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... By my calculation, roughly 20 million eligible children, mostly from middle- and upper-middle-class families, continue to opt out of the national program by bringing lunch or by buying special à la carte food items not covered by the program. As an individual family decision, packing lunches might seem like the best option, especially for children with special dietary needs. But when millions of families do so, their actions reduce the political will and financial resources necessary to make public school lunches better for everyone. The Trump administration isn’t much help. According to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, providing schools with...

I'm starving!

It sure looks as though the end is near for Joe Biden's latest presidential campaign. Forecasting the future in politics these days is a fool's game -- as Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan noted on Saturday, journalists are "bad at predictions." So here is a caveat: It is still early in the primary process, there is no clear front-runner, and anything could happen. Still, Biden gave off the distinct odor of flop sweat over the weekend. At Friday's Democratic presidential debate, he conceded he is unlikely to win this week's New Hampshire primary. That, in turn, led some of...

“He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Proverbs 10:4-5 KJV).

This past weekend the Super Bowl rolled through Miami, bringing traffickers seeking to sell their victims online to sex buyers. The FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, working with the Metro-Dade Police Department, arrested three of these alleged sex traffickers during online undercover stings.  These arrests shine a light on sex trafficker’s use of the internet. A report by the non-profit Polaris Project states, “What we do know is that the internet has forever blurred the once bright lines between the social and the commercial and that traffickers have taken notice and adjusted their business models accordingly.”The FBI...

CP33 with accessories and 50 rd mag extension, courtesy Dean Weingarten At the Kel-Tec booth at the shot show, I talked to Kel-Tec lead design engineer Toby Obermeit and engineer Ryan Williams. One of the first things I saw was the new extension magazine for the CP33. It holds 50 rounds of .22 LR. It was mentioned last year as a coming product and should be available this summer.The CP33 has been an enormous success story. They are very popular; they have a reputation for both accuracy, reliability, and a good trigger. The CP33 only weighs 24 ounces with a...

Post #29. With so many rats running for president in 2020 it's hard to keep up with who's in and who's out. Hopefully, this post will help. This thread will be posted each week, likely on Monday, with the dropouts from the previous week and newly declared candidates noted. Below is a list of declared candidates and their occupation. Below that is a list of dropouts, their occupation and the date they dropped from the race. Dropout(s) in the past week: none that I know of. Newly declared candidates from last week: Thankfully, none. Current counts: We're down to 13...

If House Democrats are unsure how to move forward post-impeachment, President Donald Trump's unhinged performances last week at the National Prayer Breakfast and in the East Room of the White House should provide some clarity. Trump unleashed a stream-of-consciousness tirade Thursday, using inflammatory words like "scum," "sleazebags" and "crooked" to describe his perceived enemies. This was Trump uncensored and uninhibited, seemingly liberated from the confines of impeachment and determined to exact revenge on his public list of enemies. It was a demonstration of remarkable pettiness but also a warning that if he is left unchecked, there are few boundaries he...

Some will argue that Birds of Prey was never meant to be a big pic like Suicide Squad with its lower-than-DC-budget (around $97M gross, $84M net). Hogwash. It’s a brand, and that’s a lot of money to spend, according to finance sources, on a movie that’s intended to be an event film in the offseason. While spinoffs in their grosses have traditionally shown to be down in their grosses from the core franchise (i.e., Hobbs & Shaw‘s $60M opening was off 39% from Fate of the Furious’ first weekend, and Fantastic Beasts was off 56% from Harry Potter and the...

Actress and left-wing activist Jane Fonda wore an old gown she had in her wardrobe to this year’s 92nd Academy Awards to fight climate change. At the Oscars on Sunday evening, Fonda presented the award for Best Picture in an Elie Saab gown that she wore in 2014 to the Cannes Film Festival — a decision she made after being inspired by teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

I won’t say much about the Oscars as I didn’t watch them again this year. All I know of the baboons and baboonettes (not racist as I understand the Academy once again snubbed POC) speechifying is what I read in the fake news.But if the “acceptance” speeches were especially good this year - i.e. anti-Trump, pro-progressive causes - you can thank Obama’s former homeboys, head speechwriter Jon Favreau and Tommy (“Dude, that was like two years ago...”) Vietor. They’ve followed the natural career progression from D.C. policy wonk and propagandist to Hollywood PR wonker and propagandist. Barack Obama’s former head...

“The Communist Manifesto” got a shoutout during the 2020 Oscars. Julia Reichert, the co-director of best documentary winner “American Factory,” which was produced by former President Barack Obama’s new film company, apparently quoted from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ infamous book during her acceptance speech on Sunday night. “Working people have it harder and harder these days — and we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite,” Reichert said. The quote appeared to be a riff on the last lines of the 1848 political document, which are frequently translated from German as “Workers of the...

MANCHESTER, NH -- Elizabeth Warren isn’t struggling like Joe Biden. But she isn’t soaring, like Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. Instead, the Massachusetts senator enters a critical stretch of the campaign relegated to the murky middle. She has to convince voters she has a viable path to the nomination, even if that path is unclear. Her campaign has spent millions of dollars flexing organizational muscle throughout the country, but she’s lagging in her own backyard ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. “I think it’s going to be tough if she doesn’t do well,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the...

MANCHESTER, N.H. —Democratic leaders have edged toward the brink of open war with one another in recent days after a series of jarring setbacks that could jeopardize the party's chances against President Trump, who continues to solidify his iron-fisted control over the Republican election apparatus. The infighting focuses largely on the failed caucus process in Iowa, with state and national Democratic leaders at odds over who deserves blame, as well as an increasingly bitter dispute over the rules governing who gets into future nationally televised candidate debates — a process that could allow billionaire Mike Bloomberg to make the stage...

REALLY ?

If anything is certain this election season, it’s that everything is uncertain. Should the strong economy continue and nothing too crazy happens, it’s conceivable that Republicans could hang onto the executive, the Senate, and even regain the House. President Trump will be on the ballot in all those districts Democrats swiped from Republicans, and now they’ll also have their own record, or lack thereof (impeachment, anyone?), upon which to run. The Senate will come down to a few key races in Maine, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina, but Democrats will have to win them all in order to gain the...

BRUSSELS - The European Commission had to apologize again on Monday for a comment by foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who had questioned young people’s commitment to the fight against climate change, referring to it as “Greta syndrome”. Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Borrell said he had doubts about young people’s genuine engagement to tackling climate change, and questioned whether they were ready to change their lifestyles by measures to cut carbon emissions. “It is fine to demonstrate for climate change as long as you are not asked to contribute to pay for it,” Borrell said, calling this attitude “Greta...

BEIJING - People across China trickled back work on Monday after an extended Lunar New Year holiday as the government eased restrictions imposed to counter the coronavirus, but the World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of cases outside China could be just “the tip of the iceberg”. The death toll from the epidemic rose to 908, all but two in mainland China, on Sunday as 97 more fatalities were recorded - the largest number in a single day since the virus was detected in the city of Wuhan in December. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been...

Ten years ago Democrats chose not to use their 60-vote Senate majority to pass card-check legislation letting unions avoid secret-ballot elections. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to bring up the bill for a vote. How political times have changed. House Democrats last week passed the PRO Act, 224-194, that would impose a back-door card check and gut the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act in the most sweeping pro-union legislation since the 1935 Wagner Act. The bill codifies Obama -era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings that overturned decades of labor law. Employers would have to hand over workers’ private information to...

You’ve successfully conducted adoptions since 2005. But suddenly, in 2019, prosecutors come after you, claiming you are engaging in human trafficking. What drastically changed over 14 years? This is the nightmare that has happened to Paul Petersen, who until January 7 was the Maricopa County Assessor in Arizona. Petersen was pressured into resigning his position after prosecutors got him indicted for bringing women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. to give birth, then give their babies up for adoption. The prosecution says it’s illegal human trafficking. Prosecutors in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas are seeking federal and state charges against...