At least one dead and many, including children, injured in KC Chiefs parade shooting
Live updates: Chiefs Super Bowl rally shooting leaves one dead and multiple injured (cnn.com)
A heroic Chiefs fan tackled a/the shooter...see video just below. His wife moved the weapon out of the reach of the perp after the husband tackled him.
The only fatality so far (I say "so far" because many of the injured suffered very serious wounds) is a popular radio host in KC:
There are lots more questions than answers. I don't have much to say, but I did say this:
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Let's stop Xcel's money-grab! (Instructions on how to comment)
If you get natural gas to your home from Xcel Energy, please join me
Xcel Energy keeps pummeling customers (like me and probably you) with rate hikes even when their energy costs are declining.
Now, with the ridiculous claim that they want more money to "invest in safety", Xcel is asking the Colorado Public Utilities Commission for a rate hike for natural gas even though gas prices have plunged almost 40% in the last year and are around all-time lows.
Xcel Energy asks for another rate hike for natural gas customers in Colorado (msn.com)
Please join me in sending a comment to the PUC to oppose Xcel's ridiculous request.
Start here: Colorado Public Utilities Commission (state.co.us)
- Choose Xcel Energy and click next
- Choose “24AL-0049G - Filing to increase base rates for all natural gas sales and transportation services and make other proposed tariff changes” and click next
- The rest is self-explanatory
Please don't copy my note verbatim but if any of it helps you, feel free to use parts of it. Maybe better to slightly reword so it doesn't seem to PUC like it's just a bunch of "form letters".
As I write this on 2/14/24, the spot price of natural gas is $1.61 (per million BTU). A year ago today, it was $2.57. That's a 37% decline. As compared to 3 years ago, natural gas is down almost 50%.
Xcel has raised prices repeatedly in recent years and is now reaping a massive windfall, charging customers more than ever for natural gas that is trading around all-time lows.
In January, the US Energy Information Agency reported that "U.S. Henry Hub natural gas prices in 2023 were the lowest since mid-2020." This was before the Biden administration policy change to restrict exports of natural gas that caused the price to plunge more than 40% in three weeks.
In recent years, Xcel's earnings growth has exceeded that of the S&P 500.
Xcel got its price hikes on customers as inflationary pressures crushed us even as the price of natural gas was actually falling, after a brief spike when Russia invaded Ukraine. Xcel itself reports an increasing number of customers facing financial hardship and needing assistance to pay their utility bills.
It may or may not be true that Xcel wants to spend money on "safety", but trying to sell us another price hike with that kind of language isn't fooling anyone. Their windfall profits from higher customer rates combined with lower wholesale energy costs means that they can fund such capital expenditures out of existing cash flow. Xcel has bled us enough.
The only price change that should be allowed for what Xcel charges its natural gas customers is a significant price cut.
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Just One Thing: Harvard students bravely skip lunch
A group of pro-terrorist students at Brown University went on an 8-day hunger strike to try to get the university to “divest from companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine.” They seem to have forgotten who started the way. Anyway, here’s the funny part. According to the Harvard Crimson, that university’s newspaper, “more than 30 pro-Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike Friday in solidarity with 17 students at Brown.” Oh, the horror! The poor little darling snowflakes skipped lunch. How did they manage? One group noted in the Crimson article is Harvard Jews for Palestine. They should just call themselves Havard Anti-Semites Pretending Not to Be, or Harvard Supporters of Terrorism, or Harvard Haters of Tolerance and Diversity. And I thought a Harvard degree couldn’t get more worthless.
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One More Thing: Did he fail to remember that, too?
So even Biden's outrage at his failed presser about the special counsel and questions regarding Biden's son's death was fake or based on a bad memory?
Fascinating to see this coming from NBC rather than Fox: Biden attacked Hur for asking him when Beau died. That didn't happen, sources say. (nbcnews.com)
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Today's Guests
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser joins the show to discuss his lawsuit to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger. (In Colorado, we know the companies as King Soopers and Safeway.)
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Comedian Georgia Comstock joins me in studio. I've seen Georgia many times as an opener at Comedy Works and she's really coming into her own and I think we'll see her more often as a headliner, and I'm hoping she finds success as a top comic.
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Mary Buckingham is The Keeper of the Sourdough Mailbox. How about that for a title you've never heard before?
177-year-old sourdough starter in Greeley goes viral on TikTok (denverpost.com)
To get your own, check out https://carlsfriends.net/
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Benjamin Allbright is my friend and KOA colleague. He's the co-host of Broncos Country Tonight which airs 6 PM - 11 PM weeknights on KOA. Last night, in the immediate aftermath of the horrendous shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration parade, Ben delivered opening comments on the show that I won't characterize other than as intense and passionate. You should listen for yourself at the link just below, but Ben and I will discuss how he feels as an American (and a veteran) seeing this American carnage.
♫ 02-14-24 Hour 1 of Broncos Country Tonight (iheart.com)
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Other Stuff
Seems like a brain-dead decision by CBS but of course there's much more that we don't know than we do know: CBS sparks outrage over firing of Catherine Herridge, ‘lone voice’ at network probing Hunter Biden laptop (msn.com)
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This was a very strange episode. Some people are wondering whether Turner is causing alarm to try to force a House vote on the bill that contains aid to Ukraine. Russian nuclear capabilities in space could threaten international satellites, US military comms: Sources | Fox News
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Two-day hearing against Fulton County (GA) district attorney starts today. Goal of the man bringing the suit, who is a defendant in one of the Trump election interference cases, is to get DA Fani Willis disqualified, which would likely disqualify her entire office. At that point, unless there's another DA's office that wants to take up the massive and legally questionable prosecution, it's possible that all charges in Georgia against Trump and associates will disappear. Obviously this is high-stakes stuff.
Georgia Trump prosecutor Fani Willis misconduct hearing: What to watch | CNN Politics
The NY Times thinks that even if Ms. Willis' behavior would normally be disqualifying, she should stay on the job because she's a black woman. This is the exact kind of stuff that does so much damage to our JUSTICE system by causing people to believe that in the US, justice is NOT blind.
Why the Case Against Fani Willis Feels Familiar to Black Women - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
And this is quite interesting: Fulton County Judge Should Boot Fani Willis From Trump Cases (dailysignal.com)
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And in another courtroom: Will Donald Trump go on trial next month in New York criminal case? A judge is expected to rule today | AP News
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Reality bites. California proves that the Laffer Curve is real (even though it should already be obvious): The Laffer Curve’s Latest Victim: California | International Liberty (wordpress.com)
The actual study: Behavioral Responses to State Income Taxation of High Earners: Evidence from California | NBER
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I think it's a little weird that a guy who's retiring because (at least in part) it's too hard to get anything done in Congress is trying to help Donald Trump get elected given that it's Trump and his influence which is causing the ungovernability. Powerful House GOP chair retiring after Mayorkas impeachment (axios.com)
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Passover...in Gaza? In Riyadh? This is just ridiculous:
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Let's help Ukraine keep doing this: Caesar Kunikov: Ukraine says it has sunk another warship, disabling a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet | CNN
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OK, this REALLY sucks: John Cleese responds to Eric Idle criticism: “We always loathed and despised each other” (nme.com)
Monty Python's John Cleese talking about fellow Python star Eric Idle:
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There might not be a choice here but I sure don’t like that this is what’s being done with our tax dollars.
Colorado lawmakers plan aid for schools enrolling new migrant arrivals - Chalkbeat
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They're waking up to the stupidity of their original woke decision: Yale could bring back SAT, joining Dartmouth, MIT (axios.com)
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Love this story: La Scala concert features violins that inmates made from battered migrant boats | AP News
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Today's Videos
A listener sent me this. I hadn't seen this guy before. How about a conservative Jewish rapper?
OMG
I know some people freak out at any mention of Hitler or use of him in humor, but there are quite a lot of these uses of a WWII movie that are really funny.