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Site issue: Unable to reply to comments

August 10, 2022 By SomervilleTom 2 Comments

The “Reply” button at the bottom of each comment is not working.

Charlie and I (SomervilleTom) have looked into it briefly and don’t see an easy fix. It is still possible to reply to a diary (top-level post), and those with access to the dashboard can still add a reply to a comment from there.

I’ll update this diary if and when we have a fix or workaround.

 

Promises made, promises kept

August 8, 2022 By fredrichlariccia Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Senate Democrats passed the $740B Inflation Reduction Act 51-50 with Vice President Harris casting the tie breaking vote.

The IRA reduces the deficit to fight inflation, addresses climate change by reducing harmful greenhouse carbon gas emissions 40% by 2030, promotes healthcare by lowering drug costs, and is paid for through a 15% minimum corporate tax.

President Biden said: “Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests. voting to lower the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance, and everyday energy costs and reduce the deficit, while making corporations pay their fair share. I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does — period.”

Forward!

Updated (Folded comments into thread-starter):

  • $369B in climate change mitigation.
  • $400B in Tax Reform Revenue including $87B for IRS to go after tax cheats; no tax hike for individuals earning <$400K

    $300B in Deficit Reduction

  • PUKES blocked $35 insulin for diabetics with private insurance even though Democrats passed it for seniors on Medicare
    </li$290B saved as Medicare can now negotiate lower prescription drug costs with pharma. Seniors currently pay an average
    of $6,000 annually for Rx. Now, that cost will be capped at $2,000
  • 15% corporate minimum tax

It’s Not Too Early to Talk About 2024

July 28, 2022 By jconway 31 Comments

Ed Kilgore, a veteran Democratic strategist and progressive policy wonk, has a must read piece in NY Magazine. He coldly analyzes the pros and cons of Biden running for re-election and seems to pin his 80th birthday (Nov 20) as the day of decision for Democrats. This day comes 12 days after the midterms and if the Democrats lose as many seats as they are projected to and lose the Senate, it could be the day other Democrats start openly preparing for primary challenges or a pressure campaign to get Biden to step down.

Kilgore crunches the numbers and they are not good:

There’s not much ambiguity when you look at the poll’s internals, either. Liberals want a different nominee by a 78-21 margin, but so do moderates by a 72-28 margin. Seventy-eight percent of white Democrats want a new standard-bearer, but so do 73 percent of Democratic people of color. Sure, older folks like Uncle Joe more than younger folks, but even 69 percent of Democrats over the age of 45 want a different 2024 nominee. There’s just no silver lining in the numbers.

I added those italics for emphasis, just so the message is clear. This is a reality based blog and I think it is critical we make our decisions based on empirical evidence and not blind belief. This should be the thing that separates modern liberals from whatever has become of American conservatives. Biden is lower than any other president was at this point in his term, including Carter and Trump. A recession in 2023 is very likely and we know how the 91’ recession cratered HW Bush’s post-Gulf War approval ratings and made him a one term president. If Biden continues to poll below 35% for another year, the reality is he cannot get re-elected.

This should concern all of us especially as the prospect of a second Trump term or a first DeSantis term is becoming more and more likely. We cannot assume the Jan 6 cavalry will save us. We cannot bank on Joe Manchin saving us (although his about face or 3-D chess move was a huge shot in the arm to the administration).

So we have to have two parallel thoughts. We should do everything in our power to raise these approval ratings and support the President. This means calling recalcitrant Democratic lawmakers to support his agenda and working tirelessly on behalf of midterm candidates for the House and Senate. It also means getting ready now think about which alternative candidate can quickly win the nomination, unite the party, and pivot to another bruising primary against Donald Trump or one of his many neofascist clones in the Republican Party. Wishful thinking won’t beat back the Republicans any better.

 

Cutting through the noise: Protecting Reproductive Rights

July 22, 2022 By joeltpatterson 1 Comment

We all know about the leaked decision to overturn Roe, and how Justice Breyer retired 3 days after the timestamp on that leaked document, and then the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization announcement, overturning Roe.

As the Federalist Society looks to insert government into personal decisions, one penumbral effect the decision has is that people might think their rights are more limited than they actually are.  In essence, SCOTUS is intimidating doctors, pharmacists, healthcare organizations, and pregnant people into assuming certain rights are not protected. So, President Biden’s team has put up a website, ReproductiveRights.gov, to inform people. Pass that link on to other people so they know.

Also, another good way to inform yourself and others is to read this cogent post by nuclear scientist Cheryl Rofer who digests the Executive Order. Here is just one part of Rofer’s post:

1. The President has directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take the following actions and submit a report to him within 30 days on efforts to:

  • Protect Access to Medication Abortion.
  • Ensure Emergency Medical Care.
  • Protect Access to Contraception.
  • Launch Outreach and Public Education Efforts.
  • Convene Volunteer Lawyers.

I particularly like that last bullet point about volunteer lawyers and pro bono representation.

The Attorney General and the White House Counsel will convene private pro bono attorneys, bar associations, and public interest organizations to encourage robust legal representation of patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking or offering reproductive health care services throughout the country.  Such representation could include protecting the right to travel out of state to seek medical care. Immediately following the Supreme Court decision, the President announced his Administration’s position that Americans must remain free to travel safely to another state to seek the care they need, as the Attorney General made clear in his statement, and his commitment to fighting any attack by a state or local official who attempts to interfere with women exercising this right.

Read the whole thing.

We need to inform ourselves so that if our friends and family members need to make a decision about their own bodies and lives, we can counteract the fear, uncertainty, doubt, and abuse of government power that Republicans are using. Spreading good information is important, and I will tell you why I think that.

A couple decades ago, my friend X asked me for help because friend Y had a birth control failure one night and did not know what to do. I said, “Have they tried Plan B, the pills you can take to prevent pregnancy?” They had not heard about that. Long story short, Plan B worked for them, and they have had healthy, happy, meaningful lives because they could make their own decision about their bodies.

The Executive Order is a good move, considering the circumstances, and is one positive step until we can elect more and better Democrats to the House and Senate, and #abolishthefilibuster to #expandtheCourt, so the Court is aligned with the majority of voters. Remember that Republicans lost the popular vote in all but one Presidential election after 1988, so they should not have 6 out of 9 Justices on the Court.

 

Regime change – in Moscow, not Kyiv

March 1, 2022 By Andrei Radulescu-Banu 3 Comments

Kindergartens and high risers destroyed. Civilians killed with impunity. Half a million evacuees, women and children. Charred wrecks of Russian tanks and trucks. And a determined will of Ukrainians to resist to the end.

How did it come to this?

Boris Nemtsov (1959-2015)

We can see Ukraine through the eyes of Boris Nemtsov. An opponent of Putin, vocal against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from 2014 – this is when Donetsk and Luhansk were taken over by pro-Russian forces, and Crimea was occupied by Russia.

Both Russia and Ukraine were weaker, then. The Russian build-up that followed was paid with hard currency from European countries in exchange for deliveries of natural gas and oil.

Nemtsov was killed in 2015 by paid assassins in front of the Kremlin. It was a political murder of a remarkable man.

From a 2014 Nemtsov interview:

– We’re the two big Slavic countries. If one of us — Ukraine — manages to become European, it will be a beacon, a guiding star, for those of us in Russia. We’ll be able to say: “We’ve had it with your miserable, corrupt Byzantium. Your iron curtains, your aggression, your hatred of all living things. Here you sit with your riot police and your batons — while over there is Kyiv! The capital of Kyivan Rus’.

Russians have revolted in Moscow and in St Petersburg many times. They are now demonstrating for peace. Putin police is arresting them by the thousands.

He controls the media channels. The Ukrainian war is not a war – for Russians, it is reported as a special operation.

Ukrainians have something unheard of: when things don’t work, they take the street, and throw leaders out. Putin can’t have this in a sister country. It gives ideas to the Russian people.

From another 2014 interview:

– Nemtsov does not want Russians to die. Or Ukrainians to die. He does not want refugees. Already, by 2015, he says, there were a million refugees from the war.

– He considered Putin’s 2014 war on Ukraine a crime. This was not, Nemtsov says, Russia’s war, but Putin’s war.

– Putin was already cynical, and criminal to start this absolutely bloody fratricidal war against the fraternal people of Ukraine.

– Putin’s goal, already in 2014, was to hold on, at any cost, to power for life.

– He sent federal troops to Ukraine in 2014 without approval from the Duma, which is a crime according to Russian law with no statute of limitations.

– Putin is taking revenge on Ukraine for its anti-criminality revolution from 2014. The result of this revolution was that the corrupt president of Ukraine was kicked out. He’s doing this to prove to Russians that such a way of overthrowing a thieving, disgusting corrupt official is absolutely unacceptable.

– Putin sees a big threat in a European Ukraine. This is a democracy, it exercises direct choice, it has change of power, it has triumph of the rule of law, and so on. It contradicts the vector of sole power, police state, lack of rights, arbitrariness, corruption.

– Therefore, success for Ukraine on the European path is, of course, a catastrophe for Putin. And is a chance for free Russia to repeat the democratic success of Ukraine.

– Of course this is a crime, of course the death of people is a catastrophe, of course to make an enemy of fraternal people is terrible.

– He sends 20 years old paratroopers (in 2014!) to die there from the 7th and 6th division of paratroopers. The 98th division was sent there. Two motorized brigades [he continues to list multiple Russian divisions and units sent to Ukraine]

– The commander in chief [Putin] said condolences at least once. Dead boys are buried in the cemetery in secret, and relatives are scared that they lose their benefits, so they won’t tell the truth.

– This is such a vile war in relation to your own military personnel. This is not even a crime, it is such meanness and infamy, and, in general, it is an unforgettable story.

– What he hopes for is complete misinformation. Few people watch the Internet. Most people watch ‘agitprop’, namely television. On TV, they are told there is a mythical war with some militias – that they are bands of fascists, they are on drugs.

– The lies and the suppression of truth are the principal reasons why Russian people support Putin and the so-called militias against the so-called bands of fascists. If it were not so, the obvious information about the death of the paratroopers would be too hard to hush up.

– He can scold as much as he wants the opposition as saying anti-Russian things, but how can you scold a mother or wife who mourns the death of her son.

– Most people treat their children as children. When they are treated like cannon fodder, I am convinced that the situation of the military guys who serve in Ukraine, who fight there, who die there, this truthful information would turn the public opinion upside down in just a few days.

My commentary

The US did not recognize the 2014 invasion of Ukraine as a war by Russia. Nemtsov will list you the names of the Russian Army units who went incognito to fight that war. Maybe we should be less skittish to help Ukrainians. Putin already broke all the rules in regards to treaties and international law.

Ukraine security was guaranteed by both Russia and the US in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons. Russia broke that treaty in 2014.

Even if it wins, Ukraine alone can’t rid the world of Putin. Nemtsov says only the Russian people can bring Putin down. And they will do so when they see the human cost of the invasion, the criminal assault on cities and civilians.

Ukraine will always be free. Its spirit is strong. Instead of regime change in Kiev, what we should get is – the Russian people to change regime in Moscow.

 

Putin’s Shock and Awe could lead to a quagmire

February 24, 2022 By jconway 29 Comments

So far Russia is hewing closely to this playbook laid out by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). It is likely Ukraine will fall within a week or two barring substantial rearmament from the West, which seems logistically difficult in this operational environment. The long game is much harder to plan out. Ordinary Ukrainians have a high degree of technical proficiency and access to small arms and their military has been planning a partisan insurgency for this dark moment.

Continuing to supply their forces with personnel based anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles could turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan for the Russians. Echoes of Iraq as well with shock and awe in the opening round followed by a much costlier insurgency. There seems to be a high degree of bipartisan support for this move in the United States Senate. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, Ukrainians already have a strong sense of national identity and affinity for liberal democracy. They will stand united against unjustified Russian aggression and will not surrender their freedom without a fight.

More Posts from this Category

City Agriculture – July 31, 2022

July 31, 2022 By gmoke Leave a Comment

The French Parliament recently approved a new law requiring all new commercial buildings to partially have their roofs covered with plants or solar … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User Tagged With: agriculture, cityplanning, climate, ecology, energy, environment, farming, food, gardening, sustainability

PUKES are the party of NO!

July 31, 2022 By fredrichlariccia 3 Comments

209 said NO to Roe v. Wade 195 said NO to Contraception 157 said NO to Same-Sex and Interracial Marriage 208 said NO to Assault Rifle bans 20 said NO to Stopping Sex Trafficking 42 said NO to Veterans Healthcare When … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

Democracy vs. Dictatorship is on the ballot in 100 days

July 31, 2022 By fredrichlariccia 7 Comments

The economy is on the ballot. It only works now for the wealthiest, top 10%. Inflation is the top concern for 33% of voters. Gas prices have fallen 70 cents in the last 4 weeks and follows with 15%. Only 14% of Trump voters want him to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

Energy (and Other) Events Monthly – August 2022

July 30, 2022 By gmoke Leave a Comment

Energy (and Other) Events Monthly - August 2022 **Index** **Conferences** Decolonizing and Regrowing Our Food Systems Friday, August 5 - Sunday, August 7 —— TEDxBoston Traction Monday August 15 —— **Lecture … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User Tagged With: agriculture, boston, climate, ecology, education, energy, environment, events, learning, renewables, sustainability

The “Purpling” of Massachusetts

July 30, 2022 By jconway 43 Comments

Jon Keller has an interesting piece in Boston magazine on how the state is becoming more purple. Like his previous foray into this discussion, his 2008 book the “Bluest State”, Keller cherry picks  a few anecdotes like a woman who’s son was … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

PUKES kill veterans health care with fist bump

July 29, 2022 By fredrichlariccia 6 Comments

As a Gold Star brother, I am livid beyond words at these cruel Senate bastards for denying help to our hero families. I will not rest until every one of these evil fascists are driven from office. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

The gauntlet is dropped!

July 28, 2022 By fredrichlariccia 3 Comments

I predict that my friend, President Joe Biden, will shock all the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism Nervous Nelly Naysayers to give the PUTRID PUKES a thrashing they'll never forget as long as they keep kneeling before the ORANGE ANUS and his … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

Andrew Yang is Moving Us Backward

July 28, 2022 By jconway 2 Comments

Andrew Yang should listen to his critics. Take it from me, a former statewide field director of a centrist third party. We targeted state legislative seats in a high education, single party state, and we still failed. This was because third … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

It’s Not Too Early to Talk About 2024

July 28, 2022 By jconway 31 Comments

Ed Kilgore, a veteran Democratic strategist and progressive policy wonk, has a must read piece in NY Magazine. He coldly analyzes the pros and cons of Biden running for re-election and seems to pin his 80th birthday (Nov 20) as the day of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor, Featured, User

Speaker Pelosi Should Not Visit Taiwan

July 28, 2022 By jconway 16 Comments

I have a ton of respect for Speaker Nancy Pelosi as both a legislative leader and a consistent champion of human rights in foreign policy from opposing the Iraq War to supporting Ukraine and Taiwan against their hostile neighbors. That … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

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There Is Not A Chance the White House is Happy With This Timing

August 10, 2022 By terrymcginty 4 Comments

Site issue: Unable to reply to comments

August 10, 2022 By SomervilleTom 2 Comments

Why do PUKES oppose $35 insulin for diabetics with private insurance?

August 8, 2022 By fredrichlariccia 3 Comments

Promises made, promises kept

August 8, 2022 By fredrichlariccia Leave a Comment

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August 7, 2022 By johntmay 4 Comments

Statement by President Biden on passage of the Inflation Reduction Act

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lowellcouncilor Darius Mitchell_ Massachusetts Governor 2022 🇺🇸 @lowellcouncilor ·
32m

I KNOW WHAT I BELIEVE IN!

MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS!

SEPTEMBER 6TH

GRAB A REPUBLICAN BALLOT!

VOTE 🗳

THE MASSACHUSETTS 1ST PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION GOVERNOR IN HISTORY!

DARIUS MITCHELL

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#MAPOLI #BOSPOLI #NHPOLITICS

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reppaulmark Rep. Paul W. Mark @reppaulmark ·
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🚨 ENDORSEMENT ALERT 🚨

I am excited and deeply honored to announce that the Mayors of #Pittsfield and #NorthAdams have endorsed our campaign for State Senate!

#intheberkshires #mapoli #checkMark✔️

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goodrica goodrica @goodrica ·
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The state should do more to help local communities with water and sewer infrastructure: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/11/metro/provincetown-sewer-emergency-forces-closure-restaurants-water-restrictions-homes/ #mapoli

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thereminderma Reminder Publishing @thereminderma ·
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The #Republican candidate for his party’s gubernatorial nomination said at a press conference at Riverfront Park last week the region “feels forgotten and left behind. We felt that. We heard that.”
#westernma #mapoli
https://www.thereminder.com/localnews/springfield/doughty-has-plan-for-western-mass-if-elected-gover/

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realjackstanton Jack Stanton @realjackstanton ·
52m

Thread:

The majority of #Provincetown is currently shut down due to a sewage emergency. This is a disaster for service workers and small businesses alike who make the majority of their yearly income in an extremely short season. (1/3) #mapoli

The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe

A sewage emergency on Thursday forced the closure of restaurants and public restrooms in a busy commercial district of Provincetown and the reduction of water usage in resident homes as workers raced to fix the issue in the midst of the busy summer season. https://trib.al/h2aKidK

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headlineoptics Headline Optics @headlineoptics ·
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Nunes: Truth Social now available for pre-order in Google Play Store https://www.masspolicyreport.com/2022/08/11/nunes-truth-social-now-available-for-pre-order-in-google-play-store/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter @masspolicy #MApoli #Massachusetts

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