Disinformation:
It must be difficult to raise kids these days and teach them how to figure out what is true or not, at least once they start using the internet. I have found three websites over the years that do a good job of helping. They are:
Truthorfiction.com
Snopes.com
Factcheck.org
Some of these are more about Internet hoaxes, and some about politicians telling the truth.
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It Took Trump Only Twenty-four Days to Sell Out Ukraine – Is that a record? I want to compare that to Quisling in WWII, but I’ll have to work on that.
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I have added someone to my favorite editorial cartoonist list: Walt Handelsman; he is in the major New Orleans’ paper, the Times Picayune. It reminds me of my days in New Orleans when I was a young sailor pup . . . and I read that paper – when not at sea; well, unless I took a copy with me, heh heh. When in other ports, I tried to buy local papers, if they were in English. In Europe you could often find a Paris edition of the NY Times, for example.
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Is there a difference between saying “I’m sure,” and “I’m very sure?” or maybe “I’m damn sure!” Isn’t that like saying “I’m a little bit pregnant?” You are or you are not. Wait, that sounds like a line Yoda would say. What was that one line, when he was teaching Luke about the force? Something like, “Do or do not — there is no try.”
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Fact: From 2008 to 2023, private health care costs per enrollee rose nearly three times as fast as Medicaid costs per enrollee. The old profit motive? Greed?
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Is it just me, or is Trump again acting like all the money the federal gov’t spends is his to control? First time it was aid to Ukraine. Now, it’s a lot of things. Like money for USAID, or schools here, etc.
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From Bernie Sanders: Trumpism does not believe in democracy or the rule of law. Trump recently posted: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” That gets attributed to Napolean. In other words, Trump believes that he can do anything he wants for any reason. He can ignore Congress or the courts. He is above the law. Nixon had similar ideas. I recall an interview with David Frost during which Nixon said, “Well, when the president does it, then it is not illegal.”
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Basketball notes: I usually don’t watch the all-star game. No defense. But the regular games are “fixed” against defense too. I never liked the 3-point shot. Changed everything and not for the better. I’ll write about that again sometime. And the way the game is now officiated is so different than when I was growing up, or a coach.
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Trump is saying that if he can work a deal with Putin to end the war, Ukraine gives up some land to Russia and minerals to us? What a deal for Ukraine!
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And this: WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS will lay off thousands of probationary workers in the middle of tax season. Well, this is good if you are very wealthy and cheat on your taxes (like Trump); not so many workers to audit you! Well, working stiffs have their taxes taken out of their paychecks, and if they take too much, you have to fight to get some back, but not those whose wealth is in stocks or real estate.
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If you look at screens a lot, as I do, you should probably use eyedrops to fight dry eye. Just saying. There are several over the counter ones. I asked my ophthalmologist if that was a good idea, and he said yes.
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History Lesson: Knitting as spying: Whether women knitted codes into fabric or used stereotypes of knitting women as a cover, there’s a history between knitting and espionage. “Spies have been known to work code messages into knitting, embroidery, hooked rugs, etc.,” according to the 1942 book A Guide to Codes and Signals.—sometimes they used the two basic knitting “knots” (knit and purl?) to indicate dots and dashes, like Morse code.
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Remember RFK’s answer to Bernie, something like this:
Bernie: Did vaccines save millions during Covid?
RFK Jr.: I don’t know
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Before the president can take any action, he has to have the legal power to do it. Presidents get their power from one of two places: the Constitution or a law passed by Congress.—this is what worries me – he will ignore the courts and Congress.
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Myth buster: George Washington did not have wooden teeth.
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The Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (C.F.P.B.) was formed in 2010 with the goals of ensuring the enforcement of consumer-protection laws and regulating a wide range of financial abuses, including payday lending, debt collection, and credit ratings. Now the Trump Administration, via Elon Musk’s DOGE, seems to be trying to dismantle it. – The New Yorker – well, again, since Reagan in 1980, the Republicans have been preaching about how we can’t trust the fed gov’mint and should reduce it or kill it (drown it in the bathtub, they said).
To quote Elizabeth Warren: “For a dozen years, the C.F.P.B. has been the financial cop on the beat,” Warren went on. “It has found more than twenty-one billion dollars in fraud and scams, and scooped up that money and returned it directly to the people who were cheated. Now Elon Musk comes in and says, ‘Let’s fire the cops.’ What could possibly go wrong?”
Me: She went on to ‘splain how Musk and X are getting into financial services . . . and suppose he does get access to all of our IRS files, etc.?
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President George H.W. Bush once called it “voodoo economics” — the unsupported assumption that tax cuts generate enough revenues to substantially pay for themselves. We are hearing this again with Trumpy’s plan to extend the tax cuts to the uber wealthy. Haven’t we learned what “trickle down economics” really is?
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Here’s something I believe: Jobs are created when people have money to spend.
Conversely, cutting taxes on those who hide millions in the Cayman Islands does not necessarily create one job, not in the U.S. anyway.
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When I retired, one of our grandkids had a hard time understanding pensions. He would say, “Wait a minute, Grandpa. You’re telling me that they pay you to do nothing?” – of course, he would understand it better now ‘cause I could use Trump’s kids as examples!
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The pope is very ill. We saw the movie, Conclave, about choosing a new pope. Makes me wonder how close to reality it was. Maybe we’ll find out.
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Enough for today.
All take care,
Kevin
Blog: If I understand this 