It should be illegal for Utilities to become for-profit. They should either be government run or non-profit, but only in the business to provide a needed service and NOT to make money.

For clarity: By 'Utilities', I mean items for which local residents have little or no choice in the provider (power/electric lines, water/sewer lines, hospitals) AND which either are or are nearly essential for modern living (it'd be hard to get a job without it, OR social services might take your kids if you don't provide the item).

I'm annoyed that this post doesn't include a link to the SOURCE. Grrr. Here it is.

There. Now it isn't just a questionable possbly faked pic, but a verifiable retraction with the misleading 'leftist' bits still at the top of the page and in the sub-headline.

Comma-la (as she tells us to pronounce it), or even Com'la (as it is traditionally pronounced)

• https://theconversation.com/its-comma-la-insisting-on-mispronouncing-kamala-harriss-name-is-racist-144523
• https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/kamala-harris-name-how-to-pronounce-pronunciation-indian.html

Hrm. No one has mentioned the decline of middle class wages.

I remember in the ... late 70s/early 80s my mother would drag us to the mall nearly every weekend. She was there to buy clothes. She always wanted something new and she wanted to try on at least a dozen items before buying one or two. I was thrilled when I was old enough to go off to the record store and/or hobby store while she did that. Earlier, I begged to go the the toy store, but was typically refused. Later, I was at the book store getting paperback scifi.

I don't think people have as much disposable income as they did then. I don't know many people who can buy as much frivolous stuff as my folks used to. I guess I could technically buy stuff all the time, but I want to save fore retirement. My folks had pensions. I have to put it away myself.

They aren't complaining that he had a black son, but that he's an "undercover Democrat" because he's stated that he learned about racism from the kid, saying things like, “Michael being a Black American, and Jack being white Caucasian. They have different challenges,” he said. “My son Jack has an easier path. He just does.”

Further, there was a question as to if the kid was real since there are no photos. That led to the new clarification:

Speculation about whether Michael was a real person prompted Johnson’s office to clarify. “When Speaker Johnson first ran for Congress in 2016, he and his wife, Kelly, spoke to their son Michael—who they took in as newlyweds when Michael was 14 years old,” said Corinne Day, Johnson’s communications director, in a statement first reported by Newsweek. “At the time of the Speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own. He asked not to be involved in their new public life.” Day added that Johnson “maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”

So if we are to believe him, there are no photos because that is the way the now-adult kid wants it.

Everybody screenshot and archive that amazon page before they edit it!

Edit: I couldn't archive.org to capture it, but this should work: https://archive.ph/pqXje

It's because of the electoral college. Most states give all their electoral college votes to whomever wins the state rather than dividing the votes equitably. This means Pennsylvania -- a swing state -- will go either all-red or all-blue. The state has a lot of fracking, and a lot of people making money off it, so Democrats are trying to appease pro-fracking to get votes.

The people getting harmed by fracking are stuck without anyone on their 'side', but will presumably be more likely to vote blue because that side favors more regulation and pro-environment stuff. Note that all Harris said was she wouldn't ban fracking. She didn't say she wouldn't make it difficult to do. My guess is any attempts to make it cleaner will get crushed by Congress and the Corrupted Supreme Court that has sided against Unions, workers, citizens, and the planet -- all to favor of their sugar daddies. So even if the next President wants to do something about fracking, it would be a hard to actually do anything.

For generations, Native Hawaiians have been displaced from ancestral lands, and on the island of Molokai, where one-third of the island is owned by Hong Kong-headquartered billionaire investment firm Guoco Group...

Same basic problem is on all the islands. Read the fictionalized story The Descendants (or see movie of same name).

... Land mismanagement causes other problems as well. Red dirt sediment from West Molokai’s eroded slopes runs into the ocean after a heavy rain, turning the water red with pollution that can kill coral reefs and clog fishponds.

“If our reef dies, we lose that as a source of food,” Kalipi said.

It sounds like Hawaii should institute a land use law where squatters on lands of absent landlords could claim ownership by working said land. I know they have something like that already because there was another lawsuit where developers purposely built on someone else's land, then sued the property owner for trying to 'steal' the luxury building they built by 'mistake' such that all she could argue was that they tear the whole thing down.

If successful, it would be one of the largest land purchases in Hawaii, behind Larry Ellison’s nearly 90,000-acre acquisition on the island of Lanai. Only this time, the land would be returning to its people.

The Molokai Heritage Trust is moving forward thoughtfully in its endeavor, dedicating years for discussion and research and obtaining its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status last year.

I am heartened by the last line, which is labeled as "Pakui’s Prophecy" (emphasis mine):

The heavens will fall, the high-born will fall, and the dark earth — the common people — will rise like a wave.

I had never heard the particular sentence, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” as a phrase, but seeing the video, there did not seem to be any hostility in her voice nor actions. The article says:

In the church, he said, to rebuke is to cast out a demon, or keep a demon from using a person to do something bad. The phrase can be said casually, though, in response to someone’s misbehavior. When Massey says it, her voice is louder and clearer than it has been before, but she doesn’t sound angry. It’s the tone of voice that you might use while saying: For goodness’ sake, this is really getting ridiculous.

That fits with her actions: totally non-confrontational, but with the mildest of chastisements.

I'm going to be repeating this whenever this ad blitz is mentioned because it is MUCH WORSE than you think. America PAC is partially funded by Musk and his old pals at Palantir. They sell data and analyses of it. You might get registered to vote if your state is a solid red or blue, but CNBC reports (archive):

[...] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk's political confidants -- which is interesting because he's at Palantir which was you'd think of as his buddy Peter Theil's gig. Again, Palantir sells information, so in all likelihood they are going to take that input to figure out exactly how to target people to 'vote Trump' using the very information the public gave them for free!

For folks who don't get to the page until it is scrubbed (which might not happen, but I expect it will), you are quoting from the "Editorial Reviews" section a quote by "Senator JD Vance"! 🫢

One of -- if not THE -- primary causes for attraction is proximity. If you see someone often, you are much more likely to become attracted to them. Family members and 'unavailable' people such as those already married are typically, but not uniformly, excluded.

After that, we tend to be initially attracted to pretty people with symmetrical features, good health, and of a similar social status (we are also attracted to those of higher social rank, but they will tend to self-select themselves to be less frequently proximate as well as rejecting overtures from potential mates of lower status). That still doesn't matter as much as frequent exposure to someone. Ideally the exposure occurs when you are both in a good mood. Bad moods make for less attraction. We also like people with whom we share common interests, habits, and so on, such that more similar people are more likely to become attracted to one another.

So, yeah, 'friends' are generally going to trigger psychological cues of attraction in any group. Most everyone has to deal with such feelings and quash them when appropriate. Some people have a hard time dealing and either pursue when that makes them creepy or they fail to respond when the feeling is mutual.

You're telling me not to clean my ears with swabs???? I'm sorry, but I will swear forever that they are intended for the ears. The only issue is that the makers don't want to get sued if anyone hurts themselves. I mean, c'mon, the Japanese use both ends of these in their ears! You want me to start doing that?

more | info

It's not just us humans, chimps trade meat for sex: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chimps-behavior-sex-news-animals

Yale taught monkeys about money, and yup, they traded money for sex. From archive of NYT article:

Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.

They already did! The 'presidential immunity' ruling they recently made basically said that if a President does it, we (SCOTUS) will decide if it is an official act, and if it is, then the Prez is blameless, but if we say the act isn't 'official' then WE will tell you the Prez is a baddie.

In case anyone just wants to see the pic:

from: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/images-trump-secret-service-smiling-after-shooting-are-fake-2024-07-14/

That'd require the child be home, first. Mom was worrying because he hadn't come home from the bus and no one was picking up the phone at the school or the bus company. I'm going to guess that getting into the house would have been noticeable because calling the cops was not mom's go-to move -- and they proved her prioritization correct by being useless.

They are trying very hard not to mention Project 2025 (bullet points). They're even saying they won't really do that stuff... while standing with the authors. They know most Americans are against their stuff, so they talk about anything OTHER than their plan to: eliminate the Department of Education, cut and overhaul Medicaid, roll back the recent law banning surprise medical billing, and revoke FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, and so many other horrible things. Instead, they're gonna mispronounce Kamala's name and make fun of her laugh.

I'm tickled pink! All 50 Democratic party chairs endorse Harris already. ActBlue got $47 million today in just 7 hours from Biden stepping out. The world looks a little brighter when Steven Miller doesn't get his way.

It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.

do we want flood-risk predictions sponsored by a flood-insurance company, or heat advisories from an air-conditioning conglomerate?

The agency is home to one of the most significant repositories of climate data on Earth, which includes information on shifting atmospheric conditions and the health of coastal fisheries, plus hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of ice-core and tree-ring data.

Eliminating or privatizing climate information won’t eliminate the effects of climate change. It will only make them more deadly.

Tell people 2025 would do this. No federal weather means local counties would have to pay Big Business for tornado/hurricane warnings. We'd pay more for fish because fishermen can't get data unless they pay. Plane schedules become even less reliable AND cost more because the government stops tracking upper level wind speeds.

Look: we want people who get a salary for doing accurate work rather than people who get paid to say whatever the bossman want to hear. Ask people to imagine how it would work if Google, NBC, Amazon, and Fox each sunk the money for trying to replicate the existing infrastructure and then sold pieces of it to paying customers -- such as Allstate, CBS, and Delta Airlines. Everyone else would have to HOPE they were getting complete data and have to wonder what was missing. Noticing record highs and lows would become proprietary and forbidden from broadcast in a way akin to being disallowed from referencing "The Superbowl" unless you pay for a license. How's any of that going to make things better?

P.S. This article is posted to several communities, so I'm reiterating this post repeatedly.