Anyone who has read my column, stories, blogs, and meanderings is well aware that I am an avowed liberal. I am so anti-gun in the hands of civilians—banning assault rifles would be the beginning for me. Despite the recent assassination of their former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, I am a...
We haven’t yet reached that point where the losses to the Russians are sustainable. Replacements may be on their way to the front. They likely will not see the same troops who have until now resisted any new advances. There have been some Ukrainian counter-attacks. The Russians now settle for longer range...
Bombardment continues with over 900 missiles launched against Ukraine and the notable media appearance was the on-air protest by an editor on Russian State TV. She was arrested and seems to be held incommunicado from her lawyers. “(T)oo many civilian targets have been hit by Russian bombs for them all...
This Thanksgiving, as with others, a lot of us will reminisce about our last big Thanksgiving soirée, at home, with immediate family. My last big family gathering came in 1977, two years before the death of my beloved great-grandmother. ‘Ma’ raised five generations of my family before she died in...
There are still years to decades to go in perfecting the material for widespread use, but this is good news nonetheless. If you have ever seen piles of concrete debris from demolished homes and buildings and wondered if those concrete chunks of rubble could ever be recycled somehow, we now have...
[Governor] “If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” CNN debate moderator Bernard Shaw asked that question of then-presidential candidate Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988. The viewers wanted the visceral response but instead received a thoughtful and principled one, one that...
Women and people of color had a unique experience that ended yesterday in Tokyo, Japan. The controversial Summer Olympics closed with America at the top of the medal leader board despite some members of the team having barbs and sticks hurled at them from the right-wing. Lots of conservatives and...
Change as a rising tide seems to be falling short as history’s stream is not as mighty. Apparently slavery is still “ordained by God for ultimate good” at Baylor University, as a RW campus group wants to accuse the University of canceling its “Christian identity”. No mention of its athletic team’s...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
We remain weary about the callow stupidity of the GOP/GQP but we must not patronize or condescend about how superfluous their grievances have been and continue to be. Now that we know more about Trump’s sexual practices, fascist fantasizing seems altogether rote and boring, but certainly redolent of a banality...
Recovering memory and historical revisionism in sex work might be the sad product of many repressive regimes. What becomes worse is the complicity of academic institutions in white-washing crimes against humanity. Harvard is no stranger to items like Alan (buddy of Jeff Epstein) Dershowitz’s attempt to move the statutory rape...
It seems clear that Trump will continue to be a Russian asset, with the bonus of classified information transferred even beyond his presidency. A new book by Craig Unger features a former KGB spy, Yuri Shvets as a source. …Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he...
The entire ThisWeek panel slammed former Governor Chris Christie for creating a false equivalence between insurrection and protests. Is Christie so devoid of morals? See full episodes here. Republican leadership has been trying to use President Biden’s “unity” message to stop Donald Trump’s prosecution for inciting the insurrection. Matthew Dowd had the relevant...
We are in the 11th hour of freedom as we know it and a pandemic where only 16 hospital beds are left in North Dakota. They are flying people out of state to available hospital beds. Scientists say the next 6 to 12 weeks will be our darkest days...
George Washington shepherded the United States through the War for Independence and presided, literally, over the birth of the nation, without panic. Abraham Lincoln guided the United States through the literal secession and reuniting of the Union, without panic. Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation we had nothing to fear,...
Trump's in Ohio today, trying distract us from knowing that the Manhattan DA has grounds to prosecute Trump and his business on these grounds: -Scheme to Defraud -Falsification of Business Records -Insurance Fraud -Criminal Tax Fraud x Q: Who do you think poisoned Alexey Navalny in Russia? TRUMP: Uhhhh … we'll...
“'Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind.” William Shakespeare The evil of science deniers recently has been beyond the pale. Not content with killing the planet over climate change, and sowing doubt over vaccines the far-right conspiracy theorists have a new target to haunt the world with the crazy,...
“Oh yes Sapiens, you hungry little monkey, it's all about you” comment via Greenland Ice Sheet — Ice Sheet Melting Is Perfectly in Line With Our Worst-Case Scenario, Scientists Warn New research has found that 50-70% of Antarctica's glacier marine extensions are at risk of hydrofracture due to enormous meltwater lakes on the...
Kansas demonstrated unintentionally that mask use “flattens the curve” by comparing counties that had mask mandates with those that didn’t. x US records more than 2,000 #coronavirus deaths in 24 hours, the highest number of daily fatalities in 3 months: Johns Hopkins University #COVID19 trackerhttps://t.co/5v8lF3itDm— Julie Laumann (@Otpor17) August 7,...
even though being moved to the point of tears is not uncommon for me nowadays. I first read John Hershey’s writing about Hiroshima while in high school, from which I graduated in June of 1963. By then I had read widely about the 2nd World War. As a result I...
She can’t stop getting caught lying: Sen. Martha McSally released a TV ad for her campaign in which she says, “Of course I will always protect those with preexisting conditions. Always.” Well … It boils down to this: McSally has been a proponent of abolishing the Affordable Care Act, which...
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) can (but not will) save the US economy. What with the White House Council of Economic Advisors now reduced to one economist, it’s worth noting that one of their econometric models (Hassett) influenced the prediction that COVID-19 infections in the US would go to zero by...
Reading the Bolton book is a tough slog. although it is amusing to read how he wanted to settle scores including obliquely allowing Rex Tillerson to call Nikki Haley a c***. If there’s a takeaway so far, it is how badly edited it is, and how absent any consideration of...
Vanity Fair got hold of an unredacted copy of Bolton’s book, or parts of it at least. And what they found goes a long way to explaining Bunker Boy’s exploding head. The redacted version is bad enough: Trump was pushing Xi Jinping to help him win reelection by buying from the...
Trump got stuck dealing with his approval of Uighar concentration camps while also signing their condemnation in the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act. Another screw up like Bunker Boy’s street-clearing stunt, and Trump as usual attacks to divert attention. An angry Trump has spent a number of tweets attacking John Bolton. x...
Golfing during a pandemic, the three day weekend begins for Trump. x According to the pool report, the White House says that Trump has landed at the Bedminster Landing Zone. Trump is staying at one of his own Trump properties, as he used to do on many weekends before the...
who is a graduate of West Point, a long-time journalist, a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson who was key in getting the Jefferson descendants to recognize as kin those descended from Sally Hemings. They are the last four paragraphs of a piece in Salon titled r the arrest of the...
Month of disruption are ahead. and Putin possibly egging on Trump in the phone call on the same day as the St John’s photo-op does not bode well for life in the Drumpfbunker as November approaches. If the G-7 summit is held in the U.S. in September, and Russia is...
Below is a collection of things that I’ve been saving up — including the problems of CV-19, MMT, neoliberalism, and other things relating pandemics to the economy. If there’s a point to this selection it is to remind ourselves what will happen in 2021 with Larry Summers now advising the Biden...
Yet another blow to our food supply delivery system. From Reuters: NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) – A slew of U.S. ethanol plants have shut down as fuel demand has collapsed during the coronavirus outbreak, and meatpackers have been hit by a worrying side-effect: less carbon dioxide is now available to chill...
Our rapturous Secretary of State not only insists on calling the coronavirus by the racist monicker “Wuhan virus,” he’s trying to force the G7 foreign ministers to go along: UK Independent: Coronavirus: Mike Pompeo insists G7 use 'Wuhan Virus' – but world officials refuse Ministers of the G7 – the...
If you need a break from the current American confusion, fear and loathing surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic, let me suggest as an antidote reading President Roosevelt’s December 9, 1941 “fireside chat” radio broadcast to the nation. At a time of far greater peril than we face today, FDR delivered a message...
The Italian death rate may be ahead for the US as the numbers now follow Italy’s, which wouldn’t have happened had Trump not wanted US companies to profit from the contagion (as well as not accepting non-US testing solutions). It’s should always be people’s health before profits. Italy’s current rate is 6.8%...
Trump’s incompetence is making the COVID19 response worse with some lack of confidence in financial demand. Recession looms. Invest in Chicken Nuggets. x The world’s output could fall during the first quarter, putting the economy at risk of recession, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday https://t.co/zYBtZhoxAO pic.twitter.com/5OrbgEh7qa— Real...
Japan is now reporting that a female tour-bus guide has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Normally, individual infections aren’t news at this stage of the virus’s spread. Except that this patient was already being counted in the “recovered” population. She had contracted the disease initially in January, received treatment, and was declared recovered...
Thomas Piketty’s new book, emphasizes the role of ideology in preserving and challenging capitalism even as “multigenerational wealth transfers, combined with high rates of return on capital, will inexorably create an uberrich capital class.” George Eaton’s article in New Statesman has some useful and current observations. “The key point is that...
Regardless, the North Koreans continue the work on ICBMs with nuclear capacity unabated by the coddling of Individual-1. x What exactly constitutes a “source familiar with the North Korean leadership's current mindset”? Did they plant a chip in Kim Jong Un's brain?https://t.co/fuIb8tPz3j — Jihye Lee ì´지Øœ (@TheJihyeLee) December 23, 2019...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
This is part three of our three-part series comparing all major electric vehicles that will be on sale in the US in 2020. For “Part 1: Offerings, Basic Stats, Safety, and Manufacturers”, click here. For “Part 2: Price, Performance, Efficiency, Range and Charging”, click here. Electric 2020 Every Electric Car...
This is part two of our three-part series comparing all major electric vehicles that will be on sale in the US in 2020. For “Part 1: Offerings, Basic Stats, Safety, and Manufacturers”, click here. “Part 3: Cargo, Internal and External Dimensions, Purchasing” will be posted tomorrow! Electric 2020 Every Electric...
The horrors of climate change are unfolding around the world with smothering heatwaves, agricultural losses from flooding, and drought — higher storm surge along with powerful and deadly cyclonic windstorms armed with heavy rainfall and wildfire. The United States and other developed nations experience every single impact listed, we do....
Donald J. Trump and Cheetos may have been conceived at the same time. Zeitscheiße. This is the true story of the Cheeto. https://t.co/SOb23YDy8k — WIRED (@WIRED) December 8, 2019 In the summer of 1945, Little Boy and Fat Man were detonated in Japan, ending the war and leaving the Quartermaster Corps...
Trump had a Cabinet meeting today and said more nonsense, repeating his campaign rally talking points, as well as using the Cabinet meeting to make other announcements. This is the Pool report (#4-10). “You people with this phony Emoluments Clause,” Date: October 21, 2019 at 11:52:51 AM EDT Subject: Pool Report #4...
We can’t allow this question to stand anymore. We just can’t. “How will you pay for Medicare for All/universal health care?” It’s fatuous. It’s fake. It’s a donation in-kind to the insurance industry. I don’t have a health care plan — and I’m certainly no expert on the minutiae of...
As part of the ongoing project to catalog every awful thing the Trump Administration has done as a reference for future political arguments and whatever few posterity survives to see 2020, here’s everything awful the Trump Administration has done this week. ____________________________________________________________________________ 1528. Slammed by an Ex-Foreign Service Officer for gross...
Gearing up for another Democratic primary season, journalists have already settled into the “gaffe” newsbeat, posting extensive updates on verbal miscues and how they could supposedly doom certain candidates. Specifically, the media narrative is that Joe Biden's gaffes will hurt him if he is the nominee against Donald Trump in...
Pardon me for quoting from the right-wing, Murdoch-owned New York Post, but the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs is just perfect in its perversity. The setting — a recent big-money Hamptons fundraiser. I guess Trump assumed he was among his “own people.” Trump kept returning to hit back at the “fake...
< p class=”is-empty-p”> For most of Japan, this time of the year is the rainy season. The rains have taken a deadly turn in recent years according to the Straits Times. Singapore daily notes that “The deluge, which began last Friday and is forecast to continue until at least Thursday,...
This is not the diary I wanted to write. Though it includes snippets of the research I wanted to share, it is not what I had been working on for the past few days, obviously. I am rushing this diary through as I had most of the research already and...
And a very merry Christmas to all our Saudi friends! x Here is the video of Trump wishing the Japanese military on a Japanese military ship: happy Memorial Day. pic.twitter.com/OdCLe78ud9 — ALT-immigration 🛂 RIP #sweetsophia (@ALT_uscis) May 28, 2019 Also, happy Fourth of July to the Queen! Is Kushner on...
