Month: December 2023

Merry Christmas–2023

It is that time again….the fat guy in the red suit to visit all the girls and boys…..to bring joy and smiles to the world.

I want to take this opportunity to wish all my loyal readers and occasional visitor a very Merry Christmas….

I hope your shopping experience was not traumatic and your hunt for those perfect gifts were successful.

Since I will not be posting any news stuff how about I give you a little history to carry the day?

Do have a tree?  Do you know the origin of using a tree?

Good thing I am here to help….

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, many ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palms and papyrus reeds, which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death.

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon, farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.

In Northern Europe the Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The Vikings in Scandinavia honored the evergreen mistletoe for its role in the death of the Balder, a god of light.

Learn more…..

https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees

And now you know.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and I am off to do some cooking for the family meal…..to include ham with my special glaze, corn pudding, my special mac and cheese (my granddaughter’s favorite) and sweet potato pie….

I hope everyone has a wonderful day and you got all the stuff you desire.

Fun, Food and family….if that is what you seek on this day then please be careful and drive with caution.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD DAY!

Tomorrow is another day and I shall return full of opinionated stuff.

Peace Out my friends.

chuq

Christmas Eve–2023

Just one day before the big day….the day when presents are opened and food is consumed and family has joy and humor around the communal table.

Speaking of this time of year and a fan favorite during the festivities….gingerbread.

As yummy as this may be what do you know of the delectable tasting yummy?

Come On!  You guys know I cannot let something go by without throwing some history in your direction….and so it is with gingerbread.

Gingerbread may be considered an indulgent treat if you’re only considering the calorie content. But it’s Christmas, and indulging in a treat or two can be a fun and healthy part of life – especially when this classic biscuit includes many nutrients that may benefit your health.

Gingerbread is believed to have originated in its earliest form in 2400BC ancient Greece. Surprisingly, this recipe didn’t contain any ginger at all – and was actually a honey cake.

But the version of gingerbread we know and love today didn’t start to take shape until the 11th century when Crusaders returned from their travels in the Middle East with ginger in hand. Ginger was first cultivated in ancient China, where it was commonly used as a medical treatment.

This led to the cooks of nobility in Europe to begin experimenting with ginger in their cooking. As ginger and other spices became more affordable to the masses in the mid-1600s, gingerbread caught on.

The original term “gingerbread” referred to preserved ginger, which was developed into a confection made with honey and spices. Later, the term was used to refer to the French confectionery pain d’epices (spice bread) and the German Lebkuchen or Pfefferkuchen (pepperbread or pepper cake).

But the gingerbread house, which is now a staple of modern Christmas traditions, is believed to have been invented in 18th-century Germany, thanks to the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm. The practice then spread to England at some point during the 19th century.

Queen Elizabeth I is credited with creating the first gingerbread men. She would delight visiting dignitaries with gingerbread figures baked into their likeness.

Despite its ancient origins, baking gingerbread during the holiday season remains a celebrated tradition in many parts of the world.

Gingerbread is a delicious yet ancient staple of the holiday season — and its spices may have some surprising health benefits

See that did not hurt much now did it?

This is it for me today….

In case you are not around for Christmas let me take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

I will see you guys when life calms down again.

“lego ergo scribo”

chuq

IST Saturday News Dump–23Dec23

Here is your chance to read the news that was omitted in your nightly news programing.

Local:  Weather has cooled down for now but that will change….

Now let’s get to the important stuff.

Do you ever suffer from ‘Brain Fog’?

A bunch of us have according to research….

The number of working-age Americans who report suffering from the malady known as “brain fog” keeps rising. The New York Times reports that 16.5 million people ages 18 to 64 are in that boat, roughly the same number who report having trouble walking or taking the stairs. The stat comes from the Census Bureau, which puts out a monthly survey that, among other things, asks people if they have serious trouble with memory or concentration. For comparison, the number was at 15 million in early 2020.

Not surprisingly, the likely culprit appears to be long COVID, which counts brain fog among its varied symptoms. In a blog at Liberty Street Economics, economist Richard Deitz previously dug into the subject and predicted it will be a challenge for both employees and employers “for some time to come.” About two-thirds of the people who reported having such trouble in the census survey said the problem is a new one for them, again jibing with the notion that long COVID is behind the surge. The increase has been particularly sharp among those ages 18 to 44.

One complicating factor in dealing with the issue in the workplace is that the cognitive trouble is so different for individuals. Long COVID symptoms range from mild to severe and last for anywhere from a few weeks to years, according to the CDC. Research suggests 20% to 30% of people who come down with COVID still have some degree of cognitive trouble several months later, per the Times. “I felt like I was permanently hung over, drunk, high, and in a brain freeze all at once” is how one 30-year-old describes it to the newspaper.

I have experienced this….but that because my  mind never shuts down even when I am asleep….so at times it seems if I am in some sort of mental fog.

The big news is a company has made a break through with battery tech….

Europe’s leading battery maker says it has made a breakthrough that could reduce the world’s reliance on China. Swedish company Northvolt, founded in 2015 by two former Tesla execs, says its new sodium-ion battery doesn’t use the critical minerals lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt—and it has an energy density of 160 watt-hours per kilogram, making it suitable for large-scale energy storage, though it’s well below the average of 250-300 watt-hours per kilo lithium batteries in electric cars typically have. Instead of the critical minerals, which have fluctuating prices and can be a fire hazard, Northvolt’s new batteries use a form of the pigment Prussian blue, the Financial Times reports.

“Using sodium-ion technology is not new but we think this is the first product ever completely free from critical raw materials. It is a fundamental breakthrough,” said Patrik Andreasson, Northvolt’s vice-president of strategy and sustainability, per the Guardian. “This provides an option that is not dependent on certain parts of the world, including China.” Sifted describes batteries without critical minerals as the “holy grail for the green transition.” Anders Thor, the company’s communications director, says that while this generation of batteries is best suited for energy storage, there is a “distinct path towards higher energy densities that also enables them for usage for vehicles, which will severely reduce cost and increase sustainability for electric mobility.”

Northvolt’s main business is supplying lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, but the company believes the sodium-ion battery market could end up being worth tens of billions of dollars, the FT reports. It makes batteries at a gigafactory just below the Arctic Circle in Sweden and is building plants in Canada and Germany as well as another one in Sweden. The company says it has not decided yet where it will manufacture the new sodium-ion battery developed in its labs.

Great news but I will wait before I pat them on the back.

Meanwhile back to AI….

The plan, as described by UC Davis Professor Yubi Chen, is quite sensible (see what I did there?). Chen launched his own small AI model company Aizip which will interface with sensors in, for instance, running shoes to replicate and alter an AI so that it makes adjustments based solely on this new data. It’s a sort of less is more approach. Instead of a large model that knows everything about how everyone runs, this AI clone knows just about your gait.

Similarly, it might be used to spit out a new custom AI that understands your aural needs and adjusts a headset based on both the ambient noise and the mechanics of your ears.

We’ve been embedding sensors in everything from fabric to wall paint for years and the long view here is that custom, small model AI could transform these and many other IoT objects. It all sounds pretty exciting.

The team that built it certainly believes it’s a big deal, writing, “This development is more than a technological leap; it represents the dawn of a new era in which every item can become a smart, evolving, and adapting companion.”

https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/researchers-build-ai-that-can-replicate-and-alter-itself-and-im-pretty-sure-thats-an-opening-line-from-the-original-terminator-script

Did anyone see Terminator?

Think about it.

And now for the crime of the century…

“It’s a crime you just can’t sugarcoat” is one of the suggested openers by the New York Times for a story about a sticky situation in Australia. The paper reports that the driver of a delivery van carrying 10,000 Krispy Kreme doughnuts stopped at a 7-Eleven service station in Carlingford, outside of Sydney, in the middle of the night on Nov. 29, and while the vehicle was unoccupied, a woman spotted in surveillance footage hovering around the gas pumps took that opportunity to jump in the van and speed away, with classic and Christmas-themed sweets in tow, per News.com.au.

9News has CCTV footage of the moment the suspect takes off in the van. The BBC reports that the vehicle was found abandoned about a week later in a parking lot, the spoiled doughnuts inside. A 28-year-old woman was arrested in the case on Thursday. The suspect, charged with vehicle theft and driving while disqualified, was refused bail. The van thief may not have even known what they were stealing. As the Times notes: “Unlike Jean Valjean, who stole a loaf of bread in Les Miserables because he was starving, this thief may have been motivated less by an insatiable love of Krispy Kremes than by a chance for an easy van heist. Given that the van was unmarked, it is likely that the cargo was merely a delicious surprise to the culprit.”

That is having a need and a fix.

Have a wonderful Saturday and be prepared for the holiday.

As Always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–22Dec23

Our lay-about Congress needs to shape up or ship out. Neither party can claim any moral high ground these days they bot are corrupt and lazy….they spend more time running to the nearest camera and/or mic to make their ramblings and then retreat into the inner sanctum of Congress and do little that would actually benefit this country or its citizens in any way.

They trade stocks using insider information with impunity….that needs to stop and stop now.

There is a bi-partisan bill in Congress that could end such practices…..

Congress took an important step toward cleaning up its act: for only the third time since the Civil War, it voted to expel one of its members. But the ethical rot in Congress extends beyond former Rep. George Santos’ outrageous lies and campaign and financial abuses. The institution is in a crisis of public confidence that we must address.

Routine reports of members of Congress making suspicious stock trades and owning stock in companies they regulate have severely harmed the public’s confidence that members of Congress act in the best interest of our country—rather than their own wallets.

It’s past time that we rise to the occasion and pass comprehensive legislation to ban members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children from owning or trading stock, and that’s precisely what the bipartisan Ending Trading and Holding In Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act would do.

This critical bipartisan legislation, which was introduced by two of this column’s co-authors—Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) in the House and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in the Senate—as well as by Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) in the House, addresses the threat posed by members of Congress owning and trading individual securities, which undermines the critical work of the federal government.

At the beginning of the pandemic, a moment when public confidence in our institutions of government was critical, Congress was rocked by reports of members trading individual stocks in pharmaceutical companies after receiving non-public information about the threat of COVID-19. Since then, we’ve seen a steady drip of scandals, each day seemingly bringing another story of members trading stocks in industries their committees regulate, or holding investments in fossil fuel companies while sitting on committees in charge of climate change policies. And each new incident drives public faith in our government lower and lower.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-simple-way-to-get-the-public-to-trust-congress-again

Sorry but this idea made me chuckle.

To be honest I do not think this has a snowball’s chance of passing for members of Congress get millions from insider info and from lobbyists buying their support for further screwing of the people they represent.

But anyway I think it is a stellar idea.

That may be the kiss of death.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That Pesky 14th

The big news in the last week has been that Colorado has kicked Trump off the ballot for 2024 and using the 14th amendment as a justification.

In case you are not sure about the 14th let me show you there is more to it than the ‘insurrection” clause….

Passed by the Senate on June 8, 1866, and ratified two years later, on July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States,” including formerly enslaved people, and provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” extending the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. The amendment authorized the government to punish states that abridged citizens’ right to vote by proportionally reducing their representation in Congress. It banned those who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate. The amendment prohibited former Confederate states from repaying war debts and compensating former slave owners for the emancipation of their enslaved people. Finally, it granted Congress the power to enforce this amendment, a provision that led to the passage of other landmark legislation in the 20th century, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congress required former Confederate states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of regaining federal representation.

….but since that is what the Colorado Supreme Court used to ban Trump then let’s look at that portion known as Section 3…..

Section 3 of the Civil War-era 14th Amendment says: “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … as an officer of the United States … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Even if someone is found to be ineligible to serve, the amendment says Congress can overturn that decision with a two-thirds majority.

The provision was mainly used between its ratification in the aftermath of the Civil War and the 1872 enactment of the Amnesty Act, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

If history interest you then this might be to your liking….

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-14-amendment-section-3-explained-colorado-ballot-ruling-rcna130581

This Colorado ruling is exactly what Trump ….wants and needs…..he can now claim the moral high ground and weaponize the ruling in his favor…..

“Suddenly we seem to have moved from “can Trump win?” to “can Trump stand?” – and a troubled world watches as the United States, arsenal of democracy and shining city on a hill, turns in on itself once again.

The decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump is ineligible under the American constitution to hold office again, and therefore should be removed from the state’s presidential primary ballot, is a brave and a momentous one. It’s on the legally debatable grounds that Trump is an insurrectionist under terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Passed after the civil war and obviously aimed at any ambitious secessionists, it states: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice-president or hold any office, civil or military … who… shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” It concludes: “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-colorado-banned-presidency-judges-b2467200.html

Personally I like the ruling but in the same mind 16 other states want to try this same move….I think that might bite the country in the ass and give Trump more clout than he already has among the mentally slow.

Then there is the SCOTUS….how will they rule on this if they hear it?

Since it is the Constitution I can see why they would not hear this case.

Since the Constitution does not specify on the legal status of the person I think they would rule in Trump’s favor.

How about you guys…..any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Faces Of Fascism

Fascism now there is a word that is getting a workout these days….almost as popular as ‘socialist’ was in the not so distant past.

But how many that use the term actually know anything about it?

Here’s a hint: Very Few!

Then here is a very simple definition to get us started….a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

But if that is too simplistic for you then maybe this will make more sense to you…..

When far-right personalities and movements started popping up during the last two decades, there was, in some quarters, strong hesitation to use the “f” word to describe them. Indeed, as late as less than three years ago, I had to defend the use of the word fascist in the Cambridge Union debate against academics who were squeamish about employing it to describe far-right movements in Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. What Donald Trump and the Jan 6, 2021, insurrection have shown, however, is that the distinction between “far right” and “fascist” is academic. Or one can say that a “far-rightist” is a fascist who has not yet seized power, for it is only once they are in power that fascists fully reveal their political propensities.

Fascism 101 for Today’s Geopolitics

But like so many other political philosophies there are many aspects within the ‘movement’….

Primo Levi used to say that every era has its own fascism. What is the fascism of our time? I define fascism as the socio-political condition of capital concentration which, without democratic control, legitimizes total indifference to the humanity of others. Therefore, fascism is a phenomenon specific to capitalist societies. I’ve been making a distinction between societal fascism (when one social group holds the right of veto over the life of another group) and political fascism (a type of authoritarian regime). Today, I think we are moving towards fascist assemblages in which previously distinct components (cultural, economic, social and political) are combined. The fascism of our time has the following faces: social neo-Darwinism, political religion, the traditional far right, lawfare, acedia individualism. Any of them is compatible with democracy, as long as democracy is not much more than a game of appearances.

Social neo-Darwinism. Neoliberalism, as an economic policy, is a device for concentrating wealth through transfers from the poor and middle classes to the upper classes by reducing the freedoms proposed by liberalism to economic freedom. As a social policy, neoliberalism translates into neo-social Darwinism: sacralization of individual autonomy in parallel with the denial of the conditions for being effectively autonomous, which leads to defending the incapacity of the state to alleviate inequalities of opportunity; glorification of order, security and tranquillity guaranteed by police repression and the mass incarceration of discontents or nonconformists; conversion of wealth and economic power into privileged criteria of human dignity; cooperation and altruism are unnatural; the means are always more contingent and disposable than the ends; the production of death is collateral damage in the struggle for success or power.

The Different Faces of Fascism

There are many faces to fascism and I feel we have not seen the end of any of them.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trump Will Not Win–But….

I know I have written some really disturbing stuff about Trump and the possibility of him winning the 2024 election….and most of it I believe will be disastrous for this country and its citizens…..but there are those among us that do not believe he can win and the aftermath that will ensue if he doesn’t.

Buried deep in an analysis of all of the reasons why Donald Trump will go down to defeat against President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, a columnist suggested that history is not on his side and that the MAGA movement is winding down.

Writing for the Atlantic, Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington explained that there are multiple roadblocks that will deny Trump a second presidency, including his extensive list of criminal trials that are casting a cloud over his campaign, his disparaging comments about the military that are resurfacing, and the fact that he is not the man he was in 2016 when he won his surprising victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

More to the point, he added, has been the string of losses at the polls suffered by MAGA candidates he has endorsed and a general dissatisfaction with the Republican Party overall.

“Trump has a strong record of electoral losses with his 2016 upset, which apparently surprised even him, as the lone exception,” Ibish wrote. “His party suffered the standard midterm defeat in 2018. Then he lost the 2020 election. Then Republicans lost control of the Senate after Georgia’s runoff in early 2021. Then his party was denied the standard midterm victory in 2022, barely eking out a four-vote House majority thanks in large part to his own handpicked, election-denying candidates, almost all of whom lost in competitive races.”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-maga-2024/

Beating Donald the Orange will only be the beginning….more horror will come….

Democrats have framed the 2024 presidential election as a battle for American democracy, but a new column argues that making sure Donald Trump loses is just part of that ongoing struggle.

The former president actively attempted to overturn the results in 2020 to remain in power, yet he almost certainly will be the Republican nominee next year and has promised to act as a “dictator” — at least for a day. His allies are plotting to help him seek “retribution” against his enemies, wrote New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.

“The American republic is genuinely at stake,” Bouie wrote. “But as Democrats and their allies gear up for that battle, they should understand that beating Trump is the beginning of the beginning. We need to fight political despair everywhere we find it, which means this country needs an overhaul of its economic system, its political institutions and its public life.”

https://www.rawstory.com/trumps-threat-to-democracy/

We can only hope that this prediction is spot on….but then there is the aftermath that we should watch closely….for we know he and his lunatic supporters hate to lose.

More to think about while you mull over what was written….

In a politically polarized nation, Americans seem to agree on one issue underlying the 2024 elections — a worry over the state of democracy and how the outcome of the presidential contest will affect its future.

They just disagree over who poses the threat.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 62% of adults say democracy in the U.S. could be at risk depending on who wins next fall. Majorities of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (55%) feel the same way, but for different reasons.

President Joe Biden has attempted to paint a dystopian future if GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump returns to the White House after promising to seek retribution against opponents and declining to rule out that he would abuse the powers of the office. The former president has tried to flip the narrative lately, saying the election subversion and documents cases against him show Biden has weaponized the federal government to prosecute a political opponent. He has called Biden the “destroyer of American democracy.”

“I think from the side of the left, it’s pretty obvious that they’re concerned about electing a president who is avowedly authoritarian, someone who clearly wants to reduce checks and balances within the government to strengthen the presidency and to do so in ways that give the executive branch kind of an unprecedented reach across the population and sectors of the government,” said Michael Albertus, political science professor at the University of Chicago.

https://apnews.com/article/democracy-2024-election-trump-biden-poll-39309519c8473175c25ab5a305e629ba

Win or lose I think the country is in for some rough seas…..

Any thoughts on these two possible outcomes?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Shock Troops Await

I know I can paint a dire picture of the world to come after the 2024 elections…..some may think I am being fanciful but I am not….I am however very worried about our rights and freedoms if the election turns out all wrong….and it is looking bad for the Americans that love their democracy.

The MAGA shock troops are waiting for the word…..

Donald Trump’s “MAGA shock troops” are signaling that if he’s elected in 2024, he will be punishing his enemies, including many of the journalists who reported on him for the past 8 years — an endeavor that will be “Job No. 1,” Robin Abcarian writes in The Los Angeles Times.

Abcarian says that demonizing the press is a tactic that Trump has long employed, as evidenced by past comments where he’s said the press is “truly the enemy of the people” and that journalists are “scum” and “the absolute worst.” Trump has also said he wants to weaken the country’s libel laws to make it easier to sue the press — with the support of some Supreme Court justices.

“This country’s political system is flawed, no doubt about it. A presidential candidate can win the popular vote in a landslide and still lose the White House,” Abcarian writes.

“This country’s political system is flawed, no doubt about it. A presidential candidate can win the popular vote in a landslide and still lose the White House,” Abcarian writes.

“Scheming partisans can draw maps designed to keep them in power endlessly and pass laws designed to depress voter turnout to their benefit. But haven’t we always believed, deep in our bones, that the American free press could never be silenced, that the 1st Amendment protects us from government censorship, and that a well-functioning Fourth Estate really is what keeps democracy safe?”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-media-revenge/

If you are a blogger that is critical of Trump and his desires for total control then you are a writer and will be handled.

Everyone that has been super critical of Trump and his desires needs to be alert and leery…..

Retribution and revenge awaits with a Trump win.

https://www.alternet.org/2666430033/

Someone needs to wake the MSM to the fact that they are not reporting the dangers of these Right wing zealots….

“Violence is a part of America’s culture,” the Black Power militant H. Rap Brown once said. ​”It is as American as cherry pie.”

Another equally American tradition is looking away from the problem when it comes from the Right.

As researchers have repeatedly found, the Right is where political violence in America overwhelmingly originates. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies—an eminently respectable, bipartisan think tank—right-wing political violence accounted for more than 90 percent of all attacks or plots in the first half of 2020, far outpacing terrorism from any other source since 1990. And since 2020, it’s gotten increasingly worse. A Reuters investigation published in August found that U.S. political violence is worse than it’s been at any point since the 1970s. Of the 18 fatal acts of political terrorism they counted since the Jan. 6 insurrection, only one came from the “Left” (involving a Democratic county official who allegedly murdered a reporter investigating him for corruption).

But you would never know this from listening to the mainstream media for most of the past three decades. And as calls to violence metastasize into a routine component of Republican politics—as when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made the H. Rap Brown-like declaration that, should criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump continue, 2024 will be the last U.S. election  “decided by ballots rather than bullets”—that denial may soon be among the biggest problems we have.

We’re in an Epidemic of Right-Wing Terror. Won’t Someone Tell the Press?

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trump Gets Kick In The Pants

The state that brought forth that Congresswoman that was caught fondling and being fondled in a movie theater also has been the first state to kick Trump off the 2024 ballot.

You heard me right….kicked off!

Donald Trump has become the first presidential candidate disqualified from running in an election under an 1868 amendment to the Constitution that bars insurrectionists from seeking office. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 Wednesday to remove Trump from the GOP presidential primary ballot in the state, saying he was not eligible because of section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the BBC reports. Last month, a district court judge in the state ruled that Trump had engaged in insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack but determined that the amendment didn’t apply to presidential candidates.

The court’s Tuesday ruling stated Trump is disqualified under the amendment and “it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” the Washington Post reports. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the justices wrote. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4—or until the US Supreme Court issues a ruling in the case, the AP reports. Colorado will hold its GOP primary on March 5, Super Tuesday. Officials say the deadline to print ballots is Jan. 5. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung described the decision as “completely flawed.” “We will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision,” he said.

Want to know more….then click here….

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/politics/trump-colorado-supreme-court-14th-amendment/index.html

Fascinating….now that there is a blueprint more states should follow suit.

You know his mouth will be popping over this turn of events and send his lawyers scrambling for a way to reverse this ruling.But what does the rest of the GOP field about this ruling?

If Donald Trump is not on the Colorado ballot, Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t want to be, either. The Republican presidential candidate says he will withdraw from the state’s GOP primary ballot to protest the Colorado Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling that ordered Trump be left off the ballot due to his involvement in the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. “I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately—or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” Ramaswamy said in a statement cited by the Hill. More:

  • “This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado,” the statement continues. Trump’s name remains on the ballot while the former president’s legal team appeals to the US Supreme Court.
  • Christie also came out with a statement, the Hill reports. “What I will say is I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being President of the United States, by any court,” he says. “I think he should be prevented from being the President of the United States by the voters of this country.” Christie also pointed out that Trump has never been tried in court on the grounds on which he is being kept off the ballot (the constitutional amendment that bars insurrectionists from seeking office).
  • Haley echoed Christie, the Des Moines Register reports. “I will tell you that I don’t think Donald Trump needs to be president. I think I need to be president. I think that’s good for the country,” she told reporters after a campaign event. “But I will beat him fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions.”
  • DeSantis had not released a response as of this writing, but he was also making headlines related to the Colorado primary, which takes place on Super Tuesday (March 5). “To qualify for the CO primary ballot, the state party requires that candidates post something on social media that announces their excitement while encouraging their followers to follow the state party’s social media accounts for updates about the state party primary and events. I’m excited to officially be on the ballot for the Colorado primary!” the Florida governor posted on X. It was meant to be a “deadpan” joke regarding the Colorado Republican party’s requirement, per Florida Politics, but it fell flat on X, where the tweet was widely mocked. That site and Newsweek round up reactions.

Sucking up to the presumptive winner of the primaries.

I love it!

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”