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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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.

An acconting of the value of resources poured into Afghanistan up until 2008 and what their status is now.

Bleaugh! We've currently got about 10 million tons of plastic in the oceans!

About all we need to know about this letter is that Representatives Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene have signed onto it. I’m sure Speaker Pelosi examined it for about two seconds before assigning it to a minion.

People that CPAC approves of. Wow! Governors Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem both oversaw absolutely disastrous COVID-19 losses of life. Don Jr. makes sense. Mike Pence should be completely and utterly humiliated. All that bowing and scraping and humiliating himself and nearly getting killed by a mob and he gets rewarded with 1% approval?!?!?! Sad!

February

Now this is how to report! Our people demonstrates the "truth sandwich" method!

Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota tries at first to engage in "whataboutism" and then attempts to pretend that SD took a responsible approach to the Sturgis motorcycle rally over the summer. "Our state peaked earlier than other states." Yeah, which means her management was irresponsible.

"Don Jr. Wants To Back Primary Challenges Against GOPers Who Dissed His Dad"
Of course he does! Loyalty is all that matters!

1898, the first known on-screen kiss!

Very true! Just because Fox News is strongly right-wing, doesn't mean the rest of the media is left-wing. The sides are asymmetrical. Whose fault is it that people don't understand that? Maybe because the media presents all conflicts as though they occur between two symmetrical sides?

The Tea Party thought they had made great progress back in 2010 by demonizing legislative earmarks. Turns out, earmarks are good for party discipline so they're coming back!

Deepthink piece on what the GOP will be running against for the next four years. Opposing Keynesianism appears to be a dead issue.

The House has passed their portion of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill!

Update (6 Mar): Senate passes its part! Bill to be signed next week! The country supported the bill by 83%, but no, not a single Republican vote for either portion!

From the piece:

[Representative] Greene presented herself as a down-to-earth alternative, an average mom / businesswoman / Christian / conservative / patriot who wanted change and didn’t believe in kowtowing to decorum. But nothing says assimilating into the primordial goo of The Swamp quite like bumping elbows with lobbyists and rich donors at the Capitol Hill Club.

Examining the Yemen war and possible solutions. Doesn't look promising.

Here's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Years ago, the other guy put out a photo of himself "working" (he had his hat on, nothing but a phone on his desk), it looked as though he was telling his minions to warm up the helicopter so he could take off for the golf course. Here, with several communication devices on her desk and an aide to assist her, it appears as though the VP is, y'know, actually working!

For a failed, one-term president who didn't accomplish much of anything, it's really peculiar how his party has reacted. Ordinarily, people like Trump would slink off, never to be heard from again.

"'Do Not Book Liars On The Air': Soledad O'Brien Calls Out Lou Dobbs"
Soledad O'Brien speaks much more to media outlets than she does to government, but her advice is very, very good!

An example of what she's talking about.

"Dinesh D'Souza Claims There Was No Insurrection At US Capitol"
D'Souza makes lots of money even though he doesn't need to do any actual research. He just makes shit up and puts t out.

So Don Jr. takes a real "(eff) democracy" point of view. Even if you lose decisively, you should still be able to contest election results.

Trump was required to produce a report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. By his hiding the report, that  appears to indicate awareness of guilt.

At the CPAC conference: "Whuuh? Who is this 'Moses' you speak of? What are these references to 'golden calf' all about?"

CPAC had a gold statue of the last president tha attracted lots of attention as it reminded people of the golden calf that Moses destroyed.

Some concerns about that.

So I'm following the live-blogging of the former president's speech at CPAC. Only real news so far is that Trump does not wish to start up a third party. Oh, and the guy who provoked a riot less than two months earlier "Defines Trumpism As ‘No Riots’"

Detailed explanation of the airstrike last night. If we're not willing to go all-in, then maybe we shouldn't go in at all. That was the problem with the 1970s, post-Vietnam battle over Angola. The CIA had people in that country, but when Russia sent Cuban troops in, the US couldn't respond. It would have been better for all concerned if the US had simply stayed out to begin with.

Very powerful point about how people use God to justify all manner of hurtful, terrible things.

Heh! Pretty cool, this is a "selfie station" where you can take your picture to document that you got your vaccination shot!

Meghan McCain thinks she's caught Press Secretary Jen Psaki in a "gotcha" question, but it's clear McCain really didn't think the situation through.

From the time Saudi Arabia was organized in 1930 until Mohammed Bin Salman took over in 2015, that country had not launched a single war. Under MBS, it's invaded three of its neighbors. Good luck dealing with him!

Pretty amazing that Representative Liz Cheney is turning out to be the great liberal hero of the moment here! Seems that if the Republican Party splits into two, she'll be, if not in charge of the more rational and traditional portion, then at least a very high-ranking person within it.

Whoa!!! This is SO cool! An un-tethered space walk! An astronaut flew for a little while independently of his spacecraft, no physical connection!

Amazing to hear a senator be so economically illiterate. Not only has the economy changed from way back when (Yes, you could buy a house and raise a family on a single income back then), but he completely neglects that higher wages create more consumer demand, which in turn creates and sustains more jobs.

Heh! Good! President Biden appoints three members to the Postal Board of Governors while Postmaster General DeJoy is testifying!

The website Indian Country Today is very interested in the Representative Deb Haaland hearing. I saw a comment yesterday that the Congresspeople who vote against her confirmation will be remembered for decades!

I especially like the third point here. Does a story always have two equally legitimate sides? Does every conflict have sympathetic figures on both sides or do you have conflicts where one side is clearly right and the other side is obviously wrong? There are such things as one-sided conflicts! The media is astonishingly bad at covering such conflicts.

Donald Trump’s accusation of voter fraud robbing him of a second term is completely and utterly without merit, but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas supports that accusation anyway.

President challenges conservatives to identify cuts. Laura Ingraham obliges. Many of her proposed cuts are, of course, completely insane and would make the economy worse.

Well, that's cool! 5,300 sea turtles were rescued after being stunned by the cold snap in Texas. Many have now been returned to the sea!

Captain Carneysha Mendoza of the Capitol Police gives us a heartbreaking description of the 1-6 attack on the Capitol. In the next frame down, we see Senator Cruz texting on his phone because, I dunno, the testimony just wasn’t exciting enough?

Fixing up the Texas energy situation calls for serious policy discussions. Too bad Republicans are now a post-policy party.

Rememberance for half a million dead from COVID-19.

Is Senator Romney’s position on Neera Tanden and rude tweets some brand new standard that was just invented for her?

Rick Grennel and Neera Tanden both put out mean tweets. Grennell's were considerably ruder than Tanden's were. Senator Manchin voted for Grennell but against Tanden.

Hmm, this might be why Senator Manchin opposed Neera Tanden so much.

Senator Manchin continues to hold arbitrary and capricious views. He had zero problems with voting to confirm Jeff Sessions, but has problems with Representative Deb Haaland.

The sheer bad faith here is just amazing. Tweets from Neera Tanden cause senators to call for the smelling salts and fainting couches, but tweets that were much worse from Trump “Ehh, no biggie,”

"Mike Huckabee: Trump Should Open CPAC With 'Y'All Miss Me Yet?'"
Eh, if you're a hard-line right-winger, you miss Trump being the President. not if you're just about anyone else, though.

Woo hoo! Ever since President Nixon (Even that guy!) released all of his tax returns, all of our presidents have followed suit. The Supreme Court has now agreed that Trump had no legitimate reason to hide his.

Update (25 Feb): Trump's taxes handed over to Manhattan prosecutor.

The 1st Benghazi investigation was concluded in early 2014, nothing meaningful was ever added to it, but the GOP insisted on having still more investigations until 2016. Now the GOP is insisting that the 6 January invasion and occupation of the Capitol was, golly gee willikers, a whole month ago, man!

Rather stupid question: "How has about Joe Biden's response to the pandemic been different than Trump's?"

Hasn't shrugged off federal role in vaccine distribution; invoked DPA for PPE; doesn't constantly lie about there being nothing to fear about the virus.

Senator Cruz is allegedly cutting a brisket here. Mm-hmm. Dry gloves, no apron, clothes that are completely clean. Ri-i-ight!

One of the statements here that absolutely baffles me is that around the 2:30 mark, Kudlow complains that Biden wants to abandon the nuclear policy of Trump and wants to revive the 2015 deal that Obama had negotiated. But the policy of Trump achieved absolutely nothing! The Obama deal was a substantive step ahead.

I don't usually have much use for CNN's Dana Bash, but she's 100% correct here. Texas politicians have been banging the drums to not give aid to states that suffer from natural disasters, but are extremely quick to hold out their hands for a freebie when they're in trouble!
It'd be nice if they admited that the disaster they just suffered was their fault! This was the entirely predictable effect of de-regulating their energy market.

Several legislators are interviewed. Texas had a major problem with its electrical grid in 2011, they had some discussions, people filed bills, but the legislature pretty much just went back to sleep and nothing was done.

The death toll from the storm and the breakdown of the grid is 32.

Senator Kennedy whitewashes Limbaugh and paints him as way more decent than he actually was.

As the GOP has apparently decided that "Well, we can't win by appealing to people. Hmm, better try suppressing Democratic voters instead!"

"Fox's Pathetic Guy Benson Spins Texas GOP Disaster Into Biden's Hurricane Katrina"
One of the recurring questions in this conversation is: "Why was the federal government so slow to react?" Unlike Hurricane Katrina, where weather reports and the Louisiana Governor both delivered ample warning that the hurricane was about to hit, no one thought that Texas would suffer the disaster that it did. There couldn't be any preparation because it had been ten years since the last such, much less serious, breakdown of the state's electrical system had occurred and the general assumption was that Texas had fixed the problem. Oops!

Ol' Franklin's right here! Biden and the Democrats are trying to undo everything Trump did! And a damn good thing that is! What Trump did was horrible and it all needs to be undone!

The lights are back on in Texas and are likely to stay that way, but Texans face a number of serious problems, from water pipes that cracked because of the freezing water in them and that are now leaking to power bills from unregulated floating prices. In years past, this was a great deal. Not so much anymore.

Ugh! I knew we were rapidly approaching the half-million mark in coronavirus deaths. We're now there.

Looks like Senator Manchin is anxious to be the next Joe $%#@ing Lieberman!!!
I thought the lesson of 2009 had been learned. Do not make unilateral concessions! You get into a lose-lose situation that way!

On The View, Meghan McCain wonders why we don't treat Speaker Pelosi getting a haircut while she should have been quarantined as equivalent to Senator Cruz running off to Cancun. Well, perhaps because Pelosi wasn't abandoning a situation where, as someone put it, they had to deal with "Food shortages. Unsafe drinking water. Impassable roads. Flooded homes. A humanitarian crisis."

Yeah, I think the drop in Covid cases has a great deal to do with having a president who doesn't deny the problem, doesn't take a "freedom!" attitude towards social distancing and sets a good example by wearing a mask.
Yes, there may be other factors involved.

The new Mars rover, Perseverance, is already producing photos of the Martian landscape.

So it looks as though Texas Senator Ted Cruz is taking a bit of heat for abandoning his state while it's undergoing a full-scale crisis. Good!

Cruz throws his daughters "under the bus" by explaining his abandonment of his state during a power crisis was so the he "planned the holiday for his daughters, 'wanting to be a good dad.'"

Here's the context of Cruz's little vacation.

But hey, Ted Cruz is just a senator. What on earth could a senator have done to mitigate a disaster? Hmm, I wonder...

Tweet from Representative AOC:

We officially raised $1 million for Texas relief at 9:17pm.
Thank you all so much.
🙏🏽 I’m at a loss for words. Always in awe of movement work.
💯 % of this relief is going straight to Texan food assistance, homelessness relief, elder care, and more.

As of 21 February, she raised nearly $5 million.

Unfortunately, delay has been an extremely effective Trump strategy for defeating Congressional oversight.

Wow! Texans should put up with no power in below-zero weather in order to keep federal regulators out? There is no way I would even consider making that sort of sacrifice!

The problem with the Texas power grid isn’t complicated. It’s libertarianism and the ideology of small government. It’s the idea that big government is a problem, when big government is exactly what Texas needs right now. A big government can engage in advanced contingency planning and can anticipate problems and can spend to avoid them.

Good thread. "governing by crisis and spectacle” and “They create a show. They do battle with enemies.” And also: “Made-up enemies are safest. The next best are powerless enemies. That's why Trump picked homeless migrants as enemies.”

Heh! How some Texan "prepprs" and "survivalists" are doing in Texas right now. Hint: Not very well as they were depending on having some sort of electrical power! 

Don Lemon of CNN makes a lot of really good points here. Yeah, Senator Johnson may not be aware that he's a white supremacist, but that doesn't mean he isn't.

Rush Limbaugh dies.

Funeral dirge for Rush Limbaaugh.

And yes - "I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

"Rush Limbaugh sold listeners a false reality — and we’re all still paying for it"

Was Rush Limbaugh “transformative” to media? Sure, but not in a way that anybody should brag about or commemorate.

Yeah, looking at the collapse of the power grid in Texas, I recall many pieces written over the years about "failed states" and how the US, "the world's policeman," should get in there and fix thing up.

Quickie set of points on what's been going on in Texas.

Right-wingers trying desperately to discredit green energy in the wake of the Texas disaster. Right-wingers gleefully show German solar panels covered in snow, as though Germany didn't have other power sources during the winter.

This strikes me as a very good framework within which to interpret the last two decades. Republicans have taken five big gambles, all of which appeared to have been grand successes at the beginning, but all have which ended disastrously and at great expense to the US.

"Varney Blames Bernie Sanders And AOC For Texas Power Outages"
My advice on power generation back during the power outage in Puerto Rico (The power stations were fine, but Hurricane Maria had taken down all the power lines) was that exurban power should be generated by combined packages of wind, solar and battery power. That would provide steady power through pretty much all weather conditions.

Never occurred to me that windmills could freeze (See the note at the bottom of this piece - "Or [Texas] could have planned ahead, made sure our wind turbines had cold weather packages"), but I think the analysis still holds up. Battery and, eventually solar power would have provided reduced power but they would have had something.

A deep dive into Texas power generation. Among other things, it points out that coal and natural gas are also limited by cold weather!

People in New Orleans are celebrating Mardi Gras anyway, dang it!

By and large, the Republican Party, the constituents, governors and mayors, agree with the Biden Covid relief package. It’s just senators and representatives that disagree.

More details on Speaker Pelosi’s proposed 9/11-style commission on 1/6.

Yeah, in the most technical sense, the Trump Administration did indeed have a vaccination "plan," but yes, the Biden Administration had to "start from scratch" because the "plan" was grossly inadequate.

Senator Rand Paul disparages the wearing of masks, saying effectively: "Hey, all of the senators are vaccinated, so what's the point?" Obviously, it never occurred to him to set a good example.
He cites a Stanford study saying mask-wearing is useless. I ran a search "stanford mask wearing" and the first result talks about how the better the materials you use, the more effective a mask is. So I'm not at all clear that he either read the study properly or remembers it accurately.

I gotta hand it to this woman! CBS reporter Lana Zak just demonstrates incredible patience in the face of a complete jackass who has no idea how to conduct himself!
And yes, his explanation of how evidence was "doctored" is very underwhelming.

Why weren't there witnesses in the impeachment tral? Good set of reasons. Numbers 4 & 5 are especially compelling.

Did the Democrats prove their case? A very convincing case that they did, based on what the defense counsel refused to answer.

There are powerful arguments to not "move on" and to not treat a law-breaking former president leniently!

Just because I knew everyone was wondering, here are the senators who voted to remove Clinton from office, But also voted to acquit Trump. In other words, lying about a blowjob was important to them, but causing the Capitol to be overrun for the first time in over 200 years was no biggie.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell earns a grade of "pathetic" from Speaker Pelosi after condemning Trump, bascially undercutting his own vote to acquit.

Update (28 Feb): McConnell says he'll support Trump runnng again in 2024.

I've dealt with the end of the trial here as the situation was fairly complicated. The final vote was 57 guilty, 43 innocent. As 67 votes were needed to convict, Trump walked.

"Auditor says Trump admin. knew ‘zero-tolerance’ would separate children from parents at border"

But many Republicans on the committee were like Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, who defended the policy, saying that adults who crossed the border illegally had committed a crime and should be punished.

Yeah, but appropriateness? Proportionality? Taking children from their parents, in many cases permanently, reminds us of the Belgian Congo, where colonists would chop off the hands of people who wouldn't work hard enough.

Representative and one of the impeachment managers Stacey Plaskett takes note of the demographics of the people that were featured in the videos presented by the defense council.

*Sigh!* Yeah, Don Jr. complains that Democrats treat the BLM response to the horrific murder of George Floyd and the 6 January attack on the Capitol are apples and oranges, like they're two completely separate events that have nothing in common. Ya know why that is? Yeah! Because the comparison is apples and oranges! '

Daily Kos is live-blogging the impeachment trial. Good point here;

This incredible montage of Democrats saying the word “fight,” shorn of all context, might mean something … if any of these Democrats’ supporters had stormed the Capitol. Which they did not.

Again, there isn’t the slightest question that the President knew full well what was going on and dd nothing to stop it.

Chris Wallace of Fox News is not at all impressed with the defense of Donald Trump.

During the former president's last month in office, he complained that the First Lady had never gotten a photo feature in a magazine. Well, to do that, a magazine needs an extensive interview to go with the photos.
This is a clear exhibit as to why there was never an extensive interview during the four years that Mrs. Trump occupied the White House.

The tape potentially connects Melania to inauguration crimes, according to Meidas Touch. Melania also references Mark Burnett, the Celebrity Apprentice producer who is said to hold a lot of incriminating tapes of Trump.

Israel has illegal settlements all over the Palestinian West Bank. The UN has identified the 112 companies that do business with them.

Well, that's pretty cool! Released from a Saudi prison after over 1k days. Happy to note that she looks unbowed and unbroken!

The prominent Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul has been released, but authorities can "return her to prison at any time for any perceived criminal activity." So when the heat's off, she'll be back in jail.

How does Donald Trump feel about political violence? Let's roll the tape and find out! Hmm, he apears to think violence is okay if it's carried out by his side. See "Knock the crap out of 'em!" The fourth video down.

Republican senator tries to draw a parallel between BLM protests in the summer and 6 January. Nope. Apples and oranges.

Huh! Interesting.

“It’s continuing to open wounds for the American public and it is something that President Trump has condemned in no uncertain terms — the terrible violence that went on there."

I'm sorry, remind me please! When did the former president condemn the violence on 6 January?!?!?! Oh yeah, that's right, he read out a speech that someone else had written for him! As far as I know, that's the only time he condemned the violence then!

During the former president's second impeachment trial, Trey Gowdy cuts to the heart of the matter:

"What's not split is the president's lawyers need to come up with a factual defense for what was he doing once he learned the siege began."

Did they ever come up with one? Actually, no. They never did.

Ahh, normal politicians doing public-spirited thing! The First Lady and Second Gentleman
make phone calls to nurses to discuss COVID-19 concerns.

Are Trump fans in actual financial need or do they just think they're in financial need because they're engaged in a status race with each other?

Not only is President Biden more popular than Trump ever was, his first bill is already more popular than anything Trump ever passed!

Hmm. Larry Flynt dies. Historically important. Hustler was never to my taste. He did win a free speech case against Jerry Falwell where the "accusation" against Falwell was so outlandish as to be obviously a joke.

This is distressing as I'm very familiar with both the work of Joss Whedon and Charisma Carpenter. Whedon is reputed to have been very abusive of many of his actors.