Month: January 2025

It Was Never About The Win

We enter into a new (for lack of a better word) world Biden has left the building and Donald has arrived doing what he does best….make nothing into some sort of filet…..but that is for others who care to write about I want to write about Biden’s waste of taxpayers money (he will not be last)…..

The US pissed away billions on its support for Ukraine in its struggle with Russia….was Ukraine ever gonna win this conflict?

Nope!

It was never about a Ukraine win.

President Biden spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, but according to a report from Time Magazine, a Ukrainian victory was never his goal.

Throughout the nearly three-year proxy war, the Biden administration never set any clear goals and only repeated mantras, such as the promise to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Eric Green, who was on Biden’s National Security Council at the time of the invasion, told Time that the administration never gave any promises to help Ukraine take back the land Russian forces had captured.

“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” Green said. “That was not going to be a success story ultimately. The more important objective was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.”

The report said Biden set three objectives for the war: ensure Ukraine would survive as a sovereign state, keep the US and its allies united, and avoid a direct war with Russia.

However, there was another goal not mentioned in the report: weakening Russia, something then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged back in April 2022 after his first trip to Ukraine during the war. Austin’s trip came after the US and its allies discouraged peace talks between Russia and Ukraine even though there was a deal on the table that could have led to a Russian withdrawal in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality.

On their way out, Biden administration officials claimed the proxy war was a success despite Ukraine’s lack of a path toward victory. “It’s unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” Green told Time. “Because there is so much suffering for Ukraine and so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”

The Time report noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who defined victory as expelling Russian forces and taking Crimea, recently complained about Biden despite the massive amount of aid he provided.

“With all due respect to the United States and the administration,” Zelensky told podcast host Lex Fridman, “I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now.”

(antiwar.com)

There you have it….it is what I have been saying for these many years….it is not about the win but rather keeping the CEOs in bonuses and stock prices high….

Let’s see how the kakistocracy handles this and other of our proxy wars….

I am not looking for much to be different.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

So It Begins

Yesterday was a big day….at least that is what I am told by the media….personally I do not see it.

It is official Trump is now king in charge…..and a few things from yesterday….Trump and the Bible….

This is for all those religious people and their blind support of Trump….

While taking the oath of office at his inauguration Monday, President Trump never placed his hand on either of the Bibles Melania Trump was holding. The First Lady had her husband’s personal Bible, which he got from his mother, as well as the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office in 1861, ABC News reports. But as Trump raised his right hand to be sworn in, his left hand remained at his side, which captured the attention of many observers. But, as CBS News reports, while presidents have commonly placed their hand on a Bible while taking the oath of office, there is no actual legal requirement that they do so.

Oaths of office are covered in Article VI, Clause 3, of the US Constitution, which states that while elected officials are bound to support the Constitution “by oath or affirmation,” “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Was he afraid of something?

Let’s get to the actions he took on day one….

A table was set up on the stage in Washington, DC’s Capital One Arena, where President Trump held an inauguration day rally soon after taking the oath of office Monday, and he signed a number of executive orders in front of the crowd, NBC News reports. “First, I’ll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration, one of the worst administrations in history,” he told the crowd. He also said he’d institute a federal hiring freeze “to ensure that we’re only hiring competent people who are faithful to the American public, and we will pause the hiring of any new IRS agents,” and that he would sign a memo instructing his cabinet “to marshal every power at their disposal to defeat inflation and rapidly bring down the cost of daily life because your costs have gone through the roof in the last four years.” After signing a number of orders, he threw the pens into the crowd, the AP reports. A roundup of notable day one actions:

All that effort and not one of those actions will benefit the working peons that slobber all over this cretin.

Day one was off with a bang….we can only wait and see what fresh hell he will put the country through in the coming years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is United Healthcare Evil?

Since the CEO of United Healthcare was popped on the streets of NYC there has been scrutiny over what drove the assassin to commit murder.

There have been several stories of people that were screwed over by the big insurance giant…..this is the one that stuck with me….

A month after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson prompted many Americans to share personal horror stories of the company’s coverage denials and other practices, a doctor in Austin, Texas on Wednesday shared her own experience that she said exemplified how the for-profit health system “just keeps getting worse.”

In a video posted to TikTok, Dr. Elisabeth Potter said she recently received an unprecedented phone call from UnitedHealthcare about a patient—one who was already under anesthesia and having surgery.

Potter, a plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies, said she was performing a bilateral deep inferior epigastric perforator [DIEP} surgery when UnitedHealthcare called her in the operating room.

The call was urgent, she was told, and needed to be returned right away.

“So I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her,” said Potter. “Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified.”

Potter found that the person calling wasn’t aware that the patient whose care he was questioning had breast cancer and was in the operating room—that information was known by “a different department” at UnitedHealthcare.

Potter’s account, said Nidhi Hegde, managing director at the American Economic Liberties Project, was “another horror story from a doctor dealing with United Healthcare’s terrible authorization process.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-healthcare-surgery-coverage

This is horrific but it is not an outlier…

Then there is news about their and others drug pricing…..

The Big 3 companies acting as intermediaries between drugmakers and insurance providers made billions by needlessly jacking up the prices of lifesaving drugs, according to the Federal Trade Commission. In its second interim staff report on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), released Tuesday, the FTC said CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx “marked up numerous specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent,” generating $7.3 billion in revenue in excess of the acquisition costs of the drugs over five years beginning in 2017.

In theory, PBMs act as middlemen, negotiating fees with drugmakers on behalf of employers and reimbursing pharmacies for prescriptions, per Reuters. But the FTC’s earlier report on PBMs, released in July, found they are “vertically integrated” with healthcare conglomerates, which “exercise vast control over huge swaths of the healthcare sector.” That report analyzed two specialty generic drugs, flagging markups over 1,000%. This report expands the analysis to 51 specialty generic drugs. For these, the Big 3’s price-markup revenue climbed from $522 million in 2017 to $2.1 billion in 2021. “Cancer drugs alone made up nearly half of the $7.3 billion” in revenue over five years “with multiple sclerosis medications accounting for another 25%,” per NBC News.

The companies—found to have “reimbursed their affiliated pharmacies at a higher rate than they paid unaffiliated pharmacies on nearly every specialty generic drug examined”—also generated an additional $1.4 billion over five years through the practice of billing plan sponsors more than they reimbursed pharmacies for the drugs, the report notes. A rep for Express Scripts says the report is misleading, with the analyzed drugs accounting for less than 2% of what health plans spend on medications in a year, per Reuters. An OptumRx rep said the company lowers drug costs and saved patients $1.3 billion last year. But the report found patients’ out of pocket costs for the 51 drugs totaled $279 million in 2021, “an annual compound increase of 14%-21% since 2017,” per Reuters.

To my way of thinking this is evil and all the industry needs to be held to a higher standard than it is today….but sadly if that happens it will be after this next 4 years.

These companies are just sick as well as greedy and evil…..period.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will It Last?

Since today is the big day this question could be about the upcoming 4 years but it is not rather it is about the ceasefire deal in the Middle East which began yesterday.

The AP reports Majid al-Ansari said in a post on X that the ceasefire will start at 8:30am local time Sunday. He advised people to exercise caution when the agreement goes into effect and to wait for directions from officials.

Under the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The exchange will begin Sunday at 4pm. During each exchange, prisoners will be released by Israel after the hostages have arrived safely. The remainder, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.

The plan says that during phase one, some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, both alive and dead. Among the prisoners, 1,167 are residents in Gaza who were held by Israel but were not involved in Oct. 7. All women and children under 19 from Gaza held by Israel will be freed during this phase. All Palestinian prisoners who were convicted of deadly attacks will be exiled, either to Gaza or abroad, and barred from returning to Israel or the West Bank. Some will be exiled for three years and others permanently, according to the plan.

Despite the ceasefire news, sirens sounded across central Israel on Saturday, with the army saying it intercepted projectiles launched from Yemen. The Iran-backed Houthis have stepped up their missile attacks in recent weeks. The group says the attacks are part of their campaign aimed at pressuring Israel and the West over the war in Gaza. There were also continued Israeli strikes into Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 23 people were killed in the previous day.

So will this ceasefire last?

Likely not…..

The ceasefire agreement regarding the Gaza Strip can be welcomed as a modest reprieve from the immense suffering that the residents of that territory have endured for the past 15 months.

The Israeli military assault on the Strip has inflicted deaths that according to the official count has passed more than 46,600. This tally likely undercounts actual deaths by more than 40 percent, with the majority of fatalities being women, children, and the elderly.

This is in addition to all the other suffering from continuing military operations. There have been more than 111,265 reported injuries, including life-changing disabilities in an environment in which Israel has largely destroyed the healthcare system.

The agreement also commits Israel to allowing an increased number of trucks bearing badly needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Other benefits include the release of a number of Israeli hostages that Hamas took in its attack in October 2023. Also to be released are several hundred Palestinians whom Israel has imprisoned. The Palestinians can be considered hostages, too. Although some of those to be released have been given sentences of imprisonment, many of the Palestinians Israel incarcerates are held indefinitely without charge, incommunicado, and without legal representation.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/gaza-ceasefire-2670860243/

I have not decided if the swearing in is worth my attentio9n.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Health Minute

+++Let me say from the onset I am not offering medical advice just offer up some recent studies that could effect you and your health….please see your doctor before starting any new plans of action for your health+++

It is Sunday and I would like to offer a wee bit of FYI…..as we grow older we fight many health battles….most common of them is blood pressure and weight….I offer up a few looks at both of these problems….

Last Sunday I posted on some news about high blood pressure and according to the response it was about as popular as a turd in a punch bowl….or people just do not care about their health….I decided to try again and re-post it….

For The Blood Pressure Watchers

Next the other thing that us seniors seem obsessed about is watching our weight…..there is some research that says we need not be tied tom those scales….

There are good reasons to step away from the scale. It can be a place of supreme stress, in a society that prizes thinness and stigmatizes fat. Then there’s the mounting scientific evidence that weight–and, accordingly, body mass index–are unreliable indicators of health. 

Cardiorespiratory, or aerobic, fitness is a much better predictor of all-cause mortality and heart disease risk than BMI, according to a comprehensive review published November 12 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. People classified as overweight and obese who had high cardiorespiratory fitness were not at higher risk of death or chronic diseases like hypertension than their thin counterparts. They also had 2-3-fold lower mortality risk than those of “normal weight” but with low fitness, per the recent research. It’s just the latest entry into the litany of studies demonstrating that fitness and fatness are far from mutually exclusive.

“Once you factor in fitness, BMI really didn’t have much statistical predictive ability at all,” says Siddhartha Angadi, senior author on the November analysis and an associate professor of Kinesiology at the University of Virginia. “The risks of being unfit are far greater than the risk of carrying a few extra pounds,” he adds.

https://www.popsci.com/health/tracking-fitness-without-bmi/

Again this is not medical advice just FYI on subjects I found while searching the web….please check with your doctor before altering any of your health routine.

Have a wonderful day and try to relax and enjoy yourself….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Saturday News Dump–18Jan25

Yes my friends it is that magical time once again…..the Saturday ‘Dump’….

Locally–we have had two weeks of winter weather that may not seem like much to some but down here we have not seen temps this low for this long in over a decade.

Personal–My treatments are wearing me down….I am fatigued constantly.  I hate it.

The weather has been cold and grey so I decided to make my famous chili (not an idle boast for it has been written up in region’s newspapers) I make it from scratch and it last no time at all…..served with fresh cornbread it is to die for…..

Enough messing around let’s get to the good stuff….

It has been a bit of a boring week for me…..I found it difficult to locate interesting stuff to share….these are the best I could do with the time I had…..enjoy.

This is for all those sushi eaters…..

It’s as long as a motorcycle and weighs just as much, but it sold for far more. The annual new year auction of a bluefin tuna at Tokyo’s Toyosu market went to a familiar name on Sunday: Michelin-starred sushi chain operator the Onodera Group, which won the auction for its fifth straight year. The price was more of an outlier. At 207 million yen or $1,316,835, auction organizers say it’s the second-highest bid recorded since the event’s 1999 start. The Washington Post reports the 608-pound fish—that’s about the weight of a male grizzly bear, the paper notes—was caught Saturday morning off Oma.

Oma tuna, as the Pacific bluefin is known, is called the “black diamond” of tuna thanks to the “unique balance of fat” it has due to the colder waters it inhabits and its diet of squid and fatty saury fish, per the Post. Onodera, which bought the fish in partnership with seafood wholesaler Yamayuki, will offer the tuna to its conveyor-belt diners for 1,160 yen (about $7.50), with a limit of two pieces per person, reports Kyodo News. NBC News reports the top bid ever recorded was 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million at the time) paid in 2019, but after the pandemic curtailed dining out, prices dropped

A short trip into the future….have you heard of the ‘grandfather paradox”?

A physicist believes he may have solved the notorious “grandfather paradox”, suggesting that time travel to the past may not be ruled out by this particular branch of physics.

First off, what is the grandfather paradox? Unlike the bootstrap paradox, which gets a little messy, the grandfather paradox is fairly simple to explain. Say you had a time machine and a taste for familial homicide, you could go to the past and attempt to kill your grandfather before he had any children. If you were successful, your parent would not be born, and so you would not be born in order to go back in time to kill your own grandfather. 

It is a thought experiment, of course, but one that seems to suggest that time travel to the past may be impossible, as it would lead to inconsistencies in the universe. Because of this, Stephen Hawking proposed the chronology protection conjecture, or the idea that there will be laws of physics yet undiscovered that would prevent time travel from happening.

Nevertheless, according to the physics we know so far, time travel to the past is not yet ruled out. One idea that comes out of Einstein’s work is that “closed timelike curves” could be possible, where spacetime is so warped (deliberately or by nature, say around a supermassive black hole) that an object or observer traversing it would be returned to their starting point.

Keeping with the sciencey stuff…..did you see the movie ‘The Lost World’…..

A team of geophysicists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has made a baffling discovery while analyzing earthquake waves to investigate the internal structures of the Earth.

Specifically, they found areas in our planet’s interior that appear to be the leftovers of submerged tectonic plates deep below large oceans.

The finding also presents scientists with a new puzzle: the pieces are far away from plate boundaries — nowhere near where they expected to find them.

It’s an intriguing finding that suggests a “lost world” could be lurking deep below the Pacific Ocean, highlighting how much there still is to learn about what’s going on deep below our planet’s crust.

https://futurism.com/evidence-lost-world-under-pacific-ocean

Not as thought provoking as you thought, huh?

Recently China is considering build a second great wall only this one would be for solar …..and now they are considering something similar for space….

Space-based solar power stations are the next big thing. China is trying something bolder and bigger. 

China has reportedly announced an ambitious plan to build large-scale solar power stations in space with the help of super-heavy rockets.

The South China Moring Post (SCMP) reported that a senior rocket scientist, Long Lehao, is leading this ambitious endeavor. He likens this project to “another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth.”

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-plans-masssive-space-solar-station

A bit of medical news….dementia is the subject….

The lifetime risk of developing dementia is higher than earlier thought and with Americans living longer, new cases are set to double to 1 million a year by 2060, researchers say. According to a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, the average person’s risk of developing dementia after age 55 is 42%. The lifetime risk is 35% among men and 48% among women, largely because women live longer. Previous estimates were up to 14% among men and 23% among women, the researchers say. The rate is slightly higher among Black Americans—44%, compared to 41% for white people, according to the study.

If you start at age 55 and go forward until your 95th birthday, there are two options: You die before dementia, or you get to dementia before death,” says researcher Josef Coresh, per the Washington Post.

  • Coresh says the risk of developing dementia between 55 and 75 is only around 4%, but it climbs steeply after that, especially after age 85.
  • Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for around 80% of cases, the AP notes. Other forms include vascular dementia, in which heart problems or small strokes impair blood flow to the brain.
  • The study looked at more than 15,000 people who were tracked for more than 20 years, NBC News reports. Experts described the study as “very important” and said it detected the higher rate of lifetime risk because patients were tracked for a long time and it included a more diverse group of participants than earlier studies.
  • Researchers say there are many ways in which people can reduce their risk of developing dementia, including stopping smoking, exercising more, avoiding obesity, and reducing their blood pressure. “All of our research suggests what you do in midlife really matters,” Coresh says. Coresh and other experts say other important factors in reducing dementia risk include reducing social isolation, treating hearing loss, and taking steps to avoid head injuries.

I saw an ad for a new whiskey…..Skrewball Whiskey…..it is a peanut butter whiskey…..that’s right peanut butter!  What is it with this younger generations that everything has to be flavored?

Only a matter of hours before the next Big Bang……coming Monday.

Go out, if you can, and enjoy your Saturday and as always….Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Social Security Changes To Come

I am an retired senior and I try to keep my fellow retirees abreast of any changes to come to their retirement.

This is about some of the ‘promises’ that Trump made to senior citizens…changes that sound good but are they?

The big one is that he wants to eliminate the income tax on benefits….sounds on the surface like a great idea but in the long run is it as good as it sounds?

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled support for ending the decades-long practice of taxing Social Security benefits on several occasions. “Seniors should not pay tax on Social Security,” Trump asserted on his social media platform in July. He then repeated the proposal in August during an interview with Fox.

Trump will return to the White House later this month, and many Social Security recipients are undoubtedly hoping the president-elect can make good on his proposal. But ending the taxation of Social Security benefits may actually be bad news for retired workers. Read on to learn more.

The Social Security trust fund holds money used to pay benefits. The asset reserves in the trust fund fell by 45% between 1974 and 1983 because of a growing imbalance in Social Security beneficiaries and taxpayers supporting program. In other words, the cost of paying benefits was increasing more quickly than revenues from payroll taxes.

Congress approved sweeping changes in 1983 to fix the financing problem, and one of those changes made Social Security subject to federal income tax. Initially, seniors with a combined income above a certain level owed taxes on 50% of benefits. But legislation approved in 1993 added a second combined income threshold, above which 85% of benefits were taxable.

Combined income is defined as adjusted gross income (AGI) plus nontaxable interest plus one-half of Social Security benefits. The chart below shows the taxable portion of Social Security benefits at different combined income levels based on filing status.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2025/01/07/social-security-change-donald-trump-bad-news-retir/

This one move could possible truly bankrupt the program for good….maybe that is what they want.

To reiterate…..

We’re just days away from a second Trump administration entering the White House, and like all political transitions, we can expect changes once he takes office. Some of the most interesting ones for retirees could be those related to Social Security.

The program is in danger of benefit cuts in about a decade, and many people are disappointed with the way its buying power has declined over the years. While it may not be the most important issue on Trump’s agenda, he’s made a few comments about changes he’d like to make that could directly or indirectly affect Social Security. Here’s a look at three of the most significant and how they could affect seniors.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2025/01/13/ways-donald-trump-may-change-social-security/

If he gets his way big changes are coming for the retirees, most of whom voted for the person that will screw them the hardest…..

Markets reacted strongly to the reelection of Donald Trump. In the week that followed Nov. 5, the S&P 500 was up about 3.7%. While the likely economic impact of all of Trump’s campaign promises is mixed, the stock market appears to believe that Trump will follow through with those that boost business, like cutting corporate taxes, while not following through with potentially damaging promises like hiking trade tariffs.

How this plays out will have broad implications in the lives of all Americans, but for the millions of Americans who are retired or will soon be so, Donald Trump’s Social Security plans could have an even bigger impact. The program is already on a path toward financial distress, but according to a recent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), many of the proposals put forth on the campaign trail by the President-elect could exacerbate the issues. First, however, let’s take a look at the state of the program.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2025/01/13/president-elect-donald-trumps-social-security-plan/

The problem with financing the social security program has a an easy fix….everybody pays the same deductions with no cut-off point.

Easy peasy …..but billionaires do not like that idea and we know no matter who is in the White House billionaires always get what they want.

Time will tell just what damage will be done to our retired seniors in the coming years.

I hope you can live with the choice you made…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

No Accountability

For years I have been preaching that the War Department is in the pockets of special interests and that this organization pisses away more money than any other…..we hear about all the money that is supposedly mismanaged by other offices but very few in Congress have anything to say about the Pentagon.

With the rise of food costs, healthcare sucks, that Congress does not want to tackle they instead reward the War department with a huge budget after it has failed numerous audits.

Despite the Pentagon’s repeated failures to pass audits and various alarming policies, 81 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted with 200 Republicans on Wednesday to advance a $883.7 billion annual defense package.

The Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025, unveiled by congressional negotiators this past Saturday, still needs approval from the Senate, which is expected to vote next week. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that he plans to vote no and spoke out against the military-industrial complex.

The push to pass the NDAA comes as this congressional session winds down and after the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced last month that it had failed yet another audit—which several lawmakers highlighted after the Wednesday vote.

Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), co-chairs and co-founders of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, said in a joint statement, “Time and time again, Congress seems to be able to find the funds necessary to line the pockets of defense contractors while neglecting the problems everyday Americans face here at home.”

“Instead of fighting the rising cost of healthcare, gas, or groceries, this Congress prioritized rewarding the wealthy and well-connected military-industrial complex with even more unaccountable funds,” they continued. “After a seventh failed audit in a row, it’s disappointing that our amendment to hold the Pentagon accountable by penalizing the DOD’s budget by 0.5% for each failed audit was stripped out of the final bill. It’s time Congress demanded accountability from the Pentagon.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ndaa-2025

With Trump we have 2 czars of spending reduction….does this mean the Pentagon will finally be held accountable? 

HAHA!

Not in this lifetime!

Some bitch and moan about all those people getting benefits from the government as a way to piss needed money away and yet could care less that the War Department pisses away money by the buckets full.  Why is that?

Something needs doing to rein the defense spending….but that will be for another Congress down the road.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Do Nothing

Today is National Nothing Day.

That is right a day for ‘nothing’ in particular.

In 1972, journalist Harold Pullman Coffin proposed National Nothing Day as a “non-event” to be observed — by doing nothing — every January 16. The next year, National Nothing Day made “Chase’s Calendar of Events,” a publication that marks annual occasions in print since the 1950s. National Nothing Day is sponsored by Coffin’s own “National Nothing Foundation.” Unsurprisingly, there is nothing to be found about that organization. True to its title, it doesn’t even have a website.

Here’s a fact that may seem to denote the idea of “nothing.” Martin Luther King day falls on the third Monday of January, one out of every seven years. The event is concurrent with National Nothing Day, which would seem to expropriate the idea that there is nothing going on on National Nothing Day every year. Since MLK is celebrated for his nonviolent activism during the Civil Rights Movement, many might refute the idea of nothingness during this particular day.  

Not only this, there are other days celebrated in contrast to this idea of nothingness. In an opposition to National Nothing Day, the Realist Society of Canada (RSC) has a religious holiday called There’s Always Been Something Day, pronounced THABS, which is dedicated on July 8 to the celebration of the “realization that if there was ever nothing, there would be nothing now.”

History is full of debates between philosophers and writers on the study of “nothing.” Because the question is, what is nothing? To answer the question of nothing, one must find the meaning of nothing. Even the true nature of “nothingness” in outer space causes disagreements between experts, because many claim even a true space devoid of anything is not nothing, because in space quantum particles exist even without gravity. 

On National Nothing Day, promotion of the day is kind of contradictory, because the day is meant as an “un-event,” which means it should not be seen as an event and refers to a thing of no importance, consequence or interest.

National Nothing Day

What will be your ‘nothing’ today?

Sounds like the perfect procrastination day to me.

But I could argue that doing nothing is still doing something….but that is a debate for another day.

Enjoy your day.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is There A Gaza Deal?

After many long months of death and destruction there is news that there is a ceasefire deal for Gaza….

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire deal, mediators announced Wednesday, pausing a devastating 15-month war in the Gaza Strip and raising the possibility of winding down the deadliest and most destructive fighting between the bitter enemies. The deal, coming after weeks of painstaking negotiations in Qatar, promises the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas in phases and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It would allow hundreds of thousands of people displaced in Gaza to return to what remains of their homes, and would also flood badly needed humanitarian aid into a devastated territory.

With good news there is always a caveat when Israel is involved….

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night addressed the ceasefire deal being worked out between Israel and Hamas, emphasizing that the agreement is not yet complete. He later went further, claiming Hamas backtracked on a previous understanding of the three-phase deal. The AP reports that claim “could indicate that obstacles remain” to actually implementing the deal, which would see dozens of Israeli hostages released by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being released by Israel and hundreds of displaced Palestinians being allowed to return to their homes in Gaza.

Then the news, if you were paying attention, it was a Trump envoy that moved the negotiations along to this point….

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, did more to pressure Israel to agree to a hostage and ceasefire deal in one meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than President Biden did in an entire year, two Arab officials have told The Times of Israel.

Witkoff met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Saturday and got him to make concessions, which Israeli media said was the deciding factor that led to the ceasefire deal announced on Wednesday.

It’s unclear how Witkoff got Netanyahu to agree to the deal, but the Biden administration refused to use any of its leverage over Israel to force a deal and continued providing huge amounts of military aid to support the genocidal slaughter in Gaza.

Even though Witkoff played a crucial role in the deal, Biden took credit for the agreement. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

In brief remarks at the White House, Biden credited his foreign policy team, who he referred to as “peacemakers” despite their role in backing the slaughter in Gaza. When asked by a reporter if he or Trump should get credit for the deal, Biden said, “Is that a joke?”

Biden also credited his strong backing of Israel as a factor that led to the deal. But unconditional US support for Israel emboldened Netanyahu to sabotage previous negotiations and escalate elsewhere in the region.

The ceasefire deal is based on an outline Biden proposed back in May 2024, which Hamas accepted months ago. The agreement involves three phases and does not commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire.

(antiwar.com)

My hat goes off to the Trump admin if the report is true….Trump may have done what Biden was unwilling top do.

Now I ask what was said to get this process to this point?

We there threats or promises?

And not to worry this will not be the end for Israel will find an excuse to kill more and destroy more….usually the two most common excuses are ‘self-defense’ and ‘national security’

I hope I am wrong but I feel this is far from over.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”