Fri: Biden Should Insist Previous Guy Be Wired to a Lie Dete

A McBuyout for McKosher

McDonald’s has said it will buy its 30-year-old Israel franchise from Alonyal, taking back ownership of 225 outlets that employ more than 5,000 people.

The US fast-food chain has been subject to boycotts and protests since Alonyal announced shortly after the October 7 attack by Palestinian group Hamas that it would be donating free meals to the Israeli military.

McDonald’s is a global company, but its franchises are often owned locally and operate autonomously. Its CEO Chris Kempczinski said previously the company had seen “meaningful business impact” in several markets in the Middle East and some outside the region due to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

They Don't Serve Cheeseburgers

Mississippi QOP Says "No Direct Democracy for You.  Next!"

Mississippi Keeps the Door Firmly Shut on Ballot Initiatives

Three years after the state supreme court voided direct democracy in Mississippi, all legislative proposals to revive it died again this week.

At issue: The state constitution requires that a citizen-led initiative collect signatures in all five of the state’s congressional districts; the language was adopted in 1992, before Mississippi lost a congressional seat in the 2000 reapportionment, and it now only has four. The court said in May 2021 that, since there were no longer five districts in which to collect signatures, no initiative could be valid.

The ruling was as literal as it gets; “it stretches the bounds of reason,” complained a dissenting justice. Nevertheless, it brought the petitioning to expand Medicaid and other efforts like it to a screeching halt. And state officials have not fixed the issue in the intervening years. Many GOP leaders have said they want to revive initiatives; but the schemes they’ve proposed have been restrictive—requiring that initiatives receive a supermajority and prohibiting them from ever affecting abortion, for instance—and even those haven’t passed.

Show Me the Money!

Days after former President Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond to block New York state from imminently collecting on a huge civil fraud judgment, state lawyers Thursday called for more information on the bond’s bona fides.

State Attorney General Letitia James' office filed papers giving Trump's lawyers or the bond underwriter 10 days to “justify” the bond—essentially, to show that the company can make good on it. That could mean disclosing more about the collateral Trump provided.

A hearing was set for April 22.

Previous Guy Will Be in a Different Courtroom Facing Criminal Charges

NY AG James has taken exceptions to the Trump bond filing. She has asserted that the surety does not appear to be qualified to provide this type of a bond in NY. Other persons who claim experience with these types of bonds, including a former Assistant AG, are noting other apparent failures to comply with NY law, such as capping the amount of the surety’s capital that can be at risk at 10%.

Notably, the surety, Knight Specialty, admits that Trump did not turn over the cash collateral that backs the bond. The CBS article states that Knight Specialty maintains that the collateral is being held in an account “pledged” to Knight Specialty. I am curious about that choice of wording. I am not an expert on these types of bonds. However, in other contexts, I would have thought that at a minimum, the collateral would be in an escrow account, segregated from other funds. If an escrow account were being used, wouldn’t the Knight Specialty have said so?

Biden Should Insist Previous Guy Be Wired to a Lie Detector

Donald Trump on Thursday accused President Joe Biden of being “higher than a kite,” and insisted that any debate with him “should be drug-tested.”

In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump revived his baseless insinuation that Biden used cocaine, this time during his fiery State of the Union speech last month.

Saving the Tranformers




In the years before the United States’ aging network of electrical grids began heaving under the pressure of record-breaking storms and heat waves, demand for transformers — the connective tissue of the power system — kept pace with the construction of new housing.

Those days are over. Now extreme weather regularly destroys hundreds of transformers at a time and drives up demand for more electricity on scorching or smoky days when cooling or purifying the air indoors saves lives. Preventing that crisis from getting worse means using electricity instead of fossil fuels for cars and heating while also generating a lot more of that power from sources such as solar panels and wind turbines. Those renewables, in turn, require a much larger and more expansive grid system — and a lot more transformers.

Manufacturers were in a bind. Building new assembly lines to churn out more of the transformers in current use would cost millions. The Biden administration, meanwhile, had proposed a new rule raising the energy-efficiency standards for transformers sold after 2027, requiring factories to start using a different kind of steel and invest in equipment that could not produce what’s currently in demand.

Facing backlash, the Department of Energy dialed back the regulation, unveiling a finalized proposal Thursday that almost completely reversed one of U.S. manufacturers’ biggest sticking points and gave companies five years to comply.

“The regulatory process can work, and this final rule shows just that by reflecting feedback from a broad spectrum of stakeholders,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “Ultimately, it will be a piece of the solution, rather than a barrier, to help resolve the ongoing distribution transformer shortage and keep America’s businesses and workers competitive.”

When It's the QOP, Truth is Optional

While most of the debate over immigration focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of President Joe Biden’s most effective policies so far has occurred elsewhere ― at airports.

For a little over a year, Biden has used what’s called “parole” authority to collectively allow up to 30,000 vetted Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans per month into the country, mostly via air travel, for a temporary two-year window.

The program is based on the authority held by the federal government under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act to grant temporary admission to foreigners on a “on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” And, the Biden administration touts, it has been accompanied by drops in the number of nationals from each of these countries who’ve crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on foot.

But to hear some right-wingers talk about it, the “CHNV parole” program — the name an acronym for the nationalities it encompasses —is a secret, treasonous endeavor that utilizes government-funded charter flights to transport “illegal” migrants into the United States. None of that is true, but that doesn’t seem to be the point.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (DJT) Out Performs.

It has been losing around 5% every day.  Today it is down over 8%.