DL Open Thread: Friday, April 29, 2022

The researchers also asked thousands of people to identify the most closely related breeds of 30 mixed-breed dogs, and they found that people could not easily identify the breed of mutts. The respondents performed just slightly better than random chance when choosing the nearest breed of mixed-breed dogs.

Rethug Circular Firing Squad In North Carolina.  Nobody likes Madison Cawthorn:

EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Madison Cawthorn may have violated federal insider trading laws as he hyped up an alleged pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scheme, multiple watchdog groups told the Washington Examiner.

On Dec. 29, the beleaguered North Carolina congressman posed at a party with James Koutoulas, a hedge fund manager and the ringleader of the Let’s Go Brandon cryptocurrency, a meme coin set up in the wake of the chant mocking President Joe Biden.

Multiple watchdog groups told the Washington Examiner that Cawthorn’s Dec. 29 Instagram post suggests the lawmaker may have had advanced nonpublic knowledge of LGBCoin’s deal with (NASCAR driver Brandon) Brown. The watchdogs said the post, combined with Cawthorn’s statement that he owns LGBCoin, warrants an investigation from the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to determine whether the lawmaker violated federal insider trading laws.

“This looks really, really bad,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the government affairs manager for Project on Government Oversight, a federal watchdog group. “This does look like a classic case of you got some insider information and acting on that information. And that’s illegal.”

R Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina thinks so:

“Insider trading by a member of Congress is a serious betrayal of their oath, and Congressman Cawthorn owes North Carolinians an explanation. There needs to be a thorough and bipartisan inquiry into the matter by the House Ethics Committee.”

DeJoy’s ‘Gas Guzzlers’ Face Legal Challenges.  How is this guy still in charge of the Post Office when all he’s done is to destroy it?:

Sixteen states (including Delaware) and two environmental activist groups—Earthjustice and the National Resources Defense Council—are suing USPS to halt its purchase of a fleet of of gas-guzzling mail trucks. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has come under fire in recent months for his decision to move forward with a contract for 165,000 new postal trucks—90 percent of which would run on gas and earn 8.6 miles per gallon.

In their suit, the environmental groups point out that DeJoy did not begin an environmental review of the contract until after the Postal Service had already issued a $483 million initial payment to to Oshkosh Defense, the manufacturer of the new trucks. The Environmental Protection Agency has contended that the review itself was flawed.

“Electrifying the Postal Service fleet would reduce smog and particulate matter pollution in nearly every neighborhood in America,” the plaintiffs write. “Postal delivery routes are stop-and-go by nature, which means that gas-powered delivery vehicles idle just outside people’s homes for much of the day. This daily pollution impacts nearly every single resident in the country, but the harmful effects of this pollution are felt most significantly by low-income communities of color, which are often forced to breathe compounding sources of pollution.”

Texans Revolt Against ‘Too Many Lanes’.  In a state where there are virtually no alternatives to pouring concrete for more and more cars.  You can guess which communities will be flattened to make way for new highway construction.

We’re #1! ‘In the country in long-acting and extended-release opioids and high-dose opioid [prescriptions,] so these are things like oxycodone,” Capelli said. “We’ve seen in our second wave of the drug epidemic, a huge influx of overprescribing medication and we are doing our part, our office is doing our part, and we are really working with the wonderful providers and pharmacists here in Delaware to just do evidence-based safe prescribing of medication.”

Tomorrow, between 10 am and 2 pm, Delawareans ‘with medicine cabinets full of old prescriptions have a chance to dump them off with the appropriate government officials, and hopefully help protect their community.’  The event is sponsored by the DEA. Here is a list of locations for you (just type in DE).

What do you want to talk about?

*Sorry this is late today.  Had an intense PT session as my new hip is doing really well.  Turns out I’ve lost a little muscle mass in what Angelo Cataldi refers to as ‘the right bu-tockal’ region.  Not enough junk in my trunk. Who knew?