In a case of odd bedfellows, environmental groups and Republican politicians are calling for a pause in offshore wind farm development following a string of whales washing up dead on New Jersey and New York beaches.  

Seven whales have turned up dead in little over a month. The latest victim, a 20- to 25-foot juvenile Humpback whale, turned up in Brigantine, New Jersey on Thursday afternoon, close to a Coast Guard station. 

“The wave of dead whales is the ocean sounding the alarm, and we must heed the warning,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Jersey-based Clean Ocean Action, after the sixth whale washed up in Atlantic City on Jan. 7 with signs of head trauma. “[The wind farm development] is too much, too fast. It’s outrageous and our ocean deserves better.” 

On Friday, Congressman Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) announced he would seek a federal investigation. “Ocean life is being put at risk as our governor and president force through their Green New Deal policies, without giving full consideration to their real-world impacts.

Drew sits on the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee. New Jersey Republican state Senator Vince Polistina called for a pause in the offshore construction:

“The work related to offshore wind projects is the primary difference in our waters, and it’s hard to believe that the death of (seven) whales on our beaches is just a coincidence.”

For others officials, though, it’s damn the whales, full speed ahead. Democratic New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, on Friday said that, while “this is tragic, obviously,” suspicions that tie the dead whales to the wind farm development were “unfounded and premature.” 

New Jersey has been on a quest to distinguish itself as the top offshore-wind state on the east coast. The Garden State has already approved three offshore wind farms and is soliciting more requests. 

Clean Ocean Action says the installation of offshore windmills usually involves exploration of the sea floor using low-frequency sounds in the same frequency that whales use, with the risk that they could become disoriented or otherwise harmed.  

Earlier this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it was unaware of any humpback whale having previously been confirmed as a victim of offshore wind projects. Among other human perils, whales can fall victim to ship strikes…but could sonar disorientation increase that risk? 

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center said it can take months to figure out a beached whale’s cause of death. In the meantime, expect Governor Murphy to continue racing to bolster New Jersey’s green energy credentials.  

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A vaccine adviser to the Food and Drug Administration is questioning whether young, healthy people should get new COVID-19 boosters, arguing those shots should be used for older individuals.

“I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later,” wrote Dr. Paul A. Offit, an FDA vaccine panel adviser and professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 11.

In his article, Offit cited two studies suggesting that bivalent boosters, which target the original COVID-19 strain and two Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA. 5, do not “elicit superior immune responses.”

“Why did the strategy for significantly increasing BA.4 and BA.5 neutralizing antibodies using a bivalent vaccine fail?” he asked. “The most likely explanation is imprinting. The immune systems of people immunized with the bivalent vaccine, all of whom had previously been vaccinated, were primed to respond to the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2. They therefore probably responded to epitopes shared by BA.4 and BA.5 and the ancestral strain, rather than to new epitopes on BA.4 and BA.5.”

Offit noted that based on those studies, “boosting with a bivalent vaccine is likely to have a similar effect as boosting with a monovalent vaccine” but stressed that “booster dosing is probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease.”

Another doctor appeared to agree with Offit’s conclusions regarding “imprinting.” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told U.S. News that “it may be that people’s immune systems are so primed to respond to the ancestral strain spike protein that a reformulated booster is unable to fully stimulate the immune system because it has been ‘imprinted’ by the original version of the virus.”

More Details

Data and studies have shown that older adults and people who have compromised immune systems are most at risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms, hospitalization, and death. Children, meanwhile, have long been shown to have the lowest chance of death, hospitalization, or developing severe symptoms since the pandemic started.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and FDA said that everyone over the age of 6 months get updated boosters at least two months after their last doses of the vaccine. The bivalent boosters were authorized under emergency use for children aged 6 months to 4 years on Dec. 9.

Meanwhile, a small number of Americans have received the updated boosters, according to the CDC. As of Jan. 4, some 15 percent of individuals aged 5 and older received the bivalent shots, while about 38 percent of adults aged 65 and older have gotten them.

That same CDC data also shows that about 80.9 percent of all Americans received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine since they were rolled out two years ago, while 69 percent have completed their initial, “primary series.”

An FDA spokesperson Abigail Capobianco responded to Offit’s article this week, telling NBC News that Offit allegedly used “selective” data to reach his conclusions and that “we strongly believe that the totality of the available evidence continues to support the use of these vaccines in all age groups.”

Read more here…

Well, it looks like you can score one for all of the “conspiracy theorists” who have said they don’t like “smart” appliances in their home because they feel like they were being spied on.

And you can tell those writing off these concerns that intimate photos of some Roomba tester vacuums have magically turned up on Facebook after being ascertained by Venezuelan gig workers.

One woman even found photographs of herself on the toilet, taken by her robot vacuum. What a time to be alive!

Breitbart reported last week that gig workers had posted pictures online where they were discussing “work-related matters”. One photo was a woman sitting on a toilet seat with her shorts pulled down to her mid thighs – it was taken by her Roomba J7 series robot vacuum, the report says.

The photos were sent to iRobot by Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers to label AI data used to train artificial intelligence, the report says. Users had agreed to “participate in the data collection” as part of a testing. They signed consent forms but now say they feel “misled” about the true nature of the consent. 

Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told Brietbart: “There is a real concern about whether the company is being deceptive if people are signing up for this sort of highly invasive type of surveillance and never fully understand… what they’re agreeing to.”

The MIT Technology Review conducted an investigation and determined it to be gig workers in Venezuela. There were also photos of a child and a woman using the restroom, the report says. iRobot has terminated its agreement with ScaleAI in response to the investigation.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is caught red-handed in an email illegally seeking help from students to aid her reelection campaign in  return for class credits…

Looking for Enthusiastic Students 

Please consider Lightfoot Campaign Asks CPS Teachers to Encourage Students to Help Her Win Reelection in Return for Credit.

The email says participants in the “externship program” would be expected to contribute 12 hours per week to the Lightfoot campaign and students could earn “class credit.”

“We’re simply looking for enthusiastic, curious and hard-working young people eager to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring,” according to an email obtained by WTTW News.

After WTTW News published details about the emails, generating a wave of criticism from other candidates in the race, Lightfoot’s campaign put out a second statement that said the campaign would “cease contact with CPS employees” out of an “abundance of caution.”

Less than two hours later, Lightfoot’s campaign issued a third version of the statement:

“All [Lightfoot for Chicago] campaign staff have been reminded about the solid wall that must exist between campaign and official activities and that contacts with any city of Chicago, or other sister agency employees, including CPS employees, even through publicly available sources is off limits. Period.”

As mayor of Chicago, Lightfoot appoints not only the superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools but also the members of the Chicago Board of Education. Chicago’s ethics ordinance prohibits the use of public resources, including email accounts, for non-official purposes.

Common Practice

Two Questions For Lightfoot

• If it’s a common practice Mayor, can we please see some other examples?

• On the assumption that fraud, influence peddling, bribes and other corruption are indeed common in Chicago, what about your campaign pledge?

Why the Desperation?

In the opinion poll from Fox 32, Garcia won 28 percent; Vallas was at 19 percent; Lightfoot was at 15 percent and businessman/philanthropist Willie Wilson was at 13 percent. Other contenders were in single digits.

Hoot of the Day

Lightfoot ran for mayor in 2019 on a platform promising to root out corruption at City Hall and toughen the city’s ethics regulations in an attempt to break the grip of the city’s “corrupt political machine.”

Lightfoot should be locked up, but won’t be. Nonetheless, you can kiss her goodbye. It’s a 9-person race and she will not be one of the final two.

But don’t expect anything in Chicago to improve, because it won’t. I suspect many of the other candidates are even worse. One is from the teacher’s union, guaranteed to be no improvement.

*  *  *

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In a move that was entirely to be expected given that Brazil’s new far left leadership has been railing against massive pro-Bolsonaro, anti-Lula protesters as “terrorists” – Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered a formal investigation of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been living outside the country, in Orlando, Florida.

Though the Biden White House after days of speculation has repeatedly underscored it has yet received no extradition request for Bolsonaro, there have been growing calls among US progressive lawmakers to cancel his visa and boot him from the United States.

New left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his top officials have pointed the finger at the man popularly dubbed ‘Brazil’s Donald Trump’ for stoking election denial and fueling riots in the country, most notably last week’s storming of Brazil’s Congress building and other facilities.

Bolsonaro supporters, who have alleged widespread election fraud, have also held frequent protests outside military facilities, demanding that the armed forces intervene to overthrow a ‘false election’.

The Oct.30 election, which was the second round, saw Lula take 50.9% of the vote against Bolsonaro’s 49.1%. The closeness of the results sparked anger and unrest among pro-Bolsonaro crowds.

Estimates of those arrested for breaking into Brazilian Congress on Jan.8 range from 700 to over 1,300 – with authorities reportedly continuing to investigate those who trespassed on the federal property.

And now the ratcheting rhetoric and legal case being built against Bolsonaro could possibly result in his own arrest if he were to return home to Brazil, given that his minister of justice has just been arrested: 

Brazil’s former Minister of Justice and Public Security Anderson Torres, who was in charge of security in Brasilia during the invasion of government buildings last week, has been arrested on suspicion of “omission” and “connivance”.

Torres, who was former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister, was arrested after returning to Brazil on Saturday after a vacation in Florida, the same US state that Bolsonaro had travelled to after losing the election to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

📸 | #Brazil‘s former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, who was in charge of public security in Brasilia during the invasion of government buildings a week ago, was arrested in Brasilia on Saturday on suspicion of “omission” and “connivance”. pic.twitter.com/jMqfBevluz

— EHA News (@eha_news) January 14, 2023

The new justice minister, Flavio Dino, had issued an ultimatum last week: Torres could either return of his own will or face formal extradition proceedings. Torres days later returned to Brazil to hand himself in, where he’s expected to fight the charges.

All of this is seen as part of the Lula government’s war to root out “Bolsonaristas” as they see the movement as a threat to Brazil’s democracy, and many are saying it has parallels to Jan.6 in the US.

Via SchiffGold.com,

Rising consumer debts colliding with rising interest rates is a ticking time bomb.

Over the last several months, consumer debt has climbed at a steep, steady pace as Americans struggle with rising prices. November was no different, with consumers piling on another $27.9 billion in debt.

With the 7.1% increase in consumer debt in November, Americans now owe a record $4.76 trillion, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.

This is a big problem for the Fed as it tries to battle rising prices with interest rate hikes. The inflation that the central bank created is forcing people to go deeper into debt. Meanwhile, the inflation fight is making debt more and more expensive.

The Federal Reserve consumer debt figures include credit card debt, student loans, and auto loans, but do not factor in mortgage debt. When you include mortgages, US consumers are buried under more than $16.5 trillion in debt.

Americans are running up credit card balances at a dizzying pace. In November, revolving credit increased by $16.4 billion. With that 16.9% increase, Americans now owe nearly $1.19 trillion in revolving debt.

To put the increase into perspective, the annual increase in 2019, prior to the pandemic, was 3.6%. It’s pretty clear that with stimulus money long gone, Americans have turned to plastic in order to make ends meet as prices continue to skyrocket.

The rapidly growing levels of credit card debt should raise eyebrows, but as ZeroHedge pointed out in a tweet, the real problem is the double whammy of rising debt and interest rates.

It’s not the record credit card debt that’s the risk: everyone knows about that. It’s the record credit card debt – and – the record interest rate on that debt that is the real time bomb. pic.twitter.com/K6rwXYMStT

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 9, 2023

Average credit card interest rates have eclipsed the record high of 17.87%. The average annual percentage rates (APR) currently stand at 19.59%.

NBC News reveals just how much rising interest rates are costing indebted consumers.

Bankrate data shows it would take 16 years for someone to pay off the current average credit card balance of $5,474 by making the minimum payments at 19.2%. At that point, they would have shelled out $7,365 in interest alone.”

As economist Daniel Lacalle put it, rising interest rates are on a collision course with a wall of debt.

Non-revolving credit, including auto loans and student loans, rose by $11.5 billion, a 5.9% annual increase. That was slightly below October’s increase. Total non-revolving credit now stands at $3.57 trillion.

The mainstream continues to spin rising indebtedness as a sign of a healthy economy. MarketWatch proclaimed, “While some households are borrowing more to withstand inflationary pressures, economists see the growth as mainly a sign of strength in the economy.”

But running up credit card balances month after month is not a sign of a healthy economy. In fact, it reveals the dysfunction in an economy that is addicted to artificially low interest rates and money printing.

The bottom line is that Americans continue to borrow at an excessive rate because they don’t have any other way to make ends meet. People don’t run up their Visa balance month after month to buy groceries when they are in “very strong” financial shape.

The stimulus checks are long gone. Savings are being depleted. The average person has no choice but to pull out the plastic. Of course, this is not a sustainable trajectory. A credit card has this inconvenient thing called a limit.

Another day, another report of President Biden having classified documents scattered all over the place – as opposed to a safe at Mar-a-Lago.

And of course as vice president when he took them, he had no authority to declassify – unlike a president.

In the latest ‘document-gate’ development, the New York Times reports that ‘additional pages of classified information’ were found at President Biden’s Delaware home on Thursday, hours after a White House statement acknowledging that a classified document was found in a storage area ‘adjacent to the garage’ of his Wilmington home, which Biden’s aides reportedly discovered the night before.

The news comes after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel this week to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials.

The Biden camp has pushed back against accusations that their failure to disclose the document find the day before the 2022 midterms amounts to election interference.

They also defended their decision not to be fully forthcoming about the matter. The White House has been criticized over its public disclosures, including why it did not reveal the discoveries much earlier, and why, when it acknowledged on Monday that some classified files had been found at Mr. Biden’s office on Nov. 2, it had not indicated that more had been found at his house the next month.

Mr. Biden’s lead personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Biden’s legal team had tried to balance being transparent with “the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.” -NYT

According to Biden’s lead lawyer, DOJ investigators needed ‘time’ to complete their inquiry, and revealing certain details publicly before more information emerged could cause earlier statements to be “incomplete.”

“That’s your version of events,” said White House spox Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday when asked if the White House did not disclose the original findings until they were reported by CBS News earlier this week. “Look, I want to very clear: There’s a process here, we are going to respect that process,” she added.

What a load of horseshit.

BREAKING: Peter Doocy (@pdoocy) of @FoxNews confronts @JoeBiden over classified documents. “What were you thinking?” WATCH. pic.twitter.com/NpU7SQH20I

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) January 12, 2023

“The timing of the revelation of the document discovery is indeed curious,” said former Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA), a longtime Biden ally and former intelligence officer, per The Hill. “President Biden must be accountable and accept responsibility for this awkward episode. The most important thing here is not preventing political embarrassment, it’s protecting our nation’s security.”

“Look, this happened Nov. 2nd. Joe Biden said he would be the most transparent president in American history. Why are we just now learning this? CBS did a great job uncovering this or we would never know,” said Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a CBS interview earlier this week.

How many in Beijing is the question

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 14, 2023

Amid its ongoing protest crackdown following months of ‘anti-hijab’ demonstrations which have resulted in hundreds of deaths, Iran has just executed a former high level official after he was convicted of spying for a foreign enemy nation.

The Islamic Republic’s former deputy defense minister Alireza Akbari was killed by hanging on Saturday, state media and the judiciary confirmed. He had been accused of spying for the United Kingdom for a period spanning years.

Akbari’s arrest had only been revealed in recent weeks, even though he was reportedly detained all the way back in 2019, and his execution marks the first high profile, former top ranking government official (the country’s #2 defense chief) to be put to death in decades. He had also been an IRGC commander at one point.

What’s more is that he was a dual British citizen, which apparently brought him under suspicion of Tehran’s intelligence services. According to The New York Times: 

Iran’s intelligence ministry called Mr. Akbari a “super spy” for MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, and accused him of passing classified national security information to the agency and receiving a payment of over 2 million euros (about $2.2 million). Iran’s state news media and his family said he had been arrested and detained for four months in 2008 on suspicion of spying for Britain, and later released on bail. He then traveled to Austria, Spain and finally Britain.

The statement from the judiciary said that Mr. Akbari had spied for Britain from 2004 to 2009, as well as when he “fled the country” and moved to Britain. It said he had been recruited by British diplomats in Tehran under the guise of trade partnerships.

Iran is saying he confessed to spying, while his family maintains that the confession was given under extreme duress.

His obtaining British citizenship and a passport after reportedly completing business deals in the UK brought him under immediate Iranian government suspicion. Tehran says the UK passport was a reward for his spying services. 

Worth noting it is extremely rare for #Iran‘s regime to acknowledge that it executed someone of Alireza Akbari’s rank as a deputy MODAFL minister. Though it is not unprecedented. Former Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was executed in 1982. 1/2https://t.co/hYsScrBIIK pic.twitter.com/0GhhJVhbW4

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) January 14, 2023

Condemnation of the Akbari was quick to come in from world leaders. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “appalled” by the killing of the British-Iranian citizen. “This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people,” Sunak said. “My thoughts are with Alireza’s friends and family.” The UK foreign ministry also called it a “barbaric act”. 

French President Emmanuel Macron of France also denounced the “despicable and barbaric” act, writing on Twitter that “His name adds to too long a list of victims of repression and the death penalty in Iran.” Macron added: “Solidarity with the UK. Solidarity with the Iranian people.”

Iran has also faced international scrutiny and condemnation for a series of protest-related executions, which stands at at least four known instances of people killed for alleged crimes related to the demonstrations. Dozens more are on death row.

After Bitcoin BTC  hit a yearly high of $21,095 on Jan. 13, reversing the entire FTX crash…

… where is it headed next? As CoinTelegraph writes, Bitcoin is currently witnessing an uptick in bullish momentum after the positively perceived CPI report was followed by a strong rally across the crypto market.

The recent rally in Bitcoin is creating increased volume levels and higher social engagement on whether the price is in a breakout of fakeout mode.

Is the Bitcoin bear market over?

While the market is still technically in a bear market compared to last week, investor sentiment is improving. According to the Fear and Greed Index, a crypto-specific metric that measures sentiment using five weighted sources, investors’ feelings about the market hit a monthly high.

Bitcoin price is now above the psychologically important $21,000 level and many analysts and traders are issuing their thoughts on where BTC price could head next.

Let’s explore a few of these perspectives.

Bitcoin trading volumes remain a concern

Bitcoin just barely recovered from its pre-FTX levels, rising above $21,000 on Jan. 13 for the first time since Nov. 8, 2022. Despite the strength of the recent rally, some analysts believe BTC price needs to remain above the $21,000 support before the current bullish trend can be sustained.

According to Glassnode analysis:

“A renewed bullish trend that started on January 1st drove bitcoin to the $18.6 – $18.9k level, yet a cross over to $19k is necessary to claim a new trading channel around $19-$21k. Resistance is expected around these levels as bitcoin faces a mid-term downward trend. If the price fails to break over the trend line, we expect a retrace toward the $16-$17k area.”

The lack of trading volume of around $18,000 shows the weakness in the current on-chain and centralized exchange (CEX) activity. The largest volumes and overall activity seem to surround the $16,000 level, suggesting that is a more solid floor than the current price range. With less volume surrounding levels higher than $21,000, Bitcoin’s rally could be capped at $21,095.

Is it just a bear market rally?

Bitcoin is still facing headwinds including massive exchange layoffs in a tightening macro economy, Gemini and Genesis legal issues and the potential establishment of a U.S. House crypto-focused subcommittee.

In addition, Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) is currently showing BTC as overbought. According to RSI analysis, a sharp downtrend may form as the price corrects.

The macro markets are also at major resistance levels. The United States Dollar index (DXY) is at key support which means risk assets like Bitcoin may start to see a sell-off if the index recovers. Bitcoin remains correlated to equities and the SPX mini futures index is also showing signs of a pullback.

TraderSZ explains below:

$BTC – huge resistance here…dxy at key support…ES looking like it could pullback abit, eth at macro mid range…been up only all week so could get some profit taking/pullback….arrow would be my trigger IF it follows plan pic.twitter.com/6JziAmBywH

— TraderSZ (@trader1sz) January 12, 2023

With Bitcoin investors taking profits as suggested by TraderSZ, it may be tough for BTC to reach higher levels.

Historical analysis points to a new Bitcoin bottom

Bitcoin is currently below its 200-week moving average and according to Rekt Capital, Bitcoin price may have already hit its macro bottom according to historical data. Historically the “Death Cross” level shows a $23,500 bottom.

Several months later and #BTC has dropped into the Macro Bottoming Area as dictated by historical $BTC Death Cross price tendencies

According to these principles, the general Bottoming Out area begins from $23500 (green)#Crypto #Bitcoin https://t.co/85DjLHoZnD pic.twitter.com/iTbCV1CxG3

— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) January 13, 2023

While traders and technical analysts are not known for accurately predicting how long a bull or bear market might last, independent market analyst HornHairs cited historical data from 2015 to estimate how long it will take for Bitcoin to hit a new all-time high.

The bull market from 2015 to 2017 lasted for 1064 days, matching with the 2018 to 2021 bull market which lasted the same number of days. If traders match the bear market that followed between 2017 to 2018 and 2021 to the current market, it would take 1,001 days until Bitcoin reaches a new all-time high.

$BTC #Bitcoin
2015-2017 bull market: 1064 days
2017-2018 bear market: 364 days

2018-2021 bull market: 1064 days
2021-*current* market low: 364 days

Days left until the top if we just carbon copy the cycle timeframe again: 1001 days pic.twitter.com/KoNZxJRuy5

— HornHairs 🌊 (@CryptoHornHairs) January 12, 2023

Despite the current conditions and the strength of the current price breakout, Bitcoin has proven many technical analysts wrong in the past. Risk-averse traders might consider keeping an eye out for increased trading volume at higher prices as an indicator of whether Bitcoin is finally back in a bull market.

A rising real wage allows the working class to achieve a higher standard of living. However, many Americans have endured 20 consecutive months of negative real wage growth as the cost of living soars above the income they bring home. Perhaps hopes and dreams of getting rich in these troublesome economic times are being plowed into lottery tickets. 

Two months after a record-breaking $2 billion jackpot, another billion-dollar Mega Million drawing was underway on Friday night. A ticket sold in Maine that matched the winning numbers of 30-43-45-46-61 with a Mega Ball of 14.

Lottery officials estimated the annuitized jackpot could be worth around $1.35 billion, while the potential lump sum cash payout is around $724.6 million. And all of that is before taxes. After federal taxes, the winner could choose between 30 annual payments of $28.4 million or an immediate cash payout of $456.5 million. 

Here’s how the math works out:

The odds of matching all six balls to win the jackpot are utterly insane, which is 1 in 302,575,350, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) that runs the lottery… You have better odds of being struck by lightning. 

But while inflation rips apart middle-class household finances, hopeful gamblers are plowing money into purchasing lottery tickets with the dream of becoming a billionaire … well, not quite, as we showed the math above. 

The popularity of lottery tickets is the hottest among “disproportionately male, lower income, less educated and non-White,” The Washington Post said, citing studies. 

 “The popularity of lottery tickets among African Americans is particularly notable,” WaPo continued. 

Google Trens shows’ lotto madness‘ has swept across this nation since the first billion-dollar jackpot in November. And the latest internet searches have gone absolutely parabolic. 

This week’s Mega Millions frenzy is a reminder that the MUSL preys on the working poor and conditions them with dreams of a new life if they win the jackpot, though the odds are astronomical, and most everyone will lose.