January 1 2023 Quotes

It must be most dangerous then to be a man. It is indeed, madame, and but few survive it. ― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (Zinc Read, February 21, 2023) Originally publishedJanuary 1, 1932

When Mercury is retrograde, stay flexible, allow more time for travel, and don’t sign contracts. Review projects and plans but wait until Mercury is direct again to make final decisions. In 2022, Mercury will be retrograde during January 13–February 3, May 10–June 2, September 9–October 1, and December 28–(January 18, 2023).

INTRODUCTION 1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election. 2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway-to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election. 3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. 4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies: a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified ("the certification proceeding"), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); and c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Each of these conspiracies-which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud-targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election ("the federal government function").

What got less coverage was that, adjusted for inflation, egg prices were actually lower in 2022 than they had been in 2015. Prices peaked in December 2022, with a dozen eggs selling for around $5 on average. Egg supply and prices were already recovering in early 2023. Producer prices, the prices farmers charge grocery stores, began to fall. The retail price, the price consumers pay in the grocery store, fell sharply (by $1 in one week in early January!) and continued to fall into 2023. The moral of the story is: We need more egg-laying chickens. The eggflation story is emblematic of what could happen to the rest of the economy. We are dependent on fragile systems that can break when stressed.