"Back in office, Trump has taught our most important strategic partners a lesson they will not soon forget: America can — and will — change sides. Its voters may indeed choose a leader who will abandon our traditional alliances and actively support one of the world’s most dangerous and oppressive regimes."
FULL story HERE
"Below-average temperatures covered parts of every state except Alaska and Hawaii this winter.
The most unusually cold conditions occurred in South Dakota and in a corridor that includes Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia as well as Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia." (SOURCE: Washington Post story.)
Here's an interesting video displaying some of the newest robots* making their way towards your home.
Presuming you could afford one, would you like to have a robot helper at home?
*The word robot comes from the word robota. The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech. It also means "work", "labor" in colloquial Slovak, archaic Czech, and many other Slavic languages (e.g., Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Macedonian, Ukrainian, etc.). It derives from the reconstructed Proto-Slavic word *orbota, meaning "work, hard work, obligatory work for the king, or a short form used for plowing"
"Trump, for his part, should recognize the big picture. If he wants to avoid World War III, he should heed the lessons of World War II. Appeasing dictators doesn’t work. Putin, a former KGB officer, responds to toughness, not trembling. He respects force, not flattery. The U.S. president should try being as rude to Putin as he was on Friday to Zelensky."
Full editorial is HERE
From Thomas Friedman Column in The NY Times
"This is a total perversion of U.S. foreign policy practiced by every president since World War I. My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV."
full column HERE.
The photo of Bloody Sunday on the billboard was by Spider Martin, whose work will be featured in the upcoming MMFA exhibition, Selma is Now: Civil Rights Photographs by Spider Martin.
This exhibition will be on view Feb. 28 through June 1. It will be accompanied by an exhibition of student art Jubilee: 60 Years of Bending Towards Justice.
As of this writing, the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has spread to 99 people; 95 percent of those diagnosed with measles this year are unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccine status, and the vast majority of those affected are under 19. The outbreak is concentrated in Gaines County, Texas, a rural area in West Texas with a disproportionately high level of religious or philosophical exemptions to vaccines — a whopping 47.95 percent of students from one of only three public school districts in the county claimed exemptions in the 2023-24 school year. The percentage of exemptions in all of Gaines County is nearly 14 percent, and that doesn’t include home-schooled children.
Earlier this month, the Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said that the outbreak in Gaines County was mostly among the “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, whose members don’t get regular health care and don’t attend public school. “The church isn’t the reason that they’re not vaccinated,” Anton said in a news release. “It’s all personal choice and you can do whatever you want.”
“Do whatever you want” might be good advice for choosing a fun new wallpaper, but it’s terrible advice for encouraging vaccine uptake.
You might assume that many religious groups are doctrinally opposed to vaccination. Why else would the majority of states allow for religious or philosophical exemptions to school vaccine mandates? But that is not accurate. The Mennonite leadership, as Anton points out, is not against vaccines — and neither are most other major religious groups. The U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches made a statement in 2021 regarding the Covid vaccine that “our confession of faith and our current and historical practice do not provide the necessary rationale for granting a religious exemption based on the theological convictions of the denomination” (italics theirs).
This isn’t the first time that undervaccinated religious groups have been at the epicenter of measles outbreaks. In 1991, a Philadelphia measles outbreak that killed nine people spread in two church communities that did not believe in any medical intervention. In 2018-19, an outbreak in Brooklyn took root among undervaccinated Orthodox Jews.
As Caitlin Rivers points out in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, routine childhood vaccines are still very, very popular in the United States. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is already going back on promises he made about vaccines during his confirmation hearing. Earlier he said he wouldn’t mess with the childhood vaccination schedule, and now he’s saying “Nothing is going to be off limits.”
The pro-vaccine majority in this country needs to go on the offensive now. Otherwise outbreaks like the one currently raging in Texas will become more commonplace, and young children will die.
“I’m incredibly concerned and expect routine vaccination rates to continue to decline,” said Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who writes the popular newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. She thinks that vaccine advocates need to “anticipate next moves so we are proactively driving narrative instead of always being in defense.”
Here is where faith leaders — particularly conservatives and those aligned with President Trump — come in. They should be among those getting out in front of recent anti-vaccine “religious freedom” messaging, as Republican parents are far more distrustful of vaccines and public health officials than Democratic parents are. Kennedy has a lot of fans among the “crunchy” Christians of America.
Religious leaders who stepped up to defend vaccines during the pandemic know how to convince their increasingly skeptical congregations that vaccines save lives. Most Americans who go to religious services said they would trust their clergy’s advice on the Covid vaccine, according to 2021 polling from Pew Research.
To get ahead of whatever Kennedy might do in the future, religious leaders can work with local public health officials to set up vaccine clinics in their houses of worship, and they can go on social media and say that “Jesus Christ would advocate for people using vaccines,” as the prominent evangelical Franklin Graham did in 2021 in regards to the Covid-19 vaccine. When there was a measles outbreak among the majority-Muslim Somali community in Minneapolis in 2017, public health leaders worked with imams to help convince their parishioners to vaccinate their children.
The Catholic Church has been a leader in vaccine advocacy. The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, for example, says the schools that it runs do not accept students who have a religious or philosophical vaccine exemption, because it believes vaccines are in line with Catholic teachings.
What the Catholic Church is doing right now in West Virginia is instructive for other faith leaders because it’s arguing that religious freedom can also be interpreted as the freedom to require vaccines to attend its schools.
For decades West Virginia had a no-religious-exemption policy in its public schools, and as a result, the measles, mumps and rubella “vaccine coverage rate for the 2023-2024 school year was 98.3 percent,” above the 95 percent herd immunity threshold, according to The Intelligencer of Wheeling, W.Va. But a law that just passed the West Virginia State Senate would allow for religious or philosophical exemptions — and it would also “prohibit parochial and religious schools from setting their own immunization requirements.”
Mark Brennan, bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, told West Virginia MetroNews last year that whatever changes are made to state law, Catholic schools would continue to require vaccinations because “it really is for the good of the children and the staffs, but also the Catholic way is to contribute to the common good. Vaccinations have a more than two centuries track record of really helping to improve public health,” Brennan said.
This year, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston shows no evidence of backing down, and if the state law passes, they could sue on grounds of religious freedom to require vaccines. “We have always maintained our constitutional right to order our schools as we see fit in accord with our beliefs,” Tim Bishop, the director of marketing and communications for the diocese, told The Intelligencer’s Emma Delk on Feb. 21.
Opposition to the West Virginia law is bipartisan and includes a petition signed by more than 6,500 parents. Pro-vaccine efforts need to include people of all different political and religious backgrounds if they are going to be effective. It would be too easy to dismiss organizing that only included liberals, for instance, as biased or especially obedient to science. And the church plays a particularly promising role because of the authority it still commands. Grassroots secular nonprofit groups like the SAFE Communities Coalition are doing good work to organize the pro-vaccine majority.
Pro-vaccine Americans need to continue to stay vigilant, use every tool available to them and keep a close eye on Kennedy and the actions of the organizations he runs. The Trump administration has already taken down a C.D.C. flu vaccine campaign in the middle of a particularly nasty flu season. There’s no telling what it might do going forward, and we shouldn’t wait around, white-knuckled, to find out.
In Alabama....100% of respondents admitted to canceling plans just to spend time alone—the ultimate sign of a drained social battery.
Full Story HERE.
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TAMPA, Fla. — Just days after the New York Yankees amended one of the most recognizable rules in American professional sports, another iconic tradition for the organization will change in 2025.
Following losses, the Yankees will no longer play Frank Sinatra’s “(Theme From) New York, New York” as fans exit the stadium. On Sunday at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees lost 4-0 to the Detroit Tigers in a spring training exhibition. After Yankees prospect Brendan Jones grounded out to end the game, Sinatra’s “That’s Life” replaced the usual “New York, New York” on the loudspeakers. It is customary for the team to play “New York, New York” as soon as the game concludes, no matter the result.
From The N.Y. Times
William R. Lucas, who oversaw development of rockets for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and shouldered much of the institutional blame for the catastrophic explosion that killed all seven astronauts aboard the Challenger space shuttle in 1986, died on Feb. 10 at his home in Huntsville, Ala. He was 102.
His family confirmed the death.
Dr. Lucas was described as a strong-willed, even autocratic director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, which supervised the design and building of the booster rocket whose failure caused the fatal breakup of the Challenger in Florida just 73 seconds after liftoff.
The sickening explosion, on a clear and cold January morning, was witnessed by children in classrooms across the country because the crew included Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher who was to be the first American teacher in space.
FULL STORY is HERE.
I believe it was because I was a journalist, though that was never specified.
There is a column in today's Washington Post by a female journalist who was also called to jury service. She writes:
"When the jury summons for federal criminal court arrived in my mailbox in November 2023, I knew I had to answer it. And not just because I had been deferring and deferring and now I was all out of deferments. I had to answer this one because in my gut I knew it wasn’t going to be just any old criminal case. I remember saying to my partner, “I bet you anything it’s a January 6 case.”
It was, and she writes about the experience (unlike me she was NOT dismissed).
BUT...weeks after the jury she sat on finished their job, finding the defendant guilty...Trump freed the defendant her jury had convicted. and others too."
I recommend reading her full column. It is HERE.
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| A recent cat adoptee |
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| My first dog, Brandy, long gone! |
Below, we show U.S. ownership rates of various pets, based on a survey of 7,539 U.S. residents conducted in early spring of 2024:
| Pet | Share of U.S. Households With Pet | Number of U.S. Households With Pet |
|---|---|---|
| Dogs | 45.5% | 59.8M |
| Cats | 32.1% | 42.2M |
| Fish | 2.9% | 3.9M |
| Reptiles | 1.8% | 2.3M |
| Birds | 1.6% | 2.1M |
| Small mammals (gerbils, hamsters, etc.) | 1.0% | 1.3M |
| Rabbits | 0.7% | 900K |
| Horses | 0.5% | 700K |
| Poultry | 0.5% | 700K |
With one of the highest ownership rates worldwide, 59.8 million U.S. households own dogs.
As the pandemic fueled a rise in pet ownership, spending also rose at a substantial rate. In 2023, Americans spent $186 billion on pets, rising 11% annually on average since 2019. By 2030, this figure is projected to rise to $260 billion.
Given the growth in pet ownership, a number of products—from cologne to raw food diets—have multiplied across the market.
Following next in line are cats, with 42.2 million American households having these feline friends. Overall, Americans spent the least on these animals likely given their low-maintenance, independent characteristics. In 2024, spending on cats was $1,311 compared to the average for all pets of $1,516.
Given the growth in pet ownership, 13% of U.S. employers offer pet insurance, including United Airlines and Verizon. Going further, other companies are introducing pet-bereavement policies and “pawternity leave”, for pet owners to take care of new or sick pets.
In fact, the New York City council is considering a bill that would allow workers to take paid sick leave to look after their pets to provide greater flexibility for animal care.
SOURCE: HERE
Protesters gathered around the U.S. Wednesday in a coordinated effort originating from social media known as the 50501 movement.
"50501 is a call for 50 protests in 50 states on 1 day," reads a website that lists the protests across the country and encourages people to spread its anti-Trump messages online.
Protest organizers describe the push as a "decentralized rapid response to the anti-democratic, destructive, and, in many cases, illegal actions being undertaken by the Trump administration and his plutocrats," the "Build the Resistance" website states.
"Tuesday was a dark day for the United States. President Donald Trump and his administration embraced Russia as a peace partner without demanding that it pay any price for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. And then, in a statement that turned morality upside down, the president blamed Ukraine for causing the war."
Full story is HERE.
In his latest attack on Ukraine, a nation that was invaded BY RUSSIA ten years ago, Trump has claimed that Ukraine’s president lacks legitimacy and that his country started the war with Russia.
“I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at a four percent approval rating,” Trump said. “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine.”
In saying this Trump was echoing the Kremlin’s latest propaganda effort, which is being amplified on social media platforms like Elon Musk’s “X”, that Volodymyr Zelensky has no legitimacy.
Source: HERE.
An upcoming Air Force
promotion exam for airmen hoping to reach the rank of technical sergeant
will be delayed after President Donald Trump's administration ordered
all diversity-related material to be scrubbed and reviewed, including
the service's study handbook and the test itself.
Nancy Altman, the president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told CBS News they heard from SSA employees that officials from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, had been trying to get access to the Enterprise Data Warehouse — a centralized database that serves as the main hub for personal, sensitive information related to social security benefits such as beneficiary records and earnings data. Altman was told King had been resistant to giving DOGE officials access to the database.
"She was standing in the way and they moved her out of the way. They put someone in who presumably they thought would cooperate with them and give them the keys to all our personal data," Altman said,
The Washington Post first reported King's departure.
King's exit from the administration is one of several departures of high-ranking officials concerned about DOGE staffers' potential unlawful access to private taxpayer information.
DOGE has accessed Treasury payment systems and is attempting to access Internal Revenue Service databases.
Since Mr. Trump has retaken the White House, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk and DOGE have rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies.
Altman told The Associated Press, "There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred."
"The information collected and securely held by the Social Security Administration is highly sensitive," she said. "SSA has data on everyone who has a Social Security number, which is virtually all Americans, everyone who has Medicare, and every low-income American who has applied for Social Security's means-tested companion program, Supplemental Security Income."
"If there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned," she said.
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