PRAWN
Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network
PRAWN Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network |
|
| PRAWN Blog Associated website: Economics Blog for UFPJ-DVN Veteran's resources. This page summarizes available governmental, organizational and other resources and makes them easily accessible to those searching for assistance. PRAWN Flyer (PDF) Updated 20Feb2010 Information sheet on Austerity
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
PRAWN's mission is to:
Local Resource Organizations
National Organizations Marlene Santoyo's
Political Allies Newsletter
30 May 11 19 May 11 18 Apr 11 28 Mar 11 6 Mar 11 16 Feb 11 29 Dec 10 5 Dec 10 4 Dec 10 30 Nov 10 16 Nov 10 11 Nov 10 16 Oct 10 17 Sep 10 11 Aug 10 12 Jul 10 6 Jul 10 5 May 10 21 Apr 10 14 Apr 10 30 Mar 10 27 Mar 10 11 Mar 10 19 Jan 10 10 Jan 10 30 Nov 09 13 Oct 09 3 Oct 09 17 Sep 09 6 Aug 09 7 Jul 09 10 Jun 09 31 May 09 13 May 09 29 Apr 09 9 Mar 09 28 Feb 09 14 Jan 09 6 Jan 09 26 Oct 08 16 Sep 08 15 Aug 08 31 Jul 08 13 Jul 08 20 Apr 08 23 Mar 08 15 Mar 08 6 Mar 08 28 Feb 08 18 Jan 08 9 Jan 08 17 Dec 07 15 Nov 07 5 Sep 07 30 Aug 07 15 Aug 07 2 Aug 07 24 Jun 07 24 Apr 07 20 Apr 07 15 Apr 07 12 Apr 07 21 Mar 07 16 Mar 07 21 Feb 07 16 Jan 07 8 Jan 07 28 Dec 06 13 Dec 06 8 Dec 06 28 Nov 06 17 Nov 06 10 Nov 06 24 Oct 06 13 Oct 06 7 Oct 06 29 Sep 06 19 Sep 06 13 Sep 06 23 Aug 06 11 Aug 06 1 Aug 06 26 Jul 06 7 Jul 06 2 Jul 06 20 Jun 06 6 Jun 06 1 Jun 06 23 May 06 13 May 06 2 May 06 Webspace provided by 1&1 Internet Webmaster: Rich Gardner |
Upcoming Events VIGIL FOR JUSTICE
|
Full text on Newt Gingrich's statement on Muslims. Gingrich doesn't ever appear to have heard of the First Amendment. The choosing of Mike Pence as Trump's VP. Wow, what a complete cluster$%#@! Heh! Yup, Trump has got some really top-notch people here! Lt. General Flynn is demanding that the Ayatollah Khomeini apologize the the attack in France. Yeah, he wants an apology from a person who passed away in 1989! Good! The attempted coup in Turkey was unsuccessful. Fascinating to see role of smartphones in this and other recent events. 50 groups call for end to Planned Parenthood investigation. Absolutely! "This panel was created to investigate something that doesn't exist." Sales of fetal tissues are not occurring. There's nothing to investigate and the commission has endangered lives by, at the very least, a reckless disregard for the safety of fetal tissue researchers by openly publishing their names. Gotta say, I have enormous sympathy for the Log Cabin Republicans, I'm totally with them and on their side, but as the GOP passes the most anti-LGBT platform ever, I just can't imagine a more useless, ineffectual group that has less influence than them. Horrors! My prayers and sympathies to the French. vA truck driver ran his truck into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, with 84 deaths. A year ago, we heard all sorts of hair-raising predictions of doom, disaster and horror about the nuclear deal with Iran. Today, we have a major success story. A player of the new game PokemonGO gets hit by a car. Unfortunately, this was an entirely predictable problem that players of the game should have foreseen. It's confirmed, Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana, is Trump's VP pick. Background info (He's very conservative). Yep, it's been a year since that criminal David Daleiden and his group, the Center for Medical Progress tried to smear Planned Parenthood. Very happily, Daleiden is doing very poorly these days and PP is doing much better! Whoa! In global warming news, North Slope of Alaska is in mid-80s today! On the Republican platform. Includes video of G.W. Bush dancing at memorial service. Heh! Got some super die-hard Bernie fans who think he can pull off an upset at the convention. Problem: It costs $3,000-$5,000 for a delegate to attend the convention. Easy enough to raise money for it if you're voting for a sure winner, a LOT harder if you're banking on an upset victory. Yeah, lots of luck with that plan. Also, I've seen a few hardcore Bernie fans putting up the meme that FDR arrived at the 1932 Democratic Convention with a minority of delegates after having endorsed his opponent. Nope. Didn't happen. Bad case of wishful thinking going on here. . I just can't imagine why Republican men think it's a good idea to interrogate Democratic women. It never turns out well for them! After Alton Sterlin's death, police seize entire store video security set-up. I'm sorry, but to seize the whole security system and the store-owner's cell phone just tells me the police are guilty as sin and every charge against them is true. They got a signed search warrant? That tells ms the judge who signed that warrant was corrupt and in on the deal and no better than the cops were. This is why BLM has insisted that all police killings should be investigated by the federal government. The locals are simply too interested in having each other's backs. With all due respect to supporters of Bernie Sanders, there were constituencies to which he was just a poor candidate who didn't really connect with or represent them. Does the Democratic Platform fall short of what we'd really like to see? Well, of course it does. But we've got a good platform and should celebrate it. Man who posted video of Alton Sterling's death arrested. Hmm, let's see. How legitimate was this guy's arrest? I agree, It's not "Black Lives Matter, but..." it's "Black Lives Matter (period)" *Sigh*, more "both-sides-erism." Erm, I recall Trump saying lots and LOTS of really, at the absolute minimum, racially insensitive remarks. I recall absolutely nothing of the sort from Clinton. "False equivalence" is the bane of modern American media coverage. Army veteran Micah Johnson shoots 11 Dallas police officers, killing five and wounding six. Very interesting to see what the NRA says here, but the more interesting question is what they leave out. They can't say victims were unarmed. They can't say killins occurred in a "gun-free zone," can't say "If only there were armed people around," because there were 20 "open-carry activists" present. I did a photoessay on the last three gun-killing events. In a disturbing development, mass shooter was dispatched by a killer drone, a remote-controlled tracked vehicle that threw a bomb at Johnson. And because, of course. Clinton has the most amazing luck. She is blessed with incompetent enemies. Republicans in Congress drag FBI Director James Comey n front of them to explain why Clinton wasn't charged. Comey made it very clear that her conduct with her email protocols didn't rise to the level where prosecution was warranted. That is, they weren't so bad as to deserve the label "gross negligence." Another black man murdered at the hands of police. His girlfriend was in the car next to him and recorded herself describing how her boyfriend, Philando Castile, was dying beside her. Their four-year old daughter was in the back seat. Serious boundary crossed. At a rally, Donald Trump was discussing Hillary Clinton's email issue. Someone in the audience yelled "Hang that bitch!" to which Trump just smiled. Global warming has a bigger cost than just sea level rise. Problem is, taking steps to stopping it means getting in the way of big sugar growers, so Senator Rubio got all vague and fuzzy on the issue. With the story of Alton Sterling, pretty much all you all you need to know is "4. Cops immediately seized the convenience store's surveillance footage." Yes, they later obtained a warrant from a judge to do so, but that just means the judge was a fellow "good ol' boy" who agreed on how to define "justice" here. Also, good advice for white people on reacting to the death of black people at the hands of police. To the surprise of pretty much no one, Fox News host Gretchen Carlson says the station boss, Roger Ailes sexually harrassed her. And yeah, it brings to mind the scene in "Return of the Jedi" where Jabba the Hut has Princess Leia captive. Kansas is insisting on austerity for regular citizens, the school system, libraries and health services are taking serious cuts and destperately trying to maintain services, so of course Kansas public servats are living it up off the public dime. I find it pretty disturbing that Trump thinks it's okay to just go around killing "bad people" without any sort of due process of any sort. Don't think that's anything to celebrate. FBI announces the results of their investigation of Clintn's emails. 110 classified emails (Eight of which wee Top-Secret) out of 30,000 emails over a four-year period. Certainly a bad thing, but nothing found that justifies any sort of prosecution. And just like the Benghazi story, the Clinton email story was overblown and overhyped from day one. Lots of good reasons as to why Clinton wasn't charged over her email, including that the SoS had to comply with a really byzantine, overly complex set of rules that really got in the way of her doing her job. The minimum wage went up on July 1st. What will happen? According to this Fox News guy here, terror, horror, death and destruction. According to the Huffington Post (In February of this year), things are likely to improve. Why is that? Because with more money in their pockets, people are likely to spend more. Erm, if your state is going to launch an expensive legal action, shouldn't the state plan out how it's going to, y'know, pay for it?!?!?! Why in the #%#@ is NC raiding a disaster fund to defend a law (HB2) that's getting them into political/economic trouble? June I was concerned that the DNC rejected Bill McKibben's recommendations for fighting global warming. Here's another view saying roughly that "We're doing fine. We're on schedule to switch our economy over to renewables." Wouldn't mind carrying out McKibben's sugestion anyway, but here's hoping the blogger is right. A few month ago, Hillary Clinton defended wheeling and dealing and politicking. Here's an example of that in action. We all agree that using the "No-Fly" list as a "No Buy" list for guns is a terrible idea as the No-Fly list has no civil rights protections, but "In exchange, it would be made easier for someone on either list to request a review of their status and to get off the list. Which is, frankly, a good idea all on its own." As the list is well over a decade old, this modest improvement would never have occurred without wheeling and dealing and politicking. And yeah, the whole Bernie phenomenon is now gone. An overplayed hand that's now collapsed. Had Bernie conceded earlier, he would have been able to take credit for getting his backers to back Clinton. As his backers moved to Clinton without him, he can't claim any credit and has thus become irrelevant. Here's a concise version of the Storman family case (They own a pharmaceutical dispensary and were refusing to dispense birth control to women they felt were sluts) that the Supreme Court refused to take up, leaving a lower court's ruling to stand. The ruling is a good one and so the Supreme Court acted wisely. Chief Justice Roberts has been called a moderate by right-wingers and by the standards of Alito, Thomas and the late Scalia, I suppose he is. But by taking the side of the Storman family here, no, he's no moderate. So after $7 million and over two years, what did the US get from the Brexit proves catastrophic for 400 richest people, who who
together lose $127 billion in stock losses. Intriguingly, one of the more eloquent critics of Brexit was actress Lindsay Lohan. Could Brexit be a harbinger of a Trump victory? British white folks have many of the same grievances that white Trump supporters do here, but our minority population is much larger (About 33% as opposed to their 8%), so that's unlikely to happen. Very annoying and aggravating that Democratic platform committee can't produce even halfway decent proposals. So it appears there were lots of areas where the Sanders people and the Clinton-Wasserman-Schultz (DWS) people agreed (Clinton appointed six members, Sanders five and DWS the remaining four), I especially approved of the $15 minimum wage, (though I thought I saw from other sources that that was not approved). I don't like, but understand why the DNC doesn't wish to formally come out against the TPP as that would involve putting space between the President and Clinton and the Democratic Party. The DNC stance on the Israel-Palestine issue I also don't approve of but understand. I'm completely baffled as to why the anti-global warming measures that Bill McKibben was proposing weren't adopted. That's by far the most important failure of the session. So what's the problem with Kansas and its schools NOW? Well, "Lawmakers cobbled together a bipartisan plan to divert funds from other corners of state government to avoid an overall increase in state spending." In other words, lawmakers are SO concerned about keeping spending low, they're short-changing state students. Guys, running a modern society takes money! Running it on the cheap doesn't work! So Speaker Ryan has now produced four plans, all of which are meant to demonstrate that his party is ready, after being in control of the House since 2011, to govern responsibly. Problem is, all four of the plans are heavily reliant on pixie dust and vague promises and unspecified math to work. GOP Senator says he would have arrested Democratic House members who conducted sit-in. Of course he would. Because the sit-in was good political theater that demonstrated that the Republican Congress was useless when it came to doing something about guns. Listened to both a Trump and a Clinton speech. Trump spoke more lies than there were minutes, Clinton's speech was full of substantive, realistic promises. Yet, Trump got the lion's share of the coverage. Speaker Ryan speaking to the House "filibuster," says the issue is terrorism. No, the issue is that American citizens have access to military-grade weapons that are appropriate for fighting off a zombie apocalypse (or many other typical military situations) but not for anything a civilian is ever likely to face. That's the real issue! According to the two Democratic ringleaders, the sit-in will continue until Speaker Ryan caves. Ah-ha! So that's how the sit-in members got their food! Other tweets. Well, 1. yes, it is a "publicity stunt," but 2. it's a damn good one that shows the American public how useless the Republican Congress is on guns. Democrats call it off after more than 24 hours. Truly amazing to witness the career of Art Laffer. The guy's "Laffer Curve" has been a complete joke for decades, his predictions have been consistently wrong, he's consistently called every economic development the wrong way, but people still look up to him, quote him and seek his advice. Rep. John Lewis leads a sit-in the House floor as the House has no equivalent of the Senate's filibster. Of course Speaker Ryan shuts off the cameras to the protest because...uh..reasons! Senator Marco Rubio breaks promise not to run for Senator again. Human Rights Campaign that represents LGBTQ people is really annoyed that Rubio is attempting to use LGBTQ people as his excuse to break his promise. Rubio has NO prior history of defending LGBTQ people! So how's the Donald Trump campaign going? Not so hot actually. Not only is his campaign doing very poorly financially, as this piece shows, but Mitt Romney had 403 paid staffers in August of 2012, Barack Obama had 901. Hillary Clinton has around 800 paid staffers now. Trump has 73. First necessary step in solving a problem is to properly diagnose it, to accurately understand it. NY Times badly fails the country by misdiagnosing the problem in getting good gun violence laws passed. All kinds of wrongness and foolishness here, but I was particularly struck by Dana Perino's comment a little after the 2:10 minute mark where she wants to know why we can't have a strong factual foundation on which to debate the gun issue. Well, funny story on that (not so funny, actually) is that the NRA and their GOP allies have prevented any gun studies from taking place! Very happy to see Democrats examining the Bundy takeover of the Malheur Wildlfe Refuge as the take-over and occupation of the refuge was a very serious issue. It very much needs to be examined. Senator Ted Cruz contributes to the debate on guns. He charged that Democrats are "incensed that Americans have a right to keep and bear arms." Erm, no. We're incensed that weapos of mass killing are legally available and easy to obtain, even for people that are suspected of being terrorists. Daseh (ISIS) is suffering badly on the battlefield! Major sections of Fallujah are friendly hands, Speaker Ryan pushes back against the un-Constitutional terrorist watch list by saying he doesn't want to question Constitutionality of unlimited guns. I understand the appeal of saying "If you can't fly, you can't buy (guns)" but the terrorist watch list, put together in 2003, was un-Constitutionally composed, with a complete lack of checks and balances. Well over a decade later, there's no apparent way to get people taken off of it. Speaker Ryan makes a poor spokesperson on the issue as he dances around that Constitutionality of the issue without ever forthrightly addresses it. Speaker Ryan comes up wth more fuzziness for an ACA replacement plan. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) tries to walk back the rathe wild, hystercal charge that Presidet Obama was "directly responsible" for the massacre in Orlando. First off, Mateen did not shoot up the Orlando nightclub because of Daesh (ISIS), Daesh was a justifcation that Mateen came up with after he decided to go on a murder spree. Second, Obama's people tried and failed to have American troops remain in Iraq after 2011 because neither the American nor the Iraqi public wanted US troops to remain. If anyone's to blame for the rise of Daesh, it's George W. Bush and the invasion in 2003. Bush retired to his ranch after the fall of Baghdad, completely failing to get any reconstruction programs on track. Cheney fired all of Saddam's troops without pay or honors, which gee, surprise, surprise, amazingly enough, led to an extended guerilla war that Daesh naturally grew out of. A former Carly Fiorina spokesperson bizarrely drags abortion into the gun debate. The segment brings up the issue of guns and the no-fly list and Republican objections to the Constitutionality of the no-fly list. These were hypocritical and too-little, too-late objections, but yes, the no-fly list is no basis for not permitting gun purchases. We need to fix the no-fly list, period! Rolling Stone makes a strong argument for removing Constitutional protections from guns so that we can regulate them as we do autos. By having guns in the Constitution, we are prevented from applying common-sense regulations that would make gun ownership safer. Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R loses election! Fine by me. This person got a briefing from law enforcement on the Bundy takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and promptly went out and told the Bundys what she had just learned. Very happy this damned traitor got thrown out of office! Democrats launch flibuster on guns. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) launched a talking filibuster on the Senate floor. Other Democrats quickly joined it. Bernie Sanders puts out some ideas, some are good, some not so good. I really hate his idea for open primaries. If someone wants to vote in a Democratic primary, they can jolly well sign up to be a Democrat! As a Democrat myself, why would I want non-members to decide on my party's leadership? I have no use for people who want to parachute into the party once every four or eight years and then try to determine who the party leaders are. Gretchen Carlson of Fox News takes a stand for gun safety measures. She now favors banning assault weapons. Hmm, most interesting. Russian hackers get DNC oppo research on Donald Trump. Wonder why they want that information? Woo hoo! Big win for Net Neutrality! "Another huge net neutrality was secured Tuesday, when a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld, 2-1 the FCC's open internet order, in full. Every part of it is legal, the court ruled." Omar Mateen's relationships to gays appears to have been very deeply confused and conflicted. He was known at The Pulse for several years before his attack on the club. That doesn't rule out jihadist motivations, but it makes his motivations very murky. Even more murkiness and confusion involves how, exactly, Daesh recruits people to kill for them. Woo hoo! By 2040, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates zero-emission energy sources will make up majority of energy! 50 people killed and many more wounded at The Pulse, an Orlando, FL, gay nightclub. Killer identified as Omar Mateen and he was using legally-purchased weapons. Daesh (ISIS) claimed "credit" for Mateen's rampage, but there's no indication of any sort of connection. Photos of Philly's Gay Pride March along with extensive comments on the Orlando shooting. Like the Philadelphia Inquirer, Poltico rates about a 6 on a scale of 10, politically. But this is a very good explanation as to why a lot of people aren't "Feeling the Bern." Just because the question of Senator Warren's possible Cherokee heritage has come up again, I read a piece earlier that said she'd definitely be accepted as a member were she to apply. This piece says her eligibility isn't really that clear, but that her actual ancestry might very well include enough Cherokee ancestors to make her application acceptable. One of Senator Cruz's favorite talking points while he was running was that income inequality got worse under Obama. 1. Cruz, of course, had no credble solution for that, 2. it has been getting worse ever since the mid-70s, the problem didn't start in January 2009 and 3. Actually, the problem has improved under Obama and, as the piece points out, the solution, as partial and inadequate as it is, wasn't complicated. Source is highly skeptical that Bernie lost to Clinton because of any sort of conspiracy. So how are relations with Iran today? Actually, they're quite good, Iran is getting increasingy close and friendly to the US. The issue of our age. Yes, Trump's racism is quite important, but if we spend just 0.06% of our GDP on fixing the climate, we might survive until the year 2100. The Mayor of Tel Aviv, the head of a Jewish peace movement and the US White House all agree that the problem in Israel is the occupation of Palestine. One very important positive effect of the ACA/Obamacare is that there are far fewer bankruptcies in states that had Medicare expansions. The Democratic primary of 2016 shows us that the US voting system, designed for small towns back in the 1800s seriously needs to be overhauled. |
![Don't [eff] with our activists!](FBI-vs-activists.jpg)
