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Earth might get its own Saturn-like rings—made of space trash
Researchers at the University of Utah predict that our planet will get its own bling, via a process that will help clean up space pollution.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90700516/earth-might-get-its-own-saturn-like-rings-made-of-space-trash
BY CLINT RAINEY2 MINUTE READ
For eons, Earth has been deprived of planetary bling—none of Jupiter’s 53 named moons, none of Saturn’s spectacular rings. But researchers at the University of Utah predict that could be changing. “Earth is on course to have its own rings,” one of the researchers, Jake Abbott, tells the Salt Lake Tribune. However, while other planets’ are basically rock, dust, and ice, our rings will be fitting for the planet whose lifeforms are polluting their own sky: “They’ll just be made of junk.”
Even wilder, this is because the researchers say we’ll make them intentionally to clear a path in the sky. Right now, the night sky doesn’t look polluted. But our low-Earth-orbit space race is only beginning: Jeff Bezos wants to send 3,200 more satellites into orbit, while Elon Musk’s Starlink has already put 2,000 in orbit and has plans to launch another 40,000 in the coming decades—15 times the number currently in the sky.
The result is that space pollution keeps growing. More satellites mean more defunct satellites, which mean more satellite pieces. According to the European Space Agency, we currently have 170 million pieces of space debris encircling the planet, some at speeds of up to 18,000 miles per hour. Inhabitants of Earth aren’t really even aware of what’s going on up there: For instance, Russia just blew up a massive broken 4,850-pound satellite last week, creating a cloud of fragments so large that the International Space Station astronauts nearly had to evacuate. (They ultimately just sheltered in place.) The station also had to maneuver three times in 2020 to avoid debris.
Attempts to remove space pollution are very much still works in progress. (The European Space Agency is apparently spending $102 million to retrieve one 247-pound piece of space trash.) The good news—doubly good if metal trash rings sound cool—is that the University of Utah researchers who think we’ll be giving Earth rings are making this prediction because they say they’ve also found the way to create them. They argue their plan could make outer space less dangerous. Their team of robotics engineers has developed a magnetic field they claim can move objects in space, even nonmagnetic ones. In an experiment outlined in their new paper in Nature, the team explains how it was able to move a copper ball through water on a raft by spinning magnets so fast that it created an electrical current. The magnets not only guided the ball’s direction, but could also rotate it. They argue robots could be blasted into space to use this same method, rearranging Earth’s space pollution into nice, clean Saturn-ring-like lines.
A new space garbage scow IPO is closer than many think.
December 1, 2021 06:06 PM ET (BZ Newswire) -- Analyst Color
The international space race is heating up, and some investors see major profit opportunities in the future space economy.
On Wednesday, Bank of America analyst Ronald Epstein highlighted the latest developments among companies competing for the lead in the nascent commercial spaceflight industry.
See Also: Space Force General Details Daily Attacks By China, Russia On US Satellites
Here’s a look back at some of the latest news on the space race:
On Oct. 29, Terran Orbital announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger with Tailwind Two Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:TWNT). The deal values Terran at roughly $1.6 billion. The company plans to construct a manufacturing facility in Florida capable of producing more than 1,000 spacecraft per year.
SpaceX successfully returned its Crew-2 mission on Nov. 8 and launched its Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station on Nov. 11. On Nov. 26, SpaceX and Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said a production crisis with its Raptor rocket engines is “mush worse than it seemed a few weeks ago” and warned employees that SpaceX faces a “genuine risk of bankruptcy” if the company can’t complete at least one Starship flight every two weeks in 2022.
On Nov. 12, German laser communications company Mynaric ADS (NASDAQ:MYNA) completed its IPO. Mynaric has an in-space test of its satellite optical communication terminals scheduled for the second quarter of 2022.
On Nov. 15, Russia tested a new anti-satellite weapon by destroying Soviet satellite Kosmos-1408 which had been inactive since 1984. The resulting debris cloud forced the ISS crew to take cover and earned Russia harsh criticism from the international space community.
On Nov. 18, Rocket Lab USA Inc (NASDAQ:RKLB) completed its 22nd mission and has now deployed 107 satellites. The company successfully recovered its first stage boosters for the third time.
On Nov. 19, Telesat Corp (NASDAQ:TSAT) began trading on the Nasdaq, essentially taking the place of Loral Space & Communications. Loral owned 64% of Telesat. Telesat is looking to construct Lightspeed, a broadband constellation of 298 satellites that will cost an estimated $5 billion and provide high-speed commercial internet access.
On Nov. 20, Astra Space Inc (NASDAQ:ASTR) completed its first orbital launch with its Rocket 3.3 model LV0007. Astra shares are up 14% in the past three months after the company went public back in July via a SPAC merger.
On Nov. 23, Blue Origin announced former NFL football player Michael Strahan and U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard’s daughter Laura Shepard Churchley will fly on its next New Shepard mission, NS-19, which is scheduled for Dec. 9.
On Nov. 24, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NADAQ: SPCE) announced Keisha Schahaff of Antigua as the winner of a charity contest to fly in a future SpaceShipTwo suborbital flight. The event raised $1.7 million for Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut Program.
Benzinga’s Take: It’s still extremely early to pick one or more long-term winners among stocks with exposure to the space race. Musk’s comments on SpaceX’s precarious financial condition are a reminder for investors of how high-risk space investments are at this point in the game.
You would have to have that if there is going to be any quality of taste. TTTV (Taste The TV) sounds like a good candidate for the JAAC (Just Another Acquisition Corp.) merger. LOL
Of course next will be the machine to synthetically dispense the food in it's desired form.
Soon to be the next IPO play in a stock market near you.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/23/taste-the-tv-japan-invents-lickable-screen-to-imitate-food-flavours
Taste the TV: Japan invents lickable screen to imitate food flavours
Prototype uses carousel of canisters to create flavour samples on hygienic film over flatscreen TV
Yuki Hou, a student at Meiji University in Tokyo, demonstrates the Taste the TV lickable screen. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
Reuters in Tokyo
Thu 23 Dec 2021 05.17 EST
A Japanese professor has developed a prototype lickable TV screen that can imitate food flavours, another step towards creating a multisensory viewing experience.
The device, called Taste the TV (TTTV), uses a carousel of 10 flavour canisters that spray in combination to create the taste of a particular food. The flavour sample then rolls on hygienic film over a flat TV screen for the viewer to try.
In the Covid-19 era, this kind of technology can enhance the way people connect and interact with the outside world, said Homei Miyashita, a professor at Meiji University in Tokyo.
“The goal is to make it possible for people to have the experience of something like eating at a restaurant on the other side of the world, even while staying at home,” he said.
Miyashita works with a team of about 30 students that has produced a variety of flavour-related devices, including a fork that makes food taste richer. He said he built the TTTV prototype over the past year and that a commercial version would cost about 100,000 yen (£653) to make.
Potential applications include distance learning for sommeliers and cooks, and tasting games and quizzes, he said.
Miyashita has also been in talks with companies about using the spray technology for devices that can apply a pizza or chocolate taste to a slice of toasted bread.
Yuki Hou, 22, a student at Meiji University, demonstrated TTTV for reporters, telling the screen she wanted to taste sweet chocolate. After a few tries, an automated voice repeated the order and flavour jets spritzed a sample on to a plastic sheet.
“It’s kind of like milk chocolate,” she said. “It’s sweet like a chocolate sauce.”
That is what we have been led to believe. But in the article I referenced, the author is arguing that it is nothing but "The Great Inflation Lie: The Fed Won't Stop Inflation" and that "both Government and the Fed want inflation to run very high". Then he goes into why but also stated where the few comparisons to now was a time with high inflation and low Treasury rates being very beneficial to equity holders. His view also was that;
"The Fed cannot and will not hike rates anytime soon. And if they do, it will be an immaterial rate hike that will have an insignificant impact on inflation.
The government will continue to ensure there is a high amount of liquidity in the financial system. The Bubble of Liquidity will remain large."
In his conclusion he states;
Don't be fooled by Fed Chair Powell's hawkish talk. After all, he has a hearing to keep his job coming up in January. Treasury yields are NOT pointing to a recession and/or deflation. They are telling us that liquidity will remain high and that the treasury market is not buying the hawkish story the Fed is selling.
We are seeing dynamics that the stock market has not witnessed for over 70 years. The inflation rate will remain above the 10-year Treasury rate for a sustained period of time, creating an environment of high inflation and relatively low-interest rates. Historically, this dynamic has been very beneficial for equity markets!
Right now, it is a fantastic time to be an investor and the worst time to be sitting on cash. Investors want to be exposed to equities that benefit from high inflation, while also benefiting from low treasury yields.
Now weather or not he is wrong or right in his theories, I'm not qualified enough to answer definitively, but he does have some points to ponder and back up his conclusions. Is it all noise and just him trying to sell his wares, you decide.
I found this excerpt particularly interesting.
They have a point.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/586496-democratic-critics-link-party-problems-to-bad-messaging?rl=1
Democratic critics link party problems to bad messaging
BY AMIE PARNES AND MORGAN CHALFANT - 12/21/21 06:00 AM EST
Democrats are attributing a string of White House missteps in recent months to poor strategy and messaging from President Biden and his advisers.
For the last part of 2021, as multiple crises emerged, the White House has struggled to offer up a consistent message that could unite not only the country, as Biden pledged during the 2020 presidential campaign, but his party. Democrats have been unable to beat back Republican criticisms about rising inflation.
They have’t offered a narrative that would persuade a pessimistic American public about the direction of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic. And headlines have been dominated by Democratic infighting over Biden’s massive social policy and climate legislative proposal — most recently with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) giving it a possibly fatal blow on Sunday.
“I do think that the White House should go back to the drawing board and figure out, really think it through, what they want to say between now and next November,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow of governance studies at Brookings Institution who served as a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “What overall message do they want to convey? Not details of this or that but the overall message because that’s certainly gotten lost.”
“The overall point is that messaging is not a response to a crisis,” Galston added. “It’s part of a strategy and the White House really needs to have a theory of the case and then build their messaging on the strategy.”
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said Biden’s vision for the country has been lost in recent months as the White House has grappled with the multiple crises.
“I don’t think America fully understands where Democrats want us to go,” Simmons said.
Democrats need to raise the bar to talk more about the destination America is headed toward and talk more about the people standing in the way, he said.
“The broader challenge is that Republicans have a narrative about the country and they've identified liberals and Democrats as the villains. The Democrats need to be more about the villains,” Simmons added.
One Democratic strategist said the problem is far worse saying the White House “needs to completely reprioritize their priorities.
"They need a wholesale revamp of their entire communications, political and strategy team,” the strategist said.
The persistent coronavirus pandemic has dampened public opinion. Biden has made strides in vaccinating a large slice of the U.S. population, but his embrace of more controversial policies like vaccine mandates have opened him up to Republican attacks. And while Biden campaigned on defeating the virus, the more contagious omicron variant has now sprung up, complicating the recovery and causing uncertainty among Americans. Cases are currently on the upswing due to the delta and omicron variants.
Republicans have also painted a skewed picture of the economic recovery, blaming Biden’s policies for rising prices while at the same time minimizing the employment gains.
Jobless claims have declined to the lowest levels since the 1960s and the unemployment rate has sunk to 4.2 percent.
Meanwhile, annual inflation, driven by the pandemic and related government spending, hit its highest rate since 1982 in November and polls show voters increasingly worried about the rising costs of goods. A recent CNN poll found that roughly seven in 10 voters believe the federal government is doing too little to reduce inflation or address supply chain disruptions.
Biden’s approval rating stands at about 44 percent, according to an average of surveys from FiveThirtyEight, and has remained low despite the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan and $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law the president successfully ushered through Congress.
Strategists believe that the economy and the coronavirus will be top issues in the 2020 midterm elections.
“Democrats haven’t really put together any kind of unified message on the economy that highlights any of the real gains we are making,” said Democratic strategist Max Burns.
The White House’s answer to concerns about inflation has largely been to argue that Biden’s sweeping climate and social policy package will lower healthcare, childcare and other costs for American families.
But that package has become imperiled with Manchin's statement Sunday that he is firmly against the legislation as it now stands.
Democrats say the internal party fighting about the legislation has hurt Biden and the party, playing into a Republican narrative of Democrats being unable to deliver. While the White House has devoted substantial time to trying to sell the Build Back Better bill to the public, that has been a complex and risky exercise because the package has changed and evolved. Biden, for instance, used to tout a provision for free community college that was ultimately cut from the package.
Some Democrats say the White House deserves more credit for its messaging strategy in the face of multiple crises. Biden’s approval rating started to take a hit over the summer amid the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and has remained low amid public exhaustion with the seemingly never-ending pandemic.
“There’s no question we the American people are exhausted and frustrated by COVID. But the White House is doing what they should be: showing the President taking action on what people are worried about, like prices, vaccines, jobs,” said Eric Schultz, a former spokesman in the Obama White House. “As a Party, Democrats have to speak with one voice, not fight each other, but take action together.”
That might be tough to do, Galston said, until the White House rethinks their entire strategy.
“If they have one, they’re doing a very good job of keeping it secret,” he said.
Did you happen to catch the article from SeekingAlpha titled "Big Crash Coming, According To Treasury Yields Dec. 19, 2021 10:35 AM ET". Interesting take and comparisons of only a few times in recent history.
Posted here:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=167198536
That's just his type of humor. Not everybody gets it, but can be at times funny and just one style of dealing with all the things going on. We all handle things differently, but he's not one the crazies or nefarious out there and there is some usage and validity to some of his graphs and things that he posts. At least as much as anybody else among all the views of the market out there.
Maybe I'm wrong and he's just another crazy Canadian taking over the US. On second thought, it might be better than what we have right now attempting to. LOL
It's ironic, but this year I sold my 40 yr old little truck that got 45-60 mpg on a consistent basis depending how I set the IP from power to mileage. Sold it for 2 1/2 times more than what I bought it for in 81 new. Less than a 100k miles on it, original and most of it's life garaged or covered. 81 VW rabbit pickup with 1.6 diesel in it. No, it didn't have all the electrical bells and whistles, but it had plenty of torque for how small it was. And the gas mileage was great. There were other vehicles as well even older that got over 30 on a regular basis. That was before all of our great tech, but they didn't seem to fit with big oil pushing our need for big and powerful. They basically only made the Caddy pickup here in the US for three yrs and just stopped even when they were selling them as fast as they could make them, still heavy market demand.
Had an article filed on that under GMOs. Yes the process is different, but as I understand it, whether you add or subtract, the result is a modified structure change and have effects (good or bad) on our biological structure. You are what you eat. I guess since GMO was turned into a dirty word, they had to come up with something. I'm no scientist, but it seems that there would be a chance for some of the same dangers and unknown effects long term from the results. Maybe it's just counter intuitive for our limited knowledge on it and be left up to scientists, but there is a danger in that when the scientists are directed and getting paid by big business for profit. I suppose in the future, we'll look forward to "edited" humans when we merge into machines. The process is for both plant and animal.
This article was from the Guardian about 2 1/2 yrs ago. At that time European countries were saying that it should be regulated the same as GMOs, but no similar requirements in the US.
Crispr gene-editing will change the way Americans eat – here's what's coming
Karen Weintraub
Thu 30 May 2019 01.50 EDT
Soon, soybeans will be bred to yield stable oil without the addition of dangerous trans fats. Lettuce will be grown to handle warmer, drier fields. Wheat to contain less gluten. And pigs bred to resist deadly viruses. Someday, maybe even strawberry plants whose delicate berries can be picked by machine instead of by hand.
Ten years ago, such genetic changes would have been considered science fiction – or so far off into the future of breeding as to be almost unimaginable. But gene editing, particularly with a tool called Crispr-Cas9, has made it much easier and more efficient to tinker with the genomes of plants and animals. The first Crispr-edited products will begin reaching the market this year, and researchers believe it’s only a matter of time before US grocery shelves could be filled with gene-edited produce, grains and meat.
The technology will be subject to stringent health and environment review, as well as labeling requirements in the EU, but not in the US. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a statement last March saying it would not regulate crops whose genetic changes could have been produced with conventional breeding. The European court of justice, by contrast, ruled last summer that gene-edited crops should be regulated as GMOs.
The scientific challenges have been largely settled – or at least there’s a clear path toward resolving them, according to scientists in the field. But political and social ones remain.
“The questions outstanding going forward are regulatory and PR and marketing and commercial launch – the things that matter the most, obviously, outside of the science,” said Rodolphe Barrangou, a distinguished professor at North Carolina State University and editor-in-chief of the Crispr Journal.
Crispr technology is still in its infancy. Short for “clustered regulatory interspersed short palindromic repeats”, Crispr was first used in cells with a nucleus only six years ago. It takes advantage of the natural immune system of bacteria to make precise cuts in the target genome. This can be used to delete a few letters, turning a gene off, or dialing it up or down, or it can force a change in the genetic alphabet, giving the plant or animal new functions. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s much more precise and easier to work with than previous gene editing techniques, according to scientists. Researchers say many of these new functions will be copied from nature, making, say, a hothouse tomato as disease-resistant as a wild one without sacrificing flavor. But others could be entirely new – and likely to raise more concern.
Unlike genetic modification, gene editing doesn’t require transgenics, the movement of genes from one species to another. So, if there are dangers to GMO foods – which some, but far from all scientists believe – gene editing that simply removes genes or copies sequences from similar species is likely to be safer.
Essentially, gene editing accomplishes what conventional breeding would, just more efficiently and more easily, according to Zachary Lippman, an expert in the genetics of flowering plants at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. “This is a tool that creates what nature could create on its own just never got around [to] or had the opportunity to create,” he said.
Lippman said Crispr is an incredibly useful tool in research, allowing him to ask new questions of the tomato plants he breeds, by fast-forwarding the research process. “The amount of genetics that we’re currently able to do has at least quintupled in the last three years,” he said. It also allows breeders, who have maximized their crops for current conditions, to now ready their crops for the challenges of climate change, said Lippman, who was recently named an investigator with the Howard Hughes medical institute.
It could also upend agriculture, boosting the health, shelf life, off-season availability and transportability of fruits and vegetables, said Haven Baker, chief business officer of Pairwise, a North Carolina-based startup that uses Crispr technology both to edit large-scale crops like corn and soy, and specialty crops like berries and snackable vegetables. Baker and the company’s CEO, Tom Adams, said they would like to see berry plants modified to make them easier to pick by drone or other machine rather than by hand, bringing down labor costs and avoiding arduous work. “These are the type of questions we’re thinking about – to really use Crispr technology not to maybe solve one disease problem, but to really solve the entire industry’s problems,” Baker said. “We see this as the beginning of a 25-year cycle of innovation that will greatly improve agriculture around the world.”
Although most Crispr gene editing is still taking place in labs and research greenhouses, the future he envisions isn’t far off. The first gene-edited products are expected to reach the market as soon as next year: a shelf-stable soybean oil that has less saturated fat and no dangerous trans fats, from a Minnesota-based company called Calyxt, and an improved variety of waxy corn – used as a thickener and stabilizer in many food products – from Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of DowDuPont.
But the public and governments around the world are still unsure how to deal with gene-edited crops and livestock.
Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, said US consumers are willing to pay 20% more to avoid GMO foods, and nearly half of the public reports actively avoiding genetically modified ingredients and food. There hasn’t been much polling data on consumer views of gene-edited foods, because they are still so new. People may be slightly less concerned with gene edits than with swapping in genes from distant species, she said, but generally, “I think people are bothered by that human-controlled laboratory step”.
She also said that she sees industry making many of the same public relations mistakes with gene editing that they made with GMOs. The industry is fighting labeling and regulation and not being as transparent as it should be about the challenges and shortcomings of gene editing, she said and wrote in a recent article.
Public reaction may ultimately drive government regulation – which is not yet a settled issue. While the USDA has said it would not regulate the technology for certain genome-edited plants, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suggested it might treat all intentionally edited products as drugs, which would mean heavy oversight.
If strong government regulations are imposed, gene editing will be finished before it really begins, said Alison Van Eenennaam, a cooperative extension specialist at the University of California, Davis. “We can stop having this discussion because we’ll never use it. It’s just done,” she said. Van Eenennaam said she was frustrated by campaigns that unnecessarily derailed a lot of the potential of GMOs, and she sees the same thing happening again with gene editing. “It’s much easier to frighten someone about something,” she said.
Others think government regulation is essential for reining in bad actors and keeping food safe.
Jaydee Hanson, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, a Washington DC-based advocacy group, wants companies to publicly release a complete genetic sequence of their Crispr products, so people can look for unintentional mutations and other problems. Now, for instance, when a potato turns green, that’s a sign it is releasing toxins and shouldn’t be eaten, he said. But if the green gene were accidentally turned off, potatoes could release toxins without the warning.
Industry and some academics say these off-target effects can be managed. They happen all the time in regular breeding and always have, said Bernice Slutsky, senior vice-president of the American Seed Trade Association, a trade group. Any plant or animal is already the product of mutations from hundreds of millions of years of evolution, Lippman said.
Hanson said he was also worried that with Crispr, as with many technological advances, most of the benefits will go to larger, more industrialized farms.
Gene-edited seeds can be patented, meaning the farmer will have to pay more to use them, which boosts the cost to farmers as well as the sellers, Hanson said.
Even changes that seem to benefit animal welfare are really about profit, Hanson said. Editing cattle genes to prevent horn growth and the need to de-horn the animals is really “about making it cheaper to have 140,000-head dairies, because it’s one more step you don’t have to take”, he said. “If you wanted to raise more humane animals, you’d raise animals like the dairy I used to work at when I was a kid – you’d have 40 animals instead of 140,000 and you’d be able to know the name of every cow.”
On the flip side, Hanson acknowledges that, though he does not see evidence of it being used that way, gene editing could potentially be used to cut down on the need for pesticides. And Van Eenennaam worries that if rich countries shut down gene editing, poor countries that really need increased productivity, fewer pesticides and healthier foods won’t be able to benefit.
This article was amended 4 June 2019 because an earlier version suggested that soybean oil naturally contained trans fats. Soybean oil only contains trans fats due to the process of hydrogenation that extends its shelf life. This has been clarified.
Well you know how that goes......it just keeps going. Just another tool in the new GOP's toolbox. The old GOP is still around, just going extinct. I really miss them. Hoping for rebirth.
I'll have to put that on my "check it out" list. Darn thing is, I'm getting older fast and that list isn't getting shorter. Pretty soon I'll have to put a couple on my bucket list. LOL
It seems that is something humans can't seem to grasp to well. Even after several million years of schooling. That no matter who kills or fights who, we still have to live together in one group on one shrinking marble. Even expanding out into space, it will still be in groups that have to depend on others for survival. "There can be only one" or "survival of the fittest" (or richest or most powerful) mentality will only be a detriment to all.
Did you happen to notice in the article the comparisons to this time were all wars? A little eerie, but not surprising. For all intents and purposes, we're at war now with the Covid Wars, Cyber Wars, and making the recipe for another Civil War along with all the world conflicts. Masses of people are being killed and maimed, violence is being perpetuated between groups or factions of the population, and even though it isn't being done with bombs and ammunition fire we still have damage and destruction to the value of our assets to a great degree. We also have shortage of some materials and supply caused by the invading foes. All that isn't even including the mental and emotional tolls. Definitely modern war.
Is it just coincidence?
My F stock holding up relatively well considering. I said before, RIVN belongs between $50-60 even though not sure we'll see it there. But I do believe RIVN has got some room to go down further. Maybe $70-80, never know for sure. But not a buy for me anyways right now. I think they will burn through their cash getting the whole thing going and will go to the well again in order to do it. Labor, inflation, chip shortages, all will effect. I'm curious in how many years in reality that they will take to become profitable.
On another note, here's an interesting take
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4475749-big-crash-coming-according-to-treasury-yields
Big Crash Coming, According To Treasury Yields
Dec. 19, 2021 10:35 AM ET
Summary
The long-term Treasury yields (or 10-year yield) remain stubbornly low, signaling a recession or deflation is coming soon.
Don't misinterpret Treasury yield signals. We are currently seeing dynamics that the market has not witnessed for over 70 years.
How did the stock markets do historically in periods of high inflation and low interest rates, similar to the one we are seeing today?
The Fed already fooled you about inflation this year. Don't be fooled by Powell's hawkish talk.
The Fed to remain dovish, inflation running high. How you can profit in the current environment?
We have consistently been taught that we should always listen to what the Treasury yields are telling us. When inflation is running as high as it is today, you should expect one of two things from the Treasury yields:
Long-term treasury yields (or the 10-year yield) go up along with the inflation rate, which would suggest that the bond markets are pricing in a healthy economy, or
Long-term treasury yields (or the 10-year yield) remain the same or even go down, which would suggest that that the bond markets are pricing-in an economic recession along with a collapse of inflation.
With the 10-year yield remaining stubbornly low at 1.5%, many investors believe that they are pointing to a recession (or deflation) next year, whereby we could see a big market crash.
However today, we are seeing a very interesting phenomenon, unseen in modern times. Inflation (as measured by U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures) is running well above the 10-year Treasury yields, resulting in significant negative "real yields"! Take a look at this chart since the year 1990 (or for the past 31 years).
Well, inflation is so high and persistent that even Jay Powell stopped using the word "transient", yet the 10-year Treasury yield is around 1.5%. This is confusing many investors who are asking themselves:
Are we heading into a deflationary environment?
Are we heading into a recession?
This is a very interesting phenomenon, that we have only seen 3 times in the past 120 years in the United States:
During the Civil War
During and after World War I
During and after World War II
The fourth time is happening right now!
Treasury yields always tell the right story, but it is people that misinterpret them.
A Dig Through History
It is very easy for us to fall into the trap of assuming things that have been true for 20+ years have been true "forever". This is called "recency bias", where our perspective of the world is more strongly influenced by things that happened recently than by things that happened long in the past.
When we think of high inflation, most of us jump right to the 1970s when higher inflation led to higher treasury yields, and treasuries almost always had a higher yield than inflation.
It's a period that many of us lived through or at least our parents lived through it. So it is a period that is fairly accessible. But has it always been the case?
No, it has not - if we dig into history:
Since the mid-1950s, we have seen a few cases when inflation has been higher than the 10-year Treasury rate, but the difference was resolved fairly quickly.
If we go further back in history, we have seen cases of inflation spiking up significantly, and the 10-year Treasury remaining low for a long period of time. The "real yields" were deeply negative as they are today. The two most obvious cases relate to World War I and World War II.
- Source Data: rateinflation.com and multpl.com
So what is the common denominator in WWI, WWII, and Today?
In all cases, for obvious reasons, debt spiked to unusual levels.
The Treasury markets are pricing-in continued loose monetary policy. The Government will let inflation take its course to "deflate" the national debt", rather than curb inflation as they have been telling us.
So it is no wonder that Treasury yields refuse to go higher than they are today! In fact, what treasuries are telling us is exactly what I have been saying over the past several months:
The Fed cannot and will not hike rates anytime soon. And if they do, it will be an immaterial rate hike that will have an insignificant impact on inflation.
The government will continue to ensure there is a high amount of liquidity in the financial system. The Bubble of Liquidity will remain large.
How Did the Markets Fare During Similar Periods: WWI and WWII
For us investors, it is important to not only be aware of what is happening in today's macro-economic situation but to also understand what the likely outcome will be for equities. In this case, we have to go back to the periods of WWI and WWII and see how equities fared during times of very high inflation and very low Treasury yields:
Case #1: WW I (Bull Market of 1918-1919)
Inflation started picking up significantly in 1917 when the U.S. formally got involved in WWI. Inflation surged up to 18% while the 10-year Treasury rate remained at 4.5%. Inflation remained high through 1919.
Despite an initial selloff in late 1917, we saw a great Bull Market that ran through 1918 and 1919 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit all-time highs. The Bull Market ran up 80% over the course of two years.
The party came to an abrupt end in 1920 when inflation suddenly became deflation. A few of the most relevant factors impacting the recession in 1920 were:
The return of troops from WW1: 1920 was characterized by high unemployment rates as troops coming home from war struggled to find work.
Resurgence in the Spanish Flu: The Spanish Flu was particularly brutal the 1919-1920 season, with the death rate approximately doubling.
The Gold Standard: In 1920, the dollar was still linked to gold. Deflation expectations were high, as people anticipated a wave of redemptions to reduce the monetary supply.
Rising Interest Rates: The Fed hiked rates in an effort to fight inflation from December 1919 through June 1920, from 4.75% to 7%.
Case #2: WW2 (Bull Market 1942-1956)
From 1942-1956, we can see several periods where inflation significantly exceeded the 10-year Treasury rate. Over this 14-year period, inflation averaged over 4%, while the 10-year Treasury rate averaged 2.5%. Meanwhile, the DJIA averaged +11% per year. I believe this is the most comparable period to our situation today.
The DJIA gained 120% from 1942-1946, even as inflation outpaced the 10-year Treasury rate for three of those years.
The "bear" market from 1947-1948 is perhaps better termed a "consolidation" as it was a 25% pullback before the market continued to new heights. The market climbed up another 230% from 1949-1956 even as inflation rose to 7.9% in 1951 and the 10-year Treasury stayed around 2.5%. By 1953, inflation had slowed down.
The combination of high inflation and low Treasury Rates proved very beneficial for equity holders. The period was characterized by low unemployment (below 5% from 1942 on) and economic growth as the U.S. economy ran hot in the wake of WWII.
The Great Inflation Lie: The Fed Won't Stop Inflation
As recently as June, the Federal Reserve was projecting a PCE inflation rate of 3.4% for 2021. Three months later it hiked that projection up to 4.2% for 2021. One month after their meeting, PCE inflation was 5%.
Earlier this year, I highlighted what I termed as "The Great Inflation Lie". Either the Federal Reserve is incompetent with projections that aren't even in the ballpark of reality, or it is intentionally being misleading. When random average Joes are being surveyed and are more accurate than the Federal Reserve with their projections, something is wrong.
I do not believe the Federal Reserve is that incompetent, that they failed to see what everyone else in the country could see.
So why do both Government and the Fed want inflation to run very high?
The U.S. Government has run up a ton of debt. As a percentage of GDP, the Federal debt is now over 120%. The cost of COVID alone was several times higher than the cost of WWII in today's dollar terms.
[img]http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2021/12/4/16392-1638665485591362.png
[/img]- Source: St. Louis Fed
Politically this is a very unpopular issue to deal with because budget cuts and higher taxes aren't really popular with anyone. While some support for token moves might occasionally gain enough support to pass, comprehensive solutions aren't even seriously discussed.
To make matters worse, the U.S. Government has massive financial obligations coming up as Medicare and Social Security will both become much more dependent upon general tax funds as they fail to fund themselves.
So without meaningful budget cuts and/or meaningful tax increases likely off the table in a polarized country, how does the government pay off all that debt? It doesn't.
The last time the U.S. had debt/GDP of over 100% was in 1946. The U.S. Government had a massive debt of $269 billion. Just by reading that number, you know what happened. What is $269 billion to the U.S. Government today? That is only half of what the government spends on interest payments alone! $269 billion just isn't what it used to be, and that was intentional.
The U.S. never "paid" for WWII - it refinanced the debt, and through inflation, the significance of the debt dissipated quickly, even as the total debt grew.
- Source: Financial Times
A significant amount of inflation is the only solution that the U.S. Government has to manage its debts and obligations.
With debt levels far beyond the pale of productivity levels (i.e., embarrassing debt to GDP ratios), the U.S. and other developed economies are mathematically and factually unable to ever grow their way out of the debt hole they have been digging us into for years.
It is too late to fix all the past mismanagement. It is also impossible to force new generations to pay for debt accumulated by the older ones by taxing them to death and forcing them to be productive in the labor force well above the age of 75. Not only will it result in political unrest, but there are simply not enough young people to tax due to an aging population, and a wave of baby boomers retiring soon.
The only way to deal with this black hole is through inflation.
Conclusion
Don't be fooled by Fed Chair Powell's hawkish talk. After all, he has a hearing to keep his job coming up in January. Treasury yields are NOT pointing to a recession and/or deflation. They are telling us that liquidity will remain high and that the treasury market is not buying the hawkish story the Fed is selling.
We are seeing dynamics that the stock market has not witnessed for over 70 years. The inflation rate will remain above the 10-year Treasury rate for a sustained period of time, creating an environment of high inflation and relatively low-interest rates. Historically, this dynamic has been very beneficial for equity markets!
Right now, it is a fantastic time to be an investor and the worst time to be sitting on cash. Investors want to be exposed to equities that benefit from high inflation, while also benefiting from low treasury yields.
My strategy includes investing in:
Value dividend stocks: These are stocks that are valued based on earnings they have today and are paying out generous dividends. When cash is losing its earning power daily, you want cash now, not in a few years! Liberty All-Star Equity Fund (USA), yielding over 10%, is a fantastic CEF to gain broad exposure to the stock market that is overweight on "value" strategies.
Companies with Real Estate Assets: Companies with high levels of real assets, like REITs, will see ideal conditions. They will be able to borrow cheap thanks to low interest rates, while inflation will drive up rents and property values. Some of our picks include "Dividend Aristocrat" crowns yielding +5%, that are well-positioned to take advantage of these dynamics!
Economically sensitive stocks: The combination of low interest rates and rapid growth means that economically sensitive stocks will run hot. Default rates will remain relatively low as the burden of debt becomes less significant for borrowers, and the excess liquidity in the financial system ensures refinancing will be easy. "CLO" funds like Oxford Lane Capital (OXLC) yielding over 12% will thrive in this environment while producing a generous yield for investors.
Energy & Commodities: Energy frequently leads the inflation wave as we pointed out long ago we are entering a commodity supercycle. These companies will benefit from a combination of higher prices, while at the same time being able to access inexpensive debt thanks to low interest rates. And yes, you can get fantastic yield of +8% while investing in commodities. You don't have to worry about price fluctuations, exactly because you are getting paid extremely well to wait!
I am looking forward for the year 2022 to be a very strong year for equities. I am personally keeping as little cash as possible in my investment account, taking out what I need, and redeploying the rest of my dividends into income investments. The last thing anybody wants is a 6.8% inflation eroding the purchasing power of their hard-earned savings. Being invested in the right stocks which offer both high yield and growth helps you not only to protect your principal, but also increase your net worth in today's difficult environment.
It is critical that investors are aware of the major macroeconomic forces at play that are impacting the markets so that you can make informed decisions. I write "Market Outlooks", similar to the above which I share every Sunday with members of my investment community, to keep focus on the big picture as it evolves. This helps us make adjustments to our portfolio as needed, in a planned and methodical manner.
Jim Jordan helped plot the coup. Now he's in line to be one of the most powerful members of Congress.
Chris Cillizza
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 1:09 PM ET, Thu December 16, 2021
If Republicans win the House majority next November -- and they are currently favored to do so -- then Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan will almost certainly rise to one of the most prominent positions in the chamber: Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Which makes his role in fomenting a potential coup on January 6 more than a little troubling.
We now know that Jordan forwarded to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows a message (sent from a former Department of Defense inspector general) that laid out the supposed Constitutional backing for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election the following day.
"On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all," read the text that Jordan has confirmed he forwarded to Meadows.
That should worry us all -- and amounts to an escalation in Jordan's conduct in and around the election.
It's no secret that Jordan has helped push former President Donald Trump's false narrative that the 2020 election was somehow stolen.
"I don't know how you can ever convince me that President Trump didn't actually win this thing based on all the things you see," Jordan said in an interview on Fox News in December 2020.
Jordan was also one of 139 House Republicans to vote to sustain the objections to the Electoral College votes in either Pennsylvania or Arizona on January 6.
Weirdly, less than a week later he insisted that "I've never said that this election was stolen."
Don't forget that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected Jordan and another Republican as members of the select committee investigating the January 6 riot.
Of course, what we know from this text to Meadows is that Jordan was actively presenting ways to circumvent the Electoral College process on the eve of Pence formally recognizing that Biden had indeed won.
Which is a very different thing from just throwing out some rhetoric on cable TV suggesting -- without any evidence -- that Trump had in fact won. It's taking concrete steps to obstruct the democratic process by which we transfer power in this country.
And that guy is -- again if Republicans win the majority -- going to be in charge of the Judiciary committee in the House in 2023. The committee that, if past is prologue, will lead investigations into the Biden administration and other parts of the federal government.
The worst part about all of this? The revelation that Jordan was a coup plotter -- or at the very least coup-adjacent -- won't hurt his chances of taking over Judiciary in a Republican-controlled House.
This is a party totally in thrall to Trump and his false claims about the 2020 election. That Jordan has been revealed to be one of people actively working to ensure that the January 6 Electoral College count didn't proceed will likely only bolster his credentials among the Trump crowd.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/16/politics/rep-jim-jordan-january-6-text/
R.N.C. Is Said to Agree to Pay Up to $1.6 Million of Trump’s Personal Legal Bills
Under the unusual arrangement, the Republican Party is paying to defend the former president as he faces investigations into his private business practices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/us/politics/rnc-trump-investigations.html
By Shane Goldmacher, Jonah E. Bromwich and Michael Levenson
Dec. 16, 2021
The Republican National Committee has agreed to cover up to $1.6 million of Donald J. Trump’s personal legal bills, according to a person familiar with the matter, in an unusual arrangement under which the party is paying to defend the former president from ongoing investigations that focus on his private business practices.
The first payments, for $121,670, were made in October to the firm of Mr. Trump’s lawyer Ronald P. Fischetti, and were publicly reported last month to the Federal Election Commission.
The decision by the Republican Party to cover up to $1.6 million in legal fees was first reported on Thursday by The Washington Post and was confirmed by the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman, said in a statement that the party’s executive committee had approved “paying for certain legal expenses” related to Mr. Trump.
“As a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the G.O.P.,” she said. “It is entirely appropriate for the R.N.C. to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never-ending witch hunt and attacks on him.”
Mr. Fischetti is representing Mr. Trump as prosecutors in Manhattan weigh the possibility of charging him with fraud. At issue is whether he inflated the value of his assets to defraud lenders, according to people familiar with the investigation. The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has questioned one of Mr. Trump’s accountants before a grand jury in recent weeks.
In a parallel civil fraud investigation, the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is also involved in the criminal inquiry, is seeking to question Mr. Trump under oath. The former president has accused both investigations of being politically motivated, and many Republican leaders have echoed his arguments.
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“Letitia James wants to politically weaponize her position as Attorney General instead of exemplifying impartiality and protecting the interests of all New Yorkers,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Fischetti declined to comment. The Republican National Committee will disclose its November spending, including any lawyer fees for Mr. Trump, by Dec. 20.
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an expert on legal ethics, said that the payments did not necessarily raise any ethical problem from a legal perspective, as long as the party neither influenced Mr. Trump’s lawyers in any way nor gained access to confidential information that might arise in the course of the investigations.
The Trump Investigations
Card 1 of 6
Numerous inquiries. Since former President Donald Trump left office, there have been many investigations and inquiries into his businesses and personal affairs. Here’s a list of those ongoing:
Investigation into criminal fraud. The Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York attorney general’s office are investigating whether Mr. Trump or his family business, the Trump Organization, engaged in criminal fraud by intentionally submitting false property values to potential lenders.
Investigation into tax evasion. As part of their investigation, in July 2021, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with orchestrating a 15-year scheme to evade taxes. A trial in that case is scheduled for summer 2022.
Investigation into election interference. The Atlanta district attorney is conducting a criminal investigation of election interference in Georgia by Mr. Trump and his allies.
Investigation into the Trump National Golf Club. Prosecutors in the district attorney’s office in Westchester County, N.Y., appear to be focused at least in part on whether the Trump Organization misled local officials about the property’s value to reduce its taxes.
Civil investigation into Trump Organization. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is seeking to question Mr. Trump under oath in a civil fraud investigation of his business practices.
But the payments showed Mr. Trump’s enduring hold on the party he led for four years in the White House. The party continues to lean heavily on his name and popularity in its online fund-raising appeals. He is a lure for major donors as well, and headlined the National Republican Congressional Committee’s fall fund-raiser last month in Florida.
Daron Shaw, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and a former strategist for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, said the payments pointed to Mr. Trump’s “total command of the party apparatus.”
“Organizationally, the Republican Party is still a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump for president,” Professor Shaw said. “Until the next heir to the throne is apparent, he’s still the king.”
Adonna Biel, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said that “if we were the R.N.C.’s donors, we would certainly be asking questions.”
In the past, several of Mr. Trump’s lawyers have clashed with him over their legal fees. In 2019, his former personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen sued the Trump Organization, Mr. Trump’s family business, saying that the company had not fulfilled an agreement to cover its legal costs. In May, The New York Times reported that another lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had been pressing aides to the former president to pay him for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
It's becoming really serious and dangerous and not funny at all. Watch short video before that weekends gathering in Arizona about what was going on there.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/12/18/trump-base-ron-filipkowski-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
Ex-Republican who monitors Trump's die-hard base issues warning
Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican and prosecutor who monitors former President Trump's supporters, says organizers of the January 6 insurrection are targeting local government officials.
How close is the US to civil war? Closer than you think, study says
CNN's Michael Holmes talks with Professor Barbara Walter of the University of California San Diego about her work on a task force that tries to predict where outside the US a civil war is likely to break out. Walter says the two best predictors of whether violence is likely to occur currently exist in the US and have emerged at a "surprisingly fast rate."
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/12/20/us-civil-war-study-barbara-walter-intvu-intl-ovn-vpx.cnn
It's not James he's talking to, or who he cares that listens, or what the lawsuit is for.
It must be real close for an indictment. With Rump flipping out and trying to delay anything he can. He lives in court and has abused and used the court for most of his life. It's never about winning any particular case, he's always succeeds in his ulterior motives. Not sure how much delay in this he'll get, but just the delay is not his only reasons. He would not of filed this case now if the impending charges weren't right at his doorstep.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/586546-trump-sues-new-york-attorney-general?rl=1
Trump sues New York attorney general
BY HARPER NEIDIG - 12/20/21 10:23 AM EST
TheHill.com
Former President Trump filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in an effort to block her civil probe into his business.
Trump's lawyers in the complaint attacked the investigation as an attempt to undermine him politically and charged James with violating the former president's constitutional rights.
"The investigations commenced by James are in no way connected to legitimate law enforcement goals, but rather, are merely a thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates," the complaint reads. “Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent."
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York asks a judge to put a complete halt to James' investigation into Trump's business practices.
The lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.
The move comes two years into James's investigation into whether Trump's business has illegally inflated its assets to attract investors and lenders and win tax breaks. The probe is being conducted parallel with a criminal investigation being carried out by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr. (D).
James on Monday said the lawsuit was an attempt to impede her efforts to investigate Trump's company.
“The Trump Organization has continually sought to delay our investigation into its business dealings and now Donald Trump and his namesake company have filed a lawsuit as an attempted collateral attack on that investigation," the attorney general said in a statement.
"To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions. Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.”
Earlier this month, James announced she would end her campaign for the New York governor's seat, opting instead to seek re-election as attorney general.
The lawsuit on Monday recited her history of criticizing the former president and promising to investigate him from the campaign trail. Trump's lawyers argued that her "political animus" towards him is evidence that the attorney general's investigation is unconstitutional.
"Defendant’s actions, including but not limited to her abuse of criminal and civil process, the commencement of arbitrary fishing expeditions, and collective misconduct in targeting Plaintiffs in bad faith and solely for political purposes, deprived Plaintiffs of due process of law and impermissibly infringed upon their constitutional rights," the lawsuit reads.
James has deposed the former president's son Eric Trump as part of the investigation into the Trump Organization's valuations of its own properties.
Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the attorney general was preparing to subpoena Donald Trump for sworn testimony in the investigation.
James's office can bring a civil case against Trump and his company if it finds evidence of wrongdoing but cannot file criminal charges.
Democratic Rep. Albio Sires won't run for reelection in New Jersey:...
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Vance's office has been collaborating with the attorney general in its criminal probe. Earlier this year, it charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with 15 felony counts over an alleged tax evasion scheme.
The criminal investigation is ongoing and Vance reportedly issued new subpoenas last month as he prepares to leave office and turn the probe over to his successor, Alvin Bragg, a former New York deputy attorney general and federal prosecutor who will take over the district attorney's office in January.
Updated 11:45 a.m.
It's hard to believe or have any confidence in that much of anything substantial will happen to curb the problem considering that one of the "countries out there", are in part, the US.
NFL Week 15 final injury reports: Several teams ravaged by COVID-19, plus Pats' Damien Harris out vs. Colts
Breaking down the final injury reports of the week heading into Week 15 weekend action
By Jared Dubin & Cody Benjamin
2 hrs ago
8 min read
We're into Week 15 of the 2021 NFL season, and injuries are once again a factor in several key games this coming weekend. The story of this week is COVID-19 (check out our tracker of every player on the list), with the emergence of a new variant and several team-wide outbreaks knocking multiple players out of the lineup. Those players are largely not listed on injury reports, but we'll do our best to make note of important players who could be out of action due to the virus.
As teams turn in their final injury reports of the week, let this be your hub for knowing who is in, who is out, and whose status may still be up in the air leading up to kickoff. Below, you'll find every injury report and analysis of what it all means for Week 15.
Las Vegas Raiders at Cleveland Browns (-3)
Raiders: TE Darren Waller (knee/back), LB Denzel Perryman (ankle), CB Trayvon Mullen (toe) OUT; DE Carl Nassib (knee) QUESTIONABLE
Browns: RB Kareem Hunt (ankle), WR Anthony Schwartz (concussion), CB Greg Newsome II (concussion) OUT; TE Harrison Bryant (ankle), DT Malik Jackson (knee) QUESTIONABLE
Waller will miss his third consecutive game, and be replaced in the lineup once again by Foster Moreau. Perryman's absence is valuable against a team whose offense is based around the run game, but with so many Browns on the reserve/COVID-19 list, it's tough to know who will even suit up for them.
Hunt is set to miss his sixth game of the season after suffering another injury last week against the Ravens. Cleveland also has 20-plus players on the COVID-19 list at the moment, including both starting quarterback Baker Mayfield and backup Case Keenum. This situation is a mess, and it's unknown at the moment how many players the Browns will be able to suit up for the game.
New England Patriots at Indianapolis Colts (-2.5)
Patriots: RB Damien Harris (hamstring), LB Ronnie Perkins (ankle) OUT; OL Yodny Cajuste (illness), OL David Andrews (shoulder), DT Christian Barmore (knee), LB Ja'Whaun Bentley (ribs), RB Brandon Bolden (knee), OL Trent Brown (calf/wrsit), K Nick Folk (knee), DB Adrian Phillips (knee) QUESTIONABLE
Colts: DT Antwaun Woods (calf) OUT; OL Ryan Kelly (knee/illness/personal) OUT
The Pats are listing a whole bunch of guys as questionable, but most seem likely to play. The potential absence of Barmore would be especially damaging in a matchup against Indianapolis' power run game. With Harris out, Rhamondre Stevenson will presumably step into a larger role as the lead back.
Woods has played fairly well in a reserve role on the defensive line when active, but he's a back-end role player for the Colts defense. Kelly is an important piece of the offensive line, helping Carson Wentz with protections and serving as a fulcrum for the run game. With Kelly out (he was initially questionable for the game), that could prove especially damaging against New England's defense.
Tennessee Titans (PK) at Pittsburgh Steelers
Titans: FB Tory Carter (ankle), OG Roger Saffold III (shoulder), DT Teair Tart (ankle), DL Larrell Murchison (knee), LB David Long Jr. (hamstring), CB Jackrabbit Jenkins (ankle) OUT; OL Aaron Brewer (toe) QUESTIONABLE
Steelers: LB Buddy Johnson (foot) OUT; TE Kevin Rader (hip), DE Isaiah Buggs (ankle), CB Joe Haden (foot) QUESTIONABLE
Good news on the injury front in Pittsburgh: Star pass-rusher T.J. Watt (groin) and linebacker Alex Highsmith (quadriceps) were both full participants and are expected to suit up. Haden also has a chance to reinforce the secondary after missing the Steelers' last four games.
Houston Texans at Jacksonville Jaguars (-5)
Texans: QB Deshaun Watson (not injury related), DB Justin Reid (illness, concussion) OUT; RB Rex Burkhead (hip, quad), TE Brevin Jordan (hand), LB Kevin Pierre-Louis (hamstring, wrist) QUESTIONABLE
Jaguars: RB Carlos Hyde (concussion) OUT
These AFC South rivals are relatively healthy, with everyone but Hyde taking full practice reps in Jacksonville for the Jags' first game since dismissing Urban Meyer. Houston's run game has struggled mightily regardless of who's led the backfield, but if Burkhead can't go, David Johnson and Royce Freeman are expected to carry the load.
Dallas Cowboys (-10.5) at New York Giants
Cowboys: OT Tyron Smith (ankle) OUT; RB Tony Pollard (foot) QUESTIONABLE
Giants: QB Daniel Jones (neck) OUT; OL Ben Bredeson (ankle) DOUBTFUL; WR Sterling Shepard (calf), DL Leonard Williams (triceps), DL Austin Johnson (foot) QUESTIONABLE
Dak Prescott won't have his left tackle on the field while he attempts to get the Cowboys' offense back on track, with Smith sitting down yet again due to ankle issues. Pollard would also represent a decent loss for Dallas if he can't suit up, even though starting back Ezekiel Elliott was a full participant at practice all week. For the Giants, Jones will miss a third straight game, giving way to Mike Glennon under center.
New York Jets at Miami Dolphins (-9.5)
Jets: OT George Fant (knee) DOUBTFUL; OL Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (ankle), OL Dan Feeney (back), DL Sheldon Rankins (knee) QUESTIONABLE
Dolphins: TE Adam Shaheen (knee), OL Austin Jackson (illness), S Clayton Fejedelem (ankle) QUESTIONABLE
The Jets are banged up up front, which doesn't bode well for rookie QB Zach Wilson against Brian Flores' Dolphins defense. Joe Flacco and Mike White are in tow as New York's emergency options under center.
Washington Football Team at Philadelphia Eagles (-7)
Eagles: TBA
Football Team: TBA
Injury reports to come.
Arizona Cardinals (-12.5) at Detroit Lions
Cardinals: WR DeAndre Hopkins (knee), CB Robert Alford (pectoral) OUT; RB James Conner (ankle), TE Zach Ertz (hamstring), OL Justin Pugh (ankle), DT Corey Peters (knee), DT Zach Kerr (ribs), DT Leki Fotu (shoulder), DE Jordan Phillips (thumb) QUESTIONABLE
Lions: RB D'Andre Swift (shoulder), OLB Julian Okwara (ankle) OUT; WR Josh Reynolds (thigh), OG Jonah Jackson (back), OT Will Holden (not injury related), DE Michael Brockers (knee), LB Alex Anzalone (ankle), LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin (shoulder) QUESTIONABLE
Each side will be missing a key playmaker in this one, with Hopkins sidelined for Arizona and Swift out for the Lions. A.J. Green and rookie Rondale Moore figure to see an uptick in action in place of Hopkins for the Cardinals, while Chase Edmonds is expected back from injured reserve with or without Conner in the lineup.
Carolina Panthers at Buffalo Bills (-10.5)
Panthers: CB A.J. Bouye (foot) OUT; WR D.J. Moore (hamstring), OL Michael Jordan (hamstring), OL John Miller (ankle) QUESTIONABLE
Bills: WR Emmanuel Sanders (knee) OUT; DT Star Lotulelei (toe), RB Taiwan Jones (knee) QUESTIONABLE
The Panthers have solid depth at cornerback and thus may be able to overcome the absence of Bouye in this game. A potential Moore absence would rob them of their best remaining playmaker with Christian McCaffrey done for the year, and the offensive line issues could be exacerbated if either of the guards has to sit out.
Buffalo will presumably use second-year wideout Gabe Davis in Sanders' role as the third wide receiver, just as it did after Sanders left last Sunday's game against the Buccaneers. It's notable that left tackle Dion Dawkins was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list, which will downgrade Josh Allen's pass protection in a week where he was limited on Wednesday and Thursday due to a foot injury. Allen, though, practiced in full on Friday and will play.
Atlanta Falcons at San Francisco 49ers (-9.5)
Falcons: S Erik Harris (chest) OUT; LB Dante Fowler Jr. (calf) QUESTIONABLE
49ers: RB Elijah Mitchell (concussion, knee), DL Maurice Hurst (calf), LB Dre Greenlaw (groin) OUT; LB Azeez Al-Shaair (elbow) DOUBTFUL; DL D.J. Jones (knee), CB Ambry Thomas (concussion), S Jaquiski Tartt (glute) QUESTIONABLE
The 49ers will turn to Jeff Wilson Jr. at running back again, with Mitchell out. They've also got a handful of injuries on defense, though the Falcons haven't exactly proven lethal this year, either.
Cincinnati Bengals at Denver Broncos (-3)
Bengals: OT Riley Reiff (ankle), LB Logan Wilson (shoulder), CB Chidobe Awuzie (foot) OUT; C Trey Hill (illness), OT Isaiah Prince (illness), LB Markus Bailey (neck), CB Vernon Hargreaves III (illness) QUESTIONABLE
Broncos: TBA
Reiff is expected to be out for the season, leaving Akeem Adeniji to protect Joe Burrow's blind side down the stretch. Should Awuzie and Bailey fail to suit up, Cincy will be down three starters on defense. Some good news, though: Burrow, Tee Higgins and Trey Hendrickson were all full participants in practice by the end of the week.
Seattle Seahawks at Los Angeles Rams (-4)
Seahawks: TBA
Rams: TBA
Injury reports to come.
Green Bay Packers (-6.5) at Baltimore Ravens
Packers: OT David Bakhtiari (knee), OG/OT Billy Turner (knee), TE Dominique Dafney (ankle) OUT; WR Equanimeous St. Brown (concussion) DOUBTFUL; WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling (back), WR Malik Taylor (abdomen) QUESTIONABLE
Ravens: OG Ben Powers (foot) OUT; DT Calais Campbell (thigh) DOUBTFUL; QB Lamar Jackson (ankle), FB Patrick Ricard (back, knee), TE Nick Boyle (knee), OT Alejandro Villanueva (knee), OG Tyre Phillips (illness), OL Patrick Mekari (hand), CB Chris Westry (knee) QUESTIONABLE
Another week, another game without Bakhtiari for the Packers, who are still flying high on the path to the NFC's No. 1 seed. Aaron Rodgers could have his receiver depth tested should both Valdes-Scantling and St. Brown sit out. Baltimore is even more banged up, with Tyler Huntley on track to start at QB in the event Jackson can't go.
New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-11)
Saints: TE Garrett Griffin (hamstring), OT Ryan Ramczyk (knee), OT Terron Armstead (knee) OUT; WR Lil'Jordan Humphrey (hamstring), LB Kaden Elliss (hamstring) QUESTIONABLE
Buccaneers: CB Jamel Dean (illness) OUT; CB Richard Sherman (Achilles) DOUBTFUL; RB Leonard Fournette (ankle), S Antoine Winfield Jr. (ankle), S Jordan Whitehead (calf) QUESTIONABLE
The Saints will be without both of their starting tackles in this key divisional showdown, leaving Taysom Hill without his top two blockers. More than that, New Orleans will also be without head coach Sean Payton, who tested positive for COVID-19 and will be replaced on the sidelines with defensive coordinator Dennis Allen. As for the Bucs, Fournette would be a big loss for Tampa Bay's balanced offense if he can't suit up, while Todd Bowles' secondary remains banged up.
Minnesota Vikings (-5.5) at Chicago Bears
Vikings: TBA
Bears: TBA
Injury reports to come
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-week-15-final-injury-reports-several-teams-ravaged-by-covid-19-plus-damien-harris-out-vs-colts/
The big problem is that the "undermining" has continued by certain right wing factions of our political system and in full effect. This has spread to undermining many things beyond the Covid Wars that has a continued damaging effect and threat to peoples' lives.
Trump sought to 'undermine' COVID-19 response, says panel
BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 12/17/21 09:29 AM EST 12,2
TheHill.com
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/586287-house-oversight-report-trump-administration-sought-to-undermine-covid
The Trump administration deliberately undermined the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes, including by weakening testing guidance and championing widespread "herd immunity," according to a new report from the House panel investigating the pandemic response.
The Democratic staff report released Friday was a summation of the year's work investigating political interference in the pandemic response from Trump officials and the former president himself.
In interviews with officials and from uncovered emails and other documents, the committee found that the former administration failed to heed warnings about supply shortages, blocked public health officials from speaking publicly and neglected the pandemic response in order to focus on the 2020 presidential election and on promoting the lie that the election was "stolen" from Trump through widespread fraud.
New evidence released by the panel Friday highlighted the frustration and anger among senior public health officials with Trump's embrace of the herd immunity strategy.
In one instance, Trump held a roundtable event at the White House in August 2020 with some of herd immunity's top proponents that was organized by Scott Atlas, a radiologist who became a special adviser to Trump.
According to emails obtained by the panel, former White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx described it as “a fringe group."
"I can't be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity," Birx wrote in an email to then-Chief of Staff to the Vice President Marc Short. "These are people who believe that all the curves are predetermined and mitigation is irrelevant -- they are a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience. I am happy to go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover," she wrote.
Other details released by the panel Friday showed the Trump White House intentionally “softened” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's public health guidance for faith communities.
Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases, told the panel in an interview he was pressured by the White House to publish guidance for faith communities that “softened some very important public health recommendations,” such as removing all references to face coverings, a suggestion to suspend choirs, and language related to virtual services.
NFL postponing 3 games over COVID surge
CDC handing out free COVID-19 test kits for international travelers
Butler said he felt the guidance "was not good public health practice" and would put people's lives at risk
"I was doing a lot of soul searching about whether or not I should have agreed to even make the change in the document. Clearly, it was a directive, but that was a real struggle as I felt like what had been done was not good public health practice," he told the committee.
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Capital Murder
A person commits capital murder in the following nine circumstances:
1 Murdering a police officer or fireman while they are doing the work of a police officer or fireman and the person knows they are a police officer or fireman
2 Murdering someone in the course of or attempting to commit a kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson, obstruction or retaliation, or certain types of terroristic threat
3 Murdering someone for payment or the promise of payment or hiring another person to commit a murder for payment
4 Murdering someone while escaping or attempting to escape from prison
5 Murdering someone employed by a prison while incarcerated in prison
6 Murdering someone while incarcerated for murder or capital murder or while serving a life sentence for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, or aggravated robbery
7 Murdering more than one person during the same criminal episode
8 Murdering someone under 10 years old; or
9 Murdering someone because of their employment as a judge.
Murder
A person commits murder if he or she:
Intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual; or
Intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual; or
Commits or attempts to commit a felony, other than manslaughter, and in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt, or in immediate flight from the commission or attempt, commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.
Manslaughter
A person commits manslaughter if he or she “recklessly causes the death of an individual.” A person acts “recklessly” when he or she “is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk” that their conduct will kill another person.
Criminally Negligent Homicide
A person commits criminally negligent homicide if he or she “causes the death of another individual by criminal negligence.” A person acts with “criminal negligence” when he or she “ought to be aware of a substantial and justifiable risk” that their conduct will kill another person.
https://aslettlaw.com/criminal-defense/what-are-the-differences-between-murder-homicide-and-manslaughter-charges-in-texas/
Trump International Hotel in Washington report exposes gaping corruption loopholes
Why does the House report matter? The D.C. hotel was the epicenter of Trump’s graft.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-international-hotel-washington-report-exposes-gaping-corruption-loopholes-ncna1286258
Dec. 18, 2021, 3:30 AM MST
By Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
Donald Trump should never have been allowed to retain ownership of his Washington, D.C., hotel while president. A new report confirmed that the controls allegedly in place to limit potential corruption failed completely. Trump exposed these flaws in the system; Congress must act now before they are exploited again.
This week, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure issued a report finding that the General Services Administration completely failed.
This week, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure issued a report finding that the General Services Administration — the federal agency that oversees the Trump Organization’s lease of the Old Post Office for the Trump International Hotel in Washington — completely failed to prevent or even identify potential legal and constitutional violations arising from Trump’s ownership of the hotel, which the committee said operated at a loss for 33 out of 53 months between September 2016 and January 2021.
According to lawmakers, GSA never even checked whether Trump was complying with the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which prohibit a president from taking payments or benefits from foreign and domestic governments. It never looked into whether his reimbursements to the government for foreign government expenditures at the hotel were accurate or whether loans for the hotel created conflicts of interest. Trump political appointees at GSA even made decisions affecting the financial interest of Trump’s properties, which was predictable, with Trump essentially serving as landlord and tenant.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., the committee's chairman, told NBC News the report “brings to light GSA’s flagrant mismanagement of the Old Post Office lease and its attempt to duck its responsibility to support and defend the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clauses.” (Trump has remained mum on the report so far.)
Trump says the 'phony' constitution 'doesn't matter' because he's 'rich'
OCT. 21, 201904:24
Here’s why this matters: The hotel was the epicenter of Trump’s graft. Anyone looking to curry favor with his administration could simply walk over to his namesake hotel a couple blocks from the White House and flash cash.
On issues from taxes to environmental regulation to foreign policy, we never knew whether Trump’s administration was making decisions in the interest of the American people or in the interest of his bottom line. When Trump refused to take any action after Saudi Arabian agents brutally murdered a U.S.-based journalist, did it have anything to do with Saudi officials paying thousands for Trump hotel rooms? When the Trump administration gave unprecedented business to private prison companies, was it because they held events at his properties?
We can’t say we didn’t warn the GSA. My organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, sent them a letter seconds after Trump was sworn in, asking the agency to start the process of finding Trump to be in violation of its lease, which said it could not be held by a government official.
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Instead, the GSA turned a blind eye to the obvious problems in a contract it oversaw. Perhaps the watchdogs were too scared to cross their politically appointed managers or the president himself. They fell down on the job. They should have done better, but it’s a lot to ask bureaucrats to stand up against the weight of the leaders they report to.
We need stronger protections. There must be accountability for Trump’s constant, corrupt disregard of the Constitution, the law and the principles of ethics. But we also must recognize that we can no longer inherently count on good faith and commitment to the rule of law from those in our highest offices. Trump may well be back in that position in the future. Others seeing what he got away with could follow his example. We need to strengthen our laws and institutions to protect against those who would, and will, abuse them.
The report recommends reforms including strengthening the audit power of the GSA and its inspector general and fortifying the prohibitions against government leases being held for the benefit of senior government officials. Those measures are important, and Congress should enact them. But as the committee also acknowledged, they are not enough. Congress must strengthen the laws prohibiting out-of-control presidential corruption.
The Protecting Our Democracy Act, which the House passed last week, includes provisions strengthening the enforcement of the emoluments clauses and gives more teeth to congressional oversight and more protection to inspectors general and whistleblowers. The Senate should pass it as soon as possible. The House-passed For the People Act includes key ethics provisions requiring presidents to sell any businesses they own before taking office. It’s up to the Senate to pass them as well.
Donald Trump made a mockery of the presidency and abused any ethics regulation he could. We’re still, years later, finding out how bad those abuses were — or could have been. Let’s make sure we’re never in this situation again.
U.S. COVID-19 vaccine mandate revived, Supreme Court showdown looms
By Tom Hals and Mike Scarcella
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-appeals-court-reinstates-covid-19-vaccine-or-test-rule-us-workplaces-2021-12-18/
Dec 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday reinstated a nationwide vaccine-or-testing COVID-19 mandate for large businesses, which covers 80 million American workers, prompting opponents to rush to the Supreme Court to ask it to intervene.
The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati lifted a November injunction that had blocked the rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which applies to businesses with at least 100 workers.
"It is difficult to imagine what more OSHA could do or rely on to justify its finding that workers face a grave danger in the workplace," said the opinion. "It is not appropriate to second-guess that agency determination considering the substantial evidence, including many peer-reviewed scientific studies, on which it relied."
President Joe Biden unveiled in September regulations to increase the adult vaccination rate as a way of fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than 750,000 Americans and weighed on the economy.
The ruling coincides with public health officials bracing for a "tidal wave" of coronavirus infections in the United States as the more transmissible Omicron variant spreads rapidly worldwide. read more
"While we are disappointed in the Court’s decision, we will continue to fight the illegal mandate in the Supreme Court," South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said on Twitter. "We are confident the mandate can be stopped."
Within hours of the ruling, at least three petitions were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to immediately block the mandate.
A protester gestures at passing traffic as Boeing employees and others line the street to protest the company's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandate, outside the Boeing facility in Everett, Washington, October 15, 2021. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
A protester gestures at passing traffic as Boeing employees and others line the street to protest the company's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandate, outside the Boeing facility in Everett, Washington, October 15, 2021. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
A group of business groups representing retail, wholesale, warehousing, transportation, travel and logistics filed one of the first petitions with the high court, raising among other issues the potential for workers to quit rather than take the shot.
"The resulting labor upheaval will devastate already fragile supply chains and labor markets at the peak holiday season," said the petition.
Companies such as United Airlines (UAL.O) have used mandates to increase the number of vaccinated employees, often with only a small number of workers refusing the shots. read more
But others such as Boeing Co (BA.N) have suspended their plans, in part because of court rulings putting government mandates on hold, but also due to resistance among workers. read more
Courts have blocked Biden's vaccine requirement for healthcare workers in half the states and a vaccine mandate for federal contractors has been blocked nationwide. read more
Friday's ruling was 2-1 with Judges Jane Stranch, appointed by President Barack Obama, and Julia Gibbons, appointed by President George W. Bush, in the majority. Judge Joan Larsen, appointed by President Donald Trump, dissented.
Republicans, conservative groups and trade organizations sued over the OSHA rule, arguing the agency overstepped its authority. read more
The rule set a Jan. 4 deadline for compliance, although it was unclear if that will be enforced because the rule was blocked for weeks.
That's true. That's why it puts more responsibility on the coaches, owners, administrative hierarchy and onward up past football. Football has all sorts of rules and regs that players have to follow and take serious and the game requires massive discipline and focus on a consistent basis. The things for Covid mitigation are easy, nothing that even compares to all the other required effort to just be there.
If one was to just take the article that was posted, it was showing that coach Carroll was taking responsibility and was getting the desired results. Along with showing that it can work and can just be included with regular regiment, making strengths not weaknesses. Wining over a little mask wearing or shot in the arm or any of the rules is just a weakness. There no wining in football.
Rules are there to protect the players and in turn protect the game. Being a good football player is being good playing by the rules. It's up to the leaders, whoever that may be, to make that happen, not shirk those responsibilities or fail in them.
There will always be large groups of not very intelligent people who follow, not lead, who need to be instructed or trained. I don't have as much against those misguided, mistaken, uneducated or untrained, but I have a whole lot of distain for the more intelligent, the ones who are followed or lead, for being an accessory to the follies, to knowingly misguide or just allow others to, all for their own conveniences or ideals.
Instead of the rolled eyes and ridiculed looks that the Seahawks got wearing masks (boy I know those looks real well), they should have looked at them and followed their example for its long past time for all the coaches and leadership to stop the wining and step it up and get on with having some good games. Or just get out of the kitchen if they can't.
Anybody see the Chiefs and Chargers game last night. I don't think that it would even been that close or overtime if it wasn't for Mahomes' flubs. He did some good ones too, but too many weren't on point to say the least. I wonder how Chargers' Parham is making out, stable and alert is all I've heard. Watching that injury was definitely cringe worthy.
Anybody see the Chiefs and Chargers game last night. I don't think that it would even been that close or overtime if it wasn't for Mahomes' flubs. He did some good ones too, but too many weren't on point to say the least. I wonder how Chargers' Parham is making out, stable and alert is all I've heard. Watching that injury was definitely cringe worthy.
The thing is though, every team has away games, that's part of the game. For every game played at home, there is a team on the road. It's a very good reason that there are any resemblance to protocols. Impossible to have a football player or all the personnel support to be a "work from home industry". If protocols are diligently and consistently followed, one will see much less percentage of break through cases (and even non vaccinated cases). I suspect that all these "break through" cases are not as many as they claim everywhere, but some I'm sure are with a non vaccinated persons claiming being vaccinated (fake vaccinated certifications are becoming big business and the sports industry has a history of covering for players breaking rules). One should expect that there would be a difference between teams that cheat and skirt the protocols that would have a bigger problem than a team who adheres to them the very best they can home and on the road.
The Seahawks have away games too and they come from one of the ground zeros for Covid. I don't believe that the Seahawks are an anomaly, just proof that if all or even any of the other teams addressed the situation with proper attitudes and actions, we would see a very small Covid lists and maybe close to non existent as we see with the Seahawks specifically. Who knows, maybe they are just faking the numbers also, but I don't think so.
Your right, playing other teams whether home or away that are not strictly enforcing or adhering to protocols will be constantly creating problems for any teams that do. That goes for every thing everywhere, not just football.
That was a great article, nice to see and obviously one more confirmation of successes of proper Covid mitigation (all forms). I'm sure that the amount of money that is involved with football, that some of the protocols are skirted and ignored or stated as adhered to, but not. There wouldn't be such a stark difference between the Seahawks and all the other teams if a lot wasn't being fudged. On another note;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/12/17/taylor-heinicke-washington-covid/
Washington quarterback Taylor Heinicke joins covid-19 list
By Nicki Jhabvala
Today at 10:21 a.m. EST|Updated today at 11:02 a.m. EST
Washington Football Team quarterback Taylor Heinicke was placed on the team’s reserve/covid-19 list Friday, two days before the team is set to face the Philadelphia Eagles in a divisional matchup that could determine both teams’ playoff fates. Heinicke joins 21 other Washington players on the covid-19 list, including backup quarterback Kyle Allen, who tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday.
For reinforcement, Washington signed quarterback Garrett Gilbert off the New England Patriots’ practice squad. The team’s quarterbacks room, which once featured 16-year veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick as a starter, is down to Kyle Shurmur, Gilbert and Jordan Ta’amu, who was added to the practice squad Wednesday.
Heinicke, like many others on Washington’s covid-19 lists, is vaccinated. If he’s asymptomatic, there’s a chance he could test out in time for Sunday’s game. But so far, none of Washington’s players on the covid-19 lists who are vaccinated and asymptomatic have been able to test out early.
The NFL altered its protocols Thursday evening, essentially allowing vaccinated asymptomatic players a chance to test out a day earlier than they would have under previous protocols, which required two negative tests separated by 24 hours. Now, those players can return after two negative tests taken on the same day — or if they meet a certain cycle threshold value, an indirect indicator of how much virus a person is carrying.
If Heinicke has two negative rapid-result tests as late as Sunday morning, he could be back on the field. Per the league’s new and complex protocols, Washington would have to activate him before Saturday at 4 p.m., and if he tests positive on game day, the team would not be able to elevate another player to replace him. The team would just lose the roster spot.
“This season, we’ve been historically running at about 20 percent of players that seem to be testing out in less than 10 days,” Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer said in a conference call with reporters Thursday. “I would expect that number to go up some now. But I just think we’ll have to wait and see.”
According to a person with knowledge of the team’s plans, Washington also plans to take a wait-and-see approach with their quarterbacks, as well as the rest of the roster, which has been decimated by injuries and coronavirus protocols.
The team has just 40 players on its active roster. Of the three quarterbacks currently available, Shurmur has the most experience with the team, after signing to the practice squad in September, after Fitzpatrick suffered a season-ending hip injury. But neither he nor Jordan Ta’amu has played an NFL snap.
Gilbert, a sixth-round pick by the Rams in 2014, spent two seasons with the Carolina Panthers (2017-18), when Ron Rivera was their head coach and Scott Turner their quarterbacks coach. His only game experience with the team, however, was the fourth quarter of Carolina’s Week 17 matchup with the New Orleans Saints. Gilbert replaced Allen, who suffered a shoulder injury in the victory.
Gilbert has bounced around among six teams, including two stints apiece with the Dallas Cowboys and the Patriots. In seven-plus seasons, he has played seven games and has had one start, with the Cowboys last season.
This story will be updated.
Well, when your in a world of fake tits, fake nose, face lips, fake marriages, fake intelligence, and alternative realities, what's a little eye color change. Known fact that blue eyes have an appeal and popularity much like blond hair has. Much higher percentage of women that have blond hair over the percentage of women with natural blond hair (might be switched popularity in colors now, don't keep up). I suppose it will become the same for cosmetic surgery designating color of eyes for people with a lot of money to spend.
SAFE EYE COLOR CHANGE IS NOW POSSIBLE
https://www.keratonyc.com/
Considering that storm surges are projected to be over 4ft above high tide will be happening by 2030, just think of what some permanence to that rise vs just storm surges. How much more extremes that will have to be dealt with than what we're already experiencing is quite a serious thought.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/antarctic-ice-shelf-crack-raise-seas-feet-decade-scientists-warn-rcna8918
Antarctic ice shelf could crack, raise seas by feet within decade, scientists warn
Thwaites is the widest glacier in the world and has doubled its rate of melt within the last 30 years, a researcher said.
Dec. 15, 2021, 5:08 PM MST / Updated Dec. 16, 2021, 8:19 AM MST
By Tim Fitzsimons
An Antarctic ice shelf could crack and disintegrate within the next decade, allowing a Florida-sized glacier to slide into the ocean and raising sea levels by feet, scientists warned Wednesday.
A dramatic chain reaction in the ice could occur by 2031, starting with the Thwaites Glacier, said Erin Pettit, a professor at Oregon State University who studies glacier and ice sheet dynamics.
The glacier, a river of flowing ice, is blocked from falling into the sea by the eastern ice shelf, which sits atop an underwater mountain and is disintegrating.
New research Pettit presented to a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans suggests the final collapse of the ice shelf may occur "within as little as 5 years" and mark the beginning of the end of the Thwaites Glacier.
How climate change is redefining life in the Arctic Circle (Part 1)
SEPT. 15, 201901:45
The ice at the top of the shelf is newly crisscrossed with cracks that are expanding toward the center of the shelf as quickly as 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) a year, the research found.
Scientists pointed to a zigzag path they say is the likely site for the ice shelf to crack and disintegrate.
Thwaites is the “widest glacier in the world” and has “doubled its outflow speed within the last 30 years,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and a contributor to the research.
“If Thwaites were to collapse, it would drag most of west Antarctica’s ice with it,” Scambos said in a news release. “So it's critical to get a clearer picture of how the glacier will behave over the next 100 years.”
Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf.
Over the last several years, satellite radar imagery shows many new fractures opening up in the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf.ESA
Thwaites contributes 4 percent of annual global sea level rise, according to the British Antarctic Survey. But if the shelf collapses, that amount could rise to 25 percent, the scientists said.
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All the water in the Thwaites Glacier would raise sea levels by 2 feet — but if its collapse triggers nearby glaciers to fall, the global sea level could rise by up to 10 feet, Scambos said.
A series of scientific studies of Thwaites in recent years has shown the enormous glacier is melting more quickly and in ways scientists never expected.
In 2019, scientists discovered a 6-mile-long, 1,000-foot-deep cavity under the glacier that means it lost 14 billion tons of ice, NBC News reported.
Later that year, researchers compared aerial films of Antarctica taken in the 1970s to current radar data, which showed Thwaites was melting much faster than researchers thought.
Their projected forecast turned out to pretty correct then. It's being regularly documented that previous forecasts and projections from generations ago with climate change effects have been too conservative and are advancing at much greater pace than previously thought and the projections now are that the "new normal" weather conditions are going to be left in the dust pretty quickly with magnitudes and frequencies becoming much worse. So don't get too used to these in what going to be considered very mild conditions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/12/10/record-warmth-surging-through-lower-48-states-two-waves/
Record warmth surging through Lower 48 states in two waves
Next week could produce historically high December temperatures in the central states, up to 40 degrees above average
By Ian Livingston
December 10, 2021|Updated December 10, 2021 at 1:27 p.m. EST
As we close in on the official start of winter Dec. 21, there’s little cold to be found across the Lower 48. The first of two surges of warmth has set records across Texas and parts of the South already. Dozens more records are possible Friday and Saturday, ahead of a powerful storm system triggering severe thunderstorms as it pushes east.
After only a brief break to start next week, warmth is set to build in again. By Tuesday, a new round of records is likely across the Southern Plains, expanding into the Midwest and Eastern states during the second half of the week. Some records could be set by large margins. In parts of the Midwest, temperatures could be as much as 40 degrees above normal, approaching their highest temperatures observed during December.
Current warmth
Dozens of records are slated to be tied or topped Friday and Saturday ahead of a cold front sweeping east. Friday’s record-challenging warmth is centered over the south-central United States. On Saturday, the record warmth will stretch to the East Coast with a focus on parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Thursday featured record highs in Houston, Brownsville and Laredo, where maximum temperatures of 87, 88 and 89 occurred, respectively.
The 87-degree high at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport was also the warmest December high temperature on record for the city, surpassing the previous monthly mark of 85, set in 1933.
Many of the same spots are likely to see record or near-record highs Friday. Oklahoma City may top its daily record of 75 from 1996. Dallas’s record of 84 could also fall. Farther east, record highs in Memphis and New Orleans are also among those at risk of falling.
Along the Texas-Mexico border region, readings may reach the sweltering low 90s in places like Laredo.
The anomalous warmth is also fueling a significant severe weather threat Friday evening into Friday night. Tornadoes, some which could be strong, are a possibility across parts of the mid-South and surrounding areas Friday night. A moderate risk, or Level 4 of 5, has been issued by the Weather Service for portions of the area.
Warmth shifts east with the cold front into Saturday. Temperatures reaching the 60s and 70s — some 20 to 25 degrees above normal for the date — could deliver records to places such as Buffalo, Washington and New York City.
In addition to record highs, numerous record-warm low temperatures have been or will be set, including up to three or four dozen Friday night.
Round 2
With a cold front clearing the East Coast late Saturday, a few days without massive winter warmth seem likely.
It won’t last for long. Unusually toasty conditions will surge back into many of the same regions east of the continental divide early next week. By Tuesday and Wednesday, temperatures as much as 30 to 40 degrees above normal are possible across the central United States.
Forecast temperatures compared to normal. (weatherbell.com)
While next week is too far out for specifics, temperatures should rise to at least the values indicated below between Tuesday and Thursday, progressing from west to east. If anything, these forecasts may be conservative, given the anticipated strength of the wintertime heat dome. There is certainly a chance for more all-time December records in spots.
Wichita: Lower 70s.
Iowa City: Near 70.
Minneapolis: Low-to-mid 60s.
Chicago: Near or above 60.
Memphis: 60s.
Washington: 60s.
Why so warm?
The large-scale weather pattern has recently favored warmth across much of the Lower 48 east of the Rocky Mountains. That seems set to continue for some time.
Much of December has been dominated by a polar jet stream locked across the northern tier of the United States and into Canada. This is quite far north for the time of year, and in large part thanks to persistently higher pressure over the contiguous United States.
High pressure strengthens over the eastern two-thirds of the United States next week. (weatherbell.com)
More recently, and into the time ahead, the weather pattern is becoming dominated by a recurring area of low pressure over the western part of the country, bringing stormy weather. To the east, like the opposite side of a seesaw, a sprawling zone of high pressure and associated warm conditions will dominate.
Storms to pour precipitation into drought-plagued California and Mountain West
Both of these weather drivers are expected to be high-end versions of themselves by the middle of next week. Some forecasting has shown the next round of “subtropical” high pressure in the eastern United States to be near historic intensity for the time of year.
On top of these weather factors, human-caused climate change is helping to push unusual warmth toward extreme levels.
More of the same is expected through the winter. While colder breaks are a good bet, an overall pattern of above-normal temperatures in the East and below-normal in the Northwest is common for La Niña winters like the present.
Morgan Housel
@morganhousel
Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: Incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.