Transgender

United Methodists repealed their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy with no debate on Wednesday, removing a rule forbidding them from being ordained or appointed as ministers. MORE

A hidden truth about the presidential campaign

 Sam Smith - Nobody talks about the lack of Biden support among non-college educated white voters. But a recent Pew Research poll tells the story: only 34% of them support Biden while 63% support Trump. Meanwhile, 53% of college educated whites support Biden while only 44% support Trump. 

How fixed are these positions? According to a Marist survey, Biden has a 21% lead with college educated whites but in 2020 Trump had a 3% lead. Things can change. 

With a father who worked in FDR's administration and as a young guy getting politically involved in the1960s I long assumed that non-college educated whites were an important part of the Democrats' support but in more recent years realized it has no longer been a party priority. In fact,  our country has increasingly adopted the values of the better educated and things like labor unions have lost status.  After the 1960s liberalism became less commonly shared. 

Add into this the fact that there may be a potential hidden ethnic factor here as many' lower class whites view multi-ethnicity as having cost them jobs and/or status. Liberals tend to address this only as a moral issue and don't even talk about the economic factors.

To save the republic, it is critical that the needs of poorer and less educated whites - especially white males - get more attention. The alternative is to elect Donald Trump and ruin the lives of everyone.

More than half of voters think Trump has committed crimes

The Hill - More than half of voters think former President Trump has committed crimes for which he should be convicted, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll shared with The Hill.  Fifty-five percent of surveyed voters think Trump has committed crimes, a finding that comes as the first of four criminal indictments against the former president goes before a jury in New York. A 53-percent majority also said Trump’s legal cases make it “impossible” for him to be a viable candidate for the Oval Office, even as he campaigns for another four years.  At the same time, 57 percent of respondents said they think the legal prosecutions against Trump constitute “lawfare,” or a way for Democrats to use the legal system to take out political opponents, while 43 percent said the prosecutions are fair and unpolitical.  Just 49 percent of respondents said Trump has committed crimes for which he will — rather than should — be convicted, while 51 percent said he will not be convicted. 

Fifty-one percent in the poll said the hush money case is happening “because he committed crimes deserving of these punishments” — while 49 percent said it’s happening because “officials are trying to force him out of the race for president.” Trump also faces charges related to his handling of classified materials and his actions surrounding the transfer of power after President Biden won the 2020 election. 

“Voters think that former President Trump may be guilty of crimes but that does not seem to be stopping them from supporting him. Even convictions only take the race to dead even,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.  In the event that Trump is convicted of crimes related to his document handling or in his Georgia election interference case, the Biden-Trump rematch set for this fall would be roughly tied at 50 percent support each, according to the poll.

Trump

Newsweek -  A law firm wants to withdraw from representing Donald Trump, citing a breakdown in relations, court documents show. In a filing to a Manhattan court, the law firm—LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland—said there had been an "irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship." The firm, which has represented Trump and his election campaign for several years, had been defending the former president in a lawsuit filed by A.J. Delgado, Trump's former senior advisor who said she was fired after she became pregnant by her supervisor during the 2016 presidential campaign. She was Trump's director of Hispanic outreach at the time. Delgado is suing the Trump campaign and Trump's former advisers Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer, claiming gender and pregnancy discrimination. All the defendants have denied any wrongdoing in the case.

NY Times - When a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump argued before the Supreme Court last week that his client should be immune from charges of plotting to subvert the last election, he asked the justices to picture a world in which former presidents were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their successors.“Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?” the lawyer, D. John Sauer, asked.What Mr. Sauer did not mention was that Mr. Trump has done as much as anyone to escalate the prospect of threatening political rivals with prosecution. In 2016, his supporters greeted mentions of Hillary Clinton with chants of “lock her up.” In his current campaign, Mr. Trump has explicitly warned of his intent to use the legal system as a weapon of political retribution, with frequent declarations that he could go after President Biden and his family.

In effect, Mr. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to enforce a norm — that in the United States, public officials do not engage in tit-for-tat political prosecutions — that he has for years threatened to shatter. In promising to sic his Justice Department on Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump has laid the grounds for the very conditions that he was asking the justices to guard against by granting him immunity.

 Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Have Judge Recused

Trump threatens to prosecute Bidens if he’s re-elected unless he gets immunity

Women

Time - Florida's ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant, went into effect Wednesday, and some doctors are concerned that women in the state will no longer have access to needed health care.Dr. Leah Roberts, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist with Boca Fertility in Boca Raton, said the anti-abortion laws being enacted by Florida and other red states are being vaguely written by people who don't understand medical science. The rules are affecting not just women who want therapeutic abortions, meaning procedures to terminate viable pregnancies because of personal choice, but also nonviable pregnancies for women who want to have babies.

“We’re coming in between them and their doctors and preventing them from getting care until it’s literally saving their lives, sometimes at the expense of their fertility,” Roberts said. The new ban has an exception for saving a woman's life, as well as in cases involving rape and incest, but Roberts said health care workers are still prevented from performing an abortion on a nonviable pregnancy that they know may become deadly — such as when the fetus is missing organs or implanted outside the uterus — until it actually becomes deadly.  “We’re being told that we have to wait until the mother is septic to be able to intervene,” Roberts said. Besides the physical danger, there's also the psychological trauma of having to carry a fetus that the mother knows will never be a healthy baby, Roberts said.

Time -Most women should start mammogram screenings for breast cancer at age 40, and get screened every other year until they reach age 75, according to new recommendations from an expert panel. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which is an independent group of experts funded by the government, regularly reviews data and makes recommendations on health issues, and many health providers follow them. It decided to revise its advice on mammogram screening that was last issued in 2016. That guideline said women should start regular mammogram screening every other year beginning at age 50, and that women ages 40 to 49 should discuss with their doctors the best screening regimen for them.

The new recommendation is based on additional evidence that has emerged since 2016, says Dr. John Wong, vice chair of USPSTF. According to data from the National Cancer Institute, the rates of breast cancer for women in their 40s began increasing by 2% annually in 2015, and that trend justified a change in the recommendations to start screening a decade earlier. “Our current data shows that this recommendation could potentially save as many as one out of five women who would otherwise die if they waited to be screened until they were 50,” says Wong. “That’s potentially saving 25,000 women from dying of breast cancer. We think that’s a big win.

Word

Via Sign Appreciation Society

 

Politics

 Democrats say they will save Speaker Mike Johnson’s job if Republicans try to oust him

Environment

Documented American sea level rise

Meanwhile. . .

History Facts - When we think of endangered animals, we generally think about elephants, tigers, and whales — but certainly not humans. Yet between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, ancestors of Homo sapiens lost 98.7% of their population, according to a 2023 study published in the journal Science. Before the population crash, as many as 135,000 early humans roamed the Earth, but according to the team of geneticists behind the study, that number plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals, and the population stayed that low for more than 100,000 years. (These weren’t modern humans, but earlier hominins on the genetic timeline; one species that was alive at the time was Homo erectus, and we’re still discovering new prehistoric human species.)

College protests

University of California, Los Angeles, cancels classes Wednesday after overnight clashes between protesters on campus. After a couple of hours of scuffles between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators at UCLA late Tuesday, police wearing helmets and face shields slowly separated the groups and quelled the violence. MORE

NPR - Brown University leaders have agreed to hold a vote on divesting from companies that support Israel, and pro-Palestinian student demonstrators agreed to clear their encampment.

Guardian - Violent clashes broke out on the campus of the University of California in Los Angeles early on Wednesday morning when counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian protest encampment, hours after New York City police cleared pro-Palestinian protesters out of an academic building that had been taken over at Columbia University. Aerial footage showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack wooden boards being held up as a makeshift barricade to protect pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA, some holding placards or umbrellas. At least one firework was thrown into the camp.

NY mayor says nearly 300 arrested in crackdowns on protests at Columbia University and City College

Axios - About 1,100 people have been arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on at least 30 college campuses.

• Only a handful of students had been expelled before Columbia's announcement today, but schools have been sending students through internal disciplinary processes.
• The University of Florida has threatened to ban students from campus for three years.

Jonathan Ben-Menachem, Zeteo -  As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives...  Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities.

1440 - Portland State University closed its campus after student protesters broke into a school library, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled its classes. Arrests across universities continued; over 1,000 people have been arrested so far. See all updates here.

NPR -  New York police officers cleared pro-Palestinian encampments at two campuses late last night. At Columbia University, officers used an armored vehicle to push a bridge through the window of a building students had barricaded themselves in. Less than a mile away, the encampment at The City College of New York was also disbanded, and students were hauled away with their hands zip-tied.

Time - Police officers carrying zip ties and riot shields stormed a Columbia University building being occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters, streaming in through a window late Tuesday and arresting dozens of people. The protesters had seized the administration building, known as Hamilton Hall, more than 20 hours earlier in a major escalation as demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war spread on college campuses nationwide.

 

Workers

Yes! - Since the pandemic, your news feed has likely been filled with content about labor organizing: unions, strikes, and workers’ rights. We haven’t seen this level of coverage since the stomping days of AFL-CIO in the ’80s. Whether it’s Starbucks, Amazon, REI, or graduate students, forgotten laborers are rebelling, demanding health and safety measures (especially because we’ve deemed them “essential workers”). A majority of Americans support this fight against big business: 71% support labor unions, the highest proportion since 1965. Unfortunately, right now 90% of these laborers fighting for union recognition will fail when faced with employer resistance. For the past half-century, union opponents have steadily chipped away at the rules protecting workers’ rights—in courts, in laws, and in our American culture. We’ve reached the point where there are many barriers to winning a union election. Even though the National Labor Relations Board changed a landmark rule to protect union rights in August 2023, organizing rights are not fully protected and can be changed on the whim of the administration in power.

Money

Ralph Nader - Another sign of government guaranteed big capitalism. Both parties passed a huge $53 billion slush fund to lure very profitable corporations to build plants in our country. The Department of Commerce have already committed to giving $6 billion each to Micron Technology, Intel and Samsung, yet the summer feeding program for poor American kids has been blocked in Congress, to give one of many comparisons.

What Trump says his regime would be like

Mike Allen, Axios - What would a second Trump term really look like? You no longer need to guess:  Former President Trump has laid out, publicly and unambiguously, designs to stretch traditions, norms and accepted law in historic ways, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write. We've written for months that Trump allies privately are plotting loyalty tests and policy proposals to vastly expand presidential power and punish critics.

You might like this or loathe it. But, based on two interviews with TIME magazine totaling more than 80 minutes, you can no longer ignore Trump's intentions:

1. On whether states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion that violates a ban (say, after 15 weeks of pregnancy): "I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states." (President Biden tweeted about that quote: "This is reprehensible.")
2. On political violence in connection with the upcoming election: "I don't think we're going to have that. I think we're going to win. And if we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election."
3. On using the military to deport migrants who cross illegally: "Well, these aren't civilians. These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country."
4. On launching the largest deportation operation in American history: "Because we have no choice. I don't believe this is sustainable for a country, what's happening to us."
5. On using the military against protesters: "I would use certainly the National Guard, if the police were unable to stop. I would absolutely use the National Guard." He then mentioned an executive order he signed to encourage prosecution of anyone who desecrates national monuments.
6. On using Schedule F power to fire civil servants: "You have some people that are protected that shouldn't be protected. And you have some people you almost want to protect because they do such a good job."
7. On pardoning every one of the people convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol: "I would consider that, yes. ... Yes, absolutely."
8. On whether he might fire a U.S. attorney who didn't prosecute someone on his orders: "It would depend on the situation. Yeah."
9. On "anti-white racism" protections: "I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country, and that can't be allowed."
10. On disbanding the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, established under President Biden: "I think I would. ... I think it sounds good politically, but I think it's a very expensive solution."

Between the lines: TIME, in the cover story going on sale May 17, calls Trump's responses "the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world."

• Asked by the magazine about his statement on Fox News in December that he'd be a dictator just for Day 1 of his presidency, Trump said: "I think a lot of people like it."

Cars

Daily Mail, UK -  New cars sold in America will soon be required to come with automatic braking systems in a move designed to drive down soaring traffic fatalities.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is mandating all passenger vehicles to be kitted out with the brakes in a strive to save 362 lives per year, amid a 'crisis in roadway deaths'. But the rule will also drive up prices, which NHTSA estimates to come at a total cost of $354 million per year in 2020 dollars, or $82 per vehicle. The law comes into effect September 2029, giving auto makers more than five years to remodel any vehicles which aren't compliant with the requirements.  It's the most significant safety rule to be imposed in the US in more than 20 years, according to the NHTSA. New cars sold in America will be required to come with automatic braking systems in a move designed to drive down soaring pedestrian fatalities

Trump

NY Times - Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial had barely begun when he started to turn his anger toward his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche.Although Mr. Blanche has been Mr. Trump’s favorite lawyer for some time, behind closed doors and in phone calls, the former president has complained repeatedly about him in recent weeks, according to four people familiar with the situation. He has griped that Mr. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor and veteran litigator, has not been following his instructions closely, and has been insufficiently aggressive. Mr. Trump wants him to attack witnesses, attack what the former president sees as a hostile jury pool, and attack the judge, Juan M. Merchan.Mr. Trump, who often complains about legal fees and sometimes refuses to pay them, has also wondered aloud why his lawyers cost so much, according to the people, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

Huffington Post - Donald Trump says he’d make local and state police departments participate in a massive immigration crackdown if he wins a second term in the White House, even though he wouldn’t have the authority to do this. ... “We’re going to be using local police,” Trump said, “because local police know them by name, by first name, second name and third name. I mean, they know them very well.” U.S. presidents don’t have the authority to order local and state police departments to carry out immigration policies run by the federal government. Asked to elaborate on his plans on this, Trump vaguely threatened that they could lose federal money if they don’t play a role in his crackdown.

Common Dreams - Former U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview published Tuesday that if reelected in November, he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. That position, said one leading reproductive rights organization, underscores the grave threat the presumptive GOP nominee poses to fundamental freedoms. "There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump will choose anti-abortion extremists and their horrifying agenda over American families every single chance he gets, and this new interview proves that he will ban abortion in all 50 states," Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in response to the former president's comments.

NBC News - The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial found that the former president violated a partial gag order nine times and threatened to jail him if he continued to violate it. The judge fined Trump $9000 and ordered him to remove the posts, which included attacks on likely witnesses Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, today.

Via @HC_Richardson

Read More

Seniors

Study Finds - Loneliness can affect anyone at any age, but a new study finds it typically gets worse as people grow older. Researchers from Northwestern University have discovered an unfortunate pattern of loneliness during adulthood. Mapping out trends across the average person’s lifespan, researchers found that feelings of loneliness are very common during young adulthood before dropping off during middle age. However, loneliness ramped back up to high levels during old age.

The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, analyzed data from nine long-term studies conducted in countries across the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Australia. In total, the study authors examined the lives of over 25,000 adults to reveal these fascinating insights about loneliness across a person’s entire life. “What was striking was how consistent the uptick in loneliness is in older adulthood,” says lead author Eileen Graham, a professor at Northwestern University, in a media release. “There’s a wealth of evidence that loneliness is related to poorer health, so we wanted to better understand who is lonely and why people are becoming lonelier as they age out of midlife so we can hopefully start finding ways to mitigate it.”

The researchers found a clear U-shaped pattern, with loneliness at its highest in younger adulthood right after the tumultuous transition from adolescence. It then drops to its lowest levels during our 30s, 40s, and 50s in that prime period of middle age. Once we hit our 60s, however, loneliness starts creeping upward again until it peaks in our elderly years.

US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources say

ABC News - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple-effects across the country. The DEA's proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation's most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use. The agency's move, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday by five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive regulatory review, clears the last significant regulatory hurdle before the agency's biggest policy change in over 50 years can take effect.

Polling update

While the presidential race is statistically too close to call the media and Democrats have downplayed the fact that Trump has lost little polling status even since his scandals have become front and center. Based on recent polling, a criminally indicted former president is actually leading Joe Biden 

 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: BIDEN VS. TRUMP
Most recent five poll average: Trump leads by 2% ... Earlier in April Biden led by 3%

2024 RACE: BIDEN VS TRUMP & OTHERS
Most recent five poll average: Trump leads by 2%

BIDEN APPROVAL RATING   Most recent five poll average 42%  - 7% below 2023 high, 1% above 2023 low, 1% behind Trump

TRUMP APPROVAL RATING: Most recent five poll average 43%, 1% ahead of Biden 

ELECTORAL VOTE MARGINS
Total electoral votes: 538.  Biden won in 2020 by 74 electoral votes. Trump's lead in 2024 based on polls is 15 with another 16 too close to call

ARIZONA
Biden- Trump poll average: Trump leads by 6%  Biden down 6% from 2020
Biden-Trump-Others poll average: Trump leads by 4%
Electoral vote change Biden down 11

GEORGIA
Three poll average: Biden/Trump Trump leads by 3% up 3% from 2020
Three poll average: Biden Trump/Others Trump leads by 5%
Electoral vote change: Biden down 16

MICHIGAN
Three poll average Biden/Trump:  Biden leads by 1% down 2% from 2020
Three poll average: Biden/Trump/Others  TIE
16 electoral votes too close to call

NEVADA
2024 Biden/Trump 3 poll avg Trump leads by 4% Biden down 6% from 2020
2024  Biden/Trump/Others 3 poll average Trump leads by 6%
Biden Electoral vote down 6

NORTH CAROLINA
2024  Biden/Trump  Trump leads by 8 Biden down 7% from 2020
2024 Biden/Trump/Others Trump leads Biden by 7%

PENNSYLVANIA   
2024 Trump-Biden Trump-Biden three poll average: Trump leads by 3% - 4% better than in 2020
Trump-Biden-Others: Trump leads by 1%
Biden Electoral vote down 20

WISCONSIN
2024 Biden/Trump/Others Trump leads by 2%
2024 Trump/Biden Biden down by 2% from 2020
Biden Electoral vote down 10

Word: Student protests

Anand Giridharadas, The Ink - Historically, students have played a vital role: forcing moral questions that sometimes blinkered, jaded, habituated, corrupted elders refuse to face. Let them. Their social function isn't to be as faultless as your CPA. Their job isn't to be right about everything or to know how to run foreign policy or to have all the answers.

You do your job. Let other people do theirs. And everyone doesn't have to do their job the way you would do yours. There is a role for students to do what they're doing -- and there is a role for diplomats and everyone else: they can handle geopolitical maneuvering, legislating, explaining things in the news, brokering peace, mounting legal cases, writing human rights reports.

Enough with this strange allergy to hearing a tune played if it's not on your instrument, not played in your style. This is a society. It takes a lot of people going at it in different ways to get where we need to go.

Sure, students get things wrong. But they rarely have mortgages, salaries, speaking engagements, lobbying contracts, revolving-door jobs, board seats, advisory gigs, and all the other things that make some older folks unable - or unwilling - to see clearly what they otherwise would surely recognize.
And in the long run, the things students clamored for 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago are now largely things that even the most encrusted establishmentarians support and take for granted. So always approach student protests with humility. And curiosity. Take your own view. But be curious, not certain.

Meanwhile. . .

Strippers' bill of rights bill signed into law in Washington state. The new law requires training for employees in establishments to prevent sexual harassment, identify and report human trafficking, de-escalate conflict and provide first aid. It also mandates security workers on site, keypad codes on dressing rooms and panic buttons in places where entertainers may be alone with customers. Most dancers in the state are independent contractors who are paid by customers and then must pay club fees every shift, Zack-Wu said. The new law limits the fees owners can charge, capping them at $150 or 30% of the amount dancers make during their shift — whichever is less. It also prohibits late fees and other charges related to unpaid balances.

Environment

EcoWatch - A first-of-its-kind study that analyzed hundreds of conservation actions around the world has confirmed that efforts toward preserving wildlife are resulting in measurable achievements. The international study, published in the journal Science, sought to assess whether conservation efforts were having any positive impacts on biodiversity. Researchers analyzed 186 studies, including 665 trials, and measured changes to biodiversity. Overall, the researchers found that about two-thirds of the studied conservation actions at minimum slowed biodiversity declines or led to improved biodiversity.  “If you read the headlines about extinction these days, it would be easy to get the impression that we are failing biodiversity — but that’s not really looking at the whole picture,” Penny Langhammer, co-author of the study and executive vice president of Re:wild, told the BBC. “This study provides the strongest evidence to date that not only does conservation improve the state of biodiversity and slow its decline, but when it works, it really works.”

Guardian - Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals. Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371m lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022.

Youth

Axios -  Household wealth for those under 40 in the U.S. is up 49% from its pre-pandemic level, according to a new analysis. Young households haven't seen wealth growth like this since the Federal Reserve first started tracking this data in 1989. 

Middle East

Axios - Columbia University has started suspending students who are resisting leaving pro-Palestinian encampments.  They will be unable to finish the semester or graduate and are barred from entering campus buildings, including housing. 

AP News - Israeli officials are becoming increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court, the permanent court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities, could issue arrest warrants for the country’s leaders more than six months into the Israel-Hamas war. Read more.

Time - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to launch an incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering from the 7-month-long war. Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah to destroy Hamas’ battalions there “with or without a deal." Israel and Hamas are negotiating a cease-fire agreement meant to free hostages and bring some relief to the Palestinians in the besieged enclave. “The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the questions. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas' battalions there — with a deal or without a deal, to achieve the total victory,” Netanyahu said in a meeting with families of hostages held by militants in Gaza, according to a statement from his office.  Netanyahu has vowed to achieve “total victory” in the war and has faced pressure from his nationalist governing partners to launch an offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last major stronghold.

Wiilie Nelson a few years ago

@Old_Santa_Claus
Keith Richards teaching a young Willie Nelson - now 91 -  how to play guitar

 

The federal debt

Robert Reich - The federal debt is a problem. This year, the United States will spend about $870 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product on interest payments on the debt. That’s more than the entire defense budget. But take a closer look.The major reason for the huge federal debt is Trump’s and George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which together added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment. They’re responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the ratio of the national debt to the economy since 2001.

Excluding the one-time costs of responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession, the Bush and Trump tax cuts account for more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio. Most of the benefits of those tax cuts, not incidentally, have gone to the rich. 65 percent of the benefits of the Trump tax cuts have gone to the richest fifth of Americans, 22 percent to the top 1 percent.