aka Presidential Emoluments Clause

In Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, the President is prohibited from receiving “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them” besides his fixed salary 

The term emolument in this context is broad and can include any profit, gain, or advantage — not just direct payments, but also benefits such as jobs, contracts, or other forms of compensation from federal or state governments 

Source: Congress.gov , Georgetown Law

On this day in 1952, Big Mama Thornton and the Johnny Otis Band recorded “Hound Dog” and turned it into a smash hit on the R&B charts, where it stayed at #1 for seven weeks.

August 13, 1952, four years before Elvis Presley would make “Hound Dog” his longest running no. 1 hit, the song was recorded for the very first time by the rhythm-and-blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in Los Angeles, California. Since Presley’s version ran 11 weeks at the top of the pop music charts, it’s often been mistakenly assumed to be his original.

Big Mama Thornton was a native of Montgomery, Alabama, who came of age on the R&B circuit in the 1940s after starting her professional career in 1941 at the age of 14. In 1951, she signed her first record contract with Peacock Records and was soon paired with another of its artists, bandleader Johnny Otis, who brought Thornton out to join his band in California.

It was there, in late 1952, that Otis asked two young songwriters on the Los Angeles music scene if they would write something, especially for Thornton. Those songwriters were Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who would go on to have an enormous impact on R&B and early rock and roll through their work with groups like the Coasters and the Drifters. But hits like “Yakkity Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “Stand By Me,” “Jailhouse Rock” and “Love Potion No. 9″ were still ahead of Lieber and Stoller when they did what Otis asked and came back to him with a 12-bar country blues tune called “Hound Dog.”

Source: history.com for the complete article

I went through old posts and found hints of an increase in data centers, at least in the early 2000s. This company tried to tell a story of why we need them and created a mural project; they also bought a 1960s power plant. In

In 2010, Greenpeace posted a warning and petition re:

The Internet is how we connect, learn new things, and share what we love. But right now, much of our Internet is also dirty, no matter how we use it.

Data centers are where Internet companies store our photos, messages, and music, and many are powered by coal and dirty energy sources that pollute our environment and harm our climate.

What’s worse — the Internet’s demand for energy is only growing bigger. If the Internet were a country, its electricity use would already rank sixth in the world.

I have to say that this is embarrassing to know that the warnings were there, just not given a decent amount of airtime or a good platform to inform the public, now, here we are in 2026, some parts of our country is suffering from droughts, others have had their land squandered by DataCenters, which we all now know use an enormous amount of Energy … and Water!

On August 13, 1981, at his California home Rancho del Cielo, Ronald Reagan signs the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), a package of tax and budget reductions that set the tone for his administration’s trickle-down economic policy. During his campaign for the White House in 1980, …read more