Mrs. Rico (no pic however just imagine a younger version of Salma Hayek) chastised Rico last week for wearing 3 gold chains to the pool when swimming/sunbathing. Rico has worn gold chains whenever he goes shirtless since the 80's and felt Ms. Rico was overreacting. These are not Mr. T type chains so little danger of Rico sinking to the bottom of the pool with all that heavy gold on. As I stated earlier Rico has always worn gold chains when going shirtless and Ms. Rico felt it was time for Rico to hang the chains up.

I have been fully entrenched in the Apple eco system for over a decade. Thinking about giving the android system a go. While Apple is clean and polished I’m kind of over the lack of innovation. Anyone talk me off the ledge or push me over?

(I’ll be disowned by friends and family for ruining texts with green bubbles instead of iMessage blue)

I haven't had a gaming system I regularly used since I was a freshman in high school. I'm thinking about what I'd like to get this time around for NCAA Football 25.

I last had a PlayStation 3. Which would you suggest to purchase?

You may have heard that the 2017 GOP tax cuts blew a giant hole in the federal budget—or so Democrats tell voters. The Congressional Budget Office’s revised 10-year budget forecast out Tuesday offers a reality check. Spending is the real problem, and it’s getting worse.

CBO projects that this year’s budget deficit will clock in at roughly $2 trillion, some $400 billion more than it forecast in February and $300 billion larger than last year’s deficit. This is unprecedented when the economy is growing and defense spending is nearly flat. The deficit this fiscal year will be 7% of GDP, which is more than during some recessions.

CBO says deficits will stay nearly this high for years, and the total over the next decade is now expected to total $21.9 trillion compared to $19.8 trillion in its February forecast. Debt held by the public will grow to 122.4% of GDP in 2034 from 97.3% last year.
Notably, CBO’s revenue projections are little changed. Revenue is expected to total 17.2% of GDP this year—roughly the 50-year average before the pandemic, as the nearby chart shows. But CBO significantly revised up projections for federal spending. Outlays are now expected to hit 24.2% of GDP this year and average 24% over the next decade. Wow.


CBO on Deficits

I love the authors books, but for what ever reason they don't cross over to the big screen. Poor screen writing, producing, directing, pick your poison. But as a fan of King novels, whenever a movie of his comes on I get sucked in no matter how bad it is.

And now, we get this. A movie based on a book I enjoyed the most...

Firestarter

That it is Mustafa.

@SolarHawk

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The Supreme Court temporarily put on hold on Thursday an Environmental Protection Agency plan to curtail air pollution that drifts across state lines, dealing another blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to protect the environment.
The ruling followed recent decisions chipping away at the agency’s authority to address climate change and water pollution.
The ruling was provisional, and challenges to the plan will continue to be litigated in an appeals court and could then return to the Supreme Court. But even the temporary loss for the administration will suspend the plan for many months and maybe longer.
The vote was 5 to 4. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by the court’s three liberal members, dissented.
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The decision concerned the administration’s “good neighbor” plan, which initially applied to 23 states. Under the proposal, factories and power plants in Western and Midwestern states must cut ozone pollution that drifts into Eastern ones. The emissions cause smog and are linked to asthma, lung disease and premature death.
The Clean Air Act allows states to devise their own plans, subject to approval by the E.P.A. In February 2023, the agency concluded that 23 states had not produced adequate plans to comply with its revised ozone standards. The agency then issued its own plan.
A wave of litigation followed, and seven federal appeals courts blocked the E.P.A.’s disapproval of plans submitted by a dozen states, leaving 11 states subject to the federal rule.
Three states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, along with energy companies and trade groups — challenged the federal plan directly in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. When a divided three-judge panel of that court refused to suspend the rule while the litigation moved forward, the challengers asked the Supreme Court to step in.
The application from the three states urged the justices to block the new rule in light of the appeals courts’ rulings, saying that “the federal plan is already a failed experiment” and “is but a shell of its original self.”

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The E.P.A. responded that the provisional rulings on the state plans should not affect the national rule and that blocking it would have severe consequences.
“It would delay efforts to control pollution that contributes to unhealthy air in downwind states, which is contrary to Congress’s express directive that sources in upwind states must assume responsibility for their contributions to emissions levels in downwind states,” the agency’s brief said.
The four consolidated cases, including Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 23A349, reached the court by way of emergency applications, which are typically disposed of in summary fashion. The court’s decision to hear arguments in such a setting — about whether to grant a stay — was quite rare.

Yarbo 4-in-1 Yard Robot

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I’m pretty sure we can all agree large corporations only care about money.
You take away their money by making them pay more in taxes and they will increase their prices.
Wouldn’t most people rather corporations not pay as much in taxes and not jack up their prices? I’d rather pay less money to buy something and I’m guessing most people aren’t going to be paying much more in taxes to offset large corporations not paying their fair share.
Why are we always having a big shit fit about them getting tax benefits.

Virginia GOP Senate Nominee Accused Of Stolen Valor​

June 27, 2024 Politics, Republicans



USA Today reports:

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, a decorated Navy veteran, has made repeated references to becoming disabled after he was “blown up” in combat, and has stressed that he has scars from his military service while Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine got rich from the safety of Capitol Hill.
Yet the Navy service record for Hung Cao, who won the GOP primary in June, does not show a Purple Heart award, the commendation given to troops who have suffered wounds from “direct or indirect result of enemy action” that required medical attention.
Nor does his record indicate that he received the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon, which requires that a sailor “must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in ground or surface combat engagement.” USA TODAY obtained Cao’s record from the Navy.

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Saw the idea on the Interwebs. The idea being to keep seniors in their homes.


I like the idea that once your mortgage is paid off you don't pay property tax. If you own something you own it.

Why are Republicans so determined to support the losers who attempted to destroy this country?

Deplorable:

House Republicans are laying the groundwork this week for a fight to fund the government later this year, attempting to push through party-line legislation with steep spending cuts and culture war proposals that could trigger a broader spending battle in the coming months.

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Funding for the federal government expires Sept. 30, and the House is in the midst of considering all 12 appropriations bills — or annual spending legislation — to head off a lapse in resources and an ensuing government shutdown.

But the GOP versions of those bills largely abandon a deal congressional Republicans struck with President Biden last year on spending caps, and they contain dozens of combative social policy provisions.

Together, those will probably doom the bills’ chances in the Democratic-controlled Senate, setting Congress on a course to approve a stopgap funding law, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to prevent an Oct. 1 shutdown. That would punt substantive government funding discussions until after November’s elections.


House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that he hoped a final government funding package could come together between November and the start of the new year.

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But the legislation draws a line that Republicans hope to hold in larger spending negotiations, especially after a right-wing bloc of the conference rebelled against this year’s funding bills, complaining that the measures bent to Democratic priorities.

“These aren’t the final products,” Cole said. “These are negotiating positions.”
House Democrats lamented that a partisan approach to government funding bills was counterproductive.
“None of these bills, none of them, will be signed into law the way they are written now. We all know that,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said in a hearing Tuesday.
The House this week is set to vote on bills to fund the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments, legislation worth approximately $950 billion. The vast majority of that money — $833 billion — will fund the Defense Department, an $8 billion increase from the current fiscal year.


Last week, the House passed a $378.6 billion funding measure for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which included a 9-percent bump in discretionary spending.

But to pay for that increase, Cole proposed deep cuts across the rest of the federal government. The State Department under the House legislation would see an 11-percent cut, after a 6-percent cut this year. The measure to fund the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments, major Democratic priorities, would see an 11-percent cut as well.

The Homeland Security bill, the most contentious of the funding proposals, takes direct aim at the Biden administration’s immigration policies. It would require the White House to spend $600 million to erect a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and would claw back $650 million in shelter services for undocumented migrants awaiting the outcome of their legal proceedings.


The measure may not be aggressive enough for some Republicans, who are considering attaching an amendment to impose harsh Trump-era immigration restrictions. The GOP leadership hopes to use the funding bills to force Democrats into tough votes on immigration ahead of the election.

“It’s the border, it’s the border, it’s the border,” Rep. Mark Amodei (Nev.), the lead Republican negotiation on the Homeland Security bill, said Wednesday.
Other policy provisions tucked in each bill would force votes on additional controversial topics. The Defense bill would prohibit funding for military service members to travel for reproductive health care and for activities that “bring discredit upon the military, such as a drag queen story hour for children or the use of drag queens as military recruiters.”
The State Department legislation would ban funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the principal aid group in Gaza. Some Democrats have sought to send more U.S. funding to the agency. Israel has accused UNRWA employees of participating in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that launched the now eight-month-old war.



It would also prohibit the use of federal funds to assist civilians from Gaza from settling in the United States.
“The priorities in this bill are really simple and straightforward. If you are a friend or an ally of the United States, this bill supports you. But if you are an adversary, or are cozying up to our adversaries, then frankly, you’re just not going to like this bill,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), the bill’s lead Republican negotiator, said at a hearing Tuesday.
In forthcoming House GOP funding bills, appropriators have signaled plans to defund parts of the FBI in retaliation for investigations into former president Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents.

Biden made his 2023 spending agreement with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that May, but a GOP revolt over the deal led to McCarthy’s ouster months later. Mindful of that, Cole and the new House speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.), opted to jettison part of the arrangement that called for $69 billion in spending that would not count against the annual budget caps Biden and McCarthy had signed off on. Republicans have taken to calling that spending a “side deal.”


But Cole on Tuesday left open the possibility that the money could return during negotiations with the Senate and White House.
“I think clearly from a Democratic standpoint, they’re going to come back into play. And I think the Senate wants more money, not less, so I would expect those things to all come up,” Cole said.

Cutting out that money, Democrats worry, would leave a gaping hole in federal resources.
“You are talking about massive cuts to basic public services and protections that would not fly with the American people, including most Republican voters,” said Michael Linden, a senior fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a former Biden budget official, warning of “deep cuts” to education, public safety and science funding. “That’s what you’d have to do. There’s not $70 billion worth of unpopular, unnecessary, unsupported programs in the federal government.”

I recall many years ago a professor in a criminology class saying sexual crimes are the most underreported, and the most falsely reported crimes.
Some poor sucker spent an hour with the police after a NL woman made accusations he was stalking her, and abusive. She deserves to be prosecuted, which I have heard anecdotally doesn't always happen.
https://www.kcrg.com/2024/06/26/nor...d-calling-police-get-out-meeting-online-date/

Against the backdrop of war in the Middle East and the Russian invasion of a neighboring state, two prominent American politicians met for a presidential debate ahead of the November election.
Both were women.

The joint appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” by Democratic doyenne Eleanor Roosevelt and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) on Nov. 4, 1956, is widely regarded as the first televised presidential debate.

Roosevelt and Smith served as surrogates for Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson and Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, four years before John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon would hold a much more famous televised debate, the first between presidential candidates.

More than a decade after the death of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt remained an influential figure in the Democratic Party and a prominent ally of Stevenson, the former governor of Illinois who had run against Eisenhower four years earlier. Smith had made national headlines in 1950 when she delivered a “declaration of conscience” on the Senate floor denouncing the anti-communist tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), earning praise and sparking speculation that she could become a vice-presidential candidate.



More on election history


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Maryland races could take days to call. The election of 1800 was worse.

With its collection of White male questioners and patronizing introduction of Roosevelt and Smith as “charming ladies,” the half-hour broadcast exemplified the social mores of the black-and-white TV era. But the serious issues that confronted the presidential surrogates remain familiar to Americans in the 21st century and are likely to come up during Thursday night’s debate between President Biden and Donald Trump.
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The broadcast came as Britain and France prepared to take control of the Suez Canal following Israel’s invasion of Egypt in late October. As the specter of war darkened the Middle East, Soviet troops rolled into Hungary to crush an uprising against the Kremlin-backed communist regime in Budapest.

From the outset, Roosevelt dominated the debate. “When there was silence to be filled,” Smith biographer Janann Sherman wrote, “Mrs. Roosevelt filled it.”



Roosevelt blamed the Eisenhower administration for failing to act to prevent the burgeoning Mideast conflict. “We did not move soon enough,” she said. “We were partly held back by our oil interests. But these things don’t happen overnight. They build up. And I think anyone who has watched the situation in the Middle East growing has been longing to see some kind of constructive action on the part of the administration.”
Events in the Middle East and Eastern Europe were linked, Roosevelt said. “There wouldn’t have been an aggression in Hungary” if the United States had taken a stronger stand in the Middle East, she said.
Smith succinctly defended the administration’s handling of the crisis. “I think President Eisenhower has done his level best to get Israel to quiet down, to have Egypt go along in a peaceful way,” she said.



Asked by Chicago Daily News diplomatic correspondent Peter Lisagor whether the U.S. leadership could have prevented war in the Middle East, Smith responded, “No, I don’t think it could have.”
Smith’s brevity was strategic. She wrote in her autobiography that she and longtime aide Bill Lewis settled on a plan to highlight her contrasts with Roosevelt whenever possible. With the former first lady’s capacity for speaking with “conviction and an impressive tone of authority,” Smith decided to keep her answers short and to the point.
“This, of course, entailed a risk: as a good debater, Mrs. Roosevelt might dominate the debate and I could look weak in contrast,” Smith conceded. “But I preferred this risk to laboring answers and overextending myself to the point of vulnerability.”



http://www.washingtonpost.com/histo...net-retropolispresidents_inline_collection_15

Smith wrote that she wore a dark dress with a strand of pearls and her trademark red rose for a sharper image on black-and-white TV and to contrast with what she and Lewis guessed Roosevelt would be wearing. Roosevelt arrived in a beige suit and wore a hat.


Smith and Lewis wanted the debate to conclude with two-minute closing statements and threatened to back out of the broadcast when they were told shortly before airtime that there was no time for summations. The network brass acceded, and closing statements were kept.
Roosevelt concluded with a denunciation of the administration’s position on atmospheric hydrogen bomb tests and defended Stevenson’s call for an end to the draft.

When it was her turn, Smith took the gloves off. She cited her record of opposing the smear tactics employed by McCarthy against Democrats and offered a pointed defense of Eisenhower.
“Democratic presidents, together with leaders of our allies, chose Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead our nations to victory in World War II and to head up NATO to stop the spread of communism,” she added. “It’s strange to see and hear Democratic leaders now accusing him of not being a leader. Why the difference? It is clearly the difference between principles and politics.”


Roosevelt was aghast.
“When Senator Smith reached over to shake hands with Mrs. Roosevelt, the first lady pulled away, turned her back, and said to her companions as she walked away, ‘Did you hear what she said?’” Lewis wrote in an editor’s note in Smith’s autobiography.

Her irritation with Smith may have been nothing more than exhaustion. “The last few days of the campaign were really strenuous and I was getting mighty tired of the sound of my own voice,” Roosevelt recalled in her autobiography.
Or it might have reflected an awareness that she was fighting an uphill battle for the Democratic candidate. On Election Day, Eisenhower cruised to a second term with 457 electoral votes and 57 percent of the popular vote.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.
After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.

The high court had put the settlement on hold last summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.
It's unclear what happens next.

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Arguments in early December lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom as the justices seemed, by turns, unwilling to disrupt a carefully negotiated settlement and reluctant to reward the Sacklers.





The Supreme Court building is seen on Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein - staff, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The issue for the justices was whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts had issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.


The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.
The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.

Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.
OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.


The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

The Purdue Pharma settlement would have ranked among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.

But the Purdue Pharma settlement would have been only the second so far to include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts would have ranged from about $3,500 to $48,000.

Sackler family members no longer are on the company’s board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.

make me think they've had some huge profit margins until the last few years

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When a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections refused to join her colleagues as they certified two primaries this year, she claimed she had been denied her right to examine a long list of election records for signs of fraud or other issues.

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Now the board member, Julie Adams, an avowed believer in the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, is suing the board, hoping a judge will affirm that right and potentially empower others in similar positions elsewhere to hold up the outcome of elections.

To voting rights activists, election law specialists and Democrats, such actions represent an ominous sign that could presage a chaotic aftermath to the 2024 election. They are particularly worried about the threat of civil unrest or violence, especially if certification proceeds amid protests or efforts to block it.



Adams wrote in her lawsuit that she “swore an oath to ‘prevent fraud, deceit, and abuse’ in Fulton County elections” — duties that she says are not possible without examining the records she has demanded. Her detractors say she is seeking the power to block a victory for President Biden. The Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic Party have asked to intervene in the suit, claiming Adams’s actions are part of a coordinated effort by Trump, his allies and the GOP to sow the same kind of doubt in this year’s presidential election that led to the violent attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn Biden’s first victory.
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“They are playing poker with the cards up,” said Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “They are telling us exactly what they are going to do. We would be foolish if we sat on our hands and did nothing and watched this happen.”
Trump has stated plainly that the only way he can lose this fall is if Democrats cheat. His campaign and the Republican National Committee are spending historic sums building “election integrity” operations in key battleground states, preparing to challenge results in court, and recruiting large armies of grass-roots supporters to monitor voting locations and counting facilities and to serve as poll workers.


Certification of local results is a key target in this effort, a once-mundane administrative step that has become a flash point in the debate over election security — and a potential opportunity to subvert the will of voters. Election officials in the nation’s 3,000-plus counties must sign off on results, followed by a similar process at the state level. Typically, certification does not mean there were no errors — it simply reflects the votes tallied at that point. And it does not preclude lawsuits contesting those results; in fact, in some states lawsuits cannot be filed until after certification is complete.



Barring such challenges, certification allows the winning candidate’s electors to then gather in each state capital to cast their electoral college votes, with a joint session of Congress taking the final step of affirming that vote on Jan. 6.
Delaying certification at any step could hold up or halt the process, potentially preventing the rightful winner from taking office.
Since 2020, county-level election officials in five key battleground states — Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — have tried to block the certification of vote tallies in both primaries and general elections. So far, none of the efforts have succeeded. In some cases, the actions came up against strict state rules limiting the role of county election boards in determining electoral outcomes, and critics say those rules will serve as essential guardrails this fall to thwart any coordinated efforts to set aside a state’s popular vote.



But the chaos and confusion that could result from such an effort are themselves a deep concern among voting rights advocates, who believe that unsubstantiated claims of fraud by Trump and his allies are sowing even deeper mistrust in the fall election results than they did four years ago, raising the potential for unrest and even violence on a greater scale too.
“An awful lot of people are looking at a potential parade of horrible scenarios,” said Ben Ginsberg, a longtime GOP election lawyer who is now an anti-Trump democracy advocate. “The number of people who doubt the reliability of elections has only increased. It hasn’t decreased. And that worries me tremendously.”

gotta respect that level of dedication....




FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - An online gaming dispute made its way to the real world when a New Jersey man flew to Florida to attack another player with a hammer, authorities said.

Edward Kang, 20, is charged with attempted second-degree murder and armed burglary with a mask, according to Nassau County court records. He was arrested early Sunday morning.

“I just want to let you know, this is a weird one,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said during a news conference on Monday. “Some things you just can’t make up.”

Kang and the victim, another young man around the same age as Kang, had never met in real life, but they both played ArcheAge, a medieval fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Leeper said. The game’s publisher announced in April that it would be shutting down servers in Europe and North America on June 27, citing a declining number of active players.

Kang flew from Newark, New Jersey, to Jacksonville, Florida, last Thursday after telling his mother that he was going to visit a friend that he had met while playing a video game, officials said. Officials didn’t say how Kang learned where the victim lives. Upon arrival, Kang took an Uber to a hotel in Fernandina Beach, about 35 miles north of Jacksonville, and then bought a hammer at a local hardware store, deputies said.

Kang went to the victim’s Fernandina Beach home, which was unlocked, around 2 a.m. Sunday, authorities said. The victim was walking out of his bedroom when he was confronted by Kang, who hit him on the head with the hammer, officials said. The two struggled as the victim called for help. His stepfather responded and helped to restrain Kang until police arrived.

The victim suffered several head wounds that were not considered life-threatening, officials said. He received staples at the hospital.

Once in custody, Kang told investigators that the victim is a “bad person online,” officials said. He also asked deputies how much jail time people got for breaking and entering and assault.

“I would say Mr. Kang, it’s going to be a long time before you play video games again,” Leeper said.

Online court records didn’t list an attorney for Kang. He was being held without bond.

My biggest takeaways so far:
Kansas State absolutely smashing through
5 seed Arkansas is out
All Big Ten teams are kaput
West Virginia looking great

LSU vs UNC tomorrow is a nice one

The owner of Iowa’s only nuclear power plant — which started the decommissioning process in 2020 — would consider restarting the plant to meet the demand of data centers and other customers, according to its chief executive officer.



Emergency managers in Linn and Johnson counties said they haven’t heard anything about resuming nuclear power generation at the Duane Arnold Energy Center, near Palo, which would be costly and would require federal authorization.


But a retired engineer said the plant had top ratings when it closed and, if restarted, could supply far more renewable energy than wind and solar projects.




“If you needed the power, it would be easier to restart a nuclear power plant than building one from scratch,” said Steve Myres, of Palo, who retired in 2020 after 26 years at Duane Arnold, most recently as part of the engineering rapid response team.


John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy, which has owned Duane Arnold since 2005, told Bloomberg on June 12 he had inquiries from potential data center customers interested in the 600 megawatts generated by the Iowa reactor.


“I would consider it, if it could be done safely and on budget,” Ketchum told Bloomberg.


Duane Arnold, which opened in 1974 under ownership of what is now Alliant Energy, employed more than 500 people when it closed in August 2020.

An aerial view, looking southeast, shows the 500-acre Duane Arnold Energy Center, located north of Palo. (The Gazette)



The plant was scheduled in 2019 to be decommissioned in October 2020 when Alliant, Duane Arnold’s primary customer, agreed to a $110 million buyout to end its power purchase agreement. When the August 2020 derecho caused some external damage, NextEra agreed to start the closure process early.

Data centers need juice​

But Big Tech companies are keen to secure electricity for massive data centers popping up across the country — including in Iowa.


Google is considering whether to build a $576 million data center in the Big Cedar Industrial Center along 76th Avenue SW and Edgewood Road SW in Cedar Rapids, less than 20 miles south of the Duane Arnold plant. Meta has proposed an $800 million data center in Davenport. These proposals are in addition to other large data centers in Council Bluffs, Altoona, Waukee and West Des Moines.


Ketchum told Bloomberg that tech companies have asked NextEra to find locations that can accommodate 5 gigawatts of demand.


“Think about that. That’s the size of powering the city of Miami,” Ketchum said. He declined to name the companies.

A General Electric generator, pictured April 8, 2019, produces electricity from the nuclear-powered steam-driven turbine at the NextEra Energy Duane Arnold Energy Center near Palo. The reactor closed the next year after the 2020 derecho. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
Ketchum said 5 gigawatts would be a challenge, but there are places in the United States that can provide one gigawatt of power. The Bloomberg article did not mention which communities, but Linn County likely would have been one before Duane Arnold was decommissioned.


When The Gazette reached out to NextEra to ask about Ketchum’s comments, the Florida-based company said Duane Arnold is being shut down.


“NextEra Energy Resources is always looking at the needs of its customers and the best use of our assets, including the Duane Arnold Energy Center,” spokesman Bill Orlove said in an email. “The company has not performed a formal study of the feasibility of restarting operations at Duane Arnold.”


A decommissioning plan released in 2022 — which Orlove last week shared with The Gazette — said the plant has ceased operations and its spent fuel was moved to a storage area on the property. The plan calls for buildings to be demolished “within 60 years” to allow time for remaining radioactivity to decay.

How big is a gigawatt?​

Renewable energy projects often are measured by the megawatt, which is 1 million watts of energy. A gigawatt is 1 billion watts, or 1,000 megawatts. If you need a more visual example of a gigawatt, here are some from the U.S. Department of Energy:

• 2.47 million solar panels
• 310 utility-scale wind turbines
• 100 million LED bulbs
• Roughly 1.3 million horsepower (Based on horsepower to watts conversion: 746 watts = 1 horsepower)
• 2,000 Chevrolet Corvette Z06s (Corvette Z06 engine delivers 670 horsepower. Two-thousand of those engines would equal 1.34 million horsepower, or 1 GW)
• 9,090 Nissan Leafs (Leaf has a 110 kilowatt motor. So 1 million kW divided by 110 kW = the maximum power of 9,090 Nissan Leafs)

Michigan nuclear plant being restarted​

The U.S. Department of Energy announced in March it would loan a Michigan company up to $1.5 billion restart the 800-megawatt Palisades Nuclear Plant, a Western Michigan plant that ceased operations in May 2022.


The money would help Holtec Palisades upgrade and test the plant to operate it for another 25 years.


“The project also highlights President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to support good-paying, high-quality job opportunities in communities across the country while also expanding access to affordable clean energy resources,” the Energy Department reported.

What about Duane Arnold?​

Myres, the former Duane Arnold engineer, said he’d like to see the same thing done at Duane Arnold.


“When that plant was shut down, there was nothing wrong with that plant,“ he said.

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Been waiting for something like this for a while honestly. Missouri is also currently suing biden for 1st ammendment violations which is before the Supreme court now. Very based move. Love to see it. I imagine Bailey is going to be around politics for a long time making major plays like this.

What is it they say about insanity?:

Cedar Rapids casino backers plan to apply for a gaming license after a two-year state pause on new licenses sunsets Sunday, the city’s preferred casino operator announced Wednesday.



Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, a national gaming operator and developer, and the nonprofit Linn County Gaming Association said they plan to jointly apply for a gaming license with the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, setting in motion the process for Iowa’s second-largest city to potentially get a casino.


Iowa lawmakers in 2022 passed a two-year moratorium on new licenses, but failed to extend the pause when the legislative session adjourned in April. The moratorium put the brakes on Cedar Rapids’ third attempt — until now — after the panel rejected licenses in 2014 and 2017. Regulators said in part that a Cedar Rapids site would threaten operations of other casinos in the region, including the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort.




The state panel overseeing Iowa’s 19 licensed casinos next meets July 8 at Prairie Meadows Casino and Hotel in Altoona. There, the five-member regulatory commission is expected to share details about the process and a timeline for when gaming license applications will be considered. All five members of the panel have been appointed since the Cedar Rapids application last went before it for a vote.


“The time is now for Cedar Crossing,” Jonathan Swain, a Peninsula Pacific Entertainment board member, said in a statement. “Linn County residents have overwhelmingly passed two gaming referendums and they have been patient. With the moratorium expiring soon, we look forward to bringing an unprecedented casino gaming and entertainment destination to Cedar Rapids.”


Hoping the moratorium would expire as planned, the Cedar Rapids City Council last year signed off on a deal to earmark land in the northwest quadrant near downtown for a potential casino, should state regulators eventually award a license. The agreement lasts through Dec. 31, 2025, but could be extended if the commission is actively considering issuing a Linn County license.


The option-to-purchase agreement with the Cedar Rapids Development Group — an entity of mostly local investors — set aside city-owned property between F and I Avenue NW and First and Fifth Streets NW to be purchased and redeveloped into the Cedar Crossing Casino. This was the site of Cooper’s Mill, home to a motel and restaurant, before it was destroyed in the 2008 flood and later demolished.





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Peninsula Pacific Entertainment previously shared plans to build a $250 million, 160,000 square-foot gaming and entertainment complex at the site. The developer paid the city $165,000 for the option to purchase the property. The plans call for flood protection infrastructure along the west side of the Cedar River.


“The development team continues to demonstrate their dedication to Cedar Rapids with a vision for a casino that highlights our community’s potential as a modern entertainment and gaming destination,” Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said in a statement. “I am confident their next proposal will bring significant benefits to Cedar Rapids and Linn County as a whole, offering unmatched opportunities for our residents and visitors while providing vital support for community organizations to advance and thrive.”


The Cedar Rapids Development Group’s deal with the city doesn’t preclude others from applying for a gaming license, but does give the group a boost in the process as local support factors into the commission’s decision.


“Our commitment to building a world-class destination has never wavered,” Swain said. “We are in the final stages of finalizing our vision for Cedar Crossing and look forward to setting a new standard for gaming and entertainment in Iowa.”


If granted a license, gaming interests say the casino would support local nonprofits by contributing 8 percent of its annual gaming revenue — the highest in the state — to the Linn County Gaming Association to divvy up. Iowa requires that licensed casinos donate at least 3 percent of revenue to nonprofits each year.


“People like to count us out, though we are part of a resilient community. Linn County has come back stronger than before — and we’re going to do it again with Cedar Crossing,” Linn County Gaming Association President Anne Parmley said in a statement. “A local casino will help our communities be even more vibrant, as we estimate Cedar Crossing will be able to commit $5 million to $7 million to nonprofits annually. This will be a major boost to local organizations, and just one of the many ways this project will make Linn County an even better place to live, work and visit.”


After Linn County voters in 2021 passed a public referendum authorizing gaming in the county on a second-consecutive vote, that allowed casino backers to seek a license in perpetuity. The measure won’t have to come to voters again.


In addition to county residents, several local government officials and trade unions also have long supported the project.


“Linn County residents support casino gambling in Linn County,” Linn County Board of Supervisors Chair Kirsten Running-Marquardt said in a statement. “This investment in our community would increase opportunity for our local economy in several ways, including job creation, tourism and providing unmatched entertainment options. Like other Iowa counties, we are looking for a fair chance for the people of Linn County to receive these benefits for our community.”