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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Drone Free Horsham

Protests are held last Saturday of each month, 12:00noon to 2:00pm

North corner of Horsham Air Base
Intersection of Easton Road & W. County Line Road

Facebook event page

YouTube - Living Under Drones

Protests held on Apr13, Jun13, Jul13, Apr14, May14, Jun14, Apr15, Jul15, May16, Jun16, May17, Aug17, Apr18, Jul18

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Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report

(Local copy, the redacted summary)

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Midsection archive

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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

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A Black Lives Matter protest.

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Anti-Drone Protest outside Horsham Air Base.

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Social Forum - Philadelphia 2015

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Anti-Drone Protest at Horsham Air Base.

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Climate March NYC / Comments from reporter Naomi Klein. / The significance of the march

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Rally for Michael Brown

Rally for Gaza

Gay Pride Parade - Vets For Peace and FUMCOG contingents

May Day 2014

Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Corbett arranges to meet with students of one of the schools that he's been defunding, but cancels when students, parents and teachers make it clear that they were goingto protest his visit. We all assembled anyway.

Anti-drones protest

Syria strike protest

Protest at Horsham Air Base about proposed Drone Command Center

Last (?) Protest on behalf of Pfc. Bradley Manning

The 2013 Philly Gay Pride Parade

Info, articles, etc.

Right-wingers furious.

Any appearance that Speaker Pelosi doesn't know what she's doing is all appearance.

"FAA Shuts LaGuardia Due To Trump Shutdown"
"Rally to end the shutdown" took place in Philadelphia and many other cities.

Jared "Kushner's security clearance was rejected by security specialists—until they were overruled"

See, here's the problem. Immediately after World War II and for a substantial period afterwards, the US reigned supreme and was unchallengeable. That's no longer the case. Russia is warning the US not to try and overthrow the government of Venezuela. Besides which, it's just as wrong for the US to change the government of Venezuela by force as it was for Russia to change ours by stealth and guile. It's now no longer the case that the US can simply do as it pleases. Other countries "have a dog in that fight" and will no longer watch helplessly as the US does what it wishes.

Federal workers stage a silent vigil Senate office building.
The President owns the shutdown says Fox Business News.
Commerce Secretary shrugs shoulders and wonders why federal workers can't just get a bank loan.
"Colorado Senator Is Tired Of Your Crap" Senator who doesn't usually make speeches goes off on Republican Party.
Republican Senator blames Senate Majority Leader McConnell for continued shutdown.

"Trump: Pelosi Cancelling State Of The Union Is 'A Great Blotch' On The Country"
The President suggests that Pelosi cancelled the SOTU because she "doesn’t want to hear the truth." But the SOTU can be delivered from anywhere. It can be delivered in writing, from the Sean Hannity Show, the Rose Garden, etc.

A short while ago, a group of three people, Senate Majority Leader Mitchell, VP Pence and Jared Kushner, tried to come up with a solution to the shutdown. Democrats rejected their ideas out of hand. Now, the Trump Administration is trying to do in foreign policy what it did in domestic policy, to have a conference where only friendly participants are invited. It's working about as well as the previous proposed all-Republican working group did.

Lara Trump (Second son Eric's wife) says: "the president is trying every single day to come up with a good solution here"
Problem is, the "solution" the President has come up with is supported by only about four out of 10 voters. 60% of us consider a wall to be a really stupid waste of money. And like a pirate who has taken hostages, he's bypassing democratic procedures.
Like Ann Coulter, who also feels hey, going without a paycheck or two is a little bit of an inconvenience, Lara is a person who's been wealthy for, if not her entire life, then at least for several decades and has absolutely no conception of what it's like for people of modest income to miss a paycheck.

Were voters impressed with Lara Trump's speech? Hah! Not in the slightest.

Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, puts herself on the correct side of the issue by visiting the place where furloughed federal workers are being fed. No one on the Republican side showed anywhere near as much common sense. Wher was Mitch? Trying to pull a bait-and-switch.

The "Both Sides" framing of the shutdown is very helpful to the hostage-taking President. No one else is helped by it. This is one of those things that appears to be neutral, but only the side that's plainly in the wrong is helped by it.

An accounting of all of the unarned protesters from Gaza killed by Israel sniper fire since March.

The blogger watches all the video on the confrontation involving Native American activist and elder Nathan Phillips and a crowd of high school students from Covington, Kentucky. He concludes that the detailed picture drawn from all of the videos is a bit different from the picture drawn by the initial viral video, but not by all that much. Mostly, the whole incident shows a complete failure of chaperoning.

The behavior of the students before the confrontation shows them to be just a vicious set of thugs.

Sometimes, when I see someone in the media, I wonder a bit as to their ethnicity. I never worry too much about it. The "cosplay socialist" here gets all deep and serious about Senator Kamala Harris, who has just declared she's running for President. Is she an African-American? Ehh, close enough. I think when people meet her they assume she's black, so I just don't see much of a point in getting all specific about exactly what her ancestry is.

Sorry, I know that Representative Tulsi Gabbard gets lots of love from fellow progressives, but the blogger is right. Gabbard is a Joe Lieberman-style Fox News Democrat with a bad case of "Both-sides-ism."

"Trump, Pence Honor MLK Day With Two-Minute Visit To Memorial"
Good to see this. Seems they're beginning to understand the political world consists of more than just Republicans.

Situation for furloughed federal workers on 30th day of shutdown. Not good. Not good at all.

Fox News person Tomi Lahren makes a really stupid comment about how "useless" marches and rallies are. Twitter user responds "I would really like to know how you, a woman, think you got the right to work and vote."
My own experience was that the marches against the Iraq War obviously didn't prevent the war, but by making it clear that the war didn't have all that much support, Bush never tried to start up a draft. That crippled the ability of the US to expand the war and ultimately meant that US had to pull out.

The older fossils of the GOP were absolutely thrilled to get the chance, they thought, to wag their fingers at AOC (Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez) and to show her for the naive little, out-of-her-depth woman she was.
Oops! You see, when people spend lots of time with wealthy campaign donors, they forget that a 40% tax rate for high earners is not an oppressive and tyrannical burden. To people who make less than $100k a year, a 50% upper tax rate is a good opening bid and they're open to higher rates.

The NY Times very seriously messed up during the 2016 election. Now, after the midterms and before the 2020 campaign gets started in earnest, would be an excellent time for a thorough house-cleaning! The Ombudsman who was fired, Liz Spayd, is owed a BIG apology and full restitution as she was 100% correct! The fellow who got her fired needs to be fired himself.

Awwww! My faith in humanity is restored! "Anonymous Donor Gifts $500,000 To Loan Company To Help Unpaid Federal Workers During Government Shutdown"

For some odd reason, NY Times thinks Democrats are losing message war on shutdown. Erm, Democrats are way ahead in the polls! The shutdown is a major loser with the public!

Oh, okay. So the Senate Majority Leader hasn't been just siting around twiddling his thumbs this whole time. Stiil, not sure if talks between "VP Pence, Senate Maj. Leader McConnell and Jared Kushner"" are likely to have been all that prodctive as Democrats were left out.

I was taking a nap when the President's Major Announcement came on. Sounds as though I didn't miss much. Sounds like it was a lose-lose proposition. It was way too weak to satisfy Democrats, but strong enough to aggravate supporters.

President's proposal is completely DOA.

Obviously VP Pence sees himself as a leader of the Republican Party. He has no use for being a leader of the United States. The Second Lady is now teaching at a school that bans LGBTQ students. His interview with an obviously-worshipful interviewer who looks at him with dreamy eyes allows him to sidestep any awkward, that is, real questions.

Two years ago, in the President's Inaugural Address, he talked a lot about urban poverty. Has he made any progress on that? Does he appear to have any sort of plan for tackling that? Gun violence was also a big topic of his. How's that been going? Etc.

Gotta love it! Rush Limbaugh is convinced that all the President needs to do is to "hang in there!" Meanwhile "White non-college Americans move away from Trump during shutdown" Those are Trump's base voters. He loses them, he's got nothing.

Unfortunately, Ann Coulter's not any brighter than the President is.
Coulter: "Oh, gosh, they’ll have to wait a few months before they know fully well they’re going to be paid in full.”
Obviously, Coulter doesn't have the vaguest clue of what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck and to then be told you'll have to get by on nothing for an indefinite period of time.

President's SOTU speech is threatened by the Speaker of the House. He takes revenge by revealing upcoming Congressional trip to Brussels, Belgium and then to Afghanistan. The purposes were to assure NATO allies that the US was still reliable and to get briefings on the situation in the country where we're drawing down our presence there. .

One of the excuses used to deny Speaker Pelosi and other Congresspeople a military flight overseas was that the shutdown required sacrifice by everyone. D'oh! The First Lady used a military flight to travel to Mar-a-Lago, a plainly frivolous use of military assets.

The same White House economist who claimed federal workers were doing just fine as they were getting a "free vacation" (without any  idea as to when the "vacation" would end) suddenly realizes what economist Paul Krugman says, "This was a pretty obvious thing to miss."

Previous White House estimates of the impact did not fully take into account the effect on people who work for private companies that contract with the government to provide services, Hassett said.

Well into the shutdown, President begins to realize he's losing the political battle.

"Nancy Pelosi uninvites Trump from the State of the Union until the shutdown is over"
Oooh! "Sick burn" as they say! Speaker Pelosi actually gives solid reasons as to why delivering the SOTU during a shutdown is a bad idea from a security standpoint, but yeah, this means the President can't use the SOTU as a platform from which to criticize Democrats.

17% of the public is willing to compromise on the Wall, 51% say no wall, no way, The remainder are the Bush Dead-Enders, who became the Tea Party and who voted for the President. For Democrats to budge on the issue would be to reward piracy, terrorism and blackmail.

Whuuh?!?!?! Great news for labor! Really great news! And Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch voted for it!!! "truckers (!) classified as contractors can sue exploitative employers in federal court (!!!!!)"

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) criticizes the CBS News campaign reporting team.and Josh Kraushaar, the politics editor at the National Journal, says she's a "media scold" just like the President.
Ehh, not quite. AOC's criticisms are precise and focused. There's a real point to what she's saying. Trump's criticism that the news often reports what he terms "Fake News" just means that, for whatever reason, he doesn't like a story. He'll call a story "Fake News" if the story is simply critical of him.

"McConnell blocks second bill aimed at reopening the government"
The shutdown has two owners now, the President and the Senate Majority Leader.

Oh, and estimates for damage caused by government shutdown rise.

"Internet Is Unimpressed With Senator Lindsey Graham's Debut As Judiciary Chair"
With treasonous activities by the President and people trying to decide whether he's a knowing co-conspirator versus what Vladimir Lenin refers to as a "useful idiot," of course the main question on Senator Lindsey Graham's mind is the Strzok/Page affair! Because, y'know, priorities!

Ah yes. The President as Master Negotiator! He invites moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats to the White House.

But Democrat after Democrat turned them down, uninterested in giving Trump a chance to berate them, try to embarrass them or try to get them to split with House Democratic leadership...

Yep. Senate Majority Leader McConnell is really, really, deeply concerned about the racism shown by Representative Steven King. Yep, he sure is. The denunciation of King is an interesting phenomenon (Article shows picture of Senator McConnell receiving award in front of a Confederate battle flag). .
Analysis of McConnell as insurgent rather than as regular politician.

"Saying 'today we face another type of disaster,' chef opens kitchen to feed DC-area federal workers"
Oh, good heavens! So very good Chef José Andrés is doing this but it's so very, very sad that his services are needed here in the first place. Andrés, who fed Puerto Ricans and people in Texas and Florida after their disasters, will be feeding federal workers in Washington DC.

A Democratic Senator from Montana points out how little thought and preparation went into planning for the President's shutdown of the government.

"The shutdown is pushing the Transportation Security Administration to the brink"
Shutdown is causing " Long lines, tanking morale, and the potential for serious security lapses."
“'unscheduled absences' has increased significantly in the last week, from 4.6 percent to 7.6 percent."
How long before we get a serious security incident?

Huh! Didn't know this.

...miles of some kind of barrier — barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall — have gone up along the U.S.-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century.

"Trump pretends 'many' Dems secretly agree with him about wall, shutdown"
As this President often does, he cites mysterious anonymous validators who take the initiative to come up to him and say they agree with him.

Representative Steven King of Iowa has been a white supremacist since forever, so why is the Republican Party getting all excitable an punishing him about that now?!?!?! Last night, Rachel Maddow suggested that, hey, maybe the new Republican House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, wants to draw a distinction between himself and the departed Speaker Paul Ryan. Ya never know.

Uh. Mah. Gawd. A sports team gets fast food for a White House victory celebration!
Victorious sports teams usually visit the White House several months after they win. This visit is a week later. more:

Had an online conversation with a conservative who proclaimed (words to the effect of): "Our Glorious Leader has done mighty deeds for the American people!" I pointed out that we're no longer selling soybeans to China. Just for the fun of it, I later looked up the figures. In November 2017, the US sold China 4.7 million tons (The Reuters pieces actually cites "tonnes," so that might refer to metric tons), which comes out to around $12 billion. For China to make up the difference by purchasing from Brazil is a technical change that the Chinese consumer doesn't even notice, but the US is piling up soybeans to the point where "U.S. soybean inventory is poised to reach an estimated 955 million bushels in 2019"

Had the President done absolutely nothing else, witness tamperirig, which he's accused of here, would be an impeachable offense all by itself.

This is deeply concerning. We already knew that the President was seeing Vladimir Putin without aides or translators, but he had a meeting, took the translator's notes and forbade her to say anything about the conversation he than had with the Russian president! Behaving like a Russian asset much?

Good! NY Times reporters notices the same thing a blogger did. Jeanine Pirro asked the President if he was a Russian agent. President delivered many, many words in response. None of those words constituted a straight denial.

Even after the government shutdown ends and it reopens, a lot of workers have been badly hurt and won't quickly recover.

Fox News person turned NBC host Megyn Kelly clearly had some really good lawyers working for her. Even though her gig at NBC was a total flop, she still got a big pay day from them.

More unarned protesters on the Gaza-Israel border being met with lethal force.

Would recommend people give serious second thoughts about supporting Representative Tulsi Gabbard. She's nowhere near as progressive as people have made her out to be.

Turns out the FBI opened up a counter-intelligence investigation of the President right after he fired the FBI Director at the time, James Comey.

Hmm. So the President's "plan to end the shutdown" appears to be what it always was, to await the unconditional surrender of the Democrats. Sure hope he's got a back-up plan 'cause his first plan doesn't appear to be working.

Very happy to see this young woman safely in Canada. Her family says they love her and I believe by their own standards, they do. But she claims she was locked in her room for six months for cutting her hair. So yeah, I take her fears of being returned to her family and then being killed by them very seriously. I wish her luck with her future life and studies!

A structural engineer who's an expert on walls and why walls fail describes why obtaining land and bulldozing property to get a Wall built is hugely premature! Also, drones are getting cheap. It won't be long before coyotes ae using them to ferry people over any wall!

"Ivanka Trump is reportedly under consideration to lead The World Bank"
When Nikki Haley said she was going to resign as the Ambassador to the UN a few months ago, Ivanka's father floated the idea of appointing his daughter to the post. Fortunately, the idea went nowhere as the President recognized that the appointment would constitute nepotism (The current nominee for the role, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, isn't any more experienced than Ivanka is). This latest idea is no better and again, Ivanka is completely unqualified to fill the role.

"Trump Gets Savage Twitter Fact-Check Over 'Wheels Older Than Walls' Claim"
As the Twitter users noted, walls actually preceded wheels by about a thousand years (Though I was interested to learn that potter's wheels preceded wagon wheels by around 300 years). What's really sad is that a blogger pointed out around two years ago that one of the perks of being president is that a president can tell a secretary something like "I need to know more about the conflict between the Turks and the Kurds," the secretary can make some calls and within a few hours, the president can have experts come to the Oval Office and give him the latest and best, most accurate information. The current President obviously never takes advantage of this perk.

"If Trump declares a national emergency, Nancy Pelosi can immediately force a vote on rolling it back"
Very interesting.

Update: The President declared an "emergency" on February 15th. The vote on that resolution will occur on February 26th, so it took a while to write it up.

Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) responds to former Senator Joe Lieberman (with words to the effect of): "Who is this irrelevant old fossil?!?!?" Bonus: She quotes The Watchmen!

US efforts to portray Iran as a threat land like a wet phone book on a desk. Secretary of State Pompeo claims Iran is "occupying" countries in the Mideast. As Iran is in Syria at the invitation of Bashar Assad and had troops in Iraq to fight ISIS, it's far from clear what Pompeo means.

How important is it that Paul Manafort shared polling data with a Russian operative? Very, very important!!! An advertising guy explains.

President says he recognized that his TV speech would be a dud before he gave it. He simply can't take responsiblity for anything.

Heh! "Nearly 100,000 viewers watched Stormy Daniels fold laundry in her underwear while Trump spoke on national TV"

This is very good. Fox News people recognizing the reality that declaring an emergency to build The Wall would be the first step to dictatorship. A host mentions, quite rightly, that Democrats would use the legal precedent to fight global warming.

Excellent thread (a Twitter thread has been collected into a single piece) that shows that political campaign reporting is still following the old ESPN College Football Gameday as a template. This template is very badly outdated and inappropriate. We need to dump it immediately!

President admits motivation for shutdown, thereby owning it lock, stock and barrel

Per source familiar: Schumer: "You’re using people as leverage. why won’t you open the government and stop hurting people?"
POTUS: "Because then you won’t give me what I want.”

"House Democrats move to eliminate Electoral College, limit presidential pardon power"
Yee-hah to this!
"Additionally, Cohen moved to prohibit Trump and any future president from issuing pardons to 'themselves, their families, their administration or campaign staff.'”
I absolutely and 100% endorse that!

The AP gets really stupid with both-sides-erism.
Y'know, I thought Ronald Reagan made it clear that the US government does not deal with hostage-takers. The AP would have Democrats give in to Republicans that are taking the government hostage.

"In new ‘temper tantrum,’ Trump literally walks away from negotiating table"

Good piece on who gets taken seriously and who doesn't. Looks at Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal versus Speaker Paul Ryan when he was about as young.

So it appears that voter fraud (When an individual voter votes multiple times) is still a really terrible thing, but when it's election fraud (When a whole town or district is defrauded), that's apparently okay.

President makes nine-minute TV speech on all major channels about the Wall. Fortunately, he doesn't play the "National Emergency" card. The public was not impresed.

Looks like the White House secured major network TV time for an address that repeats all of the president's arguments on immigration, only, this time, through a TelePrompTer.

Another view:

Short rebuttal to all of this: if it’s as bad as he said, fact he’s done nothing even though Repubs controlled Congress is an impeachable offense

Woo hoo! Very good news! Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling that Exxon must turn over evidence that they knew all about global warming while doing nothing to mitigate it.

As far as BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) for Israel is concerned:

Economic boycotts have been part and parcel of American political striving for liberty from the beginning. I have three words for you: Boston Tea Party. What do you think the American colonists were doing when they tossed 342 chests of British tea into the harbor? They were boycotting, divesting and sanctioning the injustice of King George III.

President doesn't appear to mind being surrounded by "acting" Cabinet members. Of course, fully authorized Cabinet members need to be Senate-confirmed, so that might involve hearings and questions.

People are starting to notice that Senate Majority Leader McConnell is AWOL on the Wall. Even Fox News notices.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders claimed that 4k people who were on the terrorist watch list were stopped at the Southern border. What was the acual number? Six. How reliable is the watch list to begn with? Ehh, not very. What does the term "Special Inerest Aliens" mean? Not as much as Trump Administration people are suggesting.

Update: Kellyanne Conway considers it an understandable error that Sanders confused six with 4,000.

"All Major Networks To Air Trump's Address On The Border Wall"
Not terribly surprised the speech is being aired by all of the major networks, even though the Obama speech of 2014 wasn't. Obama wasn't holding the nation hostage the way the President is today.
It would be nice if the Democratic response would be aired right afterwards as I agree that we're likely to hear all kinds of outrageous lies.

And no, the President has never shown the ability to move the needle of public opinion with any of his speeches.

19 days ago, the President announced a plan to withdraw US troops from Syria in very short order. Generally, liberals support such an idea. Problem is, the President is a very impetuous sort who leaps into decisions without much forethought. His administration has now decided that his Syria plan isn't going to take place after all.

"Mick Mulvaney Cites 'Taking A Concrete Wall Off The Table' When Asked What Trump Is Willing To Offer Democrats"
Uh...no. No, I don't think replacing a concrete wall with steel slats counts as any sort of concession. Nice try, but no.
Is immigration too complicated an issue? Not at all. The Senate voted for S744 in 2013 by 68 to 32. This was a comprehensive reform. The Freedom Caucus was allowed veto power over it and they, of course, hated it. That was the end of that. Take the Bush Dead-Enders/Tea Party/Freedom Caucus out of the picture, problem solved!

"Less than a week into her term as a congresswoman, freshman Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib" is sparking all sorts of controversies! As far as the charge of anti-Semitism goes, it's a good question to whether that's the reason that conservatives oppose her or just one of many.

Interesting comment from Senator Rubio: "And if boycotting #Israel is constitutionally protected, then boycotting companies that boycott #Israel is also constitutionally protected"

Well yes, if individuals and groups are voluntarily boycotting companies that boycott Israel, then sure. If they're being compelled to boycott by law, then no, there's nothing Constitutional about that.

The Deep State/Washington Establishment has now swung into action to assure allies that the President's comments on Syrian withdrawal are non-operative.
Yeah - "The US probably can’t stop the Turks from trying to overthrow the [Kurdish] YPG leftist militia, and certainly not after it withdraws from Syria. If the task were to protect the YPG from Erdogan, the US could never leave."

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recommends an upper tax rate of 70%. That's about double what top earners are paying now, but it's really not an extreme idea at all.

"But they'll vote for a big defense budget" is a very frequent complaint that I see about Democrats. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) throws around the wild, hysterical charge that "We've just begun to rebuild [the military] after the devastation of the Obama years." I have no idea what she's referring to by "devastation," but she's apparently confident that at least some of the audience of ABC News will take the accusation very, very seriously.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says (words to the effect of): "Thousands of terrorists are attempting to come into the US through Mexico!!!" Problem here is the extremely vague, fuzzy definition of "terrorists" and of "attempting to come into the US." Sanders fails to show that the Southern border is a significant entry point for terrorists.

Department of Homeland Security tries to present the situation at the border as extremely menacing, but trips up over the fact that the picture presented to Democratic Congressional leaders in a briefing isn't consistent with data presented on their own website. Their website says that almost 48k pounds of cocaine were seized at the border, but their presentation said that 282k pounds were seized. Numerous other false, fearmongering claims were presented.

"Blue Flu': Hundreds Of Unpaid TSA Officials Call Out Sick At Major Airports"
Yeah, this whole idea of "You need to work, but without pay" idea doesn't seem very workable in the long run. People need to pay bills, they need to buy groceries, etc.

Vice-President Pence came out with an offer and the President promptly undercut him by saying Pence's offer was unacceptable. So yeah, it's a waste of time to talk to anyone but "Ranty Granpa." People wondered why outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan didn't make any attempt to intervene in the negotiations.  Because of what hapened to Pence. ryan knew that he'd get undercut.

President doesn't want to admit he's using the shutdown as leverage, but he makes it absolutely crystal clear he's using the shutdown as leverage. He's not acting like the legitimately-elected head of a Constitutional Democratic Republic, but more like the head of a pirate ship or an organized-crime family.

This last Republican Congress was so cartoonishly, outlandishly evil, Democratic opponents didn't even try to describe to voters how horrible the plans they made actually were. Fortunately, they were also cartoonishly, outlandishly incompetent, so we can thank our lucky stars for that!

Woo hoo! Democrats charge right into the new year by tackling the Voting Rights Act! More likely to get acted on in 2021 than today, but well worth doing!

FB friend asks a good question. Which is more enjoyable? The pictures of a triumphant Speaker Pelosi (She's officially the Speaker now) or that of a sad Representative Trey (Benghazi) Gowdy leaving Congress for the last time? Both such cool pix!

Acting AG Whitaker is clearly a very good courtier. He told the President what the President clearly wantd to hear.

Ah, the wit and wisdom of our President! As the blogger says, like "Tolkien on a golden commode.” Trump comments on Syria:

"Look, we don't want Syria... we're talking about sand and death. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about vast wealth. We're talking about sand and death."

The departing Whitr House Chief of Staff John Kelly makes a point of all the terrible things he prevented or stopped the President from doing. This has now become a very familiar arguments from people who depart the Trump Administration. As the blogger asks, does one give a Parent of the Year award to someone who prevents their kid from burning down the house?

"[Secretary of State] Pompeo Pledges continuing US Cooperation with Israel in Syria v. Iran"
Interesting pledge to make because Iran is in Syria at Bashar Assad's invitation and Assad maintains power because Russia has a base in Syria. So it's a bit more complicated than that the US opposes Iran being in Syria.

The effects of short-staffing, that is, the Trump Shutdown, are being felt in national parks.

So Senator-Elect Romney criticizes the President just prior to taking office. Twitter users hope that he isn't just Senator Flake 2.0, a fellow who talked real big while not voting in a manner that was consistent with his criticisms. Here's hoping that Romney will truly become a member of the Resistance!

Senator Rand Paul is really perturbed that Senator Mitt Romney is criticizing what he feels is Our Glorious Leader. He compares Romney to outgoing Senator Jeff Flake. So do liberals, but from the opposite perspective. We criticized Flake for being really tough with the rhetoric of resistance, but really weak on voting to actually resist. Paul criticizes Flake for resisting in the first place.

Cool stuff! The Ultima Thule flyby was successful! New Horizons got to within 2200 miles of the body. It'll take about two years to download all the data as the data transmits at 2k (Remember when data would come in at the agonizingly slow rate of 56k?) but yeah, it's about a billion miles from Pluto to Ultima Thule. The Pluto flyby was in 2015.

(The President had this tweet in ALL-CAPS) "2019 will be a fantastic year for those not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Sorry Mr. President, but there's no such disease. There are people who consider you incompetent and unfit to hold office, and evil to boot. BTW, we're in the majority!
"Great things are happening for our country!"
They most certainly are! Democrats in the House are preparing subpoenas and planning out strategies for hearings as we speak! With any luck, you'll be impeached and removed from office long before the next New Years rolls around.

Happy New Year! In a mellow and pleasant mood myself, but I completely agree that this blogger has a number of good things to say.

A-to-the-fucking-men. [White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly is an unrepentant liar who sold his shriveled husk of a soul for a seat adjacent to a traitorous sociopath, revealing himself to be the small, petty, mendacious worm he was all along in the process.