Month: January 2024

A Peace Formula For Ukraine

Davos, Switzerland is the location for the 4th round of peace formula talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Ukraine and Switzerland will host around 120 national security advisors on Sunday in the Swiss resort town of Davos, Switzerland’s foreign affairs department said, the latest in a series of meetings to rally support for Ukraine’s peace plan.

The meeting, taking place in the run up to the World Economic Forum which begins the following day, is the fourth of its kind and the biggest yet, following previous gatherings in Copenhagen, Jeddah and most recently in Malta in October.

Officials had hoped the meeting in Malta would lead to the setting of a date for a global peace summit to build a coalition of support for Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan, drafted by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in December 2022.

However, co-chairs limited themselves at the time to a joint statement referring to the participants’ commitment to just and lasting peace.

A top Kyiv official told Reuters in November that a summit to begin implementing the plan “might” take place in February 2024, with Ukraine fearing the war in Gaza is making it harder to win over diplomatic support for its blueprint for peace.

(usnews.com)

Just what is Zelenskyy’s plan?

Glad you asked I happen to have it right here…..

The plan calls for:

  • Radiation and nuclear safety, focusing on restoring security around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, which is now Russian-occupied.
  • Food security, including protecting and ensuring Ukraine’s grain exports to the world’s poorest nations.
  • Energy security, with a focus on price restrictions on Russian energy resources, as well as aiding Ukraine with restoring its power infrastructure, half of which has been damaged by Russian attacks.
  • Release of all prisoners and deportees, including war prisoners and children deported to Russia.
  • Restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia reaffirming it according to the UN Charter, which Zelenskyy said is “not up to negotiations”.
  • Withdrawal of Russian troops and the cessation of hostilities, the restoration of Ukraine’s state borders with Russia.
  • Justice, including the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.
  • The prevention of ecocide, and the protection of the environment, with a focus on demining and restoring water treatment facilities.
  • Prevention of an escalation of conflict and building security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space, including guarantees for Ukraine.
  • Confirmation of the war’s end, including a document signed by the involved parties.

A grand plan and a good place to start….but there will be sticking points……but if Russia is not part of this process then what damn good is it?

The problem as I see it….Western media seems to be trying to soften the blow with a Russian victory in this conflict.

The Wall Street Journal joined the flood of American mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, Politicoand several others, in preparing the American public for a Russian victory.

The Wall Street Journal laid the psychological groundwork preparing the American public for defeat in Ukraine, despite the loss of Ukrainian lives and American dollars, with the line “Even if aid for Ukraine is renewed, it is essential to consider a realistic ending for the war.” It goes on to say that, though “Ukraine’s insistence on regaining all the territory Russia has seized since 2014 is understandable…events over the past year have made it clear that this goal can’t be achieved anytime soon.” The article concludes with the prescription that “Western leaders should explore” negotiations to end the fighting, calling it “a bitter pill” but “the only realistic path to a lasting peace in Europe.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/wall-street-journal-sets-standard-for-irresponsible-journalism-in-ukraine/

With this happening will the complexion of any peace talks be tainted?

Zelensky’s plan requires a full Russian withdrawal from the territory it has captured since February 2022, Russia giving up Crimea, war crimes tribunals, and Russia paying reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv has no shot at implementing any aspect of the Peace Formula since its counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian forces are now focused on defense and facing manpower shortages.

Plus where is America’s top diplomat, Blinken?

Whatcha think?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Next GOP Debate

I know the news is that the field has narrowed to three for the GOP nomination so the ne4xt debate may be a bit better than the preceding ones.

After their showing in Iowa the two also rans are flex what little muscle they have left…..

Haley thump the loudest but DeSantis could not let a mere woman best him so he had to come up with a retort for Haley….

Haley, one of only three Republican candidates remaining in the 2024 race as of Tuesday, says she will participate in future debates only if they feature former President Trump, the GOP frontrunner who easily won Monday’s Iowa caucuses with 51% of the vote, or Democratic incumbent President Biden, per the Hill. Trump, who refused to participate in any of the five GOP primary debates, needs to stop hiding, the former UN ambassador says in a statement. Two more debates had been planned ahead of New Hampshire’s primary next week: ABC News was to host one Thursday, followed by CNN on Sunday. Given Haley’s statement, it’s unclear whether either will take place.

Trump—with a rally scheduled for Sunday, per Politico—isn’t expected to participate in either debate, leaving DeSantis on his own. The Florida governor, who already accepted his debate invitations, claims Haley is “afraid … to answer the tough questions.” “I won’t snub New Hampshire voters like both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, and plan to honor my commitments,” he says. “I look forward to debating two empty podiums in the Granite State this week.” Haley, meanwhile, accuses Trump of running scared. “He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it,” she says. Haley, who finished just behind DeSantis in Iowa, is polling well in New Hampshire, but still trails Trump by double digits.

Sad news for us political junkies….ABC opts out of a debate….

ABC has canceled its Thursday night debate in New Hampshire because it can’t meet a condition imposed by Nikki Haley. The former UN ambassador said Tuesday that she wouldn’t take part in any more Republican debates unless frontrunner Donald Trump participates. ABC and Manchester, New Hampshire station WMUR confirmed Tuesday evening that the debate had been called off, the Washington Post. ABC said it had given Haley and Trump a 5pm deadline to commit to the debate. The debate had been scheduled to take place at St. Anselm College just days before the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary.

In the previous GOP debate, Haley debated Ron DeSantis. Before the Thursday cancellation was confirmed, the Florida governor said in a post on X that he’d show up even if Haley didn’t. “I won’t snub New Hampshire voters like both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, and plan to honor my commitments,” he said. “I look forward to debating two empty podiums in the Granite State this week.” DeSantis, who came in second place in the Iowa caucuses, accused Haley, who came in third, of “running to be Trump’s VP.” CNN was planning to host a Republican debate in New Hampshire Sunday night but it’s not clear whether it will go ahead, the New York Times reports.

How unfortunate….without football or the debate where will the entertainment come from on Thursday?

Well my Thursday night just opened up…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Agenda 47

I know it sounds like the code word that turns the clones against the Jedi.

But that is a work of fiction and Agenda 47 is a very real threat to our society.

First of all….what the Hell is Agenda 47?

Read on and be afraid….very afraid….

Agenda 47 would consist of an end to birthright citizenship, further criminalizing transgender people and the LGBTQI community more broadly, expanding the thought crime and other censorship laws to end the teaching of “critical race theory” and to defeat “Woke” and “Black Lives Matter”, attacking academic freedom and replacing it with “patriot education”, implementing a national stop and frisk law, pardoning the Jan. 6 terrorists, putting homeless people in camps or some other designated area under threat of arrest, building high tech “freedom cities”, ending the professional civil service and replacing it with right-wing political appointees and other such partisan agents, gutting the Department of Justice and other parts of the government that opposed Trump’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law, executing drug dealers, starting a trade war with China, and making “peace” with Vladimir Putin by withdrawing support for the Ukrainian people and their freedom struggle. In many ways, Agenda 47 is a continuation of the fascist and other authoritarian policies Trump put in place during his first regime but now made even more extreme and cruel.

The Hartmann Report gives a much harder look at the dystopian nightmare that is ‘Agenda 47’.

If Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.

Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/project-47-trumps-and-the-gops-dystopian-3b1

Read carefully before you vote….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–16Jan24

Anybody that follows politics knows the GOP truly hates any of our safety programs….all social benefits is always on the drawing board for cuts.

In the past there have some really comical words that have fallen out of the mouths of Repubs to try and justify the ending of social programs….but recently the idiot from Florida, Gaetz, made a statement that I truly found hilarious if it were not so blatantly anti human.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said Monday that he wants “deeper cuts” to the Department of Health and Human Services to “save the American people.”

Iowa 2024–And The Winner Is (Go Figure)

College of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

It is cold in Iowa and the faithful came out to their local place of caucusing to vote for the GOP candidates…..and as a public service IST will break the vote down and the results of that vote.

We will begin with the winner and it was anything but a shocker….

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Donald Trump has won Monday night’s Iowa caucuses in the GOP primary. The AP called it quickly, roughly 30 minutes after the first results started coming in. About the only suspense in regard to Trump is whether he will wind up with 50% of the vote, and whether he will win by a record margin (Bob Dole has the mark at nearly 13 percentage points). The bigger issue for the overall campaign is whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley will finish second, and whether DeSantis will do well enough to fend off calls that he drop from the race ahead of next week’s first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire.

The New York Times offers some quick big-picture analysis of the Iowa victory, which it notes Trump failed to secure in his 2016 campaign: “Regardless of what comes next, Mr. Trump’s Iowa victory amounts to a remarkable resurrection of a political career that had once appeared in tatters.” Politico similarly observes that he goes into New Hampshire “with few signs of vulnerability” and where he still holds a large lead in the polls despite recent progress made by Haley. The quick win suggests it could also be a short primary reason should Trump rack up delegates and deprive his rivals of a path to victory, per the Wall Street Journal

Coming in 2nd place for the silver was another mini-dictator, DeSantis.

Yes, Donald Trump won easily. But in the much closer race for second place in the Iowa caucuses, things were too close to call well into Monday night. Ultimately, though, the AP called Ron DeSantis as the second-place winner with 21.2%, edging out Nikki Haley, who got 19.1% of the vote. Both were well behind Trump at more than 51%, according to NPR and the New York Times. (Heading into Monday, Trump had hoped to get at least 50% of the vote and to win by a record margin, and he was on track to do both.)

Both DeSantis and Haley were hoping for a second-place finish to cement themselves as the obvious No. 2 in the race ahead of next week’s New Hampshire primary. But given how close their numbers were, neither “will be able to claim the clear Trump-alternative mantle” based on Iowa, per Politico. But at least for DeSantis, the results may quiet critics demanding he drop from the race. Both addressed supporters late Monday, the Guardian reports:

  • DeSantis: “They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” the Florida governor said, but “we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.”
  • Haley: Despite her third-place finish, the former South Carolina governor said, “I can safely say, tonight Iowa safely made this Republican primary a two person race. … Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare.”

Were there any causalities from this vote?

Yep there was one…..the d/bag himself Vivek…..

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Monday and endorsed former President Donald Trump after a disappointing finish in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses, the AP reports. Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old political novice who sought to replicate Trump’s rise as a bombastic, wealthy outsider, said, “As of this moment we are going to suspend this presidential campaign. There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country.” During the campaign, he needled his opponents but praised Trump as “the best president of the 21st century.” He argued, though, that Republicans should opt for “fresh legs” and “take our America First agenda to the next level.”

The approach, including his call for “revolution,” vaulted Ramaswamy into the mix of candidates vying to overtake Trump—or at least become a viable alternative. His decision to drop out, though, becomes the latest confirmation that the former president, even at 77 years old and under multiple criminal indictments, still dominates Republican politics and remains the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nomination for the third consecutive time. Ramaswamy’s failure also affirms how difficult it is for any Republican other than Trump to push the bounds of party orthodoxy, as the first-time candidate found little political reward for positions such as his opposition to aid for Israel and Ukraine.

There you have all the edge of the seat drama of the Iowa vote.

Aren’t you lad I am here so you can go about life without having to observe this circus of errors?

The GOP field has narrowed to three…..will New Hampshire be the death of the Haley campaign?

Stay tuned!

More riveting drama is coming.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Iowa Caucuses–2024

College of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

Today will be a day to remember….the bitter biting cold all the way South to Northern Mississippi and the vote in Iowa (that is if people can actually get out of their homes to vote).

With all this adversity what can we expect from the voters in Iowa on such a day?

Today’s the (extremely frigid) day: Iowa caucusgoers will come together at 8pm EST in some 1,500 locations across the state to debate their options and then cast their secret ballots. Aside from the much-discussed weather—the AP reports temps are expected to be the coldest ever recorded on a caucus night—here are the five biggest storylines to watch:

  1. Just how big will Donald Trump’s margin be: Polling suggests Trump has a win in the bag, meaning the real question is whether he manages to hit 50%. If he does, “the notion that Republicans are hungry for an alternative becomes far less believable,” reports NBC News. “He could head to New Hampshire with an imposing air of inevitability.” If he doesn’t, that could give momentum to whoever places second.
  2. And could that margin be record-setting big? The AP reports Bob Dole holds the record for the biggest margin of victory for an Iowa Republican caucus. He finished nearly 13 percentage points ahead of his rivals in 1988, a figure that Trump has predicted he will best Monday night.
  3. Who will take second? The No. 2 position, and whether it goes to Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, is in many ways the one to watch. NBC News frames it as a “make-or-break” finish for DeSantis, as he’s polling behind Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two states coming down the pike. And as the BBC puts it, “If one of these two opens some daylight between the other … it could elevate that candidate as the top alternative to Mr. Trump in the contests to come.”
  4. Where will the turnout count land? The record number of Republican caucus participants was set in 2012, when 118,411 of them showed up. Some campaigns had been expecting the caucusgoer count could surge to nearly 200,000 people thanks to the caucuses aligning with a federal holiday. But the weather is proving to be a major wildcard.
  5. Have the rules of the ground game changed? Candidates have long tried to woo caucusgoers by spending plenty of time in the state, “but, like much else in the Trump-era, that old rule may be out the window,” observes ABC News. While DeSantis did as has conventionally been done, visiting each of the state’s 99 counties and hosting 169 events over 61 days, Trump has made only 35 appearances in 21 days. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is polling in the single digits, has held 326 events over 89 days.

I would not be concerned with the Iowa for Iowa has not picked the candidate since 2000 when they went with GW Bush.

Iowa is for political nerds like me…..other than that it is just another day for most of us.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

This Is What I Have been Talking About!

Since the US has taken it upon its checkbook to finance the war in Ukraine I have been bitching about the money that is being wasted with very little return.

I recently read a story about this conflict and the War Department’s lack of oversight.

More than $1 billion in weapons that were shipped to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by the Pentagon, a report from the Defense Department’s inspector general has found.

The report examined $1.699 billion in weapons sent to Ukraine that are subject to enhanced end-use monitoring (EEUM), which includes Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, night vision goggles, AIM-9X air-to-air missiles, Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, and other types of weaponry.

The IG report found that the majority of the EEUM arms, nearly 40,000 weapons in total worth approximately $1.005 billion, have not been accounted for after being sent into Ukraine. Smaller, more portable weapons are subject to EEUM since they’re more likely to be smuggled and sold on the black market.

Robert P. Storch, the Pentagon’s inspector general, said there’s “no record” of inventories being taken. “It doesn’t mean they’re not there, or they’re not being used,” he said, according to The New York Times. “[But] because of their sensitivity, their vulnerability to diversion, or misuse, or the consequences of that, it’s particularly important to have this additional tracking and accountability in place.”

The US policy of pouring weapons into Ukraine has been done with very little oversight, and the shipments examined in the IG report are just a fraction of the over $40 billion in military equipment the US has provided or committed to Ukraine since the Russian invasion last year.

(antiwar.com)

This is a continuing problem and no one seems to care that this situation continues war after war.

This is what we get when we allow lobbyists and special interests run our foreign policy.

But let’s not worry about this…..better yet lets pretend the border is more important or cutting Social Security or Food programs.

You should be shouting from the treetops that your money is being mishandled in such a way….but sadly you will not.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

MLK, Jr For President

It is a Sunday and the 2024 presidential process is about to begin and what better time to learn a bit of forgotten history?

Drop the history lesson.

1968 our election was down to Nixon, Humphrey and Wallace (now there is a choice to die for)….but did you know that there were some on the antiwar side that wanted MLK to run for the presidency?

I had just turned 21 when the election was taking place but unfortunately I could not participate since I was a bit preoccupied in Vietnam trying stay alive.

All that said…..back to 1967….

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. never sought public office or held an allegiance to any of the major political parties. “I don’t think the Republican Party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic Party,” he said in a 1958 interview. “They both have their weaknesses. I’m not concerned about telling you what party to vote for. But what I’m saying is this, that we must gain the ballot and use it wisely.”

Yet in 1967 with both the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement in full swing, King briefly considered launching a presidential campaign on a third-party ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock, the noted pediatrician and the author of the bestseller Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare. Spock had risen to fame in the 1940s with his guidance on raising children, but by the 1960s, he was one of the leading antiwar demonstrators in the country.

After seeing Ramparts magazine photos of Vietnam children sprayed with napalm by U.S. military forces, King came to a reckoning about the war. “Never again will I be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands of little children in Vietnam,” he said. This new awareness brought King closer to Spock and the antiwar movement and on the precipice of electoral politics.

On April 4, 1967 before 3,000 people at New York’s Riverside Church, King gave his famous “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech, where he called for the U.S. government to take immediate steps to end the Vietnam War. “If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam,” he said.

The speech received a swift rebuke from leaders across the political spectrum. The Pittsburgh Courier, the leading Black weekly newspaper, said that King “does not speak for all Negro America and besides he is tragically misleading them.” President Lyndon B. Johnson felt betrayed by King’s antiwar statements after finding common cause with him over civil rights issues. 

https://www.history.com/news/martin-luther-king-jr-dr-spock-presidential-campaign

If I had been one of those that stayed behind I would have worked for King if he had run.  But instead we got 3 candidates that I would not hit a pig in the butt with at anytime.

Sadly he was killed thus ending any chance of a real antiwar person ever holding office.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Saturday News Dump–13Jan24

Another weekend begins and another IST News Dump.

All the news you cannot possibly use.

Local stuff….I am old and on Medicare and my doctor prescribed a med to help with the problem…..for one month supply the total came to $537….and that is with the dynamite Medicare coverage.  Plus for that kind of cash it should have come with a red head hooker.

This from the files of the “Lawsuit Lotto”….

Halloween-themed Reese’s peanut butter candy for $4.49, drawn in by the “cute looking” carvings shown on the candy’s outer wrapper. That’s per the Florida woman’s new federal lawsuit against parent company Hershey, who Kelly claims uses “misleading” packaging for its popular brand of holiday-geared confections, reports Reuters. The $5 million class-action complaint filed Thursday in Tampa alleges that Hershey’s labels are “materially misleading,” and that “numerous consumers have been tricked and misled by the pictures on the products’ packaging.”

Specifically, per Kelly’s suit, the candy Hershey promoted on its wrappers lacked the “explicit carved out artistic designs” that Kelly thought she was getting with her purchase. In the case of the Halloween candy she says she bought, Kelly says she expected the pumpkin-shaped candy to have a carved mouth and eyes, as depicted on the package (she notes in her suit that there were no carvings on the candy itself). Kelly claims the same for Reese’s peanut-butter footballs and bats, and also its white chocolate ghosts, per CBS News.

In the case of the football candies, Kelly says they were indeed shaped like footballs, but lacked the “laces” as shown on the packaging. “Looks like eggs!!” reads the caption of a photo about the football candy attached to the complaint. Kelly’s attorney also included links to YouTube videos showing others disgruntled over the supposedly false advertising, per WFTV. Kelly maintains that thousands of people have suffered harm due to the alleged deceptive packaging. Reuters notes that, per Kelly’s lawyer, she has also sued Burger King and Taco Bell over food that didn’t look like its advertised versions.

The Lawsuit Lotto….too many trying their hand these days.

One of the big stories was that ESPN showed a bare female chest on-air at the Sugar Bowl….

A woman baring her breast in New Orleans isn’t usually headline-worthy, but a woman baring her breast on national television in New Orleans has ESPN more than a little red-faced. ESPN apologized Monday night for the video clip of a woman baring her breast that was shown during the broadcast of the Sugar Bowl. It was aired coming out of a commercial during the second half of Washington’s 37-31 victory over Texas in a semifinal game of the College Football Playoff. A clip of people wandering on Bourbon Street in New Orleans showed a woman pulling down her top to expose her breast. “We regret that this happened and apologize that the video aired in the telecast,” ESPN’s Bill Hofheimer said in a statement to the AP.

Seriously?  The Sugar Bowl is played in New Orleans….NOLA is famous for three things….Mardi Gras, Gumbo and ‘tit flashing’….what did they expect?

Those of us that live near NOLA and spend time there are thinking….really?  Get over it!

Would you take an elevator ride into space?

I am talking about outer space not some 100 story high rise.

A spectacular design for a space elevator, with the goal of efficiently transporting passengers into outer space, has been awarded a $11,000 prize.

As the BBC reports, British architect Jordan William Hughes won the prize for space architecture and innovation from the Jacques Rougerie Foundation in Paris.

His concept, dubbed Ascensio, connects an ocean-based ship to a structure in Earth’s orbit via a cable-like structure. The ship is designed to keep up with the spaceport by moving around the ocean.

Of course, it’s only an inspired work of science fiction and likely won’t be built any time soon, if ever. But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream of a future in which space is a simple elevator ride away.

“It would revolutionize the way we get to and from space and make it more viable,” Hughes told the BBC.

Space elevators would elegantly solve one of the biggest hurdles in space travel, foregoing the need for heavy and expensive rockets to access the Earth’s orbit. The concept was first envisioned by Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in a 1895 book called “Dreams of Earth and Sky,” in which he described an imaginary 22,000-mile tower. Russian engineer Yuri Artsutanov later expanded on the idea, describing a cable that connects the Earth’s surface to a geosynchronous satellite.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/design-for-space-elevator-wins-prize

I will stay on the ground floor….thank you.

Did you ever see the movie about people getting arrested before they committed the crime?

What if there is a machine that can read your mind?

As the world inches ever closer to mind-reading technology, some scientists are calling to legally enshrine the right to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

In interviews with Undark, neuroscientists — including those who are working to make these so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) happen — revealed their concerns about the devices.

In one particularly telling exchange, a pair of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin who’ve successfully created a BCI that can rudimentarily translate brain waves into text described how it felt to realize their device was actually reading their thoughts.

“Holy shit,” UT neuroscientist Alexander Huth, who had been working on BCIs for almost a decade when he achieved a breakthrough in 2020, recalled exclaiming. “This is actually working.”

For Huth, the moment was especially strange because he’d often tested the devices on himself.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-mind-reading-rights

My friend John recently posted about contaminates in our water….

Millions Of Microscopic Pieces Of Plastic Found In Bottled Water

I just wanted to show that this problem is deeper than the water…..

A new investigation from Consumer Reports has found plastics in “almost every food” it tested, affirming that these chemicals remain “widespread” in what we eat despite the risks they pose to our health.

The chemical phthalate, a type of “plasticizer” used in plastic manufacturing that makes the material more flexible and durable, was found in all but one of the 85 common food items tested. Bisphenol A, another chemical used in plastic manufacturing, was found in 79 percent of the samples.

Technically, none of the levels found exceeded the acceptable limits set by American and European regulators. But, as CR argues, that’s just one reason why the likes of the US Food and Drug Administration is sorely behind what the science says on how dangerous these chemicals — phthalates especially, given their ubiquity — can be.

It notes that there’s no confirmed safe level of phthalates, and a broad body of studies have linked them to asthma, diabetes, reproductive issues, and hormonal problems, even at levels “well below” the limits set by regulators.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-phthalates-almost-all-food

That is about it for this Saturday’s News Dump…..hopefully you found something that caught your fancy.

Go out and enjoy your weekend….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–12Jan24

Damn I love a good burger!

And then there are things like the Big Mac.

Do you like the Big Mac? How about a double Big Mac….interested?

Well Bubba you can have it your way for a limited time….coming soon to a menu near you.

The chain just announced it will be taking its Big Mac and multiplying the meat by two for a returning menu item. That’s right: the Double Big Mac, with its four (count ’em, four) burger patties, is back after a four-year hiatus.

The Double Big Mac features four 100% all-beef patties and is topped with pickles, shredded lettuce, finely chopped onions, a slice of American cheese and Big Mac sauce, all sandwiched between a sesame seed bun.

The hefty hamburger will be available at participating McDonald’s restaurants nationwide starting Wednesday, Jan. 24, for a limited time. A McDonald’s USA spokesperson says the price of the Double Big Mac is determined by each individual restaurant and may vary by location.

The regular Big Mac already costs about $7…..that would make a double to cost about $14….seriously?

Who the Hell is that stupid?

That was rhetorical no need to answer.

For about $4 more I can have the best burger in my area…and this burger is a bison burger.

For those weight watchers….the double Big Mac will have 740 calories and that does not include the fries or the sugary drink.

It also has 46g of carbs…..45g of fats…..and 1370 mg or sodium.

In other words while you are enjoying a trendy crappy meal you can entertain yourself by listening to your arteries slam shut.

This is a stupid idea and even stupider idea to eat this junk.

Of course that is my personal opinion and not a professional one.

I hope everyone has a great weekend….and as always….Be well and Be Safe.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”