Ray Torres is the director of the short film

Beyond Credit Unions

The film is available for groups to show. Contact Ray at 215 753 9022

Flyer

Also: Press Release

I kinda like this as an anthem for the left these days.

Brief history of PRAWN

• Network groups, organizations, and individuals to stop the repression caused by "never ending wars" at home and abroad, by the US corporate military state
• Support organizations having common ground
• Educate and activate the general public

• East Timor & Indonesia Networks (ETAN)
  
• Delco Waging Peace
  
• Granny Peace Brigade - Philadelphia
• Otherjones - A blog by Deena Stryker
  
• Media Tank  
• Philly Against War
• Northeast Philly for Peace & Justice
  
• Philadelphia Veterans For Peace
• Wounds of War
• Northwest Greens
• Progressive Democracy of South Jersey (PDSJ)
• UFPJ-Delaware Valley Network
• UPenn - FASWI
• Delaware Valley Veterans for America

National Organizations

• United For Peace & Justice (UFPJ)
• World Can't Wait
• ACLU's Blog of Rights

Upcoming Events

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Midsection archive

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Pro-Palestinian Demonstration

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March for Palestinians

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Protesting Israel's attack on Palestine

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Defund the Pentagon

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2nd Amazon-Alabama protest

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Union demonstration Amazon-Alabama

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Nuclear weapons declared illegal by UN

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Getting signatures

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BLM March - September

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Pro-Post Office protest

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Rally at African-American Museum

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BLM March 13 June

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Black Lives Matter marches - 6-8 June

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Between the marches - morning of 3 June

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Memorial Day protest

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May Day Car Caravan

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Pro-Impeach and Remove from office

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Demonstration against Iran War

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Demonstration against Iran War

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Demonstration against Iran War

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Impeachment Eve rally

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Rally to support the Kurds

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Climate Strike

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Pro-Venezuela Anti-Intervention

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Horsham Air Base protest

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Protesting giving GW Bush a medal

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Pro-Mueller Investigation protest

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Rally to abolish ICE

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Democratic Rally

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Climate March

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Anti-Drones protest

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Rally at Logan Circle for families

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Protest against the Trump family separatin policy on the Mexican border

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Anti-Drone Protest

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Palestinians and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

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Rally for Palestinians

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March For Our Lives

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Lancaster Direct Action against a fossil fuel pipeline.

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Women's March 2018

Info, articles, etc.

So the vote on the “roads and bridges” (the little infrastructure) bill has been put off until tomorrow. Seems to me the two moderate senators who are holding everything up (Manchin & Sinema) want to be trusted, but have given progressives absolutely no reason to trust them.

Whew! Katie Couric has some response to the Matt Lauer accusations that make it clear  that she really needs to see a counselor of some sort about her reaction to those accusations before she puts them in a book!

"Romney pushes for changes to a bill he won't consider supporting"
This is not how legislative negotiations are supposed to work! If you want something included or left out or clarified in a bill, you should make a commitment to voting for it!

So even though Senator Manchin gave a super-low figure for what he wanted to see in the big reconciliation bill, he spoke with West Virginian citizens who had paddled up to his yacht and agreed with all of the priorities in the bill! And the bill is super-popular in his home state, getting up to 70% approval! So it’s a mystery as to what his game is.

From what I know of economics, Manchin’s alleged fears are hugely overblown!

September

Democratic Senator Kirsten Sinema appears to be depending on Independent and Republican support to ensure her re-election. Problem for her is that both Republicans and Democrats tend to want "the real thing" as opposed to some pseudo-Republican or Democrat.

For the first time that our blogger can remember, the issue of how Israel treats Palestinians was raised in Congress. Unfortunately, there's a knee-jerk reaction on the part of defenders of Israel to equate, conflate and confuse criticism of the policies of the state of Israel with antisemitism.

For many companies, the four-day work-week has moved from pilot program to permanent policy.

The essential point made in this meme, that Nazi book-burning had highly specific targets, is accurate. The Holocaust Encyclopedia, contains a listing of the specific works that were targeted.

Huh! First Hope Hicks and now SD Governor Kristi Noem have been sleeping with Corey Lewandowski. What do they see in him? Beats the hell outta me! BTW, Hicks wasn't married, but both Lewandowski and Noem are. And yes, both have multiple children.

The “case” that the election was “stolen” from The Former Guy was put together in an astoundingly sloppy and careless manner.

I guess Senator Manchin heard everybody beating up on Senator Sinema and has come riding to her rescue. His criticisms of the reconciliation bill (the big $3.5t one) make it sound as though he’s been completely oblivious to the economic debate for at least the past several years. Do we have the luxury of waiting for Manchin’s “strategic pause?” No!!! Democrats have a short window to get this done!

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is clearly someone who has never had a serious conversation about meaningful issues with anyone outside of her own social circle. She has obviously never learned how to exchange thoughts with anyone she disagrees with. Subtitle to the piece:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday defended her recent shouting matching with Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) over the issue of abortion.

"Hacker reveals right-wing health care network made millions off ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine"
Very sad! Part of the reason people are dying from Covid are the snake-oil salesmen who are profiting off of quack "cures."

Just finished watching an episode of Batwoman*, a show where a bartender fights crime with the help of some capable assistants. Trying to decide who is in more of a fantasy world, Batwoman or Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who feels that women today can easily balance having children with any kind of career!

*Batwoman and Batgirl were both active in the 50s and 60s. By the time the Batman TV show started in the mid-60s, Batwoman was more or less gone. Batwoman was revived in the 2010s and made her way to the TV screen, where a Black woman has replaced the white one.

The Covid lab-leak theory always required very extensive proof. The “Occam’s Razor” idea holds that simpler theories are generally more likely to be true. The natural evolution theory of Covid is a lot simpler than a lab leak.

A review of the book by Stephanie Grisham, the Press Secretary who never held a White House press conference. This is not at all surprising:

Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States.

Okay, so it seems less than 1% of the workforce will refuse to get vaccinated. Sounds like a lot of opportunity for sensible people and good riddance to the "romantic rebels" who refused!

It’s terrible to have to fire large numbers of people for not being vaccinated, but again, when most people are faced with losing their jobs, most of them will do the right thing.

"Hannity And Gingrich Just Want The Country To Burn"
During the four years under TFG (The Former Guy), Democrats were completely frozen out of all policy-making. They were permitted to play absolutely no role whatsoever. Ya know why Republicans are frozen out today? Because they're boycotting any role in policy-making! Also, they lost the 2020 election! Democrats have a mandate to carry out their preferred policies!

The National Fraternal Order of Police is 100% correct here! Senator Tim Scott was in negotiations with Democratic Senators to reform police practices. Scott bowed with the utterly BS reason of the clunky phrase "Defund the Police."

The Manta Ray is designed in such a way that it doesn’t swallow micro-plastics. We can design water-filtration systems the same way.

Supreme Court’s approval rating is down to 40% now. With the Court having been constructed the way it has been (Thanks, Minority Leader McConnell), a majority on the Court is not a majority in the country!

Yeah, I’m extremely underwhelmed by the NY Times and their “new” and “innovative” plan here.

This discussion thread demonstrates that the problems of the NY Times and its credibility is much deeper than any reorganization plan will fix.

When reading the Republican complaint about Biden here, please keep in mind that the Republican Party as a whole, decided in 2009 to adopt a posture of total, scorched-earth non-ccoperation with Democrats!

Conservative, Never-Trumper columnist Jennifer Rubin asks the right question. If the Build Back Better plan is so popular, why aren't Republicans supporting it? Rubin then asks why reporters keep expecting Biden to answer that!

Another right-wing Never-Trumper speaks out. Summary of Robert Kagan’s article that examines how TFG is leading America towards the abyss.

The richest households paid 40.1% of all federal income taxes in 2018.

Okay, but according to Pew Research, the wealthy are pulling in 48% of the income. Middle income people made 62% of income in 1970 and in 2018, made only 43%.

The real problem is that there is a strong sentiment (64%) that the wealthy ought to contribute their fair share. If Democrats can’t enforce a more balanced picture of taxation, are we really a democracy?

Lengthy book excerpt detailing palace intrigue, con artists, a really ugly necklace and an unsuspecting Marie Antoinette.

No, I agree with Jake Tapper. Senator Toomey is full of #$@%. Raising the debt ceiling is not about future expenditures, it’s about money that’s already been spent. And yes, the Republican Party is threatening to default and yes, that would send the world economy crashing.
Did the economy take off after the tax cut? No, the economy continued to improve after Obama left office. The same trend lines continued at the same rate.

Examining Toomey's claims.

Speaker Pelosi slams Republicans for debt brinkmanship.

So how exactly does Senator Sinema intend to pay for any of the Biden agenda if not raising taxres on corporations or the rich is not going to be included?!?! Yeah, this should have been highlighted in the very first paragraph of the story, not the %$#@ing 27th!

Conservatives see every liberal economic move, including of course, Biden's Build Back Better plan, as one more step on the road to socialism, never mind that we've been trudging on this road for 80 years now (Social Security was "The beginning of the road to socialism" don'cha know?). Any move to help regular folks is always seen in dire, apocalyptic terms.

Cool! The series "Sandman" (Dream and his siblings The Endless) will be on Netflix next year.

The PLO officially recognized Israel in 1993. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President in the West Bank (Hamas runs Gaza), has now given Israel one year to withdraw or he’ll withdraw that recognition and go to the “International Criminal Court, seeking a ruling on the legality of the occupation of the territory of the state of Palestine and deciding on the responsibility of the UN and the world in this regard.”

Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard claims that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was “the only one using Russia to take down American politicians…” The blogger goes over the considerable evidence that was public at the time indicating that Gabbard was indeed an agent of the Kremlin.

For MSNBC's Chuck Todd to see Meghan McCain as anything but a nepotism hire, someone who never would have been hired on her own merits, says really awful things about Todd!

Chuck Todd of MSNBC permitted Meghan McCain to be on his show Meet The Press. McCain lied three times in a single sentence. The truth is that: 1. Biden explicitly ran on the Build Back Better plan. 2. The current proposed plan is far less expensive and 3. the plan is quite popular.
Score for Chuck - FAIL!

A more detailed rundown of all the lies packed into one paragraph that Meet The Press re-tweeted. That is, MTP compounded McCain's lies by mindlessly repeating them, this time under their own name!

Why was Meghan McCain considered qualified to be on MTP?

Meghan McCain has a degree in art history. She has no experience as a political consultant, reporter, or anything else remotely relevant to "Meet the Press."

"CNN teams with GOP to concoct new Afghanistan drama"
So the question here is: Was the CNN story merely a hopelessly bungled, poorly written story or was it an attempt to try and gin up conflict? Was this an attempt to try and tag the Biden Presidency as having suffered a catastrophic failure?

Huh! So the whole Arisona Cyber Ninja "audit" just confirmed that Joe Biden won bigly there? Cool!

Aww! Trump fans upset over Cyber Ninja results showing Biden won Arizona!

Chairwoman of the Republican Party claims that the Arizona "audit" says: "Voters who may have voted in multiple counties..."
Note that it says "may." After all this time looking at a single county, they couldn't prove that? They couldn't nail that down in five months?

Faced with a "bad" result, TFG decides to lie shamelessly about the Arizona “audit.”

What the Republican Party is doing with the national debt is just plain, flat-out evil, period! They're holding the debt celing hostage so that they can win some politcal advantage out of it. If the US can't pay its debts, even for an hour, the result could be cataclysmic! 

There is no “debate” on the debt limit “controversy.” There is no rational side saying that the US should default. Republicans are making a terrorist-type threat.

A beautiful moment.

We were both in the presence of God simultaneously, from differing traditions and paths. This shared moment was peaceful, reverent, and holy.

It was true beauty.

Illustrating a real philosophical problem with pregnancy choice, this person says:

“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live..."

There's a term for this, it's called a "Distinction without a difference."

The Keynesian economist Dean Baker has a good thread coming off of this post talking about how completely useless the "fiscally responsible conservatives" are.

As the blogger points out, the conservative/centrist Democratic model of negotiating with the GOP simply doesn't work. After several months of talks, Republican Senator Tim Scott simply blows off further talks on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

And yeah, it's funny how Republicans only discover the virtues of bipartisanship when they’re out of power! When they’re in power, they somehow lose interest in the idea!

Many of the weapons acquired by either the Taliban or ISIS-K had originally been transferred to Afghanistan government custody, most of those acquisitions have been exaggerated for political reasons, a lot of them are too complicated for the Taliban to use, but a number of them, like night-vision goggles and communications equipment, are perfectly usable. A lot of safeguards were ignored.

Oh, $%#@ing lovely! The financial fate of the country now rests in the Senate Minority Leaders hands! That is, the debt ceiling "crisis" is nearing a deadline!

Really, really excellent speech by Representative AOC! We just ended a war, why is defense spending going up?

Heart-breaking story about a woman who refused a vaccination shot because she was very badly misinformed. Very interesting distinction between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives appear to get most of their information by word of mouth, liberals by reading things or via TV programs. One of the things this woman believes is that Biden “refers to VP Harris as President Harris.” What’s her source?

“Proof has come out…”

Why does this poor woman believe such crazy nonsense? Exhibit A: A woman named Bari Weiss claims that "Proof of a negative test is far more meaningful than proof of a vaccine..."
Erm, no. Proof of a negative test just means you're good for that particular day. You can still catch Covid in the very next hour. Being vaccinated means you're  proofed against catching Covid for a while.

Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema apparently has a plan to become the next Senator McCain, a “maverick” who’s not beholden to either side. She’s doing well with the non-Trumpers who just want to get away from all the craziness, but very, very poorly with progressive Democrats. She needs both liberal Democrats and disaffected Republicans to win reelection. As a result, her political future looks very dark.

Again, the debt ceiling "problem" is a problem of "BothSides" and false equivalence! One political party is responsible for turning  routine legislative task into a "crisis," but the other party is expected to solve the problem without the help of the other! The media can deal with complex problems where both sides are truly to blame. It just can't deal with a more straightforward "A is to blame, B is trying to solve the problem!"

Problem is, Stacey Abrams was talking about a real problem that actually existed! Republicans In 2020 talked about an entirely imaginary problem that existed only in their heads. This is a problem of “false equivalence.”

.@chrislhayes to Secretary of State Raffensperger on restrictive voting laws:
“What was the problem that law was trying to solve? You just told me about a great election. We know it was accurate. It got counted three times—Why would you look at that and say that’s a problem?”

Game on! The new Texas snitching/vigilante abortion law is now fully engaged with the first defendant and plaintiff now in place. Oh, and a cool little fun fact, the American public is 81% opposed to the Texas law! This is why the Supreme Court has been losing legitimacy lately!

The now-hard right-wing conservative Supreme Court thought they had complete freedom to tear apart the laws of the land. Their approval rating is dropping like a rock! Will that actually prevent further erosion in the laws? Ehh, we'll see.

Truly terrible what happened to Gabby Petito in Wyoming (23-year old blond white woman who was ultimately found strangle after several weeks), but 710 Native Americans went missing from 2011 to 2020.

Now that Roe vs Wade is critically wounded, the Supreme Court appears to be setting the stage for a coup de grâce and to finish it off.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been bitterly critical of the Afghanistan withdrawal, but having been aware of the South Vietnamese withdrawal (I was 15 at the time), this was a really big improvement. I think Biden handled it about a well as it could have been handled.

Wow! That's incredibly sad! Just as many people in the US have now died from the COVID-19 pandemic as died in the 1918 flu pandemic!
BTW, US population was 100m then and 330m today.

Roughly 40 years ago, Griswold vs Connecticut established a right to sexual privacy. What a brief to the Supreme Court shows is that right-wingers consider that right to be a mere "judicial concoction." They don't want to just take away the right to abortion, they want to take away everything! Birth control, gay marriage, they wan it all banned!

Producing tequila results in lots of agave fiber and water waste. A Kardashian has found a way to produce bricks out of those ingredients that can be used for building.

TFG looks back on 6 January fondly, as having been a “great day.”

Politician on Face The Nation says that the whole country went into shutdown. Nope. That never happened! In fact, the whole reason the coronavirus spread to the South is because they insisted on keeping everything open! If they had shut down, the virus wouldn't have been able to infect anyone!

Problem with voluntary measures to get people vaxxed is that you eventually hit a wall and voluntary measures don't work anymore. A competent governor will then undertake involuntary measures, mandates and requirements. The West Virginia governor can't bring himself to do that, so his state is a disaster!

Good thread examining how rural voters are portrayed to appear more virtuous, more “American” than urban/suburban voters.

Whuuh?!?! Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has actually brought the two Venezuelan parties together for talks? And the US/Canada/EU has no role?

But this is quite sad:

Guaidó and company have also cheated the USA. In 2017-19 alone, USAID handed over though various NGOs an amount of $472 million for “Venezuelan humanitarian crisis” and for “democracy promotion”. To date, they do not have any clear idea at all where the money is or on what it has been spent.

Yeah, the movement Occupy Wall Street, now 10 years old, is a major reason people aren't willing to just say "Let's get back to normal." A major call today is "Let's do better than to just get back to normal!"

Kind of interesting. TFG begins his letter to the Georgia Secretary of State with "Large scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported..." and "I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities,..."
Then he goes on to talk about "now proven facts" as though anything had been proven!
Also, it is not up to the Georgia SoS to check anything out. Yes, it is ultimately up to the defense to prove that allegations are false, but first, the prosecution has to make charges that are plausible, not just a bunch of "some guy says..." statements.

Maggie Haberman of the NY Times covers the story like it's some sort of %$#@ing sportsball event! Hey Maggie! How about covering how insane the letter is before you discuss the potential political impact?!?!?!

Marvel Comics has had a Pakistani super heroine for a number years now (Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, since 2013), but this is a live-action show with Arab characters that has generous doses of satire, poking fun at Arab stereotypes that were already bad before 9/11 but which have gotten worse since.

Sorry, but when actress Rose McGowan says Fox News has ethics, she just lost me for good.

On the one hand, Don Jr. is entirely correct that the last drone strike in Afghanistan unnecessarily killed innocent civilians, on the other, the Trump Administration has absolutely nothing to be proud concerning drones.

One of the reasons the Afghanistan war had to end was that the US had greatly increased the use of drones in it and drones are an inherently messy, imprecise instruments. If we're going to do counter-terrorism, drones are not the way to do it.

Biden has less than a third of his national security team in place. These senators are holding up getting more people in. They're doing this consciously, deliberately, with malice and forethought. If the Republican Party was a responsible, functioning party, these senators would be disciplined.

Thoughts on Representative AOC and her “Tax the Rich” dress.

Thing to understand about propaganda, talking to the NY Times columniist Maureen Dowd here, is that if you didn’t understand the message, then the message probably wasn’t for you anyway.

Very disturbing that the number of people who believe Biden did not win the 2020 election has actually increased.

So what is Senate Minority Leader McConnell's objection to raising the debt ceiling?

"This is a unified Democrat government, engaging in a partisan reckless tax and spending spree.”

This is pretty much word for word, exactly what Democrats said about the GOP's 2017 tax cut! Democrats didn't have the right to put the kibosh on Republican plans then and Republicans have absolutely zero legitimacy to put the kibosh on Democratic plans now!

Ooh, not good! The Inupiak Tribe reports that seal-hunting season has been steadily cut back due to human-caused climate change for the past 17 years.

Anti-vaxxers who push anti-science views are responsible for up to 100k deaths.

Rachel Maddow has often made reference to Democrats and Republicans living on “Earth 1” and “Earth 2,” two planets that appear to be reality, but they’re two separate realities. The ranking Republican from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee appeared to be a visitor from Earth 2. During a hearing about the US exit frm Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was questioned about a button that cuts off President Biden's microphone and informs him that he must leave the stage. There is no such button. 

In 2018, we heard about “kids in cages,” because the Trump Administration decided to simply imprison and/or return migrants.* I recall that several members of the internal “resistance” to Trump looked at their nice, cushy, high-paying jobs and what it would cost them to make a stand and decided “Ehh, human rights are important, but…”

Ever since then, the internal “resistance” has been pretty worthless.

As a commenter here says:

Members of the Trump cabinet were tragically remiss in their failure to invoke the section of the #25thAmendment …

Yeah, because the Trump minions were generally worthless at keeping Trump in check!

*The normal process was to find temporary hosts for the migrants, usually a relative, where about 98% of them would show up for their hearings.

To her credit, Press Secretary Jen Psaki made it clear that President Biden really doesn't care to hear any guidance from Republicans in either the House or Senate.

For what possible legitimate reason would the former president be immune from the suit by E Jean Carroll? Clinton wasn't immune from the case by Paula Jones, heck, Clinton couldn't even defer the case until he had left office!

This is so sad because, although I had no personal connection to the Roman Catholic pedophilia scandal of 2002, this case of an Olympics coach abusing the young women who were his clients appears to have so many common elements with the 2002 scandal, especially the complicity of so many people who should have known better.

After gymnast Simone Biles and others testified about their sexual abuse at the hands of a team doctor, Senator Whitehouse asks if the FBI didn’t similarly screw up a similar investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's actions concerning Dr. Ford.

Again, a Republican senator shows why the Senate is hopelessly broken. The Senate Minority Leadeer McConnell showed us through years of obstruction and abuse of the filibuster that the Senate really, really needs reform. Now Senator Hawley shows us that the ability of senators to hold up getting national security positions filled also needs reform.

Very disappointing to see the NY Times continue to use euphemisms and prettified words to describe plainly bad behavior by Republicans. Softening the GOP image helps no one but the GOP.

Wow! A land-roaming, four-legged whale? 43 million years ago.

I posted earlier on Senator Marco Rubio saying how awful it was that the Afghan national government collapsed so quickly. Rubio was the acting Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee from May 2020 and has been the Vice Chair since the switch-over to Democratic control. If any one person in the entire country should have known the shape that the Afghan government was in, it was Rubio.

So the new Bob Woodward book is out on TFG. Very good “Just the Facts” recounting of the highlights. Can’t believe that former Vice President Dan Quayle comes across as the hero here!

Very snarky covering of the highlights of the new Bob Woodward book. Great stuff on Speaker Pelosi’s reactions.

View of the new Bob Woodward book concerning the military view of Trump’s state of mind. The right wing goes absolutely bananas over the actions of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Blogger provides more detail on why General Milley felt it necessary to calm China down about the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

Beijing appears to have been alarmed that Trump might do something crazy to China as a way of holding on to power.

Yeah, I very much disagree with Senator Rubio and agree with General Milley that reaching out to the Chinese was a very smart and sensible thing to do.

Woo hoo! Yes! Yes! Love it! Preach it, sister! A woman discusses the possibility of serious consequences if you catch Covid while vaccinated. She demonstrats that the odds are quite low.

"George W. Bush condemns 'violent extremists,' Trump pushes back"

What does it say about Trump that every time he hears condemnations of hatred and extremism, he instinctively assumes he's the target?

Good Heavens! There is such as thing as the “right wing miracle cure economy?” And that's driving the whole hydroxycloroquine/ivermectin bubble? Oh, and they’ve now moved on to a new “miracle cure."

Basic lack of understanding from Senator Manchin here:

“It makes no sense to me at all to take billions of dollars and pay utilities for what they’re going to do as the market transitions.”

The answer is that we want them to do it faster! We want the to do it now! Because we’ve wasted decades of time and we need to speed things up!

Very frustrating that we had a much better nuclear situation when Obama left office then we do now. If only TFG hadn’t been so eager to toss away those gains in return for nothing.

Good! We're getting a downturn in people catching Covid! If we get enough people vaxxed, that downturn could be permanent.

In the meantime, very sad that our ICU beds in some states (not just beds and equipment, but the trained personnel needed to utilize them) are just filled to capacity!

Well, yeah! Unfortunately for Supreme Court Justice Barrett, the "perception" that the Supreme Court is deeply partisan is a well-deserved one as it has been packed with partisan members for many decades now.

Further commentary on that.

Very good question on the speech by Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

The question Amy Coney Barrett should be asking is not whether the public believes the court is partisan. The question is whether the public still believes the rulings of the court to be legitimate.

Right-wingers may scream "Tyranny" to their heart's content, but Biden's push to get everyone vaccinated is highly popular.

If Biden is "focusing anger" on the unvaccinated, it's because their selfish foolishness is a very real threat to the rest of us. In political terms, he's "got the wind at his back."

Heh! The other former and living Republican president, the younger George Bush, has apparently struck a nerve by comparing 9/11 to 1/6.

Disgraced fmr president George W Bush is using the 9/11 memorial to say Trump voters are the same as the radical jihadists who attacked 20 years ago

ABC News:

The scale of the federal government's response to 9/11 matched the scale of tragedy it caused.

Not if you count the invasions of Iraq and Afghnistan as part of the "response to 9/11." If you do, then the response vastly exceeded the provocation by many orders of magnitude!

There are a number of times when capitalism and good government are in sync. This appears to be one of those times. Corporation are fully on board with vaccine mandates because they recognize how positive they are while they can just say "We're just doing what the government tells us to do." 

Former Vice President Mike Pence engages in revisionist history:

"We got governors across the country what they need, when they needed it..."

Nope. Sorry. Wrong answer. I paid close attention to supply issues where the federal government was supposed to supply states because that's something our government used to do uniquely well. Under Trump, the effort to supply states was a complete and utter cluster$%#@!!! Pemce himself was pretty much invisible most of the time.

It's difficult to see what the point of this show is. The woman being interviewed, and obviously any Trump supporter who views this, immediately dismisses any contrary information as coming from the "Deep State." Anyone who skeptically examines their news and who doesn't believe that, already knows that most Trump voters are simply unreachable. So who is this show trying to inform or convince?

Woo hoo! Harvard divests from fossil fuels! This is a significant market signal. It means get out of fossil fuels while you can!

Another way in which fascists are on the march. Also, my essay on how their propaganda campaign is working.

Bwah-hah-hah! Sarah Palin refers to herself as a “real feminist!” Yes, she is a woman, but that’s pretty much all that she has in common with feminists.

Interesting piece on Robert E. Lee. Like many of his contemporaries, he wrote a tremendous number of journals, diaries, letters, etc. Unlike his contemporaries, his family has kept most of his writings under wraps. They’ve also hidden recollections and interactions with his immediate family members. Blogger also has interesting critiques of Lee as a general.