Research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (sorry, but everything except the abstract is behind a paywall) has confirmed that the Earth’s orbit varies over a 405,000 year cycle influenced by the masses of Jupiter and Venus, which takes it from a nearly circular orbit to a slightly elliptical orbit around the sun. Currently, the Earth is in a nearly circular orbit.
The research was based on evaluation of lead-to-uranium ratios in a core drilled from rock in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The core went back nearly 250 million years (give or take a few tens of millions) and far exceeded the length of previous cores– the maximum was 50 million years.
The New York Times reported that previous cores in the Northeast, 2,000 miles away, showed reliable climate cycles of 202,500 years but were unsuitable for determining uranium-to-lead ratios.
The new core will be a big help in dating fossils back to 250 million years ago, which just happens to be right after the worst disaster in Earth’s history (suspected but not proved to be due to runaway volcanism which produced the enormous lava fields known as the Deccan traps) and around the time the first dinosaurs and mammals appeared.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
We need to be patient.
We do not know what Mr. Mueller knows, but we do know that he has been far ahead of the news. For example, only in the last few days has George Nader’s name become so widely known. But Mueller has already spoken with Nader several times and Nader has testified before the grand jury; he is cooperating, which probably spells trouble for at least Don Jr. and Jared Kushner.
The problem with this investigation is that following the money only leads to more money. That’s why the process is taking so long. Mr. Muller is finding a boulder field of rocks to look beneath. It appears that in addition to Russia, two gulf nations were also willing to pitch in to help Trump win the election. And Don Jr. met with all interested parties along with more Trump campaign people. There’s a lot of smoke there, but this isn’t yet all of it.
Yes, this administration in Trump’s shadow has taken corruption to new levels. I believe the whole point of the Trump presidency is to exploit the nation for profit. What other reason could there be?
Donald Trump could care less about Making America Great Again. Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump. He attacks his own government and our historical allies while obsequiously sidling up to dictators.
This is not an American president. This is a concerted heist coupled with a flagrant disregard of the constitution and years of sound tradition.
My fellow Americans, our president is a criminal conman.
(illustration courtesy of pixabay.com and johnhain)
James Russell Lowell, in 1871, in “My Study Windows”, in a section about Abraham Lincoln, wrote: “The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.”
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.”
Theodore Roosevelt (May 1918 editorial “Sedition, a Free Press and Personal Rule” in “The Kansas City Star”) See this entry in the web site “Quote Investigator”
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and skeeze)
Addendum: Abraham Lincoln, 1864 (again according to “Quote Investigator”):
“Let the people know the facts, let them see the danger; but let every effort be made to allay public fears, to inspire the masses with confidence and hope, and, above all, to frown down every attempt to create a panic.”
Quoted by the LA Times in an article about increasing costs to patients for generic drugs that have not actually increased in wholesale prices. Stated by Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a consultancy firm that studied generic costs. He found that the insurance companies have been holding down premium costs for Part D Medicare by moving generic drugs from “Tier One” to “Tier Two”, increasing out-of-pocket costs for drugs that have not actually increased in price from the manufacturer.
Isn’t this a contradiction of the idea of “insurance”– spreading out costs to everyone so they are affordable to everyone? After all, it’s not necessarily the patient’s fault (nor under the patient’s control) if they have a “chronic illness”– like type 1 diabetes, which is caused by genetic factors, not controllable by the patient, yet accounts for a huge proportion of overall medical costs. Higher costs to the patient for drugs might lead to less compliance– the patient saves pocket money by reducing the use of the medication, which results in higher complication rates and higher overall costs. It’s an example of how treating chronic illnesses with maximal preventive/treatment measures saves money in the long run by reducing complications– only in reverse.
According to an NPR article on May 17, 2018, the fertility rate in the US has dropped to a nearly unprecedented low. The article is based on a report by the Centers for Disease Control. There was, overall, a 2 percent decrease in the number of births in the US in 2017, and a 3 percent decrease in the fertility rate among 15-44 year old women– to 60.2 births per 1,000 women. The report, which is produced by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), has shown a fertility rate below the replacement level for the US since 1971.
The difference, and the growth in the US population since 1971, has been made up by immigration. The replacement rate is 2,100 births per 1,000 women over a lifetime– the “total fertility rate”. The rate for 2017 was only 1,764.5 births per 1,000 women, a 3 percent drop from 2016.
What this means is that, since 1971, if it were not for immigration, the population of the US would have declined. This is also true of a few other countries, such as Spain, Greece, Italy, and Japan, among others. At a very basic level, immigration is essential for the health of this country. Immigrants also compensate, by being much younger than the average American, for the increasing burden that Social Security payments make on the taxpayer.
The entire document (a *.pdf) from NCHS, on the Document Cloud, can be found here.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and MabelAmber)
Felix Sater to Michael Cohen: “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected…”
Felix Sater, in an email to Michael Cohen on November 3, 2015, wrote that he would get Putin to help have Donald J. Trump elected president. According to the New York Times (August 28, 2017):
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Mr. Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
What more evidence do we need of Trump’s collusion with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and skeeze)
According to Lesley Stahl, Donald J. Trump told her (and her boss) in an unrecorded discussion before a recorded interview for “60 Minutes” that he attacks and demeans the press in order to plant disbelief in the minds of the public when the press writes “negative” (truthful) stories about him:
Stahl said she and her boss met with Trump in his office in Trump Tower in Manhattan after the 2016 election in advance of a recorded sit-down interview for “60 Minutes.
“At one point, he started to attack the press,” Stahl said. “There were no cameras in there.”
“I said, ‘You know, this is getting tired. Why are you doing it over and over? It’s boring and it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won … why do you keep hammering at this?’ ” Stahl recalled.
“And he said: ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.’ ”[CNBC article on Microsoft’s news feed for Windows 10, dated May 22, 2018]
(There is a recording of a discussion between Judy Woodruff and Leslie Stahl at the Deadline Club last night that contains this information here on Youtube)
(photo courtesy of the digital artist and pixabay.com)
This letter to Nature, submitted November 2016 and published January 2018, reviews a meta-analysis of existing and potential (without Man) stocks of carbon on the Earth and indicates that we have lost half of global biomass since humans began to change the environment by deforestation and cultivating crops. This suggests that, in order to prevent further deterioration of carbon dioxide atmospheric levels, we must apply reforestation on a giant scale. The apparent loss of global biomass indicates that we have lost respiring, carbon dioxide-fixing organisms, which leads to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
This surprising finding suggests that we are in a deeper hole than we currently believe. There is more evidence here than meets the eye, and it is bad news.
“When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may seem to be the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America,” Tillerson said. “If we do not as Americans confront the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society among our leaders in both public and private sector, and regrettably at times in the nonprofit sector, then American democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years.”
AP quote from Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State to President Donald J. Trump, in speech given at commencement for Virginia Military Institute. According to the AP story, the invitation to speak at the commencement was given before Tillerson was fired by tweet.
