I keep getting this error whenever I am trying to post images at all - whether it is with the PC or Android phone, and even when trying to edit or create the banner/icons for communities.

It just pops up in the lower left corner as:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'R', "Request er"... is not valid JSON

What's going on my coders?

America First Legal, a nonprofit group headed by former Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller, has filed a lawsuit against Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to stop the enforcement of a state law that allows minors to get sex-reassignment surgeries without their parent’s permission.

The conservative group says the Senate Bill 5599, signed by Gov. Inslee in May, "creates a dangerous incentive for minors who disagree with their parents on ‘gender-affirming care’ to run away to a shelter or host home."

SB 5599 allows host homes "to house youth without parental permission." Furthermore, the host homes do not need to notify parents about where their kids are or if they are getting medical interventions "if there is a compelling reason not to, which includes a youth seeking protected health services."

The "protected health care services" included "gender-affirming care," which for minors arbitrarily included anything prescribed by doctors to treat dysphoria, the bill said.

"Gender-affirming treatment can be prescribed to two-spirits, transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse individuals," the bill states.

Democratic lawmakers at the time described gender-reassignment surgery as "life-saving."

Drinking water consumed by millions of Americans from hundreds of communities spread across the United States is contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, according to testing data released on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The data shows that drinking water systems serving small towns to large cities – from tiny Collegeville, Pennsylvania, to Fresno, California – contain measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals”, a family of durable compounds long used in a variety of commercial products but that are now known to be harmful.

The water of as many as 26 million Americans is contaminated, according to an analysis of the new EPA data performed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington DC-based non-profit.

Studies have linked the chemicals to cancers, immunodeficiencies, reproductive harms and developmental effects in children.

Scientists and environmental advocates have increasingly warned about the harms of chemicals like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in recent decades, leading to an agreement between the the EPA and chemical manufacturers such as DuPont and 3M to phase out PFOA by 2015.

However, lasting pollution of the environment and human bodies with forever chemicals continues. Studies show nearly all Americans have some level of PFOA, PFOS, and similar chemicals, scientifically known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), circulating in their bodies. Additional analyses calculate that hundreds of millions of Americans are probably exposed through drinking water contamination.

But, the EPA’s testing program, part of a 27-year-old effort to sample the nation’s drinking water for unregulated chemicals, offers the most robust look into exactly which communities are polluted. The data released on Thursday is the first round of a program that will test most US water systems serving more than 3,300 Americans for 29 different forever chemicals, along with the metal lithium, over the next three years.

This first batch, which analyzed data from about 2,000 systems across the country, already spells trouble.

According to the data, 220 water systems found some level of PFOA, PFOS, or both chemicals in their drinking water. That means about one in 10 drinking water systems contain the two most notoriously dangerous forever chemicals.

I’ve written two columns about the late Calvin Coolidge this month (here and here) in honor of the 100th anniversary of him being sworn in as President. Engaging with the thirtieth President again these few days, I’ve been particularly impressed by his thrift. Public thrift, that is: every year Coolidge was in office the federal budget shrank, so that when he left the White House in 1929 it was lower by almost a third than when he’d taken office—a very unusual thing with American Presidents.

Contrast that with today, when the federal government is hosing money around as if it could just print as much as it wants to—which of course it can.

Is it money well spent? I wish I could think so. Washington Post, Thursday last week, headline: Biden asks for $20.6 billion for Ukraine as counteroffensive sputters.[ by Jeff Stein and Marianna Sotomayor, August 10, 2023]

Will that money be well spent in what, when hostilities started, I referred to as “the war between the world’s two most corrupt white nations”?

In reference to that I should say that Ukraine is looking a tad better corruption-wise than it was a year and a half ago. I just checked the latest rankings on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. On the 2022 figures, Ukraine ranks 116 out of 180, in between The Philippines and Zambia. Russia meanwhile is still stuck down at 137, between Paraguay and Kyrgyzstan. (The U.S.A., people always want to know? We ranked 24, between the Seychelles and Bhutan.)

That’s not the most bizarre thing I’ve read this week on federal spending, though—not by a long way. Here is the easy winner.

By way of preface, let me remind you about SIGAR. That stands for Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an agency of the federal government created in 2008 by George W. Bush to oversee our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

So … after we cut and ran from Afghanistan two years ago, SIGAR was disbanded, right? Saving the feds a lot of unnecessary expenditure, right?

Wrong! SIGAR is still with us; its website is still up and running; and it’s still issuing reports.

The report tells us that since our undignified exit from Afghanistan in 2021 the federal government, through Congress of course, has appropriated over $2.35 billion in funds for Afghanistan reconstruction and humanitarian efforts.

The Biden administration has in fact been, according to the Daily Caller, the single largest donor of taxpayer money to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan since the U.S. evacuated forces.

nd these lavish public spending policies have of course an immigration dimension. That is true even down at the state level, although immigration is supposed to be a federal responsibility. Here’s a headline from the Boston Herald: Massachusetts spending $45M a month on programs for migrants, displaced families, Healey says, by Chris Van Buskirk, August 8, 2023.

Governor Healey is of course begging the feds for financial assistance, so chances are this will come out of our federal taxes eventually, one way or another.

What happened to the principle that foreigners coming into the U.S.A. for settlement have to prove they are self-supporting? Oh for goodness’ sake, Derb, don’t be so old-fashioned. That kind of thinking went out with buttoned boots.

And the Massachusetts number is peanuts compared to what New York City is begging for. Just the city, mind; not much awareness has yet seeped up to the state government in Albany.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told us on Wednesday that the cost of housing and caring for illegal aliens in the city will be twelve billion dollars over the next three years.