It is 6:28 pm on the East Coast of the USA.

Weren't we supposed to be swamped by a geo-electric storm? I thought that was today. Instead, evidently, the space focus of concern is on another asteroid heading our way. 

Okay, then. Maybe I got the dates wrong. I had reading set aside until the power went down. Batteries in flashlights and everything. Hm. 

Aurora borealis tonight, maybe? 

Here we go again, in China.

Stop it at the FIRST CASE, NOT THE MILLIONTH AND FIRST CASE.

April 27, 2022
By Tom Levitt

An H3N8 strain of bird flu (click here) has been detected in humans for the first time, in China’s central province of Henan.

The four-year-old boy infected had been in contact with chickens and crows raised at his home, according to reports from China’s National Health Commission.

Avian influenza or bird flu as it is commonly known is a highly contagious viral disease with the first reports of human cases in the 1990s.

Some strains of the bird flu, such as with H3N8 now, have been passed to humans but this is currently very rare, and usually occurs after very close contact with infected birds or animals.

H3N8 viruses circulate widely in birds and in horses and have also been detected in dogs in North America.

“We often see a virus spread to a human and then not spread any further so a single case is not a cause of great concern,” said Sir Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health, University of Oxford....

The USA has been culling infected birds for over a decade now. All this has been policy since "W." The guy got it right when it came to disease and it's end. He really did. There is no excuse for any infectious disease to be migrating into the USA. We have our own problems

April 4, 2022
By Katie Wermus

More than 22 million chickens and turkeys (click here) have been culled in the U.S. since February due to an outbreak of avian influenza, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Avian influenza cases have been confirmed in at least 24 states in both backyard and commercial flocks, the USDA reported. Once an animal is detected to have bird flu, the flock is killed in order to prevent the disease from spreading. The virus currently poses a low risk to the public, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since the beginning of the avian influenza outbreak in February, prices at the grocery store have risen. The cost of eggs has increased 52 percent since cases were first reported, with a dozen eggs now costing an average of $2.88. If additional birds continue to become infected, prices could rise even higher, according to ABC News....

Rand Paul, get a clue!

The world was with us then as it is now. There is no doubt about the deaths of innocent people and Russia is to blame. End of discussion.

The day human atrocities are allowed is the day we will all become victims.

I believe it was Former President George W. Bush that stated people inherently want freedom and they seek it when opportunity presents itself. The Post Soviet states made their decision and they have been hated by Russia since. Hate in carrying out war and violence against others can never be tolerated.

Russia brought in portable crematories into Ukraine. What can ever be in question? They wanted to hide the genocide.

RUSSIA WAS NOT INVADED. RUSSIA WAS NOT THREATENED. THERE IS NO LESSON HERE, THERE IS ONLY ENDING THE AGGRESSION AND RETURNING TO PEACE. RUSSIA BROKE THE PEACE, NO OTHER COUNTRY DID.

This war was launched on a date without a plan because Putin believed the time was right. There has been nothing but suffering since.

There will be no revisionist history. 

 

She let her guard down.

This is really a great picture of Vice President Harris, by the way.

April 26, 2022
By Jasmine Wright, Maegan Vazquez, Betsy Klein, Kevin Liptak and Ted Barrett,

Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday after returning from a weeklong trip to California.

"Today I tested positive for COVID-19. I have no symptoms, and I will continue to isolate and follow CDC guidelines. I'm grateful to be both vaccinated and boosted," Harris tweeted Tuesday afternoon.

Kirsten Allen, the vice president's press secretary, said in an earlier statement that Harris tested positive for Covid-19 on rapid and PCR tests. Harris "will isolate and continue to work from the vice president's residence," Allen said.

"She has not been a close contact to the President or First Lady due to their respective recent travel schedules. She will follow CDC guidelines and the advice of her physicians. The Vice President will return to the White House when she tests negative," she added....

This episode by the Vice President is exactly why I still wear a mask. But, I will also point out the vaccine and it's boosters are working.

Governor Newsome has basically left it up to Californians to discern their use of precautions. He has slowly removed mask mandates for citizens within California borders knowing the hospitals currently can effectively and without shortages treat those exposed to the virus and are in danger of profound illness that is life threatening. People are still dying of this lousy virus.

I believe every Governor and the President has acted in concern for the SINGLE CITIZEN that is vulnerable. The majority that can be healthy, such as Vice President Harris, in the face of an infection want to be able to live their lives and that is a health directive as well. Activity is important to maintain good health.

Lifting the mask mandates does not mean there is no danger. It means citizens are well educated enough about precautions to decide if a mask in their life is necessary. I still wear mine and practice social distancing and hand hygiene. I think all those things are still important to my well being which include all four jabs of vaccine and booster.

As to the Vice President, she was in California where she feels most at home and in many pictures she is without a mask and closely distanced. That was her choice. She became infected and we know that the virus is adapting all the time and exposure is unpredictable to outcomes of the victim at this point. I would like to see her set the best example, but, she is a human being no different than any other American and being at home among friends feels good. 

I am mostly relieved she is in good health and that the vaccines work. I wish her and her family wellness and happiness. I thank her for her dedication to the country and it's diverse people.

This is no way to decide a vote.

The outfit that puts this ageism propaganda together really doesn't care about the facts. Allow me to help.

Peter Doucy is probably correct about those apprehended at the USA southern border as terrorists. Mr. Doucy goes on to criticize the Biden Administration that gives the listener the idea there are terrorists crossing the border all the time and Americans need to live in fear of the border policies of President Biden.

"W"rong.

Encounter data includes U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Title 8 Apprehensions, (click here) Office of Field Operations (OFO) Title 8 Inadmissibles, and Title 42 Expulsions for fiscal years (FY) 2020, 2021, and 2022. Data is available for the Northern Land Border, Southwest Land Border, and Nationwide (i.e., air, land, and sea modes of transportation) encounters...

These were actual contact and not estimations for the record. What the graph shows below are illegal encounters by "type" (click here). There is no specific listing for "terrorist." Why? Because it wouldn't even show up on the graph as a dot, that's why.

According to this data, there were 1,735,686 illegal immigrant encounters in 2021. According to Doucy there were something like 23 on the terrorist watch list. As a percentage of the encounters resulted in terrorist apprehensions there were 0.0013. To be clear that was 0.0013 percent of the population of encounters that were terrorists.

The USA Border Patrol is awesome. They were able to FIND AND APPREHEND 23 terrorists at the USA southern border when the chances of that is sincerely zero.

The word terrorist is explosive and is intended to instill fear. Why did 911 happen? Because no one expected it. The FBI had their eyes on the terrorists of September 11, 2001, but, there was dearly little action taken against them because of the FBI's respect for privacy. As it worked out, the terrorists were actually terrorists and deadly killers. The FBI was so close to controlling the actions of terrorists and possibly apprehending them because the 20th terrorist never made it to the airport and give away the plot. The FBI is that good, but, they need to be better in the permission to apprehend, question and detain. Those recommendations can only apply to our law enforcement agencies and with the organized and statistical data from the Director, currently that would be Director Wray.

The problem here is of course illegal immigration and border crossings (click here). But, there is also another problem and that is instilling fear into the American voter when there is very little to fear in order to drive the vote to extremist agendas.

Alex Nowrasteh (click here) of the Cato Institute offers nonpartisan facts in response to common myths about immigration

I am sure if I posted the Brookings Institute their facts would be similar, but, since there is a right wing bias against them why give Americans are reason to think differently. IT IS JUST POLITICS, RIGHT?

The outfit putting together the videos regarding ageism and neglect of the national security of the American people need to be sued for their slanderous editing to achieve hatred of the candidate. They have a symbiotic relationship with Doucy. I am sure he is not compensated, but, he never disavows the conclusions of the videos. Worse than that he NEGLECTS the real truth in his questions intended to victimize American voters to have them feel vulnerable.

I am not placing responsibility of the media to educate the voters and force them into voting a certain way. I criticize any media if I find disagreement with them. But, if newspapers want to understand why their circulations have been hit so hard of the recent decades it is because THE AMERICAN VOTER IS LAZY AND DOESN'T DO THEIR READING TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH.

Nothing like the "Morning Paper" with the first meal of the day and tucked under the arm for break times at work.

Americans have become so intent on political ads to decide their vote, they are in terrible condition to make the best choices. The media needs to do better in presenting the excellence in our country and it's democracy. That does not mean censorship at all. The American people need to gather the truth, especially in reporting, and decide their vote and not SURRENDER THEIR VOTE to the most money spent on political ads.

The video below is illegitimate and is also chronic in it's insistence that the age of President Biden is in question when it comes to making executive decisions. I don't find that an issue, I find the judgement of him abusively harsh. This video is an example of it.

 

American voters need to know what the "silly season" is all about and it is not benign.

September 17, 2018

By Caitlan Gibson

Great for a school assembly (click here). It is primarily an unspoken truth in schools. Why?

At first, it wasn’t obvious that anything was amiss. (click here) Kids are naturally curious about the complicated world around them, so Joanna Schroeder wasn’t surprised when her 11- and 14-year-old boys recently started asking questions about timely topics such as cultural appropriation and transgender rights.

But she sensed something off about the way they framed their questions, she says — tinged with a bias that didn’t reflect their family’s progressive values. She heard one of her sons use the word “triggered” in a sarcastic, mocking tone. And there was the time Schroeder watched as her son scrolled through the “Explore” screen on his Instagram account and she caught a glimpse of a meme depicting Adolf Hitler.

Schroeder, a writer and editor in Southern California, started paying closer attention, talking to her boys about what they’d encountered online. Then, after her kids were in bed one night last month, she opened Twitter and began to type....

The attack on American democracy is real, isn't that right, Moscow Mitch?

April 26, 2022
By John Haltiwanger

The Kentucian was wise enough to not be photographed with Butina regardless of the NRA contribution to Rand Paul of $104,446 to his political campaign (click here). The NRA was being clever to give the biggest contributions to the GOP candidate most likely to lean into gun laws.

Genocide doesn't need a reason except hate. Indeed, the Senator was well paid for by Russian Dark Money  through the NRA. Even today, after January 6th, Rand Paul feels an obligation to blame Ukraine for the genocide of it's own people.

Sen. Rand Paul (click here) on Tuesday received fierce pushback from Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the Kentucky Republican said that Ukraine was "part of Russia" during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Paul said there was "no justification" for Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, but added "it does not follow that there's no explanation for the invasion." The GOP senator cited Russia's qualms with Kyiv's NATO ambitions, which have not advanced in 14 years, and accused the Biden administration of "beating the drums to admit Ukraine" to the alliance.

Blinken rejected Paul's suggestion that the administration was "agitating" for Ukraine's NATO membership, stating that the US was "standing up" for the alliance's open door policy and "a basic principle that one country can't dictate to another the choices it makes about with whom it allies."...

This is interesting. And everyone thinks it is "just politics." The Republicans were circumventing sanctions and we wonder why they don't matter. Traitors. I can't help but wonder if Paul voted against the sanctions and why?

August 9, 2018
By Ron Elving

By now, (click here) practically everyone has seen that picture of the two guys at President Trump's weekend rally in Ohio wearing T-shirts that said: "I'd Rather be a Russian than a Democrat!"

Many have also seen the visuals of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul hobnobbing in Moscow this week with members of the Russian Council, sometimes called his "counterparts." These included the chairman of the council's foreign policy panel, Konstantin Kosachev, who happens to be under official U.S. sanction for his government's actions against our government.

But that didn't seem to bother Paul, who invited Kosachev and others to visit the USA.

Indeed, this sanction and other tokens of disapproval imposed on Russian officials in the past year have not seemed to chill the enduring warmth between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Paul carried a handwritten note from Trump to Putin on his trip....

August 6, 2018

By Mary Ilyushina

Moscow - Sen. Rand Paul (click here) on Monday invited Russian lawmakers to Washington after meeting Russian members of parliament in Moscow.

“I am pleased to announced that we will be continuing this contact,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said in Moscow. “We agreed and we invited members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia to come to the US to meet with us in the US, in Washington.”

Paul is in Moscow meeting with Russian lawmakers in a trip he sees as a continuation of US President Donald Trump’s diplomatic outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and comes several weeks after Trump invited Putin to DC as well. Paul has been one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters following the criticism Trump faced – including from some within his own party – for the US President’s handling of his meeting with Putin in July. During a news conference in Helsinki at the time, Trump declined to back the conclusion of the US intelligence that Russia interfered with the US presidential election over Putin’s denials, though Trump later said when he was back in the US that he misspoke....

Most Western countries as well as communist Russia has right wing extremists. The Azov Battalion are the ones that took on the hardest fight for the people and land of Ukraine in Mariupol.

Such extremist groups are NO REASON FOR GENOCIDE!

April 11, 2022
By Marc Bennetts

In a plush Italian restaurant (click here) halfway between Red Square and Russia’s parliamentary building, Maria Butina, an MP with President Putin’s ruling party, sipped green tea and spoke of Nazis.

A former gun rights activist, Butina, 33, made headlines in 2018 when she was convicted by an American court of conspiring to infiltrate Republican circles. Her case became a cause célèbre for Moscow, which alleged the charges were politically motivated and aimed at undermining a summit between Putin and President Trump. She served 15 months in prison....

Hm. Scaly Mountain is where Mark Meadows pretended to live and register to run for the US House. Isn't that the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains?

Just sayin'.

September 21, 2017
By Eleanor Klibanoff

Within hours of last month’s deadly white supremacist rally (click here) in Charlottesville, the national media descended on the small northern Kentucky city of Florence, where alleged murderer James Alex Fields grew up.

This was not the first time a national spotlight shone on Kentucky in the wake of racially-motivated violence.

Hate groups have long called Kentucky and the region home — from the days when white supremacists influenced state and local government, to 11 years ago, when Ku Klux Klan members beat a young man nearly to death at a county fair, to today.

“For white supremacists, they view (Kentucky and) Appalachia, wrongly, as a place where there are white folks who are very independent, don’t like the government and who are sympathetic to their messages,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center....