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Tag Archives: Floats
Trump floats serving as House speaker for ‘short period of time’ if needed until GOP settles on leader – CNN
- Trump floats serving as House speaker for ‘short period of time’ if needed until GOP settles on leader CNN
- Trump would accept House speakership for a ‘short period’ while Republicans decide on a permanent replacement Fox News
- Marjorie Taylor Greene Accidentally Makes Case Against Trump As House Speaker Yahoo News
- Trump says he’s willing to serve as House speaker for up to 90 days — if it’s ‘necessary’ to unite Republicans New York Post
- Schumer responds to calls for Trump to be speaker of House: ‘No thanks, we’re good’ Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Kevin McCarthy floats concession on allowing conservatives to remove House speaker
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is floating a last-minute deal to bring conservative holdouts in line and clinch the speakership.
The embattled California Republican is offering a congressional rule change that would make it easier to remove a House speaker in exchange for his ascension to the post. McCarthy’s offer would lower the threshold required for a motion to vacate the chair — a parliamentary gambit that forces a vote on retaining the speaker.
Currently, because of a rules change pushed through by Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only a member of the House leadership can offer a motion to vacate. Conservative House Republicans are pushing for that standard to be repealed, allowing any one member to force a vote on the speaker at any time.
“Every member of Congress was elected to legislate on behalf of their constituents,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican who is running against McCarthy for speaker. “To do that, members must be able to hold their own leadership accountable.”
SEVEN MORE HOUSE REPUBLICANS THREATEN TO OPPOSE MCCARTHY WITHOUT CONCESSIONS ON HOUSE RULES
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Republican members criticize President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the close of the war in Afghanistan, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Allowing members to offer a motion to vacate the chair is seen as an insurance policy by hard-line Republicans. Many fear that once entrusted with the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy will refuse to threaten a partial government shutdown in an effort to get President Biden to make concessions on policy.
“While difficult in practice, it is an important mechanism to restore trust and provide accountability,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
ANDY BIGGS TO CHALLENGE KEVIN MCCARTHY FOR SPEAKER ON HOUSE FLOOR
Given that the incoming House GOP majority is a only 222 seats, McCarthy cannot afford to ignore the demands. Officially, 218 votes are needed to clinch the speakership on the House floor on Jan. 3, assuming everyone is present and votes. McCarthy has already drawn five public no votes from Republicans.
“Every member of Congress was elected to legislate on behalf of their constituents,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican who is running against McCarthy for speaker. “To do that, members must be able to hold their own leadership accountable.”
(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Motions to vacate the chair were deployed only twice between 1910 and 2015. In the first instance, Democrats unsuccessfully attempted to oust GOP Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon for ruling with what many claimed was an iron fist. The vote eventually failed after Republicans refused to buck their leader.
It was threatened again in July 2015 by then-Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina. Meadows sought to force a vote on Republican Speaker John Boehner’s decision to strip him from the House Oversight Committee for voting against a trade bill.
Boehner’s allies within leadership prevented the motion from going directly to the floor, instead sending it to the House Rules Committee for consideration. Three months later, Boehner resigned after conservatives indicated they would not drop the issue.
In 2015, the Freedom Caucus sought to oust Speaker John Boehner using a motion to vacate the chair. (AP Photo/Michael A. McCoy)
In the aftermath of Boehner’s resignation, McCarthy made a bid for speaker but was forced to abandon that goal after opposition from the Freedom Caucus. Since Republicans only held a narrow majority, the nearly two-dozen-member group had veto power.
Boehner’s successor as speaker, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, only agreed to run for the top spot after receiving a pledge from the Freedom Caucus that it would not try and oust him in the same manner.
Pelosi, D-Calif., changed the rule when Democrats retook the House in 2019 partial
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“The House can’t function if anyone can take the entire chamber hostage at any point over a petty disagreement with the speaker,” said a Republican congressional aide.
MLB Insider Floats Red Sox Idea After J.D. Martinez Joins Dodgers
Could the Red Sox replace J.D. Martinez with a fellow veteran slugger?
The New York Post’s Jon Heyman kicked around the idea after Martinez left Boston in free agency to reportedly sign a one-year deal with the Dodgers. Martinez’s new deal might have marked the end of the road in Los Angeles for Justin Turner, who’s been with the organization since 2014 and turned 38 last month. Heyman on Saturday reported the Dodgers haven’t definitively moved on from Turner, but if he ultimately does need to find a new home, perhaps the Red Sox could provide it.
“Dodgers haven’t ruled out Justin Turner even with JD Martinez in the fold,” Heyman tweeted. “Other possibilities for Turner include D-Backs, Marlins. Or could Red Sox replace JD with JT?”
Turner was an All-Star as recently as 2021 and appears to have enough left in the tank to be an impactful member of an MLB team. Furthermore, Boston could use a potent bat as well as a veteran presence in the clubhouse. Turner potentially could provide both of those services at a reasonable-to-low cost in his 15th big-league season.
That said, Chaim Bloom and company might prefer taking a platoon approach to the designated hitter spot after Martinez took ownership of it for five seasons in Boston.
Kurt Warner Floats Theory About Tom Brady’s Run Of Poor Play
The past few months haven’t been very easy for Tom Brady.
After a pair of ugly wins to start the 2022 NFL season, the Buccaneers dropped four of their next five games including two losses to a pair of vastly inferior opponents: the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Carolina Panthers. Tampa Bay as a team didn’t play very well through seven weeks, and that includes Brady. The star quarterback’s uncharacteristic mistakes are partly responsible for the talented Bucs offense not clicking.
To make matters worse for Brady, it appears his personal life has seen better days as well. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner isn’t ruling out the possibility that those tough off-the-field matters are having a lingering impact.
“… I go and watch the tape from Sunday and I just don’t see the Tom Brady that we’ve come to know,” Warner said Tuesday on NFL Network. “The mistakes that he’s making, the things that he’s not seeing. I’m not one that ever wants to say some of the stuff that’s going on outside the game seems to be trickling inside the game and inside the lines. We’ve never seen Tom Brady do that before. He’s so good at focusing through everything else and being able to play football. But right now, he’s doing things that aren’t Tom Brady-esque and you have to wonder whether that other stuff is getting involved.”
Regardless of what’s the primary source for Brady’s ongoing struggles, it doesn’t look like the Bucs are on the precipice of figuring things out and taking off. Tampa Bay also will be hard-pressed to get right in Week 8 when it will host the Baltimore Ravens on a short week in prime time.
So while it’s probably too early to call it a “lost season” for Brady and the Bucs, things are definitely trending in that direction.
An iconic soap with two weird claims to fame — “It floats” and it’s “99+44⁄100% Pure”
New York
CNNBusiness
—
Walk into a Walmart, Target, any drugstore chain in your neighborhood or a corner bodega for New York City dwellers, and chances are you’ll find an Ivory Soap bar, or a pack of 10 bars for under $5, sitting on the shelf.
This iconic cake of soap, invented almost 150 years ago, has become a part of Americana largely by advertising its two strange merits: “It Floats” and it’s “99+44⁄100% Pure.”
The original product is a no-frills, plain white, mild-scented bar soap with the name “IVORY” etched into it in script. Impressively, it has stayed exactly that way for 143 years – barring the addition of an Aloe scented variety, and is also still around.
Ivory soap’s longevity flies in the face of a notoriously fickle market for personal beauty products where new trends can appear and disappear in a flash.
So why has Ivory Soap stood the test of time? One theory is because of its clever advertising and branding. Ivory Soap packaging famously, and relentlessly, touts the attributes of purity and buoyancy.
“That’s brilliant execution,” said David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, a branding expert who has helped name such popular consumer products as “Swiffer,” “Blackberry” and “Dasani.”
“Just think about it. How many other soaps can you think of that tout an attribute that’s analogous to “It Floats?” said Placek. “I can’t think of another. It makes you remember it because it also makes you think about other soaps that don’t float.”
Because Ivory Soap’s taglines have remained consistent and endured for over a century and through generations of consumers, they’ve seeped into the subconscious, said Placek.
“Even if you’ve not used Ivory Soap you know about it and you remember it,” he said.
Ivory Soap is the brainchild of Procter & Gamble. Not the huge multinational consumer brands conglomerate that it is today, but of two individuals – Harley Procter (son of P&G cofounder William Procter) and James N. Gamble (son of P&G’s other cofounder, James Gamble).
It was in the late 19th century, a period when river bathing was prevalent among large swaths of the population. Now imagine losing your grip on a bar of soap when you’re immersed waist-deep in murky water.
But what if there was a soap bar that could float?
An AdAge article about Ivory Soap’s invention explained how Gamble at the time was trying to create a new type of gently formulated soap. The R&D process inadvertently created a batch of soap that was found to float because air bubbles got trapped inside.
Gamble, according to P&G’s website, recognized the “floating soap” could revolutionize the washing experience in more ways than one.
He initially thought the floating soap could be used both for laundry and for washing up. Over time, the soap bar primarily became a bath soap.
Naming the soap was another story.
According to P&G legend, Harley Procter same upon the word “ivory” while attending church and thought it perfectly fit the new soap’s look and feel and both men adopted “Ivory Soap” as the name.
P&G launched the soap in 1879 hyping it not only as a soap bar that floated but for its purity.
That claim, according to the company, hinged on a study of the soap by chemistry professors at the request of the inventors. One study showed the soap had only a small amount of impurities – 56/100 of a percent – of a non soap material in it.
So they decided to play that up in Ivory Soap’s advertising, rounding it up to create its second iconic tagline – “99 and 44-100% pure.”
P&G maintains that while it continues to innovate its Ivory Soap, the product is still made with a simple formula free of dyes and parabens meant to gently cleanse the skin.
It has, however, extended the brand to other products.
In the 1950s, according to the AdAge article, P&G launched a light-duty dishwashing detergent under the Ivory brand, followed by liquid hand soaps in the 1980s and moisturizing body washes in 1996 with the introduction of Ivory Moisture Care. Today, the Ivory personal care portfolio also includes baby care products, hair and body washes and deodorant.
Ivory soap has become so iconic that in 2001 P&G donated a collection of its Ivory Soap artifacts to the Smithsonian Institution, including its earliest advertising and a bar of unused soap from the 1940s.
Lexicon Branding’s Placek said Ivory Soap is a product way ahead of its time. “It was ‘pure’ before pure, clean and simple products became as popular as they are with consumers today,” he said.
NASA astronaut floats on the space station with Earth in the background (photo)
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins floats above Earth in a gorgeous new photo from the International Space Station.
Watkins launched to the orbiting lab on April 27 as part of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission, making history as the first Black woman to embark on a long-duration spaceflight. She is currently serving as a mission specialist, aiming to observe and photograph geological features on Earth and conduct a variety of science experiments alongside her crewmates.
On Monday (May 9), NASA shared a new photo of Watkins in the space station’s cupola, which offers the perfect viewing spot for astronauts living and working aboard the orbiting lab. The cupola is a dome-shaped module with seven windows that face Earth. The small module not only allows the crew to observe Earth, but also provides a view of the exterior of the International Space Station, making it easier to monitor robotic activities, approaching vehicles and spacewalks.
Related: Meet Jessica Watkins, NASA Artemis astronaut
In addition to Watkins, SpaceX’s Crew-4 includes NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines and the European Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti. The crew is expected to spend six months living and working on the space station.
After the arrival of Crew-4 and the subsequent departure of Crew-3, another SpaceX mission, the station’s Expedition 67 now includes three Russians, three Americans and one Italian astronaut. The crew will work closely together over the next several months, conducting scientific research, station maintenance, training and more.
Crew-4 is Watkins’ first spaceflight. Her experience includes intensive instruction in the space station’s systems, spacewalks, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, water and wilderness survival training, geology training and expeditionary skills training, NASA wrote in a description of the new photo.
In 2019, she also served as an aquanaut crew member in the Aquarius underwater habitat for the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 23 mission.
Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
Elon Musk floats turning Twitter’s headquarters into a homeless shelter
Fox News host weighs in on the Russia-Ukraine war and Elon Musk’s new role for Twitter on ‘Kudlow.’
Elon Musk, Twitter Inc.’s largest shareholder, proposed turning the social media company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter because “no one shows up anyway.”
Musk made the proposal via a Twitter poll on Saturday night. Nearly 1.2 million people had responded by Sunday morning, and 91.1% of them voted in favor of the idea.
ELON MUSK PURCHASES STAKE IN TWITTER AFTER SLAMMING ITS APPROACH TO ‘FREE SPEECH’
Musk’s poll comes a week after he purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter’s stock, making him the company’s largest shareholder. Musk has been critical of Twitter’s handling of free speech on the platform and has proposed a number of tongue-in-cheek changes to the company since his stock purchase.
He tweeted another poll Sunday morning on whether to remove the letter “W” from “Twitter.” The only available responses were “Yes” and “Of course.”
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Musk would join Twitter’s board of directors last week. Musk will also participate in a town hall Q&A session with Twitter employees, some of whom have expressed concern of Musk’s presence at the company, Agrawal announced to employees Thursday.
“We say that Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now. Often, we at Twitter are what’s happening and what people are talking about. That has certainly been the case this week,” Agrawal wrote Thursday in a company-wide email, according to the Washington Post. “Following our board announcement, many of you have had different types of questions about Elon Musk, and I want to welcome you to ask those questions to him.”
TESLA TO HOST 15,000-PERSON GRAND OPENING NEXT MONTH AT NEW GIGAFACTORY IN AUSTIN, TEXAS
Musk’s purchase comes soon after the billionaire Tesla founder criticized Twitter for a lack of commitment to free speech.
“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Musk tweeted March 26. “What should be done?”
“Is a new platform needed?” he tweeted later.
GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY – AUGUST 13: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Armin Laschet, CDU Federal Chairman and Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, talk during a tour of the plant of the future foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory on August 13, 2021 in Grünheide ((Photo by Patrick Pleul – Pool/Getty Images) / Getty Images)
Many of Musk’s nearly 80 million Twitter followers encouraged him at the time to buy Twitter’s platform entirely, or create his own.
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Twitter has repeatedly censored conservative viewpoints in recent years. The company locked the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee out of its Twitter account for jokingly awarding Biden administration official Dr. Rachel Levine a “Man of the Year” award. Levine is a transgender woman.
Twitter also blocked the sharing of links to a New York Post article revealing the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. While critics derided the story as Russian disinformation at the time, both the New York Times and Washington Post have since acknowledged that the story was accurate.
Hospital mascot, not Disney rabbit, floats on Ax-1 mission as zero-g indicator
A long-eared toy dog was briefly mistaken for a famous Disney rabbit on Friday (April 8) when it was revealed as the “zero-g indicator” aboard the first private mission to visit the International Space Station.
“Caramel,” the mascot (opens in new tab) for the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation, was seen floating inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Endeavour” shortly after the spacecraft entered Earth orbit with the Axiom-1 (Ax-1) crew. With its ears extended out and a cartoon look to its embroidered eyes, the brown and beige plush puppy looked a lot like a certain bunny.
“It looks like the crew is beginning to adjust to zero-g, and if you look at the right-hand side corner, it looks like we can see the zero-g indicator,” said Kate Tice, a quality system engineering manager at SpaceX and the co-host for the company’s Ax-1 live launch webcast.
“That was one of the things I really wanted to see, what they were going to bring (opens in new tab) today as their zero-g indicator. So I can’t wait to see what comes on,” replied Jon Rackham, a crew systems hardware lead for Axiom Space, the organizers of the Ax-1 mission, and Tice’s co-anchor.
“It looks, I can’t quite tell… Pokemon?” Tice said as the doll came more into view. “Oh, it has ears? Oh! It’s a bunny! Is that Thumper? I think that is Thumper from ‘Bambi.'”
Live updates: Ax-1 private mission to space station
Related: Axiom Space: Building the off-Earth economy
A press release issued by Axiom Space several hours after the 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) launch clarified that the doll was not a rabbit, but rather a dog.
“Caramel served an important role as the mission’s zero-gravity indicator,” the release read (opens in new tab). “Zero-gravity indicators are small items, often stuffed toys, chosen by space crews to provide a clear visual indication that they have reached microgravity.”
The tradition began in Russia, where it dates back to Yuri Gagarin and the small doll he took along on the world’s first human spaceflight in 1961. Since then, many of Gagarin’s fellow cosmonauts have followed suit, often letting their children pick out the toy.
In 2019, SpaceX brought the custom to the United States when it chose a plush planet Earth (opens in new tab) to fly on its first uncrewed test flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Since then, the company’s first four space station-bound crews have picked out plush dolls of a dinosaur (opens in new tab), Star Wars’ “Grogu” (or “baby Yoda (opens in new tab)“), a penguin (opens in new tab) and a sea turtle (opens in new tab) to serve as their zero-g indicators.
The private Inspiration4 mission, which circled the planet aboard a Dragon for three days in September 2021 to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, took the idea a step further by flying the hospital’s mascot and then selling replicas of the “space puppy” (opens in new tab) online.
The Ax-1 crew selected Caramel as their indicator with a similar intent, but also because of the mission’s connection to Montreal Children’s Hospital. In addition to commander Michael Lopez-Alegria (opens in new tab), pilot Larry Connor of Dayton, Ohio, and Israeli mission specialist Eytan Stibbe, the Ax-1 crew (opens in new tab) includes Canadian Mark Pathy, whose science on the station will include several projects led by the researchers at Montreal Children’s Hospital.
“Investigations include research into chronic pain and sleep disturbances during space travel, which are likely to have real world impact,” read the Axiom release.
Pathy also plans to talk live from the space station with children at the hospital.
To celebrate its mascot’s role in the Ax-1 mission and raise funds for its research, the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation is offering a souvenir Caramel plush (opens in new tab) for a donation of $200 (Canadian, or about $160 U.S.) or more. Donors will also receive an Ax-1 mission patch and a signed letter of authenticity.
Shipping is limited to the U.S. and Canada (for overseas orders, contact the foundation) and quantities are limited. One thousand of the dolls are available to ship now, with more expected for delivery in the fall.
In the meantime, Caramel and the Ax-1 crew are set to arrive at the International Space Station on Saturday morning (April 9) to begin an eight-day program of science research and educational outreach.
Follow collectSPACE.com (opens in new tab) on Facebook (opens in new tab) and on Twitter at @collectSPACE (opens in new tab). Copyright 2022 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
Hospital mascot, not Disney rabbit, floats on Axiom-1 mission as zero-g indicator
April 8, 2022
— A longed-eared toy dog was briefly mistaken for a famous Disney rabbit on Friday (April 8) when it was revealed as the “zero-g indicator” aboard the first private mission to visit the International Space Station.
“Caramel,” the mascot for the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation, was seen floating inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Endeavour” shortly after the spacecraft entered Earth orbit with the Axiom-1 (Ax-1) crew. With its ears extended out and a cartoon look to its embroidered eyes, the brown and beige plush puppy looked a lot like a certain bunny.
“It looks like the crew is beginning to adjust to zero-g and if you look at the right-hand side corner, it looks like we can see the zero-g indicator,” said Kate Tice, a quality system engineering manager at SpaceX and the co-host for the company’s Ax-1 live launch webcast.
“That was one of the things I really wanted to see, what they were going to bring today as their zero-g indicator. So I can’t wait to see what comes on,” replied Jon Rackham, a crew systems hardware lead for Axiom Space, the organizers of the Ax-1 mission, and Tice’s co-anchor.
“It looks, I can’t quite tell… Pokemon?” Tice said as the doll came more into view. “Oh, it has ears? Oh! It’s a bunny! Is that Thumper? I think that is Thumper from ‘Bambi.'”
A press release issued by Axiom Space several hours after the 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) launch clarified that the doll was not a rabbit, but rather a dog.
“Caramel served an important role as the mission’s zero-gravity indicator,” the release read. “Zero-gravity indicators are small items, often stuffed toys, chosen by space crews to provide a clear visual indication that they have reached microgravity.”
The tradition began in Russia, where it dates back to Yuri Gagarin and the small doll he took along on the world’s first human spaceflight in 1961. Since then, many of Gagarin’s fellow cosmonauts have followed suit, often letting their children pick out the toy.
In 2019, SpaceX brought the custom to the United States when it chose a plush planet Earth to fly on its first uncrewed test flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Since then, the company’s first four space station-bound crews have picked out plush dolls of a dinosaur, Star Wars’ “Grogu” (or “baby Yoda”), a penguin and a sea turtle to serve as their zero-g indicators.
The private Inspiration4 mission, which circled the planet for three days to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, took the idea a step further by flying the hospital’s mascot and then selling replicas of the “space puppy” online.
The Ax-1 crew selected Caramel as their indicator with a similar intent, but also because of the mission’s connection to Montreal Children’s Hospital. In addition to commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, pilot Larry Connor of Dayton, Ohio, and Israeli mission specialist Eytan Stibbe, the Ax-1 crew includes Canadian Mark Pathy, whose science on the station will include several projects led by the researchers at Montreal Children’s Hospital.
“Investigations include research into chronic pain and sleep disturbances during space travel, which are likely to have real world impact,” read the Axiom release.
Pathy also plans to talk live from the space station with children at the hospital.
To celebrate its mascot’s role in the Ax-1 mission and raise funds for its research, the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation is offering a souvenir Caramel plush for a donation of $200 (Canadian, or about $160 U.S.) or more. Donors will also receive an Ax-1 mission patch and a signed letter of authenticity.
Shipping is limited to the U.S. and Canada (for overseas orders, contact the foundation) and quantities are limited. One thousand of the dolls are available to ship now, with more expected for delivery in the fall.
In the meantime, Caramel and the Ax-1 crew are set to arrive at the International Space Station on Saturday morning (April 9) to begin an 8-day program of science research and educational outreach.