Month: September 2024

A 10 Point Progressive Plan

College of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

As the election slowly grinds into the minds of our fellow citizens I would like to offer up a quote for them to consider…..

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.

Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.

That is a quote from 1912 Progressive Party (Bull Moose)….it rings even more true today than in those days.

As the Congress slowly returns to what they pretend is normal…. Progressives in the country have released a 10 point plan going forward……list of 10 policy objectives….as usual Progressives have some great ideas but the so-called ‘centrist’ Dems will fight this plan tooth and nail and then there is the Repubs who cannot get behind anything that would benefit us peasants.

The plan is ambitious and very based on reality…..

A coalition of national progressive advocacy groups on Monday released a list of 10 policy objectives that it believes President Joe Biden should embrace to consolidate support for his high-stakes electoral rematch against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

The platform—released by Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), and the State Democratic Party Progressive Network—frontloads the threat that Trump and the fascist movement at his back pose to basic freedoms and democracy itself.

“The 2024 presidential election presents a challenge for progressives to preserve and amplify our voice while fighting the most dangerous threat to U.S. democracy in our nation’s history,” reads the platform’s introduction. “Our best strategy to advance both goals is to become state and national Biden delegates at the state and national Democratic Party conventions, and to elect Joe Biden for a second term. Throughout this process, we must advocate for a progressive policy agenda that builds and expands upon progressive elements of President Biden’s original Build Back Better (BBB) plan.”

“With our support and voice,” the document adds, “progressives may persuade and enable President Biden to achieve more progressive policy objectives during his second term and prevent a fascist takeover.”

The first plank of the agenda urges Biden and the Democratic Party to “develop and repetitively use more aggressive messaging against and educate the public about the dangers of fascism including exposing and condemning Project 2025, the fascist blueprint for a second Trump administration.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/progressive-coalition-platform

Like I said an ambitious plan and one that I will endorse whenever I can….but the real test will be those Progressives in Congress will they go bold or will the wimp out as they have done so many times before?

Then there is the ‘Progressive Promise’ from the Progressive Caucus in the House….

  1. Advancing justice, dignity, and peace for all. 

At the Progressive Caucus, we believe that government must be the great equalizer of opportunity for everyone. We are committed to passing legislation that advances justice, dignity, and peace for all people. 

  • Realizing the goal of a universal, high-quality, Medicare For All health care system for all. 

  • Advancing the right of every American to retire with security and dignity.

  • Ending poverty and income inequality and securing a living wage for all people.

  • Protecting the fundamental right to organize. 

  • Ending mass incarceration and advancing equal justice under the law.

  • Taking urgent, inclusive, and transformative action on climate change. 

  • Upholding the fundamental reproductive rights of all people. 

  • Ending our forever wars, cutting the bloated Pentagon budget, and prioritizing diplomacy.

  • Advancing humane, fair and just immigration laws.
  • Advancing racial justice and equity. 

There is more so read on…..

For me these principles are more in line with my thinking than the mainstream Dem which is a little better than a conservative.

Sadly there is no major candidate that will fight for these principles in 2024…..instead we will have the usual corrupt POS that has plagued our system for 40+ years.

Will I have to go in search of an alternate candidate?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Kris Kristofferson–R.I.P.

Another star is gone.

A musical icon from the 60s has died….this time it is one of my favorites….Kris Kristofferson.

Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died, reports the AP. Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said. He was 88. McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given. Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas, native wrote such classics standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine, and Tom T. Hall. “There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas. He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the US Military Academy at West Point to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

His music will live on but he will be missed.

In closing I leave you with a couple of my favorite songs …..

This one is from the American Outlaws, The Highwaymen tour with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings….

Great music for the soul of us old farts….thank you Kris!

May he rest in peace.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Which Came First?

It is Sunday and a day for me to enlighten my reading audience into some mysteries of life and thought….I try to avoid the mundane boredom that comes with US politics on the weekends.

Now it is time to expand the mind….throughout the ages man has asked the difficult questions….what is life?  What is love?  Where are we in the universe?

But in all that time there has been one gnawing question that no answer has been formulated…..which came first the chicken or the egg?

Now an answer has been presented…..

Was it the egg and then the chicken? Or the chicken and then the egg? Well, a group of scientists have suggested a new theory as to eggs-actly which came first.

Before we reached an age where we had so many other deliberations to worry about – taxes, electricity bills and what we’re actually going to do with the rest of our lives – there was nothing better than the biggest questions on our minds being what we would have for dinner, when our next playdate was or what came first – the chicken or the egg.

So, a team at the UK‘s University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences decided to find out once and for all.

Some argue the eggs came first – laid by dinosaur ancestors of the fluffy, squawky bird that funds establishments such as KFC. Others have argued a chicken popped out of nowhere and then proceeded to lay an egg.

And in a study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a team of scientists decided to take 51 fossil species and 29 living species and split them into two categories for examination: oviparous (laying hard or soft shelled eggs) and viviparous (giving birth to live young – like us humans do).

The study found the early reptilian ancestors of chickens were viviparous – they gave birth to live animals and didn’t lay eggs.

And while both the teams at Bristol and Nanjing University in China noted that animals laying hard-shelled eggs have been one of the greatest innovations, this research is particularly noteworthy.

The team explained the research implies extended embryo retention (when the mother retains their young before birthing) was the ultimate protection for this group of animals in particular – so basically, way back then, birthing a live chicken was safer than laying an egg.

https://www.unilad.com/news/what-came-first-chicken-egg-science-debate-304414-20240913

So did that paper truly give a definitive answer to which came first?

Your input would be welcomed.

That is my Sunday offering I hope you were entertained and/or educated….go out and have a wonderful Autumn day and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Saturday News Dump–28Sep24

It is that time again….another Saturday and another news dump…..

Personal news….nothing I would like to talk about right now….maybe later.

Locally–we dodged yet another bullet here on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi with a hurricane….Helene hit East of us and has brought very little effect to my region…thank you.

Now moving on to the real important stuff…

A whistleblower has told the world that a big dramatic story will break soon….

A UFO whistleblower, Charles McNeal, has made some startling claims about a significant event in human history set to occur in the coming months. He alleges that he was part of a top-secret US Air Force intelligence unit responsible for upholding a 70-year truce between the American government and an alien civilization.

According to McNeal, who offers no proof of his credentials on his YouTube channel, this truce is due to expire at the end of September 2024. He suggests that a series of planned events will follow, including the partial or total destruction of Israel, a brief global conflict, and a staged alien invasion using reverse-engineered UFO technology.

He also suggests that a gradual release of information through news outlets and fictional portrayals of extraterrestrial contact in films and TV has been part of a campaign to ready the world population for the shock of encountering an alien species. “This is known as the Public Acclimation Program,” he oddly states.

https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/major-ufo-announcement-whistleblower-aliens-33742511

Seriously?  Isn’t there at least one of these ‘stories’ monthly or so?

Romania has a new way of carbon capture…..

The European Bison, wiped out from Romania over 200 years ago, has been brought back thanks to efforts by Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania. Since their reintroduction in 2014, the population has grown to 170 individuals. Grazing over a 48 square kilometer area, these bison are not just surviving but thriving, transforming the landscape and its ecological dynamics.

New research from Yale University indicates that these bison significantly enhance the ecosystem’s ability to capture carbon. Evidently by grazing, they promote plant growth, recycle nutrients, and compact the soil, which helps prevent carbon release. This process results in the capture of an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon each year, roughly equivalent to the emissions from 43,000 US petrol cars.

https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/how-reintroducing-bison-in-romania-is-capturing-co2-2-223864/

It is Autumn and those pesky leaves will start to fall and the pain in the butt will begin….

Nature experts have a message for anyone with a lawn heading into autumn: Step away from the rake.

As the weather turns cooler, trees change, leaves begin to fall, and homeowners embark on one of the most back-breaking chores of the year. But if the thought of spending hours combing your property has you dreading the return of fall, there’s good news: You don’t have to.

Scientists are debunking the myth that a layer of leaves is bad for our lawns. Rather, the practice of ignoring plant debris—which they’ve labeled “leaving leaves”—offers numerous benefits. Instead of piling and burning or bagging a tree’s leftovers when the seasons change, experts suggest letting your soil reap the rewards of the decomposing organic matter.

“A forest has the richest soil there is, and that happens because leaves are falling off the trees and decomposing right there and organic materials are going back into the soil,” Susan Barton, a professor of landscape horticulture at the University of Delaware told The New York Times. “We should be doing that in all of our landscapes, but we’re not.”

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/why-you-should-not-rake-fall-leaves

I do not rake….I mulch up the leaves and leave them where they fall.

Food stuff….I love asparagus either roasted or grilled but why does it make my pee smell….well funky?

Asparagus has a long and storied history: It was mentioned in the myths and the scholarly writings of ancient Greece, and its cultivation was the subject of a detailed lesson in Cato the Elder’s treatise, On Agriculture. But it wasn’t until the turn of the 18th century that discussion of the link between asparagus and odorous urine emerged.

In 1731, John Arbuthnot, physician to Queen Anne, noted that asparagus “affects the urine with a foetid smell … and therefore have been suspected by some physicians as not friendly to the kidneys.” Benjamin Franklin also noticed that eating asparagus “shall give our urine a disagreeable odor.”

Since then, there has been debate over what is responsible for the stinky pee phenomenon. Polish chemist and doctor Marceli Nencki identified a compound called methanethiol as the cause in 1891, after a study that involved four men eating about three and a half pounds of asparagus apiece. In 1975, Robert H. White, a chemist at the University of California at San Diego, used gas chromatography to pin down several compounds known as S-methyl thioesters as the culprits. Other researchers have blamed various sulfur-containing metabolites.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24731/why-does-asparagus-make-your-pee-smell-funny

Just a short FYI for this Saturday.

More food stuff….

Thousands of chemicals used in food packaging and food production are leaching into food itself.

“It’s [from] your soda can, your plastic cooking utensils, your nonstick frying pan, the cardboard box that your fries come in,” says Jane Muncke, a toxicologist based in Zurich. “It’s retail food packaging, but also the processing equipment, and your [kitchenware] and tableware at home.”

More than 3,600 chemicals found in food packaging are also found in human bodies, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. The research was led by Muncke and her colleagues at the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, a nonprofit research group focused on hazardous chemicals in food packaging.

The paper synthesizes data from other published sources that document the presence of certain chemicals in humans from samples of blood, urine and breast milk. Of the 3,600 chemicals found in both food packaging and in humans, the researchers say about 80 are known to have “hazard properties of high concern” to human health.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/09/20/g-s1-23909/food-packaging-chemicals-health-hazard

As they say “we are what we eat”….scary huh?

This does it for me…..I have much to consider so this Saturday is a bit short….sorry about that.

Enjoy your weekend and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Trump A Fascist?

I am sorry but I have had lots on my mind today so I have not written anything but this article should do to stir up some reactions.

I know, I know…..this is one subject that has been batted around for years but the question is still unanswered….definitively.

Supporters say no….that it is only sour grapes that has people saying such stuff…..opponents point to words and speeches and actions as proof that he is leaning far Right….which is accurate?

This is a well written article from the Guardian and I give it here to see if people will actually pay attention or stick to their shallow thinking.

****Please read the article and comment on the validity of the work not some half baked belief that is rambling around in that mind of yours.****

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/is-donald-trump-a-fascist

The piece is well worth the read whether you agree or not.

And now if you have any thing to add….

I Read, I Write, You know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is This Voter Suppression?

We hear about all the attempts being made around the country to try and find ways to keep voters from voting….all under the guise of preventing voter fraud, which by the way is NOT a major problem but is being used to rev up the idiots.

Seems a mayor in Wisconsin has a way to try and control who gets to vote.

The mayor of a central Wisconsin city who ran for office on his opposition to absentee ballot drop boxes said Wednesday he did nothing wrong when he put on work gloves, donned a hard, hat and used a dolly, to cart away a drop box outside City Hall. Wausau Mayor Doug Diny posed for a picture Sunday to memorialize his removal of the city’s lone drop box, which had been put outside City Hall around the same time late last week that absentee ballots were sent to voters, the AP reports. The city’s election clerk, Kaitlyn Bernarde, said she has reported the issue to the Marathon County district attorney as well as the state elections commission.

“

This is no different than the maintenance guy moving it out there,” Diny said Wednesday. “I’m a member of staff. There’s nothing nefarious going on here. I’m hoping for a good result.”

  • The move, which sparked a protest in the city Tuesday night and anger among drop box advocates, is the latest example in swing state Wisconsin of the fight over whether communities will allow absentee ballot drop boxes.
  • After former Donald Trump lost the state in 2020, he and some Republicans alleged that drop boxes facilitated cheating, even though they offered no evidence. Democrats, election officials, and other Republicans argued the boxes are secure. The Wisconsin Supreme Court, then controlled by conservatives, banned the use of drop boxes in 2022. But in July, the now-liberal controlled court reversed that decision and said drop boxes could be used. However, the court left it up to each community to decide whether to install them.
  • More than 60 towns, villages, and cities in nine of the state’s 72 counties have opted out of using absentee ballot drop boxes for the presidential election in November, according to a tally by the group All Voting is Local. Drop boxes are being embraced in heavily Democratic cities including Milwaukee and Madison.
  • Diny ran as a conservative and was backed by the Republican Party in the nonpartisan mayor’s race. He is in his first year as Wausau mayor after being elected in April. Diny said that he and the city clerk never discussed the drop box before it was placed outside City Hall late last week. Diny said he decided Sunday to act when he realized the drop box was “not secure.”
  • Bernarde said Wednesday that the city planned to “secure the drop box to the ground” and unlock it, but it was removed before that could be done. The box was locked and contained no ballots, she said. It is a felony in Wisconsin to impede or prevent “the free exercise of the franchise at an election.”
  • Wausau resident Pamela Bannister, speaking at a city council meeting Tuesday night, called for Diny to apologize and return the drop box. “This is the kind of action that’s designed to stir the pot,” Bannister said. “It does not tamp down the rhetoric that we’re all facing in this election cycle. It accomplishes nothing positive and amounts to, in my estimation, voting interference and intimidation.”

So I ask again is this an attempt at voter suppression?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A “Great Replacement Theory”

It is time to call a spade a spade.

There has been lots of typing trying to explain what is happening in this country politically….some of it is detailed and in-depth but there is a simpler explanation.

Donald Trump made clear on the Philadelphia debate stage this week, as he has throughout his three presidential campaigns, the basis of his run for office. Trump is running on the platform that non-white immigration is an existential threat to the nation. This time around, Trump has made his primary message, the so-called Great Replacement Theory(GRT), more vivid than ever. It is therefore of existential importance in understanding the stakes of this election to have clearly in mind what has happened in the past when GRT has been the central driving narrative both of individuals and of states.

According to the Great Replacement Theory, the nation’s greatness, its traditions and its practitioners, are existentially imperiled by an influx of foreign races, ethnicities or religions. The foreign elements are sometimes described in the narrative of GRT, as vermin or diseases. 

GRT was central to the official Nazi motivation for the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on Jewish betrayal of Germany. But this betrayal, for Hitler, was intimately connected to the Great Replacement Theory, via the introduction of Black soldiers in the French army subsequently occupying the Rhineland, the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes:

It was and is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

With the benefit of hindsight, the idea that Jews betrayed Germany in World War I in order to use the occupying French army to bring Black Senegalese soldiers in to ruin the white race by rape and race mixing seems utterly unhinged. It is hard to fathom that this crazed conspiracy theory justified for many Germans the mass murder of two out of every three of Europe’s Jews. But our descendants will also find it hard to understand why so many Americans find Trump’s claims that non-white immigrants to the United States are savages who eat pets, criminally insane murderers and drugs dealers who nevertheless somehow manage to get it together to vote fraudulently en masse in election to be plausible. In both cases, the bizarre nature of these claims stands in stark contrast to their obvious political power.

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/13/donald-is-openly-running-a-great-replacement-theory-campaign/

All this is nothing new…..I recall when the boat people were arriving in the 70s a story locally was that pets were being eaten by them and that Vietnam had sent us criminals….any of that sound familiar?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Biden’s UN Farewell

Soon to be former president Joe Biden strolled up to the podium at the General Assembly of the United Nations to make his last speech as president.

And was it a bunch of crap!  (My thoughts included)

President Biden delivered his final address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, and while he addressed international conflicts, he also spoke of his decision to withdraw from the 2024 race. Details from outlets including CNN, the New York Times, the AP, and the Guardian.

  • “Some things are more important than staying in power,” Biden told his fellow world leaders. “As much as I love the job, I love my country more. I decided, after 50 years of public service, it’s time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward.”

(Was not his intention he flub up a debate and had to walk down)

  • Biden said he has witnessed a “remarkable sweep of history” in his life and warned that “we’re in another inflection point in world history—for the choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come.” On the same theme, he sounded a note of optimism: “I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not,” he said. “We are stronger than we think” when acting in unity.

(This is a loaded statement….well crafted to mean anything)

  • The president said the world “cannot look away” from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or stop supporting the latter. “The good news is Putin’s war has failed at his core aim,” Biden said. “He set out to destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is still free. He set out [to] weaken NATO, but NATO is bigger, stronger, more united than ever before.”

(But we can look away from the Middle East while Israel attacks and kills with impunity)(He claimed that he was working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability to the Middle East” even though his administration continues to provide full-throated support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and its escalations in Lebanon.  And that is so much chicken sh*t)

  • He also lamented the “bloody civil war” in Sudan, saying it had “unleashed one of the world’s worst humanitarian [crises].”

(Good one…when was the last time he brought this crisis up?)(In his address, Biden also called for countries to stop arming the opposing sides in the war in Sudan. “The world needs to stop arming the generals, to speak with one voice and tell them: Stop tearing your country apart. Stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people. End this war now,” he said.)(Good advice a shame he or anyone else in DC will take it)

For those interested this is a transcript of Biden speech to the UNGA….

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/09/24/remarks-by-president-biden-before-the-79th-session-of-the-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-ny/

Anyone that follows international affairs will see the hypocrisy in this speech….I am sorry but his words ring hollow.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

You Wanna Bet?

The Lotto was big here in Mississippi until they legalized sports betting…..the casinos starting raking in big bucks and then they legalized electronic sports betting and the flood gates were opened wide.

There is a wealth of sites and apps that allow you to throw your money away….FanDuel, Draft king, et, etc….all this easy access will come back and bite you in the ass.

This is heading for a crisis…..for a ‘fool and his money are soon parted’…..

America is a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires trapped by the billionaire class. We wax poetic about democracy and meritocracy inside of a top-down controlled world, telling ourselves a fantasy about what this country is while ignoring what it proves itself to be–all as myriad crises fester far from the consequences faced by the capitalist class. Perhaps that’s why sports are so popular. They are the lone part of America that is actually centered around meritocratic ideals (just so long as you don’t kneel before the national anthem).

And make no mistake, legalized sports gambling is one of those many crises plaguing this country. Charles Fain Lehman covered a litany of new studies in an excellent article for The Atlantic today, and they all indicate that the legalization of sports gambling has largely been a disaster.

There are some predictable outcomes, like Northwestern University’s study which found that legal sports gambling depletes household savings by $2 for every $1 gambled, and economists at UCLA found that legalization increases the risk a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent.

But there are even darker consequences that come with a wave of highly addictive betting apps that sports leagues have made inseparable with their product, like how Oregon economists found that legal sports betting leads to about a nine percent increase in intimate-partner violence. Men’s Health conducted a poll of men in 2023 where 58 percent of respondents said sports betting has affected their mental health, 43 percent say it has affected their physical health, and 18 percent say it is “destroying [their] life.”

https://www.splinter.com/the-sports-gambling-crisis-is-america-in-a-nutshell

These sites are geared to people chasing scared money….those trying to make rent….those trying to feed the kids….scared money.

These sites and apps will do whatever it takes to hook you and keep you coming back for one more chance.

Do not be fooled by these sites….there is nothing easy about gambling….

Could it be time to ban on-line betting?

Back in 2018, the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize sports gambling. “Six years into the experiment, the evidence is convincing: Legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake,” writes Charles Fain Lehman in the Atlantic. It may be harmless fun for a lot of people, but far too many can’t control the impulse, and the ubiquitous ads on TV and online aren’t helping. In his essay, Lehman cites studies suggesting that the proliferation of gambling is taking a heavy toll, and usually on families that can least afford it. “Specifically, for every $1 spent on betting, households put $2 less into investment accounts,” he writes, adding that households with gamblers are more likely to see credit cards maxed out, checking accounts overdrawn, and even bankruptcy.

“More harrowing” is a University of Oregon study estimating that intimate-partner violence rises 9% in states where gambling is legal, he writes. At this point, 38 states allow gambling, with little to show for it given that tax revenue “has been anemic”—less than alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana, writes Lehman. And that’s even as Goldman Sachs says Americans now bet $1 billion a month, up 20-fold since it was legalized. It’s time to ban gambling anew, argues Lehman. “If the states are ‘laboratories of democracy,’ then the results of their experiment with sports gambling are in, and they are uniformly negative,” he writes. “Better to end the study now than prolong the suffering.”

(Read his full essay, which includes more details on the studies cited.)

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will Georgia Be Ground Zero?

Many people are saying that Trump will unleash his minions to bring chaos to the 2024 election if he does not win….

A sizable minority of Americans said they would try to invalidate the presidential election results depending on which candidate wins, according to a new poll. In the latest World Justice Project survey, 14% of Republicans said they would “take action to overturn the 2024 election based solely on who is declared the winner.” Eleven percent of Democrats said they would do the same.

The survey — which is completed annually — also found widespread distrust in elections and the courts that arbitrate them. “Today, trust in many U.S. institutions, government accountability, and overall rule of law is considerably lower than it was ahead of the 2020 election,” Elizabeth Andersen, the executive director of the World Justice Project — which works to advance the rule of law around the globe — said in a statement.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article292616804.html#storylink=cpy

….and it is shaping up that Georgia may be the ground zero that they are looking for.

There have been several reports of the antics by Trump loyalists in the background in Georgia.

A network of county election officials in Georgia is strategizing behind the scenes to help Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The Guardian, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, obtained emails through a public records request from a group calling itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, which includes election officials from at least five counties in the state. The emails show favoritism by the group toward Trump, as well as efforts by the group to show fraud in the 2024 elections, despite no vote yet having been cast.

Emails were sent between the officials, as well as election deniers in Georgia and around the country. These included groups like the Tea Party Patriots, or TPP, and the Election Integrity Network, or EIN, a group founded by former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell. Members include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton County board of elections, and his colleague Julie Adams, Debbie Fisher of Cobb County, Nancy Jester of DeKalb County, and Roy McClain of Spalding County. All of them have a history of refusing to certify election results, and Adams works directly for the TPP and EIN.

In the emails, members discuss how to combat scrutiny, in one case regarding a letter from a Democratic attorney warning officials against refusing to certify election results. Adams sent a different email under her Tea Party Patriots address with a meeting agenda including an item about a “New York Times reporter traveling to several counties in Georgia.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/186116/emails-georgia-election-officials-trump-chaos

The chaos has already started with early voting….in Georgia….

Georgia is one of the battleground states seen as crucial to deciding the next president, but don’t be surprised if the state can’t report results on election night. The state board of elections on Friday voted 3-2 to require all counties to hand-count ballots to verify the machine count, reports USA Today. As the Washington Post notes, that has the potential to delay results for days or weeks because only the smallest counties will be able to get the count done by the next day, as mandated. “Military ballots have already been issued,” complained Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in the state’s Irwin County. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

Voting rights advocates were similarly irked, saying the late change has the potential to not only delay the count but “lay the groundwork for spurious challenges,” per Reuters. The board is controlled by three members approved by Donald Trump, who has previously praised them as “pit bulls,” notes USA Today. One of them, Janelle King, has said her mission is “to ensure that every vote is counted accurately and every election is conducted correctly going forward.” NPR has called the state a “must-win” for both Trump and Kamala Harris.

For a more detailed analysis then this article would help….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/georgia-hand-count

If you recall Georgia was a Trump favorite to find and disqualify a number of ballots making him the winner….so I would expect nothing less than a similar attempt in 2024.

Great stuff, huh?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”