Presidential candidate Marianne “Don’t call me Crystal Lady” Williamson has proposed the creation of a Secretary of Peace and a Department of Peace (not to be confused with 1984’s Ministry of Peace).

“Lasting peace requires its active and systematized cultivation at every level of government and society … Nothing short of broad-scale investment and government reorientation can truly turn things around.”

Ok, maybe it should be confused with 1984’s Ministry of Peace.

The Air Force's new billion-dollar Nuclear Command and Control Facility in Nebraska is being named after confessed war criminal Curtis LeMay.

In today's tight economy, businesses are finding ways to include durable, low-cost, value-added perks to their offerings

For example, this place offers a fingerprint-resistant blunt-force murder weapon.

If Congress or the President were truly concerned about the environment, there are several actions that can be taken immediately that are entirely within their purview.

One of the those actions is to prevent the ~490 ships in the U.S. Navy from dumping their waste and garbage into the ocean; something the Navy has been doing with impunity for 244 years.

Ever the real estate magnate, President Trump pondered purchasing Greenland from Denmark during a meeting of economic advisors.

The proposal may seem off the map, but Trump is actually the third president to broach the issue.

I think presidents get confused about what the island of 56,000 people actually has to offer when they see it on a Mercator projection.

The corn-derived sweetener known as High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is only (only!) 42% fructose. Big Food is putting a high octane version directly in food products that is 90% pure. Did Big Food name the new product Double Plus Good Corn Syrup? Extra Deadly Corn Syrup? Half the Cost and Twice the Margins Corn Syrup? No.

It’s called “Natural Sweetener”. How can something be natural when it’s the result of an industrial chemical process that includes fermented mold, you ask? Let’s see how natural HFCS-90 is:

To create HFCS-90, corn starch is converted into common corn syrup (glucose) via exposure to different enzymes, one being the product of fermented Aspergillus (mold). The second step converts the glucose into its kissing cousin (isomer) fructose by rearranging the atoms in the glucose molecules; this creates HFCS-42.

HFCS-90 is created by passing HFCS-42 through an ion exchange column whereby undesirable ions are sequestered by appropriately charged resin (small beads of crystalized alien sweat (or similar)).

This is your “Natural Sweetener”.

Burger King started selling the Impossible Whopper provided by Impossible Foods this month (but that’s not the whopper referenced by the title).

Glossing over the GMO Frankenfood that is the Impossible Burger (packaged as a Whopper), Impossible Foods insists that its food-like product “bleeds like real meat”. Meat does not bleed, because it does not contain blood (“I’ll take ginormous biohazards for one-thousand, Alex.”).

The reddish fluid in steaks and hamburgers is myoglobin – literally, muscle juice!

The most widely-predicted event in recorded history has transpired, with the discovery of the body of Jeffrey Epstein in his New York City jail cell this morning.

Epstein had two suicide attempts in as many weeks despite being on what NYC called 'suicide watch' - which apparently has nothing to do with suicide prevention.

The tragedy, of course, isn't the death of a predator, but the loss of the person who could expose the entire predator network, which some reports date back to the 1950's.

Here's how representative government works. The government receives feedback on a topic:

“The overwhelming majority of comments [>99.9%] from the general public, including the more than 20,000 letters from the write-in campaign, did not support the continued registration of sodium cyanide predacide uses (M-44 devices)," – EPA statement

Then it does whatever the hell it wants: EPA Re-authorizes Cyanide Traps.

The CDC has shut down the Army's biomedical research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland for failure to maintain safety standards.

The U.S. is a signatory to the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, thus one wonders what the Army is doing with a biomedical research lab.

The U.S. is just weeks away from testing a missile banned by the 1987 nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

As luck would have it, Russia was found to be in violation of the treaty to justify the U.S.' withdrawal just in time to test the new weapon. More thoughts on this topic here: Arms Race or Equalizing the Playing Field?

Twenty-nine years ago today the United States went to war and didn't come back.

(There's a fair argument to be made that we went to war seventy-eight years ago and never came back, but we will leave that for another day.)

U.S. authorities have indicated that the son of Osama bin Laden has died, but have not given additional details.

Outlets are reporting the person's name as Hamza bin Laden, when in fact the person's name is Hamza, styled as Hamza bin Osama.

The concept of a surname does not apply.

A Louisiana woman arrested on suspicion of theft denied ownership of a gram of methamphetamine that was found in her person after a cavity search.

They say possession is nine-tenths of the law, so she may have some wriggle room there.

Empowerment Therapy
Day 1

Mantra of Impervious Defense

I am rubber, you are glue.
Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.

What do you get when you cross Baby Boomers with Millennials and add Columbia, Maryland?

Not Woodstock 50. The troubled "cross-generational" event was finally cancelled after organizers were informed that LSD is still illegal and Millennials think it is some kind of church.