So sorry to hear this news.

February 7, 2019

Washington - John Dingell, (click here) a gruff Michigan Democrat who entered the U.S. House of Representatives in 1955 to finish his late father’s term and became a legislative heavyweight and longest-serving member of Congress, died on Thursday. He was 92.

“Today the great State of Michigan said farewell to one of our greatest leaders. John Dingell will forever be remembered as ‘The Dean’ of Congress not simply for the length of his service, but for his unparalleled record of legislative accomplishments,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer wrote in a post on Twitter.

He saw a great deal of change in his years in service to the country. He saw the first African American President and the first woman Speaker of the House. He saw the first walk on the moon.

But, the time he spent in the US House of Representative span decades beginning when Dwight Eisenhower was president. They were incredible times.

He never lost interest in the country. He loved it and the people loved him.

Sincerest sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues. He was genuine. He is difficult to forget. He was moral and loved people. He reached for the higher purpose. He made the USA great.

December 4, 2018
By John D. Dingell

...These are not just the grumblings of an angry old man (click here) lamenting the loss of “the good old days.” In December 1958, almost exactly three years after I entered the House of Representatives, the first American National Election Study, initiated by the University of Michigan, found that 73 percent of Americans trusted the federal government “to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.” As of December 2017, the same study, now conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, found that this number had plummeted to just 18 percent....

I want to know if this is an isolated case within the USA media.

Go get them, Jeff Bezos. This is hero stuff. No gossip pictures are going to overshadow the heroics taking place. This is definitely putting pressure on the owner of the "Washington Post" to provide propaganda to the American public.

I find it hard to believe this is an isolated incident. Others just may be waiting in the shadows and will come forward, too.

February 7, 2019
By Dylan Byers

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (click here) accused the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., of “extortion and blackmail” on Thursday for threatening to publish scandalous photos of him and his mistress if he didn’t drop an investigation into how the tabloid obtained text messages exposing his extra-marital affair.

According to the emails that Bezos published, which have not been independently reviewed by NBC News, showed that AMI threatened to publish texts from Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, that included photos of a sexual nature. In exchange for withholding the photos, AMI demanded that Bezos stop the Washington Post, which he owns, from reporting about political motivations behind the National Enquirer's initial reports about his relationship with Sanchez.

"If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" Bezos wrote on the blogging website Medium of one letter in which an AMI representative detailed embarrassing photos and texts that the tabloid planned to publish revealing his relationship with Sanchez.

David Pecker, CEO of AMI, which owns National Enquirer, and President Donald Trump are known to be friends, and Pecker has been accused of buying controversial stories about Trump to keep them private....

February 7, 2019
By Alexandra Petra

“Good fences make good neighbors.” (click here)

— Mike Pence, defending the need for a wall on the United States’ border with Mexico

This old saying appears in the poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. However, in the poem, it was ironic. I have taken the liberty of updating the poem so Mike Pence can quote it without embarrassment:

Something there is that wants to build a wall,...

I visited the exact place most folks speak of about when referring to the Robert Frost fence. It isn't all that. The most interesting part of the fence is it's intended use for the Frost family. Frost said of his farm with a fence.

"I might say the core of all my writing was probably the five free years I had there on the farm down the road a mile or two from Derry Village toward Lawrence. The only thing we had was time and seclusion. I couldn't have figured on it in advance. I hadn't that kind of foresight. But it turned out right as a doctor's prescription."

--Thompson, Lawrence, ed. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York, Holt, 1964.

Robert Frost was an interesting man. He taught at Pinkerton Academy (click here) in Derry, New Hampshire. He had six children;  Elliot (1896–1900, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just three days after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father.

He loved his children and his employment was about a mile or so walk from his home. The farm house is a large house and it accommodated all the people it comfortably sheltered from any New Hampshire winter.

But, the children of Robert Frost didn't know the limits of fences. The fence at the farm house is only for the front yard where the children would play while young.

The children were each assigned a constellation in the night sky over their home to study, read about and write about. In addition, they never had a bed to sleep in they could say was only their bed. The children were allowed to sleep anywhere they wanted within the bedrooms assigned to the children. The exception, of course, was that of any infant at the time that was assigned the crib.

Robert Frost believed in liberal views of child rearing and to his way of thinking he wanted his children to feel safe and loved; that included each other as siblings.

The most interesting aspect of the house was the backyard which sprawled for quite a distance and was bordered by forest. There were no walls to speak of in that yard. Just a stone border fence about a foot and a half high. Robert Frost did not believe in keeping people out with a fence. Not at all. He believed in keeping people inside the fence, especially when their view of the world and a street were unsafe.

I am sorry to say Vice President Pence's analogy is grossly wrong. Perhaps he really should do a study of a subject to understand the depth of authorship, before he wrongly uses it for his own purpose.

Absent form the "State of the Union" speech the evening of February 6th.

February 7, 2019
By Marc Orfanos

Tel Orfanos, right, with his father, Marc, center, and his brother Ty at the 2016 Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Marc Orfanos is a resident of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and member of the Everytown Survivor Network.

Imagine (click here) being called into a room after waiting 10 excruciating hours to learn if your child is alive or dead. You find yourself face to face with a somber police officer. The words “I am sorry, your son did not make it” are barely comprehensible as the room swirls around you. You gasp for air as you feel your heart being ripped out of your chest. Your life, along with the lives of your family, friends and community, is changed in that instant. This is the reality of gun violence in America. This was our reality three months ago today.

Telemachus “Tel” Orfanos was my oldest son. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him, and there is nothing in this world more important to me than my children. He lived his life to help others, and that is he how he died. He was only 27 years old.

Tel survived the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history on Oct. 1, 2017, in Las Vegas. He honorably served our country in the Navy, but never felt the looming presence of death more than at the Route 91 Harvest festival, where 58 people were killed and more than 850 wounded. When he came home, we hugged and cried — we felt so lucky for him to be alive.

None of us ever expected Tel would be at the scene of a second mass shooting just one year later. On Nov. 7, 2018, Tel was at the Borderline Bar & Grill in our hometown of Thousand Oaks, Calif., when someone opened fire. Tel rushed a group of friends out of the bar before returning to try to help more. He was shot multiple times and killed along with 11 others. I will never again be able to hug him, cry with him or be thankful he came home.

Mass shootings have become so routine and commonplace that my son was present at two....

While the State of the Union went on people in the USA were dying at the hand of violence. "Mass Shootings in 2019" (click here) Citizens die everyday in the USA now since the NRA and Russia has had it's way with our elections. Everyday there are mass shooting in the USA and they are not committed by the Undocumented. That fact went completely unrecognized in the State of the Union speech. Trump is not a president for all the people, just the one that improve his image in the way he wants it portrayed.

February 6, 2019

New York — Police say (click here) gunfire inside a Brooklyn building has left one person dead and three others hospitalized.

Detective Adam Navarro reports the shooting happened shortly before 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at a party in the lobby of an apartment building at 1778 Fulton Street.

A 20-year-old man was shot in the head and chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Another 20-year-old man was shot in the torso. A 55-year-old woman was shot in abdomen, and a 22-year-old woman was grazed by a bullet; both are expected to survive.

Navarro says it’s unclear how many of the victims were actual targets of the male gunman.

Police have so far made no arrests.

Occurred February 6, but, reported on February 7th.

Cleveland -- Cleveland police (click here) are investigating a shooting that left one person dead and several others injured.

Police were called to Roehl Avenue and West 33rd Street around 10 p.m. Wednesday night.

When they arrived, they found a large crime scene.

According to Cleveland EMS, one man was found dead at the scene. His identity was not released.

Three other men were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center, EMS told Fox 8.

A 33-year-old and 18-year-old were listed in critical condition. A 32-year-old was listed in serious condition.

Cleveland police have not released any information on the shooting or possible suspects.

CHECK USGS RIVER GAUGES! 

ICE JAMS in any area where the Polar Vortex visited.

FLOODING, I’ve seen it and the rivers are beginning to swell.

From the president’s speech he intends to have a dictatorship come hell or high water. It is time for the US Congress to protect and defend the US Constitution and carry out the country’s business. There is obviously no other choice.

We still don't know what he said at Helsinki to Putin. Trump nationalism should not replace responsible citizenship.

The cause of childhood cancers needs study. The causes are not as well known as the treatment. 

Happy Birthday, Judah Samet. May he live to see many more. A very nice moment.

October 29, 2018
By Ryan W. Miller

Pittsburgh – Judah Samet (click here) was four minutes late to services on the Sabbath.

He always arrives on time, at 9:45 a.m. A conversation with his housekeeper on Saturday, though, kept him away from the massacre of 11 of his friends at the Tree of Life synagogue.

For the Hungarian-born 80-year-old, the targeted rampage at his place of worship was the second time anti-Semitism almost took his life. Samet survived 10 months in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II and was just a stopped train ride away from Auschwitz.

Samet pulled into the parking lot of Tree of Life “around 9:49, maybe 9:50” on Saturday, he said. Then a man knocked on his car window....

Stop using the term "late term abortion," there is no such thing and it can be misinterpreted.

There are laws now that allow viable fetuses of abortion to be born and given neonatal care. The third trimester abortions can have a viable fetus IF it is normal and healthy. This entire idea of Late Term Abortion is a political football and nothing more.

...Though many media reports (click here) and other literature use the phrase ‘late-term abortion,’ it is not accurate and should not be used,” Hal Lawrence, M.D., executive vice president and CEO of ACOG, said in an email. “A full-term pregnancy is defined as a pregnancy with a gestational age between 39 weeks and 40 weeks, 6 days. ‘Late term’ refers to a pregnancy with a gestational age of 41 weeks to 41 weeks, 6 days. Abortions are not performed at ‘late term.’”

He added, "Because different methods of inducing abortion are effective at different stages of pregnancy, abortions are sometimes categorized by whether they occur in the first or second trimester. Clinicians sometimes use the term ‘early abortion’ to refer to abortions that occur up to 70 days gestational age, when medication abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol are highly effective. The term ‘later abortion’ is sometimes used to describe abortions that occur after 12 weeks gestational age. Describing these abortions as ‘late-term’ is simply inaccurate."...                

Wage increases for LABORERS in the USA cannot be talked about without discussing inflation.

7 September 2018

Annual wage growth (click here) hit a nine-year high in the US last month as the economy created more jobs than expected.

Average hourly earnings rose by 0.4% in August, pushing the annual rate of increase to 2.9% - the fastest pace since June 2009.

Hiring in the construction sector and in professional services helped the economy to add 201,000 jobs last month....

Annual inflation rate (click here) in the United States fell to 1.9 percent in December of 2018 from 2.2 percent in November, matching market expectations. It is the lowest inflation rate since August of 2017, mainly due to a decline in gasoline cost. On a monthly basis, consumer prices edged down 0.1 percent after a flat reading in the previous month and also in line with forecasts. It is the first monthly decrease in consumer prices in nine months, due to a 7.5 percent slump in gasoline prices. Inflation Rate in the United States averaged 3.27 percent from 1914 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 23.70 percent in June of 1920 and a record low of -15.80 percent in June of 1921.

The FED has been doing backflips to try to stem the inflation rate.

October 11, 2018
By Jeff Kearns

A gauge of underlying U.S. inflation (click here) was below estimates in September as used-car costs fell and housing rents cooled, signaling that price gains may remain close to where Federal Reserve policy makers want them amid an outlook for continued gradual interest-rate hikes.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the core consumer price index rose 2.2 percent in September from a year earlier, the same pace as in August and less than the 2.3 percent median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, a Labor Department report showed Thursday. The broader CPI slowed to a 2.3 percent annual gain, the least since February, compared with forecasts for 2.4 percent.

The inflation figures partly reflect a 3 percent monthly decline in prices for used cars and trucks, the biggest drop in 15 years. While the dollar and 10-year Treasury yields initially fell after the report, Fed officials will have two more months of price figures in hand before their December meeting at which they’re projected to raise interest rates for a fourth time this year amid solid economic growth and consumer spending, boosted by tax cuts....

The net exporter of oil and gas now has greater pollution to be responsible for that results in a climate crisis needing more food stamps, not less.

These charts (click here) show the number of Americans receiving food stamps as reported by the United States Department of Agriculture. As of the latest data released on December 7, 2018 the total is 38.6 million, which is more than the entire population of Canada....

...The massive spike in September & October 2017 was due to the massive hurricanes that struck the USA during that month. The spike of 3.4 million people distorted the chart too much, so I fixed the y-axis at 1 million so that the overall trend can still be seen. The spike would be much, much higher if Puerto Rico were in the SNAP program, but it is not. Instead, Puerto Rico gets a block grant to fund its own Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP), which fed about one-third of the island before Hurricane Maria. There are 3.4 million people in Puerto Rico, so if they were part of the SNAP system, the October 2017 bar on the chart above could conceivably go up another 3 million....

The USA is setting records in air pollution with it's net exports. Trump's economy is built on the backs of human lungs as well as heat-related storms that kill.

...WHO estimates that around 7 million people (click here) die every year from exposure to fine particles in polluted air that penetrate deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system, causing diseases including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia.

Ambient air pollution alone caused some 4.2 million deaths in 2016, while household air pollution from cooking with polluting fuels and technologies caused an estimated 3.8 million deaths in the same period.

More than 90% of air pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, followed by low- and middle-income countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region, Europe and the Americas....

Reagan was the first Republican to cheat the way to an economy by deregulating, but, Trump has set a record.

List of the current deregulation (click here)

New Rule: Climate Emergency | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) (click here for website of "Oil and Gas Climate Initiative )

To begin, Bill Maher is correct in drawing attention to Earth's climate. The petroleum industry has their own initiative, but, to be very frank $100 million is nothing compared to what it will take to end the climate crisis. This organization needs to be scrutinized for it's spending and it needs to work with the IPCC in order to sincerely make a difference.

There needs to be transparency to the funds and their use. I will point out that Shell stated openly the drilling in the Arctic is a poor idea and carries too much risk including the dangers to the climate. THAT is leadership.

If I read the tea leaves right, methane will be the new oil and this initiative will provide little to no relief from CO2 emissions generated by burning methane and will never seal the methane leaks their industry produces every year.

Start containing the effects of the Climate Crisis by ending the destruction of rainforest and begin to replace the biotic content of Earth in it's forests and other carbon sinks.

20 September 2018
By Adam Vaughan

ExxonMobil (click here) has joined the oil and gas industry’s flagship climate change project, reversing its decision not to join the alliance four years ago.

The company was a notable holdout when the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OCGI) was launched, but will now join European peers BP, Shell and Total in contributing $100m (£75m) to curb the impact of global warming.

The move is the clearest sign yet the US company is taking a more progressive stance on global warming.

Exxon, which promoted climate denial for years despite knowing about the risks since 1981, had shifted its tone on climate change under the leadership of Rex Tillerson. But while acknowledging global warming was real and linked to fossil fuel use, Tillerson said fears over climate change were overblown.

Darren Woods, who became the chief executive in 2017 when Tillerson became US secretary of state, has taken that shift further. “It will take the collective efforts of many in the energy industry and society to develop scalable, affordable solutions that will be needed to address the risks of climate change,” he said of the firm’s decision to join the OCGI.

Two other US oil companies, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, have also joined the initiative, taking its total climate fund to $1.3bn....

The Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund (click here) - sometimes referred to as war funds - is a separate pot of funding operated by the Department of Defense and the State Department, in addition to their "base" budgets (i.e., their regular peacetime budgets). Originally used to finance the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the OCO continues to be a source of funding for the Pentagon, with a fraction of the funds going to the State Department. 

Since the OCO fund has very little oversight and is not subject to the sequestration cuts that slashed every other part of the budget in 2013, many experts consider it a “slush fund” for the Pentagon. For example, Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, found that the Pentagon was stashing an estimated extra $20 billion worth of non-war funding in the “operation and maintenance” accounts of its proposed 2014 war budget. Even Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has recently called the OCO "a road to nowhere."

...Congress appropriated approximately $103 billion for OCO in FY2017 (click here) (8.5% of all discretionary appropriations), $78 billion for OCO in FY2018 (5.5% of all discretionary appropriations), and $68.8 billion for OCO so far in FY2019. Discretionary appropriations for FY2019 are not yet final; a continuing resolution expired December 21, 2018....

American lobster men and women have real reasons to emigrate to Canada.

February 5, 2019
By Penelope Overton

Lunar New Year (click here) is supposed to be the busiest time of the year for Tom Adams, whose company, Maine Coast, used to sell millions of pounds of lobster to China.

But the U.S.-China trade war has shut Maine Coast out of that market.

His old Chinese customers now buy their lobster from Canada, which can sell them a hard-shell version without the 25 percent import tariff. On a snowy Wednesday morning, on what should have been his busiest shipping day of the year, Adams waved at stacks of boxed lobsters waiting to be loaded on to cargo trucks at his newly expanded York facility and sighs.

“Last year, all of this and more would’ve been headed to China,” Adams said. “But now, we’re lucky if any of them are.”

Maine lobster dealers are struggling to manage the fallout from the U.S.-China trade war. Before the tariff, China was the second biggest importer of U.S. lobster, buying $128.5 million worth of it in 2017. The U.S. was on track to double its lobster sales to China before the tariff initiated by President Trump hit in July, according to trade data. Since then, U.S. lobster exports have all but dried up....

Beyond the obvious political agenda with American troops and tax dollars, what does Putin and Trump have in mind for the USA?

February 4, 2019
By Matthew S. Schwartz

Updated at 10:30 a.m. ET

An additional 3,750 troops (click here) will be sent to the Southern border to help install wire barriers and monitor crossings, officials said. The new deployment will bring the number of active-duty troops there to around 6,000.

In a tweet on Sunday, President Trump said that "STRONG Border Security" is necessary in the face of "Caravans marching through Mexico and toward our Country."

The announcement of new troops on Sunday comes just days before Trump is expected to discuss border security measures during Tuesday's State of the Union address....

The mass marches to the USA border under Trump have been more than curious. That has never occurred before in the history of the USA. I find all the mess about the USA southern border, including the largest drug haul, very odd. Record numbers of everything. Very odd.

December 20, 2018
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Mujib Mashal

Washington — The Trump administration (click here) has ordered the military to start withdrawing roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan in the coming months, two defense officials said Thursday, an abrupt shift in the 17-year-old war there and a decision that stunned Afghan officials, who said they had not been briefed on the plans.

President Trump made the decision to pull the troops — about half the number the United States has in Afghanistan now — at the same time he decided to pull American forces out of Syria, one official said.

The announcement came hours after Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, said that he would resign from his position at the end of February after disagreeing with the president over his approach to policy in the Middle East....

GOP Rep. to Obama: 'You Lie!' (click here for current DACA status - thank you)

Due to federal court orders, (click here) USCIS has resumed accepting requests to renew a grant of deferred action under DACA. USCIS is not accepting requests from individuals who have never before been granted deferred action under DACA. Until further notice, and unless otherwise provided in this guidance, the DACA policy will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded on Sept. 5, 2017. For more information, visit Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: Response to January 2018 Preliminary Injunction.

This film loop proves the disrespect Republicans exhibit for any Democratic leader. It is disgusting and proves to USA enemies the hideous nature of our political system.

“The Eastern Virginia Medical School Board of Visitors, (click here) like the administration, faculty, staff and students of EVMS, are committed to our core values of integrity, collegiality and excellence,” said Rector David A. Arias, Founder of SwimWays. “The Board, like our senior management team, is committed to discovering quickly how unacceptable photos such as these came to be published in the past. Further, we are committed to ensuring that our existing culture is one that would never tolerate such actions today.”

Following yesterday’s announcement of the creation of the external Community Advisory Board, President Richard V. Homan, MD, appointed Gilbert Bland, as Chair of the Community Advisory Group. Mr. Bland is the former national President of the Minority Franchise Association of Burger King Corporation and charter member of its Inclusion Advisory Council. Mr. Bland currently serves as President and CEO of the Urban League of Hampton Roads and as a board member for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Sentara Healthcare, and the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. Mr. Bland’s past leadership roles include service on the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia as Chair, the Old Dominion University Board of Visitors, and James Madison University Foundation....

VMI needs to conduct their own investigation to diversity at the university as well. The statements on it's diversity page are a bit pathetic.

Diversity Makes a Difference (click here)

What do we mean when we talk about diversity in college?

Broadly speaking, diversity is the word we use to describe a mixture of individuals and ideas, and the traditions, belief systems and cultures that come with them.

So, what are we striving for when we want to see more diversity in college?

When most students seek diversity on campus, what they are seeking are opportunities to express themselves and find community with others who believe the same way, as well as opportunities to learn from those from different cultures and backgrounds.

Diversity can be promoted by the university in several ways. First, institutions should be making an effort to hire a varied faculty to teach students. But the school should also be doing the best they can to foster substantial interaction between people from different backgrounds. This prevents students and faculty from self-segregating and encourages positive connections....          

I found US House Representative Mike Turner's (click here) response to questions about the thirteen indicted Russians (click here)  in the Mueller Investigation glib, distanced and minimalized. He stated they were bloggers as if they were never a threat. Excuse me, but, those bloggers assisted Donald Trump into office and terrorized a portion of the USA population previous to the 2016 election. Those bloggers helped throw the election to Trump. Maybe Turner actually appreciates the efforts of the KGB directed bloggers.

He was also not worried about sanctions being removed by Trump after the legislature passed them. Is Mike Turner at all concerned for the integrity of the elections in the USA or is more interested in "winning" at any cost as Trump certainly likes to make known.

Obviously, the Republican response to the errant ways of the Trump Administration is to minimize the importance of the federal government and USA Constitution. They need to improve their concern for the country.

Budweiser | Wind Never Felt Better | 2019 Super Bowl Commercial (click here for the vicious hate by the petroleum industry of alternative energy - thank you)

Budweiser won my heart today. I am proud of a Wall Street company. They love the USA. They are heroes. Thank you.

The USA and its loss of status among nations since 2017 in the field of energy production will be featured next week. It can't be blamed on Budweiser. Thank you for your interest.