Your cost at the supermarket is about to go up

Albertsons in South Los Angeles on Friday afternoon.

Get ready for higher food prices at your local supermarket!

Kroger Co. said it is buying rival Albertsons Cos Inc. in a deal that values the company at $24.6 billion, one of the biggest deals in the history of the grocery industry in the U.S.

That means that other than Walmart, Costco, and Trader Joe’s almost every food market in Los Angeles will be owned by Kroger. Smaller food chains are usually specialty stores that do not offer a complete choice of foods.

The effect is obvious. Less competition means higher prices. Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based consumer advocacy group, called the proposed merger “a terrible idea. This would give too much market power to one big giant, especially in California,” Court said. “We would urge the administration to reject this merger.”

To overcome anticipated political and regulatory hurdles, Kroger and Albertsons said they would get rid of stores in markets where they overlap. The companies said they would spin off up to 375 Albertsons stores in a stand-alone public company or just close them. Or in other words less stores means less competition.

“Armageddon”

Is the world on the verge of an “Armageddon?” It appears that President believes we are or at least fears that it could happen. And it is on his mind. No one in the Whitehouse or in his administration has contradicted his words.

President Joe Biden’s stark warning Thursday night that the world faces the highest prospect of nuclear war in 60 years was not based on any new intelligence about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions or changes in Russia’s nuclear posture, multiple US officials told CNN.

One senior administration official said Biden was speaking “frankly” in his remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, reflecting heightened concern based on Putin’s recent nuclear threats.

Biden’s nuclear warning not based on new intelligence but opens a window into real worries inside the White House.

The situation today is reminiscent of the 13-day showdown in 1962 that followed the U.S. discovery of the Soviet Union’s secret deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba is regarded by experts as the closest the world has ever come to nuclear annihilation.

What is needed is a mediator that both Ukraine and Russia respects. Both countries will have to find a compromise. Is that likely?

In Hiroshima, the black rain started to fall 20 minutes after the bomb exploded. It covered an area about 20 kilometers (12 mi) across around ground zero, covering the countryside with a thick liquid that could douse anyone it touched with up to 100 times more radiation than stepping into the blast center.

The city around the survivors was burning and tearing up the oxygen around them, and they were already dying of thirst. Struggling through the flames, they’d become so desperate for water that many opened up their mouths and tried to drink the strange liquid falling from the sky.

There was enough radiation in that liquid, though, to make changes in a person’s blood. It was strong enough that the aftereffects of the rain can still linger today in the places it landed back then. We have every reason to believe that it’ll happen again if another bomb falls.

Old Men Ruling the World

Sadly we have a world of government leaders who are old. They hold a perspective based on the past. I know. I’m old myself. It’s not just President Joe Biden (79) and King Charles III (73). Xi Jinping is 69. Vladimir Putin is also 69. Donald Trump is 76.

What new ideas can we expect from these people? Donald Trump dreams of becoming president again but we have not heard one new idea. His focus is on his loss of the 2020 election and getting even with his supposed enemies. Joe Biden has not been a uniter and has expressed no vision for the future (think JFK putting a man on the moon). Charles III says he will follow his mother’s example but what did she do other than sit on the British throne?

Leaders of the U. S. congress includes Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi who is 82. Leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer is 71. Republican Senate leader Mitch Mitchell McConnell is 80. Some other old timers in the Senate

State	First Name	Last Name	Party	Age	Birthdate
California	Dianne	Feinstein	Democratic	87	6/22/33
Iowa	Chuck	Grassley	Republican	87	9/17/33
Alabama	Richard	Shelby	Republican	86	5/6/34

Queen Elizabeth II – A Wasted Life

Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a state banquet in her honor in Berlin during a royal visit to Germany in June 2015.

Queen Elizabeth II, who has died age 96 after the longest reign in British history, will be mourned around the globe as one of the last monarchs born to a classic age of European royalty, when kings and queens wielded genuine political power.

A wasted life. She could have and should have done things to make the world a better place. She did none of that.

We can only hope that King Charles III, with all his power, does more than sit on the throne.

Queen Elizabeth II Failed to Sustain the Empire

If I was English I would not be celebrating the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. On her watch the British Empire deteriorated to a nation where some of its remaining parts are contemplating withdrawing from the UK.

Above is a map of the British Empire as it was on 6 February 1952, the day Queen Elizabeth II began her reign. Colonies, protectorates and mandates are shown in dark red, while dominions are shown in pink. The United Kingdom itself is shown in light red.

The British Empire does not exist today. However, the Commonwealth is a free association of sovereign states comprising the United Kingdom and many of its former dependencies that acknowledge the British monarch as the association’s symbolic head. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are the primary remaining Commonwealth nations. Other countries that are part of the Commonwealth are The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St Lucia, Tuvalia, St Christopher and Nevis. Gibraltar and The Falkland Islands are a self-governing British Overseas Territories.

So exactly what are the British honoring with the death of the queen? She had no authority and did nothing to help sustain the UK.

Trumpism Menaces Democracy

The President clearly stated at a speech he presented at Independence Hall in Philadelphia that MAGA is an attack on American democracy. He pointed out that those supporting MAGA beliefs take the position that there are only two consequences of an election. Either they won or they lost due to a corrupt election.

In other words they do not accept any loss. That means there is no democracy. President Biden said American democracy remains in great peril and declared former President Trump and his supporters the biggest threat to American democracy. While it was a political speech meant to rally Democratic Party loyalists to go to the polls in November the point he made rang true.

When do the MAGA Republicans accept an election loss? Apparently the answer is they do not accept any loss. To me Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.

The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’

In honor of another 100° plus day in the San Fernando Valley I have written new words to “California Dreamin'”

—

All the tree leaves are brown

And the grass is dead watering lawns is limited

The sky is blue on a hot summer’s day

I tried to take a walk but it wasn’t safe sidewalk is too hot

It would be so nice on Cape Cod Bay

Massachusetts dreamin’

On such a summer’s day

Stopped into an orchard

I passed along the way

The owner said

All the plants are dead and I’m going away

I am going north far far away

Massachusetts dreamin’

On such a summer’s day

Global Warming – ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Vice President Al Gore warned us in 2006 and while his timing may have been off global warning is an obvious reality.

Excerpt from Gore’s book ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

“The climate crisis is, indeed, extremely dangerous. In fact it is a true planetary emergency. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, working for more than twenty years in the most elaborate and well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have forged an exceptionally strong consensus that all the nations on Earth must work together to solve the crisis of global warming.

The voluminous evidence now strongly suggests that unless we act boldly and quickly to deal with the underlying causes of global warming, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes, including more and stronger storms like Hurricane Katrina, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

We are melting the North Polar ice cap and virtually all of the mountain glaciers in the world. We are destabilizing the massive mound of ice on Greenland and the equally enormous mass of ice propped up on top of islands in West Antarctica, threatening a worldwide increase in sea levels of as much as twenty feet.”

Today’s Los Angeles Times provided current catastrophic conditions around the world. In Beijing torrents of murky brown water gushed past train windows in a subway tunnel. Severe flooding in western Germany turned streets into rivers that swept away cars and toppled houses. A fire in Oregon so big that the skies of New York city are hazy with smoke. A downpour over London on July 12, when about a month’s worth of rain fell on parts of the British capital, leading to flash floods that paralyzed some streets and forced the partial closure of its Underground rail system.

The LA Times reports “Experts predict that the frequency of floods like those seen this summer are likely to increase in severity and frequency as the planet warms.”

Perhaps all the nations in the world will take action to protect the planet in unison.

News Media – All About the Revenue

Just this past December everyone was talking about the killing at Newtown, Connecticut. Then there were the Marathon Bombers. And just two days ago there were hundreds of parades and demonstrations over the George Zimmerman verdict.

I was certain that “Justice for Trayvon Martin” would not be easily forgotten. But the birth of a new prince in England has pushed everything off the front page. Even “Hardball with Chris Matthews” devoted his entire program to the birth.

So my question is, How important are the daily stories presented in the news? The media wants us to believe that the current story really is the consequential event. They keep feeding us with a non-stop flow of tragedy and drama that suits their need to obtain advertising revenue. And what does the public do? We watch and listen to every bit of information no matter how trivial.

The newspapers are not much better than television and radio. Washington Post’s front page article “For some, a drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a harrowing experience” may be interesting to some people but is this a front page story? The Los Angeles Times Column One story “The NRA newest Sensation” tells of a Black man who is also a member of the organization. Both stories might be interesting to some people but is this front page news? To me it is trivial events that have little bearing on anyone other than their immediate families and maybe not even them.

Is it any wonder that so many of us have turned off the news broadcasts and canceled our newspapers?