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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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

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Video - first part of Conference on US Military Bases in Foreign Countries.

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Treatment of Puerto Rico and 250th day of Trump Presidency

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Horsham Air Base Aug 2017

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Anti-Drone Protest May '17

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May Day celebration at Clark Park

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March for Science

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Rally on 41st day of Trump Presidency.

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Protest held on 15th day of Trump presidency

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Women's March in Philadelphia during first week of Trump Administration.

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March held a few days before President Trump's inauguration

Info, articles, etc.

In the same week that Jacob Blake was shot several times at point-blank range and left paralyzed, apparently (from what I could see in the short film clip) for turning his back on a police officer during a disagreement, this driver argues with an officer for a full minute and 20 seconds, making explicit threats, and gee. Surprise, surprise! This driver leaves the scene in perfectly fine shape!

Here's a piece that explains the whole issue with what the DNI is supposed to be providing to Congress via an in-person briefing as well as a written briefing. I've reproduced a paragraph that's usually just expressed as "He provided no evidence to back up his claim." Thought it would be interesting to see his complete statement. Notice how completely uninformative it is.

The President (of course) would like to get the Nobel Peace Prize for the UAE-Israel peace deal. But is the deal really about peace? Israel and the UAE have never had any military clashes.

$%#@!!! Yeah, I'm firmly on the side of the FDA official and science here!

Mary Trump, the President's niece, was not at all impressed by the Republican National Convention. She didn't think much of Ivanka or Don Jr. either.

Presidential rhetoric is giving permission to right-wing vigilantes to start shooting.

This reminds me that a few weeks ago, someone sketched out a hypothetical situation, “Suppose President Hillary Clinton had tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths on her hands...“ Well, right off the bat, this wasn't credible. There was nothing inevitable about the US suffering tens of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus! With a President Clinton, we'd probably be like countries in Europe are today, with a much lower death rate!

Unfortunately, over half a year into the coronavirus crisis, we're still flying blind on getting good data on what the situation is.

No, Democratic presidents seeking a second term will not copy what the President is doing now! Why not? Because it's %$#@ing illegal!!! You should not be using the resources of being an incumbent to run for reelection!

Supposedly, allegedly, in theory, cutting off in-person intelligence briefings is supposed to reduce leaks. No evidence has been provided to show that anything has been leaked.

More on that.

US troop drawdown in Iraq seems voluntary, but is the result of the President's blundering.

This is concerning! New CDC guidelines say contact-tracing isn't necessary. That's sure to increase cases!

Very sorry to hear about the death of Chadwick Boseman! I was only aware of his role as Black Panther. He was very good in that.

Yeah, that was a really serious, burning question that the Republican Party should have been answering over the past four days, what's up with all the chaos and disorder and the out-of-control pandemic and the dissatisfaction over police brutality? How is a second term of Trump going to fix all that? They never came close to an answer.

A look at the President's pretty much accomplishment-free foreign policy.

Monitoring sewage can be our friend. Seems COVID-19 shows up very quickly in sewage. Close monitoring of it enable the University of Arizona to shut down their campus very quickly and to prevent a mass outbreak there.

Yeah, the current President talked a lot about violence without ever mentioning why that violence exists. As TPM points out, he talked about violence in Kenosha without ever mentioning the cause of that violence, that is, what was done to Jacob Blake.

Almost 6k people have tried to climb Mt. Everest since 2006, the success rate of reaching the peak has grown from 1/3rd to 2/3rds, but the death rate remains about 1%.

Yeah, I think Kellyanne Conway completely and totally fails to grasp what being a public official is all about. If there's violence in Democratic-run states, that doesn't mean the president is off the hook.

A bit over 20 minutes, an excellent speech by Senator Harris! Let's hope the President sees it and that it makes him really mad!

So between the murder of George Floyd of Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake Jr. of Milwaukee, what has the Trump Administration done to reduce police killings of Black men? Listening to Vice-President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short, it seems they’ve pretty much sat around twiddling their thumbs. I didn’t hear of any substantive policies or actions that they either have done or that they plan to do.

From Twitter:

WHY is MSNBC and CNN covering the entire Republican Convention and Fox News is only covering a limited part of it? Who is not watching?

Good question. See Daily Kos.

Trump Approval DROPS After 2 Days of the Republican Nationalist Convention

A very snarky, highly critical view of the Republican convention's fourth night.

We have a very real and serious problem with the coronavirus, but we have a really serious problem with TV news, which gives the President credit that he doesn’t deserve and which downplays the really serious news. The way the map is color-coded here is really stupid and makes the situation look far better than it actually is.

Belarus, the battle of regular folks vs the state and how they “hot-wired” the internet. A network that had a few hundred thousand subscribers saw its subscriptions shoot up to 2 million.

Mike Huckabee thinks he’s found hypocrisy.

We were! We thought the burning and looting were understandable reactions to murder, but we didn’t think they were good things!

Looking at the Kenosha vigilante.

A close look at his social media accounts and background show a teenager obsessed with law enforcement who also identified as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and “Blue Lives Matter,” a pro–law enforcement movement that evolved in response to Black Lives Matter.

Heh!

From the Department of You Cannot Make This Up Dept:
Ari Melber: "Matt, why have so many people close to Donald Trump been indicted?
Matt Schlapp: "The real question is why *haven't* any people around Obama and Biden been?"

Gee, I don't know. Could that be because Clinton and Obama didn't surround themselves with criminals? Could it be because Trump's got a lot of "friends in low places?"

NY Times journalist describes the First Lady’s “I really don’t care” jacket as a “fashion faux pas.” No, "faux pas" is really not a term that I'd use to describe this. "Horrendous failure of judgment informed by a complete lack of humanity" would be more like the description I'd use.

NY Times has declared Pompeo the worst Secretary of State ever. Hmm, yeah. I'd agree with that!

President appears to have adopted a new fantasy, that there was unity and harmony until the coronavirus.

Larry Kudlow is apparently describing the economy of the future because he's describing the present coronavirus pandemic as though it was in the past. No, we have not recovered from this at all!

*Sigh!* So is this what the President meant by "winning?"

China intends to spend $400 billion in Iran over the next 25 years. Y’know, I’m old enough to remember a time when Iran was a strong ally of the US in the Persian Gulf that was keeping all the smaller powers there in line for us. Now Iran is a forward base for China.

Uuh...whut?!?! Joe Biden wants to launch a Chinese-type Cultural Revolution?!?!?! Erm...uh, yeah. Okay.

Lots of great snark here on Republican Convention.

Wow! Kimberly Guilfoyle forgot to wear her Ilsa, Nazi She-Wolf of the SS costume! It would have fit her rhetoric so much better!

The First Lady a "secret weapon" against Democrats? Erm yeah, I think the very best she can possibly hope for is to not bungle her speech. Doing better than adequate is in wishful-thinking territory.

Sounds like the First Lady's speech went about as well as it could have. She didn't make any major screw-ups, though "One of the main components of her campaign is tackling cyberbullying ― something her husband does almost daily on Twitter."

The NY Times does its level best to humanize the Trump family via the First Lady, but it requires that we suspend disbelief and to think of Melania as exercising any meaningful influence along the lines of what she presented in her speech last night.

Jerry Falwall Jr. resigns from running Libery Uiversity after repeatedly watching his wife doing it wih young men.

And yeah, the liberal perspective is that the fraud, hypocrisy and the misuse of donated cash are all way worse than the sex.

The Postmaster General - a useless, worthless, criminal piece of $%#@!!!!/

Again, the thing to note about this is that numbers and statistics and "black on black crime" are all completely beside the point. A horrible, horrible crime has occurred! That's the point!

So wearing a mask and encouraging others to do the same is an "elite" activity, eh? Y'know, Vietnam, which is both not all that wealthy and right next to China, had up until late July, zero deaths from COVID-19. Since then (as of 24 Aug) they've had a bit over 1k cases and 27 deaths.

Wow! Campaign advice for the President from the NY Times! Liberals should not consider the Times to be their friend!

Very interesting but not at all surprising. People in Finland were simply given a basic income to see if they'd just sit around the house all day or would work. Most of them chose to work. One interesting effect was that a lot of jobs that don't pay very much were filled because people's basic needs were already being fulfilled.

Yeah, the statement made by the Press Secretary is really below the standard of decency we should expect from someone in that position. She included the racist term "the China Virus."

This is why I really don't have much use for Dr. Birx. Voting can be arranged so that it's a quick, easy, in and out, but very frequently, it isn't and her Starbucks example becomes irrelevant and beside the point.

California is suffering from a really serious self-inflicted wound. They depend on prison labor to fight wildfires and now, when new fires have broken out, most of that labor was released due to the pandemic!

That “Build The Wall” fund that Bannon scammed people with? Yeah, the President knew all about it.

Lara (Wife of Second Son Eric) Trump is terribly distressed by the Democrats’ “dark, dismal and really depressing vision of America” under her father-in-law’s tenure and the Trump family is determined to present a brighter, happier place.

[Rose Garden replaced by Melania’s design] Gahh!!! All the color! All the beauty! Gone!!!

Update (9 Sep): The job that was done on the Rose Garden was so hasty and shitty and rushed, it was obvious during the First Lady's speech that it was poorly done and already needs extensive re-work.

Demonstration in support of our local Post Office in Elkins Park, PA.

With "[a]t least six Republican congressional candidates embrace or sympathize with QAnon," when does "I know nothing" about QAnon become dereliction of duty?

There are 500 US troops in Syria. Why? The President admits they are there to commit the war crime of stealing Syria's natural resources.

It should concern conservatives that far too many of their leaders see them as "marks" that are ripe for exploitation.

The President has claimed that delivering ballots to drop boxes can be manipulated to produce fraudulent outcomes. Proof of any sort was not offered.

Excellent news! Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny was poisoned two nights ago and is now on his way from Russia to Germany. Best wishes for his recovery!

As I've said many times, I've been extremely unimpressed by the President's Iran policy. This overselling of the aerial assassination of Iran's General Soleimani. doesn't help matters.

Further failure of Iran policy. This last step was predicted to be a failure and it was.

A rundown on the (alleged) "cost-cutting" measures that are getting in the way of an accurate vote count on Election Day.

Sarah Cooper puts out another great piece! She then follows up in her own voice.

Last month, the Department of HHS turned over its COVID-19 data tracking to a private company. The Trump Administration is not all on the same page yet, but some of them appear to be admitting that the system was moved over far too rapidly and without the appropriate planning.

Ah, okay. The shift of COVID data from HHS back to the CDC is happening because it's being demanded by the Attorneys General of 22 states!

Wow. Gee. Surprise, surprise. Truly amazing that switching over from reporting coronavirus results from the CDC to the HHS would be a complete and utter cluster$%#@. Huh. Amazing how that works!

So the President wants to be sure the election is free and fair. Okay, but his hand-picked Postmaster General has been very busy making it unfair for Democrats who want to vote safely! What is he doing in terms of programs to make it fair for both sides? Nothing, as far as I can tell.

The President's rhetoric proved and reinforced the former president's message. He was called a menace to America's democratic instittions. His response:

"[Obama] SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOT CAUGHT!"

So Trump's response was to lie and to gin up a fake scandal.

Was the UAE agreement all about just a peace deal?

The secretary of defense, Mark Esper, was formerly the vice president of the F-35 sustainment program at Lockheed Martin. One F-35 retails for roughly $100 million.

The President complains of something he terms as "cancel culture," a concept that he himself practices with great enthusiasm. As usual, it's "Do as I say, not as I do."

$%#@&%!!!! So Postmaster General DeJoy has no intention of fixing the enormous damage he's caused!

VP Pence seems pretty confident about his upcoming debate with Senator Harris. I'm still confident she's gonna make him cry.

During his rally speech, the current VP says the Trump Administration needs four more years to "drain the swamp." Correction: They need need four more years to begin to get around to considering maybe possibly doing something about that overflowing swamp that's actually been growing on their watch!

The fact that Gaza has been under siege (nothing can come in or go out without Israeli permission) for well over a decade means that Israel can cut off necessities like electricity at will.

The President tries to blame the Governor of New York for a bad response to the pandemic. Problem is, no one outside of the White House, some sycophant governors and various Trumpists agreed that it was the responsibility of states to do that. The President very badly failed to see to it that the federal government did what it needed to do.

Stone Mountain in Georgia is the site of a really big Confederate monument and was the site of a really big confrontation. The anti-Confederates won!

Erm, I don't think the H1N1 Swine Flu is even slightly comparable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The two are not even in the same universe in terms of seriousness.

Makes complete sense. Trump Administration believes in what we call "crony capitalism." A sort-of, more or less classic capitalism, but one that relies heavily on personal relationships. This fellow was a personal buddy of the President so that makes him perfectly qualified to look for a cure for the pandemic.

The DNC was an unqualified success! Not only was it difficult to break away from (which is good as the party wants people to see as much as possible of their convention without networks interrupting), but viewership was up!. 26 million for the first night in 2016 and 28.9 million this time!

This is one thing I think conventions should keep from the coronavirus time, doing the convention roll call presentations from the states as opposed to from a convention hall. much better and less boring visually!

This blogger tends to carry on a lot about how all of the nation's newspapers in 1998 called for the President's resignation over his not telling the truth during a deposition over Monica Lewinsky. But he's right to do this as those same papers are quiet as can be over the current President's actions, which are worse by many orders of magnitude!

Eva Longoria was the hostess of last night's DNC Convention. Yeah, I know her mostly from Desperate Housewives, but I've seen her in celebrity news on and off, always about something positive. Republicans are jealous because they have to make do with C-List celebrities like Ted Nugent and Scott Baio.

Democratic Convention opens up. First night ends with really devastating speech by former First Lady Michelle Obama  (further coverage and commentary here). President responds. He calls the speech "divisive." I just had to shake my head. This is far beyond parody! Trump is probably the most divisive president since at least the 1860s!

What would Biden be campaigning on without the pandemic? I agree, there are plenty of issues to campaign on!

President is asked repeatedly, if the election is going to be a “disaster,” what is he going to do to try and fix the problem? His response is to keeps changing the subject.

Huh! So the most die-hard, super-supporters of the President pilots boats! Just think of all of the reporters going to dingy diners in mid-size cities to be close to "the people" when they could have been going to yachts instead!

A story about copyrights and living creatures. A fellow took a tardigrade (They can range from 0.05 millimeters to 1.2 mm (0.002 to 0.05 inches)) and blew it to be big enough to take part in a computer game. Several writers also featured a big tardigrade in their shows. Good news is that you can't copyright a living creature's abilities! Nobody made their tardigrade unique enough to be copyrightable.

This is a real problem. The NY Times comments on the 2016 presidential campaign, but they were very much a part of that story! By treating Clinton's emails as a story roughly comparable to Watergate/Iran-Contra, they primed and prepped the American public to be very sensitive to any new chapters in that very minuscule "story," so Comey's announcement had a far more significant impact than it should have.

The post features a "re-tweet," a statement that the President wholeheartedly endorses.

*Sigh,* remember back in the old days (prior to 2017) when a president would represent and support all of the American people? Good times!

Senate Majority Leader McConnell is a full and complete partner and co-owner of the Post Office mess.

What are these “very impressive” numbers? Nearly 50k new infections on Saturday and over 169k fatalities since February. No, I’m not at all clear on what the President finds “impressive” about all that.

There was a lot of food insecurity before the coronavirus crisis began this year. It’s a lot worse now.

There’s been some aid to farmers from the states, but basically, they’ve just really cut back production. Vegetables are selling pretty well.

So for Mike Huckabee, religion basically comes down to reproductive choice. A "good" follower of Roman Catholicsm will deny choice to women. Matt Schlapp completely loses all credibility when he says

But seriously, for these two, the "free" exercise of their religion requires them to force other people (women) to have children that they don't want!
"Freedom for me, but not for thee!"

The blogger warned us about this. Vote in the UN Security Council on Iran sanctions. 13 to 2, the US was on the losing team with only the Dominican Republic voting with us.

Adds some details on the failure of Iran policy. What's especially sad is Secretary of State Pompeo's "explanation" for why US policy was such a complete crash & burn failure.

The Trump campaign had weeks to prepare for Senator Harris or another black woman to be chosen as the Democratic VP candidate. Their problem is that a direct attack on a Black woman will energize a really core Democratic constituency, but will also energize the racist right-wingers in the GOP.

$%#@ rasm frasm $#@% ABC News is misinforming people on COVID-19 and immunity.

Good! the president has very frequently claimed, without evidence, that mail-n voting is filled with fraud. The judge says to put up or shut up!

Rachel Maddow has been reporting on Belarus over the last few nights. Olya Oliken adds what she can to the story.

Wasn’t aware that the Secretary of State had said anything abut Belarus. Problem is, it’s really difficult for the US to be taken seriously when the Secretary says: “...we were incredibly troubled by the election and deeply disappointed that it wasn't more free and more fair." Well, when the President is blatantly messing with the USPS in order to bend the US election his way, it’s rather difficult for any foreign countries to see the US leadership as being honestly concerned with democracy.

The blogger draws the connection between the endless and fruitless Benghazi investigations and the endless and fruitless investigation into Biden's actions in Ukraine. They were and are both designed to serve electoral purposes.

What’s happening with Post Office should be at the very top of every news cast, every paper, etc.

Is this another confession that the Postal system is being manipulated to serve the incumbent? Sure sounds like it to me!

Human-made beds go back at least 200k years.

Children are not soldiers and school is not any sort of battle. Governor DeSantis is being way too dramatic! No, sending kids into a place where they’re likely to catch a deadly diseases for which there’s no vaccine, no cure and is deadly in far too many cases is not “akin” to Navy SEALS carrying out a military mission!

As their first official Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate Act, Biden and Harris call for a national mask mandate!

Wow!

I'd be fascinated to know how Republican Senators and Representatives feel about this. Is small-d democracy important to them or do they favor electoral victory at any cost?

Newsweek should be ashamed of itself for printing Birther crap! They knew damn well that Birtherism is racist. If they didn't they are far too ignorant and naive to be reporting news! I red Newsweek as a teenager. Sad to see how it's declined.

And, of course, the President cites this piece to suggest Harris is ineligible to be the Vice-President.

Good Newsweek has apologized for its racist op-ed on Senator Harris and her eligibility to be VP.
This is grimly hilarious: “We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted and weaponized.”
Good Heavens! What did they think would happen?!?!?!

Yeah, this is just absolutely racist as $%#@!!! President might as well just use the N-word freely.

"Donald Trump Gives Away The Game: No Funds For USPS Means No Mail-In Voting"

"Therefore they don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting so therefore they can't do it I guess."

And why won't Democrats have the money to conduct a fair and safe election? Because the President is standing in the way! Reminds me of what Mary Trump says, that when her uncle throws up his hands and says "It is what it is," that just means HE doesn't want to fix the problem!

Despite being outspent six to one, Representative Ilhan Omar crushes primary opponent 57% to 39%! This is very good news for progressive Democrats!

One of the main functions of the Vice-President is to attack opponents in ways that would compromise the president/presidential candidate. Harris demonstrates she's up to the job!

Cool! Hallmark Channel enters the 21st Century! Thought they would've started featuring same-sex weddings a while ago!

Kellyanne Conway delivers a heartfelt talk about crime, but suggests that people's attention is mis-focused on the President. But for Homeland Security to send unidentified troops to Portland OR and to start arresting people and tossing them into unmarked vans did far more harm than good for Portland. They escalated the violence in the city rather than calmed it down.

Last month, members of the Trump Administration was using foest fire terminology, talking about "embers" and "flare-ups," suggesting that the pandemic was rapidly disappearing and that it was time to get back to normal. Nope. Not even close. In terms of forest fires, the pandemic is still burning hundreds of acres at a time. We are nowhere close to "coming down the other side of the mountain."

Aww! Agents of Shield is ending! Good show!

"Will Trump try to target voter access through an executive order?"

...at a White House press briefing early last week, a reporter asked Trump whether he'd consider issuing an executive order in the hopes of derailing postal balloting. "Well, I have the right to do it," the Republican responded. "We haven't gotten there yet, but we'll see what happens."

Erm, no. The President has no such "right" at all!

Absolutely fascinating that Brian Kilmeade of Fox News thinks that people in positions of authority and people like Malcolm X were having polite discussions about Civil Rights and that people on the left today are more radical and uncompromising than they were during the 60s!

Biden has chose Senator Harris as his running mate! Cool! She was my first choice for president!

Heh! Trump campaign adviser Katrina

This is exactly what we want left-wing Democrats to believe!

FB friend of mine posted this today and wondered why Don Jrs. kids all look so glum and depressed. I recalled that he dumped his wife just a few months ago for that former Victoria's Secret underwear model. Wouldn't be surprised if all three of the kids were seeing therapists.

Update (24 Aug ): Picture of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the woman Don Jr. dumped his wife for.

Got a piece of right-wing mail today that had a short list of the "great accomplishments" of our current President. Number one on the list was our greatly improved relations with North Korea. This piece from June shows...ehhh...not so much! Basically, NK doesn't feel anything has been accomplished and that Trump has been lying to them. My own impression is that he gave up a lot for nothing in return. Clearly, he has nothing to brag about here.