Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
In an op-ed Wednesday for the Montrose Daily Press, Republican state Sen. Don Coram painted Boebert as a liar who “claims credit for things she had absolutely nothing to do with.”
Coram urged Colorado voters to back Adam Frisch, a former member of the Aspen City Council, in what the polls currently predict will be a close race in November.
Boebert “spends her time jet-setting around the country promoting herself and extreme rhetoric that only divides this country further,” wrote Coram. “It’s disgraceful and we should expect more from our United States representative.”
He added, “I believe Adam Frisch is a good man,” and said the Democrat is “decent, honest, and persistent.”
Frisch has “demonstrated that he is more interested in representing the district than being a celebrity,” Coram wrote. “That’s important.”
Adam Curtis’ astonishing autopsy of the fall of Russia will leave you wide-eyed
Jasper Rees – October 13, 2022
Adam CurtisBritish documentary filmmaker (born 1955)
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – BBC Pictures/BBC Pictures
A long dark road ploughs through a wasteland of snow towards an icy horizon. Welcome, this opening image unequivocally says, to post-Soviet hell, where women wait in line for meat and abortions, men brawl in banks and parliaments, where everyone sells anything to survive – shoes, bodies, blood.
In Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (BBC iPlayer), documentary essayist Adam Curtis has filleted thousands of hours of unused footage from the BBC’s archive to craft a phantasmagoric autopsy of the USSR as it breaks apart in a thousand brutal ways, making way for capitalism. The result is a garish multi-part disaster epic.
Onto a boundless compendium of chaos Curtis has contrived to impose structure via canny juxtapositions and ironic echoes. Thus in the first film the corpse of Kim Philby seems to symbolize the death of communism. In the last film, it’s the turn of democracy to lie in an open casket at the funeral of politician Galina Starovoitova, murdered a month after speaking to the BBC. In between, the leitmotif of death is everywhere from Chernobyl to Chechnya, from the reassembled bones of the last tsar to the looted graves of German soldiers.
No film by Curtis comes without a portion of irate mansplaining, crammed here into captions which tell of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and a harmless-looking pipsqueak called Putin the oligarchs finally install as their puppet. Mainly, though, he lets astonishing pictures do the talking.
“May the Russians and all generations of Russians be damned to hell!” screams a woman fleeing the bombing of Grozny. Elsewhere, expectant Russian mothers are coached to sing to their unborn children who’ll now be old enough to bomb Zaporizhzhia.
Alongside such dolorous portents, surreal metaphors for delusion and dysfunction sprout like irradiated knotweed. Grotesque bodybuilders flex pecs under giant images of Marx and Lenin. A bear wanders the forest by night, infra-red eyes glaring as if in psychic shock. A cosmonaut is marooned in the Mir station because there’s no money to fly him home.
From America, among many chancers, comes a motivational speaker teaching Russia’s women to smile. The most captivating smile of all belongs to wily street beggar Natasha. Imagine Shirley Temple in a novel by Dostoevsky. Filmed across several years by a BBC crew, like a good capitalist she eventually requests remuneration. “You’ll get paid,” she argues, “and it’s costing me my time.” This staggering masterpiece is worth yours.
A Trump aide was caught on security camera moving boxes from a Mar-a-Lago storage room before and after the DOJ subpoenaed Trump for top-secret documents: NYT
Cheryl Teh – October 13, 2022
Walt Nauta, a longtime Trump aide, was seen moving boxes out from a storage room the FBI searched.
The incidents were caught on security footage, The New York Times reported.
Nauta was seen moving boxes before and after the DOJ demanded top-secret files be returned in May.
A Trump aide was caught on security camera moving boxes out of a storage room in Mar-a-Lago, per a report from The New York Times. The Times did not view the security footage and Insider was not independently able to verify its contents.
The Times spoke to three people familiar with the matter, who said longtime Trump staffer Walt Nauta was seen on Mar-a-Lago’s security footage moving boxes out of a storage room that was later searched by the FBI. This took place both before and after the Department of Justice issued a subpoena in May ordering Trump to hand over classified documents, per the NYT’s sources.
Intrigue has swirled around what was kept in the storage room, and whether anything was removed from it before the DOJ searched Trump’s property. The Times’ piece dropped hours after The Washington Post reported that Trump himself explicitly directed employees to move boxes of White House documents from the storage room. These boxes were taken from the storage area to the former president’s private residence after Trump advisers received the DOJ’s subpoena in May, per The Post.
The FBI also interviewed Nauta several times before it raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8, according to one of The Times’ sources.
The DOJ is currently investigating whether Trump broke three federal laws — including the Espionage Act — by keeping the files at his Florida residence. In an August court filing, the Justice Department said it had evidence “that government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., declined to comment on The Times’ reporting. Taylor Budowich, Trump’s spokesman at his post-presidential press office, told The Times the Biden administration was “colluding with the media through targeted leaks in an overt and illegal act of intimidation and tampering.”
Budowich and Woodward Jr. did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
A Trump aide was caught on security camera moving boxes from a Mar-a-Lago storage room before and after the DOJ subpoenaed Trump for top-secret documents: NYT
Cheryl Teh – October 13, 2022
Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images A Trump aide was caught on security camera moving boxes from a Mar-a-Lago storage room before and after the DOJ subpoenaed Trump for top-secret documents: NYT
Walt Nauta, a longtime Trump aide, was seen moving boxes out from a storage room the FBI searched.
The incidents were caught on security footage, The New York Times reported.
Nauta was seen moving boxes before and after the DOJ demanded top-secret files be returned in May.
A Trump aide was caught on security camera moving boxes out of a storage room in Mar-a-Lago, per a report from The New York Times. The Times did not view the security footage and Insider was not independently able to verify its contents.
The Times spoke to three people familiar with the matter, who said longtime Trump staffer Walt Nauta was seen on Mar-a-Lago’s security footage moving boxes out of a storage room that was later searched by the FBI. This took place both before and after the Department of Justice issued a subpoena in May ordering Trump to hand over classified documents, per the NYT’s sources.
Intrigue has swirled around what was kept in the storage room, and whether anything was removed from it before the DOJ searched Trump’s property. The Times’ piece dropped hours after The Washington Post reported that Trump himself explicitly directed employees to move boxes of White House documents from the storage room. These boxes were taken from the storage area to the former president’s private residence after Trump advisers received the DOJ’s subpoena in May, per The Post.
The FBI also interviewed Nauta several times before it raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8, according to one of The Times’ sources.
The DOJ is currently investigating whether Trump broke three federal laws — including the Espionage Act — by keeping the files at his Florida residence. In an August court filing, the Justice Department said it had evidence “that government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., declined to comment on The Times’ reporting. Taylor Budowich, Trump’s spokesman at his post-presidential press office, told The Times the Biden administration was “colluding with the media through targeted leaks in an overt and illegal act of intimidation and tampering.”
Budowich and Woodward Jr. did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
The real story behind America’s population bomb: Adults want their independence
Clay Routledge and Will Johnson – October 12, 2022
Declining birth rates are a major concern for the United States and many countries around the world, so we – an expert in existential psychology and an expert in pulsing public opinion – surveyed the Americans choosing not to have children to learn the reasons why.
Americans are having fewer children than are needed to keep population numbers stable.
Fear of not just climate change and affordable housing
Much of the conversation in the United States about this issue has focused on fears about the future of the world or major economic challenges. For instance, the threat of climate change and the affordability of housing are frequently referenced as reasons that Americans don’t want to have kids.
While those are concerns of course, when you look at the data, family planning appears to be influenced more by people’s personal views about the independent life they want to live than their worries about potential environmental or economic issues.
This has important implications for how we as a nation approach the demographic challenge of declining birth rates.
A Harris Poll found that of those without children, about half do not want to have a child in the future, while 20% remain unsure. The only factor that the majority (54%) of Americans who don’t want to have kids endorsed as influencing their decision was maintaining personal independence.
We then asked these individuals whether their decision to not have children was influenced by a wide range of factors. Only 28% of them reported that climate change influenced their decision to not have kids. Similarly, only 33% indicated that housing prices influenced their decision.
Other factors we asked about including the political situation in the United States (31%), safety concerns (31%), personal financial situation (46%) and work-life balance (40%) were endorsed by less than half of respondents.
The only factor that the majority (54%) of Americans who don’t want to have kids endorsed as influencing their decision was maintaining personal independence.
Moreover, since respondents were able to indicate multiple reasons for not having kids, we also asked them which of those factors most influenced their decision. Further suggesting that this decision is more about personal preferences than other factors, we found that maintaining personal independence was reported as the most influential factor for more respondents than any other factor; 43% of those who considered independence to be a factor indicated that it was the most influential reason for not having kids.
For comparison, only 26% of those who considered climate change when deciding whether to have children reported that it was the most influential reason and only 9% of those who considered housing prices indicated such.
Americans may have multiple reasons for opting out of parenting, but their desire for personal independence is the most powerful one.
It is also worth noting that men and women were generally similar in their reasoning; 53% of females and 55% of males reported that their desire to maintain their personal independence influenced their decision to not have children. No other reason for not having kids was cited by a majority of men or women.
We shouldn’t oversimplify the story of why more and more Americans are choosing to not start families. It is undoubtedly complex and involves facets that public opinion surveys can’t fully capture. However, our results have important implications for cultural and political discussions around this issue.
Changes in public policy may not help
Perhaps most important, our findings suggest that public policy solutions are unlikely to have much impact on birth rates. Because Americans who are opting out of having children are more influenced by their desire to maintain their personal independence than concerns about climate change or affordable housing, or other issues such as work-life balance and safety, efforts to promote a more pro-natal society will need to be more cultural in nature.
More specifically, these efforts will need to address psychological needs related to individuals’ life goals and priorities.
How do we change people’s attitude about how children will affect their lives if they privilege personal freedom over other ideals? A good place to start is to focus on one of the most fundamental psychological needs, the need for existential meaning.
Humans are highly motivated to perceive their lives as meaningful. And it is when they perceive their lives as full of meaning that they are most mentally healthy, resilient, goal-driven, self-disciplined and self-reliant. In this way, meaning can be thought of as a key ingredient to achieving personal independence.
The Americans concerned about how having children may affect their personal independence may not realize that meaning is so empowering and that family is a fundamental source of meaning. For instance, surveys find that when people are asked what makes their lives feel meaningful, the most common response is family.
In addition, studies find that parents report higher levels of meaning than adults without children and have a greater sense of meaning when they are taking care of their children than when they are engaged in other activities.
Cultural narratives that treat parenting as a threat to personal independence and a roadblock to a fulfilling life may contribute to declining birth rates more than many realize.
There are of course environmental, economic and other challenges that can make people worried about bringing another human into this world and that can make raising children difficult.
But this is not new. For much of our history, most humans lived far more perilous lives than we live today. Our challenge is less about our material conditions and more about our mindset.
If we want a world with more children, we are going to have to convince people that having and raising kids is a critical ingredient of, not a barrier to, the good life.
Republicans Plan to Use Debt Limit Leverage to Reduce Social Security, Medicare: Report
Michael Rainey – October 12, 2022
Republicans in the House are planning to use a potential showdown next year over raising the federal debt limit to make changes in Social Security and Medicare, Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick reports.
The developing plan hinges on Republicans winning control of the House in the midterm elections, an outcome that is looking likely. Four GOP lawmakers who are vying for leadership of the House Budget Committee in the event of a Republican victory told Fitzpatrick that the need to raise the debt ceiling could give them the leverage they need to force Democrats to make concessions.
“The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use to make sure that we do everything we can to make this economy strong,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the senior Republican on the current Budget Committee, said.
Republicans are still discussing exactly what changes they might try to enact. “What would we consider a win?” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), who is interested in the top spot on the Budget Committee. “What would we consider to be a fiscally responsible budget?”
Although the details are still up in the air, one theme is clear: House Republicans want to reduce federal spending, and the major entitlement programs are a target. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) Carter said that Republicans’ “main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary — it’s got to be on entitlements.”
Shrinking the safety net: One option reportedly being discussed is raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, the two largest mandatory spending programs. Each faces financial squeezes in the coming years as the baby boomers age and continue to retire. Under current rules, the Social Security system would be forced to cut benefits starting in 2034, while Medicare could run short of funds by 2028.
Earlier this year, the Republican Study Committee released a plan to raise the eligibility age for Social Security to 70 and the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. The increases would be phased in over time and once the target is reached, the eligibility age would then be indexed to life expectancy. The lawmakers also called for increased means testing in the Medicare program, and a privatization option for Social Security.
Other options being considered include more stringent work requirements and income limits for what Smith called “welfare programs,” including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program more commonly known as food stamps. And new caps on discretionary spending could limit spending increases over 10 years.
One thing that won’t be cut: defense spending. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) told Bloomberg that he wants to cut nondefense spending in order to provide more money for the military.
Willing to risk “catastrophe”? Republicans say they are leery about pushing too far in their demands, but many experts think that any effort to use the debt limit as leverage in negotiations is unacceptably risky. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that defaulting on U.S. debt payments — which would occur if the U.S. failed to raise the debt ceiling — would cause a “catastrophe” in the global economy.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the GOP of taking huge risks in order to cut important social programs. “House Republicans are openly threatening to cause an economic catastrophe in order to realize their obsession with slashing Medicare and Social Security,” a Pelosi spokesperson told Bloomberg. “As House Republican leaders’ own words constantly reveal, dismantling the pillars of American seniors’ financial security is not a fringe view in the extreme MAGA House GOP, it is a broadly held obsession at the core of their legislative agenda.”
House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D-KY) also criticized Republican plans. “Holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to implement an extreme and unpopular agenda is not governing, it’s desperation,” Yarmuth said in a statement. “Congressional Republicans are so hellbent on gutting Social Security and ending Medicare as we know it that they are willing to risk economic catastrophe to get it done. This is a desperate attempt to shower the wealthy and big corporations with even more tax giveaways by intentionally sacrificing the needs of American families.”
Democrats do have one option for disarming Republicans ahead of a debt ceiling showdown: They could attempt to raise the ceiling on their own during the lame-duck session at the end of the year, potentially denying the GOP the use of that weapon. But both Yarmuth and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Bloomberg there has been no discussion among Democrats about such a plan.
The bottom line: Taking a page from the tea party playbook from a decade ago, expect to see Republicans attempting to force spending reductions in the next Congress — reductions that could involve fundamental changes in the way the country’s top safety net programs operate.
Members of Nevada Senate candidate’s family endorse opponent
Gabe Stern – October 12, 2022
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Less than a month before Election Day, 14 members of Nevada Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt’s family sent a letter endorsing his opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.
“We staunchly believe that Catherine is well equipped with her own ‘Nevada grit’ — a quality that she will take forward in representation of our home state for six more years across the halls of Congress,” the letter states.
Instead, it talks of Cortez Masto’s understanding of “the daily realities of dogged hard work” and mentions her experience in public education as well as her commitment to law enforcement.
The family members also wrote that Cortez Masto’s career demonstrates she is “an authentic advocate of Nevada.”
It marks the second time that some of Laxalt’s family has endorsed his opponent. During his unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 2018, a dozen family members endorsed Democrat Steve Sisolak in an op-ed to the Reno Gazette-Journal. That letter more explicitly criticized Laxalt, saying he “leveraged and exploited” the family name throughout his campaign.
That letter prompted 22 of his family members to send another op-ed, defending Laxalt and calling the other letter “vicious and entirely baseless.”
The grandson of former U.S. Sen. and Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt and the son of former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, Laxalt is seen by many as the best opportunity for Republicans to pick up a seat that could give them the majority in the Senate.
In a tweet on Wednesday afternoon, Laxalt said it is “not surprising” that family members, most of whom he said are Democrats, are supporting Cortez Masto.
“They think that Nevada & our country are heading in the right direction. I believe Nevadans don’t agree,” he said.
The Laxalt family joins a growing list of endorsers from across the aisle, Cortez Masto spokesperson Sigalle Reshef said in a statement, citing law enforcement organizations and rural lawmakers who have endorsed the Democratic candidate.
Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
The newspaper’s editorial board broke down exactly why it believes Johnson is “the worst Wisconsin political representative since the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy.”
It ripped the Donald Trump loyalist, who is facing a reported tight race against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, as “an election falsifier who recklessly promoted” Trump’s 2020 lies and a “science fabulist” who baselessly questioned COVID-19 vaccines and spread pandemic misinformation. Johnson was also slammed for trying to rewrite “the sordid history” of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.
“You’ll notice Johnson is not touting a long record of accomplishments in his ads for re-election,” the board wrote. “Instead, he and his supporters have attacked his opponent — a Black man — as ‘different’ and ‘dangerous.’”
Johnson was first elected to the Senate in 2010.
“Johnson in the past promised to serve no more than two terms,” the board concluded. “Voters should hold him to that pledge in November.”
Spanish Vineyards Use Solar Panels to Protect Wine Grapes
By Paige Bennett, Edited by Irma Omerhodzic – October 12, 2022
As global wineries are hit with impacts of climate change, a new project called Winesolar in Spain is innovating ways for vineyards to protect their grapes while also generating clean energy.
Iberdrola, an energy company based in Bilbao, Spain, has created a shelter for growing wine grapes at vineyards in Guadamur. The shelter is made with a few solar panels that generate about 40 kW of energy, which will be used by the González Byass and Grupo Emperador wineries. The solar panel shelter creates a microclimate by shading or exposing plants from the sun and offering some relief from high temperatures while also minimizing evaporation after watering crops.
While combining solar energy and agricultural land is not new, one component that makes the Winesolar project stand out is that it will have a tracking system, with trackers from PVH, that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the most efficient solar panel positioning over the vines at any time, according to Iberdrola. Techedge, an IT firm, will help the solar panel project further the wineries’ agricultural goals.
Sensors in the vineyards will record data including soil humidity, wind conditions, solar radiation, and even vine thickness to find the optimal position for the solar panels, giving the vines a fighting chance against the effects of climate change.
“The installation will help to improve the quality of the grapes, allow a more efficient use of the land, reduce the consumption of irrigation water and improve the crop’s resistance to climatic conditions in the face of rising temperatures and increasingly frequent heat waves,” Iberdrola explained in a statement.
While the project is a small pilot, Iberdrola has plans to expand the idea into other Spanish vineyards, in addition to adding another 1,500 megawatts of solar panels across Spain. The company has installed 2,200 MW so far in 2022 and installed 800 MW last year, as CleanTechnica reported.
The project is an example of growing interest in agrovoltaics, or a balance between photovoltaic energy and agriculture through the installation of solar panels on farms. Agrovoltaic projects are meant to improve sustainability and make farming more efficient. While it isn’t a new concept — it was first conceived in the early 1980s — it has become increasingly popular in recent years for its potential environmental and economical benefits.
“When it comes to the environment, the main benefit of agrovoltaics is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector,” Iberdrola said on its website. “What’s more, the dual use of land for both agriculture and for energy relieves pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity, which are affected when cultivation areas are expanded.”
Former Trump employee tells FBI Trump ordered Mar-a-Lago boxes to be moved -report
Sarah N. Lynch and Kanishka Singh – October 12, 2022
Trump holds rally in Nevada
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A former employee of Donald Trump has told federal agents the former president asked for boxes of records to be moved within his Florida residence after receiving a government subpoena demanding their return, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The testimony of the key witness, coupled with surveillance footage the Justice Department also obtained, represent some of the strongest known evidence to date of possible obstruction of justice by the former Republican president.
The FBI conducted a court-approved search on Aug. 8 at Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, seizing more than 11,000 documents including about 100 marked as classified.
The employee who was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was cooperating with the Justice Department and has been interviewed multiple times by federal agents, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the situation. The witness initially denied handling sensitive documents and in subsequent conversations with agents admitted to moving boxes at Trump’s request, the newspaper reported.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
A Trump spokesperson said the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden had “weaponized law enforcement.”
“Every other President has been given time and deference regarding the administration of documents, as the President has the ultimate authority to categorize records, and what materials should be classified,” Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told the newspaper.
Budowich accused the Justice Department of leaking “misleading and false information” to the media.
The document investigation is one of several legal woes Trump is facing as he considers whether to run again for president in 2024.
New York state’s attorney general recently filed a civil lawsuit accusing Trump and three of his adult children of fraud and misrepresentation in preparing financial statements from the family real estate company.
The Trump Organization also is set to go on trial on Oct. 24 on New York state criminal tax fraud charges.
Separately in Georgia, a grand jury in the Fulton County is probing efforts by Trump to overturn the former president’s 2020 election defeat.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
