The picture below was taken at one of my local grocery stores last March:

Toilet paper and paper towels were missing from the shelves because too many people were hoarding them.

For a period of time, a roll of toilet paper was worth more than a barrel of oil, because oil futures were actually negative for part of the year last year.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a-year-ago-heres-what-traders-have-learned-since-11618863839

There have been reports that the same thing is now happening in the Southeastern United States due to shortages caused by the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline.

• Gas stations across the US are running out in the wake of a crippling cyberattack.

• The Colonial Pipeline that supplies the East Coast has been down since it was hacked last week.

• Sixty percent of gas stations in Atlanta were out, one analyst said, and 25% across North Carolina.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

More than 1,000 gas stations in eastern US states ran out of gasoline after a cyberattack knocked out a crucial US pipeline that supplies much of the region's gasoline.

Price rises and panic-buying followed the news, which led to widespread shortages as operators struggled to move fuel supplies without the out-of-action Colonial Pipeline.

According to data from the app GasBuddy, as of early Wednesday the worst-hit states were North Carolina, where 24.8% of stations were out of gas; Georgia, where 15.4% were empty; and Virginia, where 15% had run out.

https://news.yahoo.com/more-1-000-gas-stations-102401834.html

We've had discussions about wind power before, which you can read at the link below. In retrospect, the discussions involving Trump are pretty funny. Remember, this is the guy who said " the wind isn't blowing, so you can't watch TV tonight, honey" at one of his rallies.

https://www.democratichub.com/posts/3848/should-wind-power-be-government-supported-or-private

I started a new thread because of a breaking story in the New York Times this morning:

Construction on the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is expected to begin this summer, after the Biden administration gave final approval Tuesday to a project it hopes will herald a new era of wind energy across the United States.

The Vineyard Wind project calls for up to 84 turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they could generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes.

The Interior Department has estimated that by the end of the decade, some 2,000 turbines could be churning in the wind along the coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/climate/climate-wind-farm.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Climate%20and%20Environment

800 Megawatts of power would rival many of the existing land based wind farms in he country. It's interesting to note that Altamont Pass in California, the largest on the list, produces half of the wind power in the entire world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States

This is the first paragraph of the original Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Today,, the Republicans in Congress will be voting to remove Liz Cheney from her post as the third most powerful person in the House, simply because she told the truth about 2020 election. She is expected to be replace by Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist.

As a result, more than 100 Republicans, including some former elected officials, are preparing to release a letter this week threatening to form a third party if the Republican Party does not make certain changes, according to an organizer of the effort.

The statement is expected to take aim at former President Donald J. Trump’s stranglehold on Republicans, which signatories to the document have deemed unconscionable.

“When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice,” reads the preamble to the full statement, which is expected to be released on Thursday.

The effort comes as House Republican leaders are expected on Wednesday to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their ranks because of her outspoken criticism of Mr. Trump’s election lies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/us/politics/republicans-third-party-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

If the group actually formed a third party, it would be a death knell for the Republican Party.

In February 2020 party affiliation by party were:

Democratic: 45,715,952
Republican: 33,284,020
ind & misc: 33,530,123
Libertarian: 609,234
Green: 246,377
Constitution: 118,088
Wk Families: 50,532
Reform: 6,665
oth parties 1,712,747

The February 2020 tally is the only one in U.S. history in which the number of voters registered independent and miscellaneous was greater than the number in either major party. But between February and now, Republicans regained their second-place position.

In September, the breakdown looked like this:

Democratic: 47,106,084
Republican: 35,041,482
ind & misc: 33,696,700
Libertarian: 652,261
Green: 240,222
Constitution: 129,556
Wk Families: 49,758
Reform: 9,004
oth parties 1,814,973

Both major parties picked up roughly 1,500,000 voters, while the independent vote remained about the same. Since the inauguration, both parties have lost votes - but the Republican Party has lost more than the Democrats.

Even if a third party was not formed, the threat of a third party would have a "Ross Perot" effect on the Republican Party. In 1992, Perot won 19.7 million votes (18.9% of the popular vote) which allowed Bill Clinton to defeat George H.W. Bush with only 43% of the popular vote, but 5,000,000 more votes than the incumbent president.

https://ballot-access.org/2020/10/24/nationwide-voter-registration-data-by-party/

Thomas Freidman published another thoughtful column this morning about the Republican Party.

My favorite sentence is this one:

'We’re witnessing a daylight mugging of our democracy — and I am not talking only about the voter-suppression measures being passed by Republican-controlled legislatures in swing states."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/opinion/liz-cheney-gop.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

BREAKING NEWS:

As expected, Liz Cheney is no longer the chairwoman of the House Republican conference. To quote Peter Wehner, "today the Republican Party is less a political party than a political freak show. It is being sustained by insidious lies. And people who love America, starting with conservatives, should say so. Otherwise, if the Republican Party’s downward spiral isn’t reversed, it will descend even further into a frightening world of illusion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/opinion/liz-cheney-vote-trump.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Opinion

When I read the headlines in this morning's Arizona Republic, I immediately saw red.

Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Tuesday that would remove certain voters from the permanent early voting list, approving one of the more controversial election-related bills of the year less than an hour after the Senate gave its final approval in a party-line 16-14 vote.

Republicans have argued Senate Bill 1485 will help ensure the accuracy and efficiency of the list of voters who have signed up to receive a ballot in the mail automatically ahead of each election, but Democrats contend it will purge infrequent voters and is an effort to suppress turnout.

“This bill is simple. It’s all about election integrity,” he said in a video released within an hour of the bill’s passage.

"Election integrity is the same bullshit phrase in all the new voter suppression laws".

Sponsored by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, Senate Bill 1485 requires county officials to remove voters from the permanent early voting list who do not vote early at least once in a primary, general or municipal election during two election cycles.

Election officials would have to send a notice to those voters, who could remain on the list by filling out and returning the notice within 90 days.

Attorneys for the Legislature said the bill would not apply retroactively and voters will not see its effects until after two election cycles.

The bill also will rename the permanent early voting list, or PEVL. It will be known instead as the active early voting list, or AEVL.

Coming after high turnout in the last election and President Joe Biden’s victory here, the bill is just one of several that Republicans have sponsored to change the state's voting process in ways big and small and which Democrats contend are not intended to protect election integrity but are merely attempts to curb turnout.

"We know this is going to be especially impactful for rural and tribal folks. And yet, we continue to pass bills under this guise of preventing fraud even though there has been little to no evidence produced of any actual fraud," Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, said Tuesday.

Rios said that more than 125,000 people would have been removed from the permanent early voting list ahead of the last election had the law been in place at the time.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2021/05/11/arizona-bill-remove-people-early-voting-list-heads-gov-doug-ducey/5041220001/

On Friday, of the top 10 most popular Facebook posts, nine were from far-right extremists, including Ben Shapiro and Franklin Graham.

And every weeknight, more than 3 million people tune in to watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News. It's the largest audience of any show on cable news.

The right wing is dominating on TV and social media, reaching tens of millions of people and feeding them baseless lies and propaganda. Which is why it's no surprise that dangerous conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine and wild lies about a stolen election are spreading like wildfire across the country. In fact, a new poll shows that more than half of all Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump

According to MIT, false news travels six times faster on Twitter than the truth.

We saw on January 6 the deadly consequences of the right-wing echo chamber, when Trump and his enablers ignited a white supremacist insurrection that left lawmakers running for their lives, dozens injured, and five people dead. And it could have been much worse.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by then-president Donald Trump in the weeks prior to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is expected to throw his former boss under the bus when he testifies before Congress this week about the attack, according to a report by Axios.

Esper was replaced by Chris Miller, who outright blamed Trump for the deadly insurrection when he spoke to VICE Showtime in March.

“Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and tried to overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

Miller said that he wasn’t clear on whether Trump fully understood what he was doing and what his supporters would do, but he made it clear that the attack never would have happened without Trump’s words.

So ..

The two most recent Defense Secretaries are calling out Trump for his role on January 6.

The teflon layer is starting to wear a little thin.

https://dailyboulder.com/ex-defense-sec-mark-esper-will-throw-trump-under-the-bus-at-congressional-hearing-report/

If you need further convincing that the Arizona legislature is inhabited by people from a different universe, consider this news:

An Arizona legislator is likening state messages encouraging residents to get the COVID-19 vaccine to communism.

The COVID-19 vaccine is not mandatory in Arizona. But on digital billboards situated on state highways, the state has been urging residents to get vaccinated as a way of returning to normal life.

State Sen. Kelly Townsend, a Republican from Mesa, shared on social media last week that she thinks the signs are government overreach and similar to China, which has a one-party government — the Communist Party of China.

"Want to return to normal? Get vaccinated," says the digital billboard message that Townsend photographed and included in a tweet on Thursday.

"Seen in Communist China today," Townsend wrote in the tweet accompanying the photo. "Oops, I mean Arizona."

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2021/05/10/arizona-senator-kelly-townsend-state-covid-19-vaccine-messages-communist/5025918001/

Heather's letter from last night was packed with news:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-10-2021

There are two broad themes in her letter:

1) We are extremely lucky to have Joe Biden as our president

2) Today's Republican Party is a sad joke, a fact acknowledged by Arizona state senator Paul Boyer.

State senator Paul Boyer, who voted for the “audit,” told New York Times reporter Michael Wines: “It makes us look like idiots…. Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

And then, this morning, the Washington Post dropped a long, investigative story by reporters Emma Brown, Aaron C. Davis, Jon Swaine, and Josh Dawsey revealing that the arguments former president Trump has grabbed to “prove” the election was stolen from him were part of a long conspiracy theory hatched in 2018 by Russell J. Ramsland, Jr., “a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream.” The story follows how Ramsland’s theories, which were debunked as “bat-s**t insane” by White House lawyers, got pumped into the media by Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, among others, and how Trump came to embrace them.

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) tweeted this morning: “A few days before Jan 6, our GOP members had a conference call. I told Kevin [McCarthy] that his words and our party’s actions would lead to violence on January 6th. Kevin dismissively responded with ‘ok Adam, operator next question.’ And we got violence.”

The other day, Adam Kinzinger compared the Republican Party to the Titanic:

"The band is still playing, trying to convince everyone that all is fine, and Trump is running around looking for women's clothing so that he can get into a lifeboat.

Microsoft News this morning published a story listing all of the vehicles that Trump owns, and a few that he used to own.

The majority of the vehicles on the list are money pits (Trump Force One is a prime example) but the most surprising vehicle on the list is a Harley Chopper. Nor surprisingly, it's all gold.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-luxury-transport-from-gold-motorbike-to-private-plane/ss-BB1gzUtP?ocid=msedgdhp

Oklahoma has secured a $2.6 million refund for a malaria drug purchase once touted by former President Trump as a treatment for COVID-19, the state's attorney general announced Friday.

Why it matters: Trump repeatedly promoted hydroxychloroquine last year despite health officials warning that the drug should not be prescribed for treating COVID-19 outside of research or hospital settings due to serious side effects. Oklahoma purchased 1.2 million hydroxychloroquine pills in April 2020, per AP.

What they're saying: Attorney General Mike Hunter said the state reached an agreement with FFF Enterprises, a private medical supplier.

• "They recognized we were in competition with every other state in the nation to get whatever we could to protect Oklahomans. When it was determined the drug wasn’t effective in combatting the virus, they did the right thing by refunding our money," he said in a statement.
• The state will return its stockpile and receive the purchase price in full.

https://www.axios.com/covid-oklahoma-hydroxychloroquine-refund-trump-5d0fc177-aa15-457d-b24c-6969d6f9c5ae.html