Month: April 2024

IST Saturday News Dump–13Apr24

It is that magical time when IST finds the most under-reported stories from the past week…..some outrageous, some entertaining and some just plain gross….

I will start with a story from the “Can’t Fix Stupid’ files….

A 21-year-old skier in Colorado was wearing a helmet and other protective gear but it wasn’t enough to save him when his attempt to jump a highway failed, authorities say. Investigators found that the man “was attempting to perform a high-risk skiing stunt by trying to clear the width of Highway 40 and unfortunately lacked the necessary speed and distance and subsequently landed on the highway pavement,” the Grand County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Authorities said a bystander initiated CPR but the man died at the scene, the Denver Post reports.

The county coroner’s office identified the man as Dallas LeBeau, 9News reports. The jump LeBeau attempted near the Berthoud Pass summit, west of Denver, was 40 feet, KDVR reports. Friends told KDVR that LeBeau loved to ski and often urged others to take up the sport. “He wanted to do things that nobody else had done. He always said his birthday was the same day as Evel Knievel,” says childhood friend Devin Shirk.

All for a YouTube moment.

Stupid is as stupid does!

Most sane people know that climate change is real and will soon be a drag on the food supply….could this be a savior when that occurs?

Breadfruit is hardly a staple of the American diet, but aficionado Zoë Schlanger at the Atlantic wonders if that will change soon enough. The trees grow in tropical climates with lots of rain, but climate change is shifting where they can be planted. Until recently, the only place on the continental US they were successfully grown was the Florida Keys, but warming weather patterns are changing that. Here’s why the tree and its versatile crop could become the next trendy thing on the menu:

  • They grow quickly: Breadfruit trees grow fast (up to 20 feet in their first three years), and fruit within their first year. They yield between 200 and 400 basketball-sized fruits annually, per the BBC, producing a vast amount of food on very little acreage.
  • They’re nutrient dense: A serving of breadfruit gives a lot of bang for its buck. It contains all nine essential amino acids, making it a good source of protein. Breadfruit is also rich in fiber and various vitamins and minerals like calcium, iron, and potassium. And according to Forbes, one fruit can provide the carbohydrate intake for a full family.
  • They can withstand extreme weather: While their growing conditions must be tropical, breadfruit trees are hardy once established. Florida grower Patrick Garvey noted that after 2017’s Hurricane Irma, all his fruit trees were demolished from the influx of salt water, except for his single breadfruit tree, which was back in action 18 months later. Impressed by its resiliency, he switched gears and is growing a grove of them.
  • They’re quite yummy: Breadfruit is versatile in the kitchen—fried into fritters, roasted, ground into flour, or used as a custard when it’s ripest. If its monicker, derived from its chewiness, isn’t exactly enticing, read these musings from Schlanger: “(My friend) would pound garlic and oil with oregano brujo, a pungent weedy plant in the mint family, and spoon the sauce over the frittered discs. For me, little in this world is above a breadfruit tostón, crisp and flaky on the outside, creamy on the inside. My mouth is watering writing this paragraph.”

Sounds more yummy than the pond scum story from a couple of weeks ago.

There has been many stories in the recent past about gene editing…..and this is just another one…..

The experimental biotech startup Verve Therapeutics has paused the first phase of a buzzy human gene-editing trial due to strange side effects in a patient, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The trial in question — dubbed the “Heart-1” trial — is the company’s attempt to use gene editing to reduce heart-attack-causing cholesterol in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, a passed-down genetic disorder that causes buildups of LDL cholesterol in individuals. LDL is the bad kind of cholesterol, and familial hypercholesterolemia drastically heightens patients’ risk of early heart attack and can lower life expectancy overall. Verve’s proposed solution: inject “VERVE-101,” a serum designed to lower fatty LDL molecules by genetically altering the cholesterol-managing PCSK9 gene, into trial participants’ livers.

While promising tests on monkeys paved the way for Verve’s much-anticipated human trial, however, Heart-1 has now hit another speed bump.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/gene-editing-experiment-side-effects

I can see the benefits from this practice but I can also foresee abuses as well….think Khan from Star Trek.

I hate to be a bummer but this is too important to pass up……

The Earth simply can’t stop setting new heat records.

Global surface temperatures have soared once again, The Guardian reports, making March the tenth consecutive hottest month on record. Over the last 12 months alone, global temperatures have persistently been more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, putting us squarely in “uncharted territory.”

Put differently, we’ve already surpassed the levels stipulated by the Paris Climate Agreement — at least for the time being — in an alarmingly abrupt progression that’s even caught environmental scientists by surprise.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/global-temperatures-set-records-past-ten-months

This news worries me for I have planted a garden and Summer will be trying as it was last year….the drought and the extreme heat it was a daunting thing to keep the garden healthy.

Last week the news hit that OJ had died of cancer….not too many people will mourn his passing….I got to thinking about the famous ‘slow speed’ chase and wondered what the Hell had happened to that white Ford Bronco….of course me being me I had to go searching for info…..

It was, as the Los Angeles Times reports, “a ‘Where were you?’ moment.” While later generations would vividly recall the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, those a bit older remember the afternoon of June 17, 1994, when OJ Simpson, in the backseat of a white Ford Bronco, reportedly with a gun to his head, led police on a slow-speed pursuit through Los Angeles, driven by friend Al “AC” Cowlings. With Simpson’s death, people can’t help but harken back to that day, nearly 30 years ago, when Simpson was to surrender to charges of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Quickly labeled a fugitive, Simpson delayed arraignment for hours until landing at his home in Brentwood, where he was taken into custody shortly before 9pm.

CNN and NBC interrupted coverage to broadcast the chase live. (Watch CNN’s coverage here.) Though the event shouldn’t have been globally or even nationally significant, it involved one of the most famous people in America, wanted for double murder. Cowlings had alerted police to Simpson’s condition and asked them to back off, resulting in what was essentially a parade on LA freeways. For Simpson, a former star running back, it was “the most-watched run of his life,” reports CBS Sports. Some 95 million people watched the chase unfold, more than tuned in to any Super Bowl in the 1990s. It’s a fact some believe “helped make the Simpson trial a national obsession,” per the Times.

The chase “ushered in the coming era of the 24-hour cable news cycle” and kicked off “a 16-month span of nonstop coverage of Simpson’s murder trial that would ultimately end in his polarizing acquittal,” per the Washington Post. It also made that 1993 Ford Bronco an icon, pushing sales of the vehicle upwards, per SlashGear. The Bronco belonged to Cowlings, though Simpson had an identical version that had been seized by police. Cowlings’ Bronco was later sold to an associate for $200,000, per USA Today. It’s now kept at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, “next to Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Bug and John Dillinger’s red Essex Terraplane,” the outlet reports.

That solved that mystery.

That is all I have on this Saturday….I hope everyone has a great weekend and as always….Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

12 April 1861

My readers know that I cannot pass up an opportunity to drop some history….and today is one of those days.

Do you know what day it is?

Hundred and sixty three years ago today the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina thus starting the bloody struggle that has been called the “American Civil War”……

For those that slept through American history class….

By 1861, the country had already experienced decades of short-lived but ultimately failed compromises concerning the expansion of slavery in the United States and its territories. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860—a man who declared “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free”—threatened the culture and economy of southern slave states and served as a catalyst for secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States, and by February 2, 1861, six more states followed suit. Southern delegates met on February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, AL., and established the Confederate States of America, with Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis elected as its provisional president. Confederate militia forces began seizing United States forts and property throughout the south. With a lame-duck president in office, and a controversial president-elect poised to succeed him, the crisis approached a boiling point and exploded at Fort Sumter.

In the South we are taught our state’s history and most book make it seem like the desire to leave the union was overwhelmingly popular…,not accurate….

From its beginnings the Confederacy suffered from a rising tide of intense domestic hostility, not only among Southern blacks but increasingly among Southern whites. Ironically, it was a hostility brought on largely by those most responsible for the Confederacy’s creation. Planters excused themselves from the draft in various ways, then grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Soldiers went hungry, as did their families back home. Women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots from Richmond, Virginia, to Galveston, Texas. Soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, and draft evasion became commonplace. By 1864, the draft law was practically impossible to enforce and two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. Many deserters and draft dodgers formed armed bands that controlled vast areas of the Southern countryside.

Wartime disaffection among Southerners had solid roots in the early secession crisis. Most white Southerners, three-fourths of whom owned no slaves, made it clear in the winter 1860-61 elections for state convention delegates that they opposed immediate secession. Nevertheless, state conventions across the South, all of them dominated by slaveholders, ultimately ignored majority will and took their states out of the Union. One Texas politician conceded that ambitious colleagues had engineered secession without strong backing from “the mass of the people.” A staunch South Carolina secessionist admitted the same. “But,” he asked, “whoever waited for the common people when a great move was to be made—we must make the move and force them to follow.”

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/southern-unionism.html

Even in the South there were enclaves of unionist bravado…..even in Mississippi….Jones county.

The story of Jones County, Mississippi’s Unionist activities has long been clouded by myth and legend, but most historians agree that this small, wooded backwater was the site of some particularly violent resistance to the Confederacy. The pro-U.S. movement in Jones first crystallized a few years into the Civil War, when the county became a haven for young men who had grown disillusioned with the Confederate cause and deserted the army. Led by a mercurial local named Newton Knight, the runaways organized into a Unionist guerilla outfit called the Knight Company and took to harassing nearby Confederate units. Whether Knight and his band were a principled resistance group or mere bandits has been a matter of debate, but there’s no doubt they succeeded in stirring the political pot. The group effectively disabled the county government, and at one point, its activities sparked rumors that Jones County had seceded from the Confederacy and was flying the stars and stripes over its courthouse. The Knight Company’s disruptive reign continued until April 1864, when Confederate Colonel Robert Lowry used bloodhounds to track the guerillas and drive them from their hideout in the swamps. Newton Knight later resurfaced, however, and after the war, he assisted in U.S. reconstruction efforts in Mississippi.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was in school this event was never covered at all.

There were others…..

https://www.history.com/news/6-unionist-strongholds-in-the-south-during-the-civil-war

For more information if interested….

Southerner vs. Southerner: Union Supporters Below the Mason-Dixon Line

You have seen those child soldiers in Africa…..well during our Civil War children as young as 10 fought and died….

Ten times more underage soldiers, from as young as 10-17, fought in the American Civil War than previously recognised, and this had profound implications for US military and legal history. This is a key takeaway from Associate Professor Frances M. Clarke and Professor Rebecca Jo Plant’s prize-winning book, Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era.

“In America’s Civil War era, children remained minors until they turned 21. If they entered the regular army, however, they were emancipated from parental control. To retrieve young sons, parents filed writs of habeas corpus in massive numbers, while the Lincoln administration tried to stymie their efforts by silencing local courts. These disputes led to one of the most significant shifts in US legal history-the federalisation of habeas corpus,” said Associate Professor Clarke, who is a researcher in the Discipline of History.

https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/american-civil-war-prize-winning-new-book-reveals-plight-of-underage-soldiers/

A little history for those that are interested in the American Civil War….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The FISA Revolt

FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), just in case you have been unaware….it is up for renewal and the Hard Right is fighting the passage of this…..

A bill that would reauthorize a crucial national security surveillance program was blocked Wednesday by a conservative revolt, pushing the prospects of final passage into uncertainty amid a looming deadline. The legislative impasse followed an edict earlier in the day from Donald Trump to “kill” the measure. The procedural vote to bring up the bill failed 193-228, with 19 Republicans joining Democrats in voting no. More, from the AP:

  • The bill. The bill in question would renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the US government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. US officials have said the tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage.
  • Opposition. The reauthorization is currently tied to a series of reforms aimed at satisfying critics who complained of civil liberties violations against Americans. But opponents have complained that those changes did not go far enough. Among the detractors are some of Johnson’s harshest critics, members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus. Pushback has been bipartisan, with Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden, who have long championed civil liberties, aligning with Republican supporters of Trump.
  • “Kill FISA.” In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump stated incorrectly that Section 702 had been used to spy on his presidential campaign. “Kill FISA,” Trump wrote in all capital letters. “It was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign.” A former adviser to his 2016 presidential campaign was targeted for surveillance over potential ties to Russia under a different section of the law.
  • Expiry date. Though the program would technically expire on April 19, the Biden administration has said it expects its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
  • House Intelligence Committee reaction. “I’m just bewildered that a small number of members decided to take down the rule,” Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday evening. The panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Turner, also lamented that the bill had faltered, especially since he said it had unanimous support from a special working group. “There’s a great deal of misinformation about FISA,” Turner said. “It is not spying on Americans—in fact, that is absolutely prohibited.”
  • What Johnson had to say. The Washington Post reports that when Johnson was asked if Trump was impeding the FISA reauthorization process, he said, “I’ll just say that it’s never helpful for the majority party to take down its own rules.”

If you would like a more detailed look then this site should help….

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/bill-to-extend-mass-surveillance-program-fails-house-vote/

More to the story….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/section-702-2667732823

Looks like the Freedom Caucus is gunning for Johnson as they did for his predecessor, McCarthy…..

These tools have way too much power and Trump has way too much influence on this pack of thugs.

Will Johnson cave to keep his job or will he grow some cajones and take on the Freedom Caucus?

More fun for me!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–11Apr24

My next door neighbor, I live in Mississippi, is trying to criminalize librarians….Alabama has a law in consideration that would do just that…..

The Alabama Library Association and other critics on Wednesday called out the state’s Republican policymakers for pushing a new bill that opponents warn will unfairly jail librarians and have a chilling impact on collections.

House Bill 385, introduced Tuesday by state Rep. Arnold Mooney (R-43) and 30 other legislators, says that “under existing law, certain obscenity laws do not apply to public libraries, public school libraries, college libraries, or university libraries, or the employees or agents of any such libraries.”

“This bill would provide that these criminal obscenity laws do not apply to college or university libraries or their employees or agents, but do apply to public libraries, public school libraries, and their employees or agents,” the legislation continues.

H.B. 385 would also add the following language to the definition of sexual conduct: “Any sexual or gender-oriented material that knowingly exposes minors to persons who are dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, or are stripping, or engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing, presentations, or activities in K-12 public schools, public libraries, and other public places where minors are expected and are known to be present without parental consent.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-library

So sad that politicians are turning schools and libraries into political battlefields….when they should be more concerned with educating their citizens and not hindering the teachers and librarians.

It is a pathetic day when the destruction of schools take the lead in state politics.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trump Has An Answer For The Ukraine Situation

Everybody has an opinion on how to end the stalemate in Ukraine…..even the once and future king, Trump….

Donald Trump has a plan to stop the war in Ukraine, though Ukraine won’t like it. The former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee has spoken privately about his plan to pressure Ukraine to cede territory to Russia—specifically Crimea and the Donbas border region—in order to bring the two-year-old war to an end, the Washington Post reports. Trump has reportedly said both sides “want a way out” and people in parts of Ukraine wouldn’t mind joining Russia. He’s apparently so confident in his ideas he’s claimed he could negotiate a “very easy” peace deal within 24 hours of his election, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will not surrender any land.

A Trump campaign rep wouldn’t answer questions about his plan, but said “President Trump is the only one talking about stopping the killing.” Campaign adviser Jason Miller later claimed the whole report was “fake news,” per the New York Post. The proposed scenario outlined by sources would mark a dramatic departure from President Biden’s long-term plan to continue military support for Ukraine, and some foreign policy experts say it would only reward Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading his neighbor. Even people close to Trump share this view. “He has to pay a price. He can’t win at the end of this,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham, who claims to have “been spending 100% of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine.”

Graham says he wants Trump to embrace the idea of Ukraine joining NATO. But “he doesn’t say much about that. I don’t know if he’s thought too much about it,” Graham tells the Post. Former Trump White House aide Michael Anton has reportedly described Trump’s plan as focused on the ceding of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and Donbas to Russia, limiting NATO expansion, and encouraging Putin to lessen his reliance on China. That last point might take sanctions relief and European cooperation. But Ukraine and its European allies are likely to resist any deal with Moscow. For Zelensky, it would “constitute domestic political suicide,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Michael Kofman tells the Post.

I have said since about 1995 that since the collapse of the USSR that NATO should be dissolved and let Europe deal with the consequences of a defunct Soviet Union.

Ukraine….if there is a peace deal that keeps boundaries the way they are today then there will always be problems in Eastern Ukraine as there were before the invasion.

Is Trump’s plan a sound plan?

Will this plan hurt Trump’s chances?

In reality do any of his supporters really care?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Running On Empty

I wish I could say that this post was about the song by Jackson Browne….sadly it is not.

America is running on empty with our electrical supply.

The so-called experts are saying that climate change and other factors will cause the demand to rise significantly and there is the transition to electric vehicles that will rise.

It was bound to happen. An aging American infrastructure system, powered to some extent by coal and hydroelectric power, has faced rising needs for electricity for houses, businesses, AI, and Bitcoin. There is no short-term solution, and when one does occur, it is likely to be political.

There are several examples of how climate change has compromised electricity supply. One is how drought has affected one of the largest energy suppliers in the Western US- the Hoover Dam. According to NewsNow, “At full capacity, the turbines at the dam can produce 2,074 megawatts, but as the water level has declined during the drought, power production has been affected and efficiency of the power plant is down 33%.” At peak production, this electricity powers one million homes.

Coal’s use as a source of electricity has environmental problems. The EIA puts the percentage of electricity from coal at 16%. They would need to drop sharply to cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, but what happens to the goal to lower this, at least in the short term?

(climatecrisis247.com)

Could the US return to the days of massive nuke power policies?

Many world powers have sped-up plans to introduce new nuclear power plants in a bid to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and decarbonise. Due to the high energy demand, many countries around the globe view renewable energy as insufficient in the mid-term to provide enough energy to meet the needs of the growing world population. However, nuclear power could provide a low-carbon alternative, offering abundant energy and low emissions. However, experts now worry that the global reliance on Russian uranium to power many of these projects could put many world leaders in a quandary, having already introduced sanctions on Russian energy and attempted to reduce their reliance on Russia.  Earlier this year, the U.S. announced a $6 billion bailout for its existing nuclear plants. The government and the Department of Energy (DoE) partnered on a scheme to help nuclear plants across the country facing severe economic challenges to support the longevity of U.S. nuclear power, as part of the country’s green transition. Despite being controversial, nuclear power is considered carbon neutral, and therefore key to transitioning away from fossil fuels. Since then, the launch of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has encouraged greater investment in the nuclear energy sector. It offers a variety of subsidies, including a production tax credit to help preserve the existing fleet of nuclear plants and tax incentives for the development of new nuclear reactors.  

(oilprice.com)

Our electrical grid is falling apart it is old and getting tired….and it is getting overtaxed year by year….

What to do?

Let me float this idea….take some of the money we throw at every war in every corner of the world and use that to upgrade the system.

I mean come on….the War Department gets about $900 billion this year alone…..cut that by 20% and get the grid up to snuff….or as close to snuff as possible.

It is only a matter of time people.

Or if that idea is not to your liking….how about another one?

The US added just 251 miles of high-voltage transmission lines last year, another in a series of declines, though the nation greatly needs more power. The process is slowed by as much as a decade by the need for approval from various governments and agencies, as well as to address lawsuits over potential damage to views and ecosystems. Two reports issued Tuesday suggest the US is overlooking a technique used in other countries that could double the electric grid’s capacity in many parts of the country, the New York Times reports.

“Advanced reconductoring” basically refers to replacing old power lines with newer models that have smaller, lighter cores such as carbon fiber and hold more aluminum. These lines can carry twice the current that older lines do. The change is being made in Belgium, the Netherlands, and other nations to provide room for more wind and solar power. “We talked with the transmission system planners over there and they all said this is a no-brainer,” said Emilia Chojkiewicz of the University of California, Berkeley, who cowrote one of the reports. “It’s often difficult to get new rights of way for lines, and reconductoring is much faster.”

The other report, from GridLab and Energy Innovation, a nonprofit, looked at why more US utilities aren’t already doing this. An executive for Southern California Edison, one of the largest utilities in the US, said there are questions about how much of the need this approach will meet but said, “We agree that advanced conductors are going to be very, very useful.” A Berkeley scientist called reconductoring a start, per the Times. “It’s not the only thing we need to do to upgrade the grid, but it can be a major part of the solution,” Amol Phadke said.

The point is we need to do something before it is too late.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Have Candidates Ever Been Disliked More?

College of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

2024 is an election that has two candidates that few voters seem to like and in some cases hate.

I will admit that I would not vote for Trump on threat of death and Biden to me is just a spineless tool of big business….I will not vote for either of these candidates and will most likely look elsewhere to put my vote…..just so I can get the endless trash talk about my choice.

All this said has there ever been two more disliked candidates in recent memory?

No there has not and ABC covers the subject…..

Shocking news: Americans are not jazzed about their choices in the 2024 presidential election. According to 538’s averages,* only 43 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of former President Donald Trump, while 53 percent have an unfavorable opinion. And only 40 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of President Joe Biden; 55 percent have an unfavorable one.

It’s historically unusual for any major-party nominee to be this unpopular — let alone both of them. Using 538’s current polling-average methodology, we went back and calculated retroactive favorability averages for every Democratic and Republican presidential nominee since 1980.** By late October before the election, only seven of the 22 candidates had negative net favorability ratings.

If Trump’s and Biden’s net favorability ratings remain underwater through Election Day, 2024 will be only the second presidential election since at least 1980 in which Americans had a negative view of both candidates. The first was in 2016 — which also happens to be the only recent presidential election in which the two candidates were, on average, more disliked than Trump and Biden are now.

It’s possible that, with most Americans entrenched in their partisan camps and believing that the country is on the wrong track, we’ve entered an era of perpetually unpopular presidential candidates. Before 2016, no presidential nominee in at least 36 years was more than 9 percentage points underwater; since then, five of the six have been.

https://abcnews.go.com/538/americans-hated-candidates-biden-trump/story

I also read that another batch of ‘people’ are calling it quits for 2024 because their popularity was not there….I am talking about the ‘centrist’ attempt to field candidates “No Labels’……

After running up a series of high-profile rejections from potential candidates, No Labels is abandoning its efforts to field a 2024 presidential ticket, reports the Wall Street Journal. The centrist group announced the decision on Thursday after being rebuffed by contenders including Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Joe Manchin, and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. The group had raised $60 million with the intention of fielding a candidate should Donald Trump and President Biden end up as their parties’ nominees, per the New York Times.

“Today, No Labels is ending our effort to put forth a Unity ticket in the 2024 presidential election,” Nancy Jacobson, the group’s leader, said in a statement. “Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before. But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.” The move also comes after the death of the group’s founding chair, Joe Lieberman.

That gets rid of one group of ‘centrists’ now if we can keep this flow going then this country may have a chance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–09Apr24

I hope everyone that participated in the viewing of the eclipse used protection….if not then you will have a hard time reading this post.

There some things that have been proven to be true and yet there is a portion of the population that refuses to believe…..(you gotta love misinformation….proponents have done a helluva job)

Here are a few of the facts that some still refuse to believe….

Scientific discoveries are being made all the time, and things that may once have been thought of as fanciful have now been proven to be real. Although debate still rages about things like whether the Earth is flat or round and whether the moon landings happened, there are some things that science has proven beyond doubt, but some people still won’t believe.

An online community discusses scientific findings that still split public opinion and have those who refuse to accept.

https://wealthynickel.com/15-things-that-are-scientific-fact-but-public-opinion-wont-accept-0424/

Some good stuff in that article.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Can Biden Do?

Get ready for a little history.

Last week I posted on the high cost of food and a loyal reader and commenter Grouchy Farmer, https://grouchyfarmer.com/ and I had conversation on how these prices could be controlled a bit…..I brought up that Nixon had done something in 1973 with the Executive Order process.

Nixon’s Executive Order 11723 states….

SECTION 1. Effective 9:00 p.m., e.s.t., June 13, 1973, no seller may charge to any class of purchaser and no purchaser may pay a price for any commodity or service which exceeds the freeze price charged for the same or a similar commodity or service in transactions with the same class of purchaser during the freeze base period. This order shall be effective for a maximum period of 60 days from the date hereof, until 11:59 p.m., e.s.t., August 12, 1973. It is not unlawful to charge or pay a price less than the freeze price and lower prices are encouraged.

SEC. 2. Each seller shall prepare a list of freeze prices for all commodities and services which he sells and shall maintain a copy of that list available for public inspection, during normal business hours, at each place of business where such commodities or services are offered for sale. In addition, the calculations and supporting data upon which the list is based shall be maintained by the seller at the location where the pricing decisions reflected on the list are ordinarily made and shall be made available on request to representatives of the Economic Stabilization Program.

SEC. 3. The provisions of this order shall not extend to the prices charged for raw agricultural products. The prices of processed agricultural products, however, are subject to the provisions of this order. For those agricultural products which are sold for ultimate consumption in their original unprocessed form, this provision applies after the first sale.

SEC. 4. The provisions of this order do not extend to (a) wages and salaries, which continue to be subject to the program established pursuant to Executive Order 11695 (b) interest and dividends, which continue to be subject to the program established by the Committee on Interest and Dividends and (c) rents which continue to be subject to controls only to the limited extent provided in Executive Order 11695.

SEC. 5. The Cost of Living Council shall develop and recommend to the President policies, mechanisms and procedures to achieve and maintain stability of prices and costs in a growing economy after the expiration of this freeze. To this end, it shall consult with representatives of agriculture, industry, labor, consumers and the public.

Read more on Nixon’s efforts…. Executive Order 11723

While I was no fan of Nixon at least he was doing something for the people of this nation….what is Biden doing?

I have said a few times….we cannot eat words and task force is a waste of time that will be soon forgotten in 2025 and then there is Congress the most corrupted lay-abouts that has ever been.

Granted 1973 was a different age and the special interests were not as liberal with the cash payouts as they are today and agribusiness was nothing but a far off thought.

I have no love for Biden but he could do more if so inclined….but that is a joke….he will do nothing but talk.

In my opinion price controls will do the job….if only for a short time….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

It’s An Eclipse Not An Apocalypse

Today is the big day and all eyes will turn to the sun and the possibility of witnessing a solar eclipse….but there are those among us that have seen some horrific things emanating from the eclipse….one such theory is that it is proof that the US is a ‘wicked nation’….to those people that believe my advice is stop drinking too much sacrificial wine.

Then there is yet another stupidity that the eclipse will be a human sacrifice event……

The internet is buzzing ahead of Monday’s total solar eclipse, with conspiracy theories about the rare celestial event spreading like wildfire.

Some are much more outlandish than others, however, with one particularly wild theory speculating that the phenomenon will lead to “a massive human sacrifice event.” Taking to the r/conspiracy subreddit, a Reddit page for sharing conspiracy theories about a multitude of topics and discussing them with others, Redditor u/wefellinloveinnyc expressed their fears surrounding the solar eclipse on Monday.

They cited maps showing the eclipse’s path of totality and that of previous American eclipses as well as the locations of major businesses like Tesla or other geographic features like fault lines as they relate to the paths of totality. “The April 8th ‘Great American Eclipse’ & Why I Believe They Are Planning A Massive Human Sacrifice Event” was what the user titled their post before launching into four paragraphs “backing up” their claim.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/solar-eclipse-mark-start-massive-32533422

These idiots show just how ignorant the population has become….it is sad.

If you plan on viewing the eclipse then please follow all safety precautions.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”