BKjr Is Moron

RFK Jr. Unveils Disturbing Plan to Combat Bird Flu

Trump’s health secretary has proposed the worst idea, as egg prices continue to skyrocket.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks that the bird flu should be allowed to spread unchecked to identify birds that could be immune.

Kennedy said in a recent Fox News interview that farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds that are immune to it,” an idea that experts say would be dangerous and hurt the poultry industry.

“That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas, told The New York Times.

Every new infection of the H5N1 virus is a chance that it will mutate and become more powerful and spread further, although it still hasn’t been proven to spread between people. But if it were allowed to spread through millions of birds, “that’s literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” Hansen said.

While Kennedy’s department doesn’t have any regulatory powers over farms, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins agrees.

“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Rollins said on Fox News in February.

If this plan actually goes into effect, the virus would spread among a larger number of birds, putting more people and other animals at risk of infection. Right now, if a poultry farm has a positive test for the virus, it is reimbursed for culling its flocks to prevent its spread.

If the virus were allowed to spread on purpose, bird flu “infections would cause very painful deaths in nearly 100 percent of the chickens and turkeys,” Dr. David Swayne, a poultry veterinarian and former USDA employee, told the Times, adding that it would be “inhumane, resulting in an unacceptable animal welfare crisis.”

Kennedy isn’t even operating on the right information: He claimed in one interview that the virus didn’t seem to affect wild birds, but there are many documented cases of wild birds dying from H5N1. Kennedy also theorizes that some chickens and turkeys may be immune, but scientists say that poultry lacks the genes needed to resist the virus.

It seems that Kennedy’s pseudoscience is spreading unchecked as well. He’s already been putting his anti-vaccine beliefs into practice at HHS by curtailing multiple vaccine research projects and directing resources toward researching the debunked conspiracy that vaccines cause autism. His latest idea on the bird flu is dangerous and could end up having disastrous consequences for public health and U.S. agriculture.

Step By Step

Closer and closer to full blown Daddy State.

The American justice system was set up in such a way that we'd be OK with letting a couple of bad guys slip thru the cracks in order to protect the rights of everybody else.

Maybe we have to let 100 bad guys get away with shit, so 335,000,000 good guys don't have to worry about being disappeared into a shithole prison in El Salvador without so much as a fuckin' phone call.

What the fuck are we doing?

The kicker, of course - the great potential tragedy - is that we've let Trump get away with shit, and now we get to see what Payment Due really looks like.

Goin' On Down

Everything Trump Touches Turns To Shit

Tesla falls after Commerce secretary recommends buying stock

Tesla shares fell early Thursday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick used a TV appearance to urge Americans to buy stock in Elon Musk's car company.

Why it matters:

Cabinet secretaries don't typically recommend individual stocks, much less those linked to the president's closest adviser.

His recommendation was potentially overshadowed, though, by one of Tesla's most fervent defenders on Wall Street calling the company's situation a "crisis."
What they're saying: "I think, if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla," Lutnick said on Fox News Wednesday evening. "It's unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap. It'll never be this cheap again."

"I mean, who wouldn't invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding me."

By the numbers:

• Tesla shares were down about 1.7% in premarket trading Thursday to $231.75.
• The stock is down 5% in the last five days, 35% in the last month and 42% so far this year.

"We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly," JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman said in a research note last week.

Between the lines:

• Lutnick's comments are part of what has effectively become a Trump administration campaign to defend Tesla.
• Last week President Trump held a public showcase of Tesla's cars at the White House.

Amid a wave of "Tesla Takedown" rallies at dealerships nationwide, top administration officials have pledged to investigate protesters for domestic terrorism.

Of note:

• Just hours before Lutnick's comments, Cantor Fitzgerald — the investment bank where he was previously CEO, which is now managed by his sons — upgraded Tesla's stock.

The intrigue:

• Lutnick's recommendation came as one of Wall Street's most bullish Tesla analysts sounded the alarm on the company's future.

"Lets call it like it is:

• Tesla is going through a crisis and there is one person who can fix it....Musk," Wedbush Securities' Dan Ives wrote in a research note Wednesday night.
• "As someone who is a core bull and believer in the Telsa long term growth story.....I loudly urge Musk and the Board to step up, stop being silent, and help resolve this crisis forming at Tesla," Ives said.

Today's Today

HAPPY VERNAL EQUINOX, EVERYBODY

Most likely, Marzanna was originally a goddess of life who oversaw all of nature including death. As the years passed Marzanna became a deity associated with winter, death, torment, plague, pestilence, and nightmares. When spring arrives her powers subside, she dies, and the spring goddess Vesna is born. For centuries, it’s been a tradition in Slavic cultures for the people to help this process of change come to fulfillment.

This ritual in which Marzanna is banished represents the end of the dark and challenging days of winter, the victory of life over death, and the welcoming of the spring rebirth and reblooming of nature. Vesna, goddess of spring (morning, birth, youth and fertility), is an Artemis-like protector of the wild, often pictured wearing a bear skin, as bears are her familiars and guardians. Mother Bear protecting her children. She’s the goddess of wild nature, forests, animals, hunting, and the moon. What is called “the copse,” a wand of the early blooming pussy willow or hazel, is decorated and carried to represent her and welcome spring’s reawakening.

The Spring Goddess Vesna - Ukraine

Managing Expectations

Rev Karla Substack

Caveat Emptor

If I sell a product in my store, and that product turns out to be faulty to the point of endangering my customers, then I have to assume part of the liability. Not all of it, but some.

Those folks aren't just the suppliers' customers, they're mine too. I have a certain responsibility to vet my suppliers and their products, the same as I have a responsibility to vet my customers to make sure they're on the level, so I get paid for my goods and services.

Amazon is looking to duck their share of the resposibility, the same as they try to weasel out of paying their share in taxes.

Sick of this shit. There's no honor in it. Maybe I've always been a bit naive about it, but I want to say I remember a time when not everybody was always trying to put one over on somebody, and going to great lengths to offload their costs onto either their customers or the government (which is essentially the same fuckin' thing, dammit).

The point of the exercise cannot be to leave the other guy holding the bag every time.

This is the kind of result we'd expect from consolidation and monopolization. If you don't have to worry about a customer not coming back - because they've got nowhere else to go - then you've got 'em by the balls, and you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want.

Amazon sues Consumer Product Safety Commission over recall order for hazardous products

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has sued the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for finding the e-commerce giant legally responsible for the recalls of hundreds of thousands of products sold on its site.

The independent federal agency ordered Amazon in January to take several actions, including notifying customers who bought more than 400,000 items covered by recalls and giving refunds to those who could prove the products were properly disposed of or destroyed.

The order followed the commission’s unanimous determination last summer that Amazon was a “distributor” of faulty items sold on its website by third-party sellers and shipped through the company’s fulfillment service

But Amazon has long disputed it qualifies as a “distributor” of products offered by other sellers. In its lawsuit filed on March 14, the company maintained it serves as a “third-party logistics provider” and therefore should not be held liable for recalls of products that were made, owned and sold by others.

The commission sued Amazon in 2021 for allegedly distributing hazardous items, accusing the company of putting consumer safety at risk by failing to properly notify the public about recalled products that included defective carbon monoxide detectors and flammable children’s pajamas.

Amazon said in its lawsuit that it issued previous recall notices and some refunds shortly after the CPSC raised safety concerns several years ago. The company argues the commission is an “unconstitutionally structured agency” that overstepped its authority with the new directive.

“The remedies ordered by the CPSC are largely duplicative of the steps we took several years ago to protect customers, which are the same steps we take whenever we learn about unsafe products,” Amazon said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. The Seattle-based company said it could not comment further on its lawsuit filed last week.

Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX also have active lawsuits challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board as unconstitutional. The two companies initiated the cases after the labor agency filed complaints against them in disputes about workers’ rights and union organizing.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission declined to comment Wednesday on Amazon’s lawsuit complaint. In a Jan. 17 statement about the hazardous products order, Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr. said it was the CPSC’s job to “hold companies like Amazon accountable” and “no company is above the law.”

Today's Keith

Be sure to catch the end of Worst Persons.

Olbermann illustrates firsthand what it means to make large chunks of dollars, and what can happen to people when they hit big.

💥💯

A Birthday

Rosetta Tharpe

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born Rosetta Nubin, March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973, was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and also later guitarists, such as Eric Clapton.

Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, opening the way to the rise of electric blues. Her guitar-playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s. Her European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964, with a stop in Manchester on May 7, is cited by British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.

Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of "light" in the "darkness" of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording "Rock Me" and with her 1939 hit "This Train". Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While controversial among conservative religious groups due to her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.

Tharpe's 1944 release "Down by the Riverside" was selected for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004, which noted that it "captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers" and cited her influence on "many gospel, jazz, and rock artists". ("Down by the Riverside" was recorded by Tharpe on December 2, 1948, in New York City, and issued as Decca single 48106). Her 1945 hit "Strange Things Happening Every Day", recorded in late 1944, featured Tharpe's vocals and resonator guitar, with Sammy Price (piano), bass and drums. It was the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard "race records" chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll, and alternatively has been called the first rock and roll record. In May 2018, Tharpe was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence.

Mama Bears

... are not to be fucked with.

Be All That You Can Be

An army of one.

A few good men.

Join the navy and see the world.

 Aim high - fly, fight, win.

Join the US military. See faraway exotic lands. Meet fascinating people - and kill them.

We're the best fighting force the world has ever seen. We're the best trained, best fed, best equipped, and best armed - we're just the best!

But we get completely flummoxed when somebody throws a pronoun at us. We just go all pieces.