Saturday Report 3/2/24 - Is There a Magic Formula That Slows Down Aging?
The Best of the Rest of the News
— Republicans on the Supreme Court bend over backwards to accommodate Trump. In 2000, when action by the Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush (even though Al Gore won the election), it took them just two days to pick up the case and less than two weeks to render a decision (they heard arguments on December 11 and rendered their 5-4 decision the next day on December 12). In Trump’s case, to help him back into the White House, instead of a speedy decision he needs SCOTUS to slow-walk his appeal, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. They were offered the case in September, picked it up this week, and won’t even hear arguments until April 22, pretty much guaranteeing Trump won’t see a trial before the election. There is no way to describe this other than naked election interference. Compare that with Brazil in 2023, where President Jair Bolsonaro tried to use a clone of Trump’s strategy, claiming he hadn’t lost the election but that it was stolen from him, then inciting a massive riot at that nation’s capitol. By the end of the day of the riot, January 8, 2023, over 1000 of the seditionists had been arrested (compared to 14 arrests on January 6th here in the US). In just two weeks, the Brazilian Supreme Court had authorized an investigation of Bolsonaro for election theft, and when his trial concluded on June 30 he was convicted and barred from office for life. If America survives this November’s election intact, we must fix both our Supreme Court and our laws against insurrection, now that Trump has shown any future wannabee dictators where the weaknesses are in our systems.
— Moscow Mike Johnson postpones a government shutdown this week. That’s the good news: he approved and allowed a vote on a package to keep the government open, so everything from Social Security to veterans benefits will keep flowing. The bad news is that he only put the shutdown off by a few weeks. Ever since Newt Gingrich pioneered using the debt ceiling and appropriations bills as a weapon against a Democratic president (in that case, Bill Clinton) Republicans in Congress have used them as clubs against Clinton, Obama, and now Biden. While it was effective against Clinton and Obama, who both caved on important issues to the GOP pressure/threat, Biden isn’t taking it. Instead, he’s demanding that Republicans join with Democrats to “do the nation’s business.” And opinion polling suggests the GOP has lost their edge on this: most people now blame shutdowns on them and want to keep our government functioning smoothly. Nonetheless, the 40 or so members of the Koch-head Freedom Caucus are itching to shut down the government and Moscow Mike is clearly intimidated by them. Keep an eye on this: it could get really ugly in a few weeks.
— Biden and Trump both visited the US southern border on Thursday. President Biden met with the people charged with protecting and enforcing the border, the Border Patrol officers, while Trump held a photo-op with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas National Guard, who have no legal authority over the border. Biden called for Democrats and Republicans to work together to pass border control legislation that’s already passed the Senate. Trump spewed a jumble of racist lies. It was a startling and in-our-faces contrast between a true statesman and a demagogue.
— Hunter Biden outfoxes James Comer and the GOP. Comer dragged Hunter before his Oversight Committee to try to implicate Joe Biden in overseas corruption. But Hunter wasn’t playing along. He responded to questions by pointing out how Jared Kushner had taken billions from a foreign government while he’s never taken a cent. He noted that President Biden had never put his kids into official White House positions like Trump did, responding to several questions with variations on, “I’m not corrupt like Trump and Jared.” It was a marvel to behold, to hear Democrats on the committee tell it, and you can read the quotes on the Wonkette blog on Substack.
— Putin is helping flood Europe with brown-skinned immigrants to disrupt their democracies and assist rightwing politicians. A new report from the British newspaper The Telegraph reveals how Putin and the Wagner Group are helping African refugees find their way into various European nations, producing massive blowback from the largely white populations. He’s doing it explicitly to stir up trouble for European democracies and to shift electoral politics toward the hard right. Which raises the question: is he doing the same to us? Within weeks of Joe Biden becoming president, the flow of refugees and immigrants to our southern border nearly tripled from Trump-era levels. Was Putin using his social media trolls to amplify the messages from Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Moscow Mike Johnson that “Biden has opened the border”? It sure makes sense: poor people in countries south of our border also use Facebook and X…
— Wisdom School Alert! Is There a Magic Formula That Slows Down Aging? Throughout human history, pretty much wherever humans lived, there were periodic times of — literally — feast and famine. Turns out this concept is important to Longevity, although we don’t have to fast…
— Crazy Alert! Trump is trying to pawn off the false claim that Roe v Wade allowed women to kill their babies after birth. You can always tell the politicians who have a deep hatred or fear of women: they roll out false tropes like this one. “I also think that they [women] are the radicals,” Trump told Fox “News,” “because they will kill the baby in eight months, nine months. Under Roe v. Wade, they had the right to kill the baby after birth. I mean, literally, after birth in some cases.” Astonishingly, he still has an approval rating by Republican women well north of 60 percent. Stockholm syndrome, anybody?
— Geeky Science! How ultra-processed foods are linked to bad health. Want to increase your risk of cardiovascular disease-related death by 50%, your risk of anxiety and depression by 53%, and your risk of heart disease by 66%? Or raise the probability you’ll develop Type 2 Diabetes by 12%, or “death from any cause” by 21%? Just keep eating at fast-food joints and consuming food products that are so processed that they can sit on a supermarket shelf for months. Soft drinks, fast food, snack bars, and other ultra-processed-foods cause all these problems and more, according to a new report published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). As much as 80% of the diets of low-income Americans are made up of these “foods,” which is why poorer parts of America have much higher levels of obesity and shorter lifespans. Time to ditch the junk and start eating meals made from scratch!
— Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! ADHD: How to Train Your Attention Span with Meditation. For high-energy Hunters, one of life’s biggest challenges can be simply slowing down enough to find a calm center:
— Israeli troops slaughter starving Gazans. The situation in Gaza is quickly
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