variety tends to get all the glory. However, a large new observational study suggests that black tea also does good things for those who drink it, reports the Guardian. The study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that those who drink two or more cups a day might live a bit longer than those who don’t, per the AP. Specifically, researchers from the National Cancer Institute discovered that these “higher intake” drinkers of tea have a 9% to 13% lower risk of mortality, a modest but statistically significant figure.
“These findings suggest that tea, even at higher levels of intake, can be part of a healthy diet,” the researchers conclude in the study. The tea’s temperature, or whether people added milk or sugar, didn’t matter. The US researchers used a large database in the UK, given the popularity of black tea there. The UK Biobank allowed them to follow nearly 500,000 tea drinkers ages 40 to 69 for about 11 years, per a news release from the National Institutes of Health, to which the NCI belongs.
The study can’t prove cause and effect, only that researchers observed a possible connection between tea drinking and longer lives. “Observational studies like this always raise the question: Is there something else about tea drinkers that makes them healthier?” Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies at New York University, tells the AP. “I like tea. It’s great to drink. But a cautious interpretation seems like a good idea.”
It is that time of the year again…..everything you see in ads is ‘pumpkin spice’…lattes, creamers, yada yada….and now there will even be a pumpkin spice noodles…..
Fall is the time for curling up with a cup of something warm and comforting. The pumpkin spice latte is the official beverage of the season, and a bowl of hot noodle soup is an excellent choice if you’re looking for something more substantial. If you can’t choose between sweet and savory, you don’t have to. As Yahoo! Reports, Nissin is bringing back its pumpkin spice Cup Noodles for autumn 2022.
The seasonal product from Nissin is part of a long-running trend of sticking pumpkin spice flavoring where it arguably doesn’t belong. The brand debuted the limited-edition variety in September 2021, and it was apparently popular enough to warrant a comeback.
According to the brand, the noodle soup uses “special pumpkin seasoning” to achieve its sweet-and-savory flavor combination. Brave taste-testers who reviewed the concoction on YouTube were baffled—and a little nauseated. Jason Mazurek said, “It’s really creamy[…] It starts to make your stomach turn a little bit.” The YouTubers behind the channel 5 Minute Eats described it as “a warm dessert.”
I remember back in the early days of the global pandemic and doctors were falling out windows, Russian doctors that is….well since those days there have been many Russians high placed that have met with untimely ‘ends’…..and we can add yet another one to the list.
What’s not being disputed is that the chair of one of Russia’s largest oil producers has died after falling out of a hospital window. What’s murkier, however, is what led to Ravil Maganov’s demise—what CBS News notes is the sixth death this year of a big-name Russian energy exec under eyebrow-raising circumstances. On Thursday, Russian state news agency TASS reported that the 67-year-old Lukoil chairman died by suicide after plummeting from a sixth-floor window, noting that Maganov had been in the hospital—IDed by the BBC as Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital—for treatment after a heart attack. “In addition, he was taking antidepressants,” TASS added.
However, two sources who say they knew Maganov well tell Reuters they don’t believe he would have taken his own life. His employer, meanwhile, announced in a statement that Maganov had died “following a serious illness.” Lukoil, which is Russia’s largest private company, has taken an unusually assertive stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, pleading in a March statement for negotiations and the “soonest possible end to armed conflict.” The company’s former president, oligarch Vagit Alekperov, stepped down in April after the UK and the EU sanctioned him over the Russian-led war.
Other energy company bigwigs who’ve recently died under mysterious circumstances include former Lukoil board member Alexander Subbotin, who was reported in May as having been found dead in a basement on the outskirts of Moscow, supposedly after receiving a shaman’s “treatment” involving toad poison. A month earlier, Sergei Protosenya, a former manager for Novatek, Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer, was found dead, along with his wife and daughter, in a villa in Spain. Local police say he killed his family, then himself. One person who might be feeling uneasy at the moment: Nail Maganov, Ravil’s brother, who heads up another Russian fuels firm, Tatneft, headquartered in the Tatarstan region.
There sure are a lot of ‘unexplained’ suicides in Russia (wink wink)…..
This is a source of contention for many….but the question still needs to be asked…..After 6 months who is actually winning the conflict?
My question is asked because of the massive money and equipment that has poured into Ukraine from the US and the spigot is still full open……
He is a look into the conflict by VOX……
It has been six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s not obvious who’s “winning” the war.
The first stage of the Russian attack in February, a lightning thrust aimed at seizing Kyiv and decapitating the Ukrainian government, was a swift and humiliating failure. Stiff Ukrainian resistance forced the Russians to withdraw to the eastern part of the country, where their ambitions narrowed in the short term to a conquest of the Donbas region (much of which had already been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014).
In the Donbas offensive, which began in late April, the two sides have been locked in an artillery duel — less rapid troop advancement and more firing shells and rockets from afar. This played to Russia’s primary strength, a numerically superior artillery corps, and led to high Ukrainian casualties and slow but steady Russian gains in the spring and early summer.
More recently, however, the momentum has started to swing back to the Ukrainian side. Western military aid — most notably an American rocket artillery system called HIMARS — has helped level the artillery playing field and wreaked havoc on Russian supply lines. Today, experts aren’t asking whether Ukraine will launch a counteroffensive aimed at retaking Russian-held territory, but when it will start and where it will focus.
Whether this means Ukraine is now “winning,” however, is a somewhat more complicated question to answer. We don’t know that the upcoming counteroffensive is likely to succeed; it depends on factors about which we have limited evidence, like Ukraine’s ability to conduct so-called “combined arms” offensive operations (ones that employ multiple components of military power simultaneously to accomplish a particular goal). Some important quantitative metrics, like the size of their respective ammunition stockpiles, are hard to estimate based on publicly available information. At this point, even leading experts on the conflict find it difficult to assess with real confidence who’s winning on the battlefield.
As Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine enters its seventh month now, a former U.S. diplomat said that more and more Russians support Moscow’s acts and want to eradicate its war-torn neighbor.
What Happened: Daniel Fried, distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and former Ambassador to Poland, in a tweet on Sunday, said, “It’s not just Putin’s war. Many Russians now support the Kremlin’s campaign of national extermination of Ukraine.”
Again these are just observations…..and the lack of questions about this conflict proves the power of propaganda.
My state of Mississippi has been in the news lately and not for too many positive things…..Roe decision…..upholds Jim Crow laws….and now the neglect that has come to bite the people of the state in the ass.
Around the capitol city of Jackson is paying a hard price for our politicians neglect….the infrastructure….
For the 150,000 or so residents of Jackson, Miss., the water situation is a mess. The capital city’s main treatment plant was on the brink of collapse, with most households having little or no water pressure. And if residents are lucky enough to have a trickle from their faucets, that water isn’t safe to drink, reports the New York Times. Public schools have switched to virtual learning in the interim, and local businesses were scrambling. Coverage:
Emergency: “Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale,” said Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves in a briefing Monday evening. “It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.” Reeves declared an emergency and said the state was mobilizing to provide bottled water for residents and a tanker system for firefighters, but he warned that the logistics of such an effort were “massively complicated.”
Latest trouble: This week, heavy rains caused the Pearl River to flood city streets, and though the flooding itself wasn’t as bad as initially feared, it worsened already existing water problems in the city and affected the OB Curtis treatment plant. The facility had to drastically cut water production because of the flooding’s effect on a nearby reservoir, reports WLBT.
Earlier issues: The city already had been under a “boil water” advisory for a month because of poor water quality, reports CNN. In fact, the Curtis plant has been operating on backup pumps for weeks because of unspecified damage to its main pumps. And in February 2021, the city’s entire water system shut down during a winter storm, with aging pipes and mains bursting and leaving residents without water for weeks.
‘Failure’: Gov. Reeves said the state began preparing over the weekend “for a scenario where Jackson would be without running water for an extended period,” per CNN. “All of this was with the prayer that we would have more time before their system ran to failure,” the governor said. “Unfortunately, that failure appears to have begun [Monday].”
The mayor: Reeves didn’t invite Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba to his news conference, notes Mississippi Today. Earlier Monday, Lumumba declared a “water system emergency” but suggested the water-pressure issues might be resolved in a few days. Reeves painted a more dire picture. The GOP governor said he hadn’t spoken directly with the Democratic mayor as of Monday evening, but he said the mayor had agreed to cooperate with state officials.
This is for those that would like to know more about the failure of Mississippi government….
As many as 180,000 people in Jackson, Mississippi will not have access to safe running water for the foreseeable future, state officials said Monday night—the latest manifestation of a longstanding crisis in which the city’s residents have been made to suffer the consequences of chronically underfunded infrastructure, compounded by a worsening climate emergency.
“Do not drink the water,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said at a press conference. “In too many cases, it is raw water from the reservoir being pushed through the pipes. Be smart, protect yourself, protect your family, preserve water, look out for your fellow man, and look out for your neighbors.”
Reeves, a Republican who has refused to prioritize upgrading Jackson’s failing infrastructure throughout his two years in office, declared a state of emergency and announced, “We need to provide water for up to 180,000 people for an unknown period of time.”
“This is a very different situation from a boil-water notice,” Reeves continued. “Until it is fixed, we do not have reliable running water at scale. The city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency will take the state’s lead on distributing drinking water and non-drinking water to residents of the City of Jackson.”
