Thursday, June 25, 2026
NO, I am NOT running for state Rep. for House District 36
I checked the wrong box
By Will Collette
 |
| This is where I stand |
I heard about it from our Town Clerk Amy Weinreich (thank
you, Amy). Then saw my name on the Secretary
of State’s listing of declared candidates. I will take every step required
to correct that mistake and make sure my name is NOT on the ballot.
I voted to endorse Tina Spears as a member of the District
Committee and am wholeheartedly supporting her through the Primary and the
General Election.
And I will not be replacing her yard sign (photo, above) with one
of my own…although I might put one up that reads “DON’T VOTE FOR ME!”
Soaring US beef prices likely to rise further thanks to trade tensions and disease outbreaks
Trump blunders lead to more expensive burgers
The cost of beef, having spiked since early 2025, is coming under even more pressure. The most recent is the screwworm outbreak that hit cattle in Mexico and has now spread to the United States, where the cattle herd has already fallen to levels not seen since the 1950s, due in part to drought.
Meanwhile, potential trade disruptions loom. Just before U.S. and Mexican trade negotiators began meeting on June 16-17, 2026, to discuss the long-standing deal binding North America, Donald Trump warned that Washington may not renew the agreement, which was negotiated during his first term, and instead potentially withdraw from it altogether.
And because beef is both a top agricultural import and export for the U.S., the industry is especially vulnerable to any disruptions to the existing trade deal. As one example, the cost of ground beef is up by more than 20% just since January 2025.
Current trade uncertainty, reflecting Trump’s more fragmented, bilateral approach to negotiations, couldn’t come at a worse moment for inflation-weary consumers. The growing turmoil in the North American beef market risks further tightening supplies and raising prices.
RI Dems convention split leaves no endorsements for governor, LG and AG
Bad news for McKee and Matos
By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current
The outcome marks yet another setback for McKee, who will be the first sitting governor in at least recent history not to win the backing of his party, said Joe Fleming, a WPRI 12 political analyst.
“I don’t recall an incumbent governor ever not winning the endorsement, and I’ve been around a long time,” Fleming said in an interview Monday. “This is not a good sign for the governor.”
McKee received 81 votes to Foulkes’ 75, while 11 voting committee members opted not to endorse, according to vote totals shared by the Rhode Island Democratic Party. To secure party backing, candidates need to get 50% of all votes cast plus one — or 84 of the 167 committee members who cast ballots at the Teamsters Local 251 union hall in East Providence Saturday.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
They don't want you to know the REAL reason Social Security is in trouble
But I'm going to tell you anyway
The common understanding is that Social Security’s shortfall
is due to the huge postwar baby boom, now retiring, and to America’s increasing
life expectancy. The usual recommended fix is to reduce Social Security
benefits or raise the age of eligibility. As Speaker of the House Mike
Johnson, warned Monday,
“entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed.” He
said Republicans will introduce a plan to do that. Brace yourselves.
I used to be a Social Security trustee, and I call bullsh*t.
The baby boom can’t be blamed for Social Security’s
shortfall. The Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 recommended the
reforms that Congress then made — raising Social Security payroll taxes and
also raising the eligibility age for collecting Social Security benefits — knew
all about the baby boom and figured it into its calculations. (Early boomers
like me can now start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born
after 1960 have to wait until they’re 67 to collect full benefits.)
Americans’ increasing life expectancy isn’t at fault,
either. While wealthier Americans are living longer, that’s not the
case for lower-income Americans. The Urban Institute estimates that
life expectancy in the top 20 percent of income-earners is 91 years for people
born in the 1990s, four years more than people born in the 1950s. Yet the life
expectancy in the lowest 20 percent of income-earners is fewer than 80 years.
So what’s the real cause of the Social Security shortfall?
What did Greenspan’s commission fail to predict? Widening inequality.
Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to
earnings up to a certain cap. This year, that cap is $184,500. Earnings at
or below this amount are taxed at 12.4 percent. The cap rises every
year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.
Paddle by the light of the silvery moon, June 28
|
Is this how Donald Trump's ear miraculously healed so quickly and thoroughly?
Stanford scientists regrow lost cartilage and reverse arthritis in major breakthrough
Stanford Medicine
 |
| Miraculous healing |
A treatment that targets a protein linked to aging has
restored lost knee cartilage in older mice and prevented arthritis from
developing after serious joint injuries, according to a Stanford Medicine-led
study.
Researchers also found encouraging results in human tissue.
Samples collected during knee replacement surgeries began producing new,
functional cartilage when exposed to the treatment.
The findings raise the possibility that damaged cartilage
caused by aging or osteoarthritis could one day be repaired with either a local
injection or an oral medication. If successful in people, the approach could
reduce the need for knee and hip replacement surgeries.
An oral version of the treatment is already being tested in
clinical trials for age-related muscle weakness.
Targeting the Root Cause of Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis and
affects about one in five adults in the United States. The disease gradually
breaks down cartilage in the joints, causing pain, stiffness, and swelling. It
is estimated to generate roughly $65 billion in direct health care costs each
year.
Current treatments focus mainly on pain relief and, in
severe cases, joint replacement surgery. No approved medication can slow, stop,
or reverse the underlying disease process.
The new treatment works by blocking a protein called
15-PGDH, which researchers describe as a "gerozyme." This class of
proteins becomes more abundant with age and contributes to declining tissue
function throughout the body.
The same research team first identified gerozymes in 2023.
Previous studies showed that 15-PGDH plays a major role in age-related muscle
decline in mice. When researchers block the protein, older animals gain muscle
mass and endurance. When the protein is artificially increased in young mice,
their muscles become weaker and smaller.
Scientists have also linked 15-PGDH to the regeneration of
bone, nerve, and blood cells.
In addition to stopping shingles, shingles vaccine may protect against dementia
Shingles is nasty, but researchers find a side benefit to getting vaccinated
Receiving the recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV), which prevents herpes zoster (HZ), commonly known as shingles, within a year of entering or leaving a US nursing home dramatically lowers the risk of a dementia diagnosis for up to four years.
The study, published yesterday in
the Annals of Internal Medicine, reinforces past observational
research suggesting the same.
While previous research found that the live attenuated HZ
vaccine reduced the likelihood of a dementia diagnosis, the researchers in this
study wondered if RZV provided the same benefit. The paper found that receiving
a dose of RZV was associated with a 5.8-percentage-point lower risk of a
dementia diagnosis for up to four years.
“[That] translates to about one in 17 dementia cases
potentially being prevented through vaccination,” lead author Kaley Hayes,
PharmD, PhD, associate director of pharmacoepidemiology at the Brown University
School of Public Health, told CIDRAP News. “We were honestly taken aback by the
results. However, they actually are consistent with other studies that have
primarily included the older form of the vaccine.”
Trump Planned to Spend $300 Million in Taxpayer Dollars on Ballroom While Claiming It Was Privately Funded
Surprise shocker (not): he lied from the beginning
Stephen Prager for Common Dreams
Reiterating what he’d already said countless times, the
president claimed in March that the project was “taxpayer-free” and entirely
funded by private donors, who’d spend $400 million to build it in the
now-demolished East Wing of the White House.
But at the time he made these comments, he knew that was
untrue.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that a detailed project summary
made three weeks earlier showed the total construction cost at $600 million,
with more than half of the funds coming from taxpayers.
The Post continued:
By the time Trump made his comments in March, the federal government had already approved more than a dozen payments to the contractor overseeing the work, Clark Construction, totaling tens of millions of dollars in public funds, according to a log of the contractor’s invoices obtained by The Post...Multiple project summaries provided to the White House by Clark Construction show that internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.
According to the March 5 estimate reviewed by the Post, $293
million worth of funding is coming from donors—many of whom have received new
or extended federal contracts over the past six months.
The rest of the money comes from taxpayer-funded sources:
$155 million would come from the Secret Service, $149 million from the White
House Military Office, and $3 million from the Executive Residence.
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
The Age of the Super A*sholes
Trump and Musk dominate our economy and our politics
To describe both as selfish narcissists would be a wild
understatement. Both are maniacally obsessed with increasing their own personal
wealth, power, and control.
Both have been willing to break laws, norms, and other
social constraints in pursuit of these goals. Both have manipulated, bribed,
conned, robbed, and bullied their ways to dominance.
Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election,
was impeached twice, found criminally liable for cooking his corporate books,
and civilly liable for sexual abuse.
Musk paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump
elected president, then ran Trump’s illegal and hugely destructive DOGE. Musk’s
SpaceX has all the hallmarks of a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which insiders
pocket the winnings and leave latecomers holding the bag.
Both pride themselves on paying little or no taxes. Trump
famously said that paying not paying federal income taxes "makes
me smart." Musk paid zero
taxes in 2018.
Both are notoriously lacking in empathy; they view all
relationships as transactions. Trump refuses to be a
"consoler-in-chief" in national tragedies and openly withholds
sympathy for families of political opponents who die. (When Rob
Reiner and his wife were murdered, Trump asserted they were killed
“due to the anger [Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and
incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT
SYNDROME.”)
While the country suffers,
Trump posts images like this
Musk has stated that
"the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” — arguing
that a society can only afford to practice broad empathy if it operates from a
position of systemic strength.
Both regard themselves as omnipotent and invincible. Both
lash out verbally or physically at anyone who crosses them, often getting into
raging disputes and fights.
To the extent they have any belief beyond their own
omnipotence, it’s white male nationalism. “Whites are a rapidly dying
minority,” Musk wrote his 240 million followers in a January post on X. In
a February post, he declared that
“there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against
anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more
guilt trips. ENOUGH.”
And this
Musk has suggested that race plays a detrimental
role in hiring. He’s touted the role
of white people in eliminating slavery. He’s accused public figures
of racism
against white and Asian people.
In recent months, Musk has increased his
online posts about perceived threats to whiteness, or what he views as calls
for a “genocide” against
white people. Over the past seven months, he has posted 850 times
about race, nearly daily and triple the rate for the previous two years.
Trump also has a well-documented history of white
supremacist actions and rhetoric, including the 1973 lawsuit brought against
Trump management for allegedly discriminating against Black renters; his
full-page ads in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five Black and
Latino teenagers eventually exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; his
leading role in the debunked, racially-charged conspiracy theory that Barack
Obama was not born in the United States; his 2016 accusation that Mexican
immigrants were criminals and “rapists;” his 2017 “Muslim ban;” his “fine
people on both sides” of the violent white supremacist rally in
Charlottesville; his view of Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as
“shithole” countries; his determination to erase Black history from America’s
classrooms; and his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Both Musk and Trump have pushed the conspiracy theory that
Democrats are seeking to import undocumented immigrants so they can take over
the U.S. government forever.
Both have fomented white nationalism abroad. Trump was an
enthusiastic ally of Viktor Orbán, who saw Western civilization threatened by
Muslim immigration into Europe. Many people in Trump’s circle continue to
support and encourage leaders of the European far-right.
Musk, too, encourages white nationalism abroad. During the
recent anti-immigrant protests and riots in the United Kingdom—particularly in
Belfast and London—Musk posted that “civil
war is inevitable” and urged British protesters to “fight
back or die” (prompting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to condemn
Musk’s comments as “dangerous.”) In response to the recent killing in Belfast,
Musk blamed “murderous
migrants beheading innocent people in their home town.” He shared an
image of the stabbing suspect, who is Black, alongside the caption declaring “millions
must go.” And he reposted messages claiming that Starmer “hates white
people.”
Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for
Countering Digital Hate report that “Musk’s amplification” of anti-migrant
narratives to his hundreds of millions of followers was “instrumental”
in provoking the violence in Belfast: “No individual played a bigger role in
spreading [hateful] content on X than Musk himself.”
Help address the lingering problems the Navy left behind at Ninigret Park
| |||||||||||||||
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)