September 25, 2021

'How Many More Deaths Must It Take?' Barbados Leader Rips Rich Nations in Fierce UN Speech

Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley delivered a scathing indictment of the rich and powerful during her address at the 76th session of the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, condemning the leaders of wealthy countries for refusing to take basic steps to end the coronavirus pandemic, tackle the climate emergency, and usher in a more just society.

"How much more global temperature rise must there be before we end the burning of fossil fuels?"

"If I used the speech prepared for me to deliver today, it would be a repetition, a repetition of what you have heard from others and also from me," Mottley said at the outset of her remarks, which came after the leaders of African and Latin American nations decried the massive, persistent inequities in coronavirus vaccine distribution that have left billions of people without access to lifesaving shots.

(Snip)

"How many more variants of Covid-19 must arrive, how many more, before a worldwide action plan for vaccinations will be implemented?" Mottley said. "How many more deaths must it take before 1.7 billion excess vaccines in the possession of the advanced countries of the world will be shared with those who have simply no access?"

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/25/how-many-more-deaths-must-it-take-barbados-leader-rips-rich-nations-fierce-un-speech?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1632592998

September 25, 2021

Cisneros Slams Cuellar for Being Only House Democrat to Vote Against Abortion Rights

Texas congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros on Friday slammed Rep. Henry Cuellar—the U.S. House member she is aiming to unseat—for being the lone Democrat to vote against legislation that would codify abortion rights into federal law.

Shortly after the House passed the Women's Health Protection Act by a vote of 218-211 Friday afternoon, Cisneros released a video calling out Cuellar for "once again" refusing to "stand up for South Texans' reproductive freedom." Every House Republican who was present joined Cuellar in voting no.

"He's chosen to stand with his Republican allies and turn his back to South Texans' families and our healthcare," said Cisneros, who narrowly lost to Cuellar in the 2020 Democratic primary for Texas' 28th Congressional District. Cisneros announced in August that she would challenge Cuellar again, and she quickly won the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America and other reproductive rights groups.

"Even after our state's Republican leaders just passed the country's most restrictive abortion ban, almost ending all abortion access in Texas, our congressman refuses to defend our reproductive rights," Cisneros said in her video statement.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/24/cisneros-slams-cuellar-being-only-house-democrat-vote-against-abortion-rights?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1632511993

September 24, 2021

Ted Cruz Shut Down Over Question About 'Racist' Voter ID Laws

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1441468435725225985

September 24, 2021

'This is big': House passes amendment to cut US complicity in Saudi bombing of Yemen

Anti-war groups on Thursday welcomed the U.S. House's passage of an amendment to the annual defense bill that would cut off the flow to Saudi Arabia of U.S. logistical support and weapons "that are bombing civilians" in Yemen.

"This is BIG," tweeted the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) following the afternoon 219-207 vote, which fell largely along party lines, with just 11 Democrats voting "no."

https://twitter.com/FCNL/status/1441130441491234816

At issue was Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment to H.R. 4350, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It's one of dozens of amendments to the NDAA under consideration by the House this week.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/ro-khanna-yemen-war/

September 21, 2021

Bay Area cities join lofty Biden plan to tackle homelessness

The Biden administration launched a new push Monday to house 100,000 Americans by the end of 2022 as the mayors of the Bay Area’s three biggest cities — all struggling with homelessness on a massive scale — jumped on board.

The House America initiative, which also aims to create at least 20,000 new affordable homes nationwide, asks city, county and state leaders to publicly commit to housing more people and building low-income units using new federal funds. In exchange, federal officials will offer support and guidance to help them meet their goals.

It’s a major signal from President Joe Biden’s administration that ending homelessness is a top priority despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and worries that expiring federal and state eviction protections soon will push more people onto the streets.

(Snip)

“Oakland is in this 1,000%,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said, accepting the Biden administration’s challenge during a virtual event launching the program. Oakland has pledged to house 1,500 people and build 132 new units of housing by the end of next year, Schaaf said. More than 4,000 people are homeless in Oakland, according to the city’s most recent count.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/20/bay-area-cities-join-lofty-biden-plan-to-tackle-homelessness/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

September 21, 2021

Former Rand Paul aide, pardoned by Trump, charged with funneling Russian money into 2016 election

A former campaign staffer for US Sen. Rand Paul has been charged with channeling money from Russia into the 2016 presidential election, the US Department of Justice said Monday.

In an unsealed indictment, dated September 9, prosecutors allege Jesse Benton "conspired to illegally funnel thousands of dollars of foreign money from a Russian foreign national" into the campaign.

In October 2016, Benton received a $100,000 wire transfer from the unnamed Russian national, the indictment states, promising him that he would get to "meet a celebrity" at a fundraiser in Philadelphia on September 22, 2016.

Prosecutors do not name the candidate, but former President Donald Trump was hosting a fundraiser that night at the Ritz-Carlton in Center City, Philadelphia.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-rand-paul-aide-pardoned-by-trump-charged-with-funneling-russian-money-into-2016-election/ar-AAOEapd?ocid=st

September 20, 2021

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, other Democrats push new voting rights bill

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and other Senate Democrats are charging forward on a new voting bill, but there is no indication they will be able to win Republican support in the chamber, or change the filibuster, to pass the plan.

Yet Klobuchar said in an interview that she views the latest legislation as "a major breakthrough" following negotiations in July and August that resulted in West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic swing vote, signing on to the new bill.

"It's the first agreement that we've had on the substance," Klobuchar said. "And you really have to start on an agreement on the substance before you get to the next step."

The downscaled proposal was rolled out last week after an effort to start debate on a more sweeping election overhaul failed on the Senate floor in June due to GOP opposition. The new version, dubbed the Freedom to Vote Act, comes in a year when some GOP-led states tightened voting laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump's widespread false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.

https://m.startribune.com/klobuchar-pushes-new-voting-rights-bill/600098542/?clmob=y&c=n

September 19, 2021

New 'Don't Look Up' Images Show Meryl Streep as a Trump-Like President of the United States

A new batch of Don’t Look Up images give us a better look at Meryl Streep as the President of the United States and the star-studded cast of Netflix’s dark comedy about the end of the world. While Streep’s clearly Trump-inspired President was already introduced in the film’s first teaser, EW's new exclusive images also give the first look at Ron Perlman, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, revealing more details about their characters.

The new set of images shows Streep playing what seems to be a populist President, as she’s seen in public events waving and smiling and donning a hat with a slogan on it. A few photos also feature Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as two low-level astronomers who find out a massive comet is coming towards Earth, which could mean the end of humanity as we know it. Although DiCaprio’s and Lawrence’s scientists try to warn the world about the cataclysm to come, they have to navigate the complex world of politics, where re-election is more important than the truth. Also, there will be no shortage of unbelievers that claim the scientific discovery is just a hoax.

Blanchett and Perry play cable news channel hosts in the new images, while Perlman is shown in full astronaut uniform. While the pictures also show many other cast members, their roles in the upcoming film are still unclear. The new images give a first look at Timothée Chalamet, Scott Mescudi (a.k.a. Kid Cudi), Ariana Grande, Rob Morgan, Himesh Patel, Tomer Sisley, and Melanie Lynskey. Jonah Hill, who was shown in the first teaser and plays the president's son, also comes back in a picture taken from a meeting on the White House.

Directed by Adam McKay from a screenplay he wrote based on a story by David Sirota, Don’t Look Up cast also includes Matthew Perry, Chris Evans, Mark Rylance, and Michael Chiklis. McKay produces Don’t Look Up, which was first planned as a climate change allegory but evolved to reflect the narrative disputes during the pandemic. According to McKay: “We can’t even talk to each other anymore. We can’t even agree. So it’s about climate change, but at its root it’s about what has the internet, what have cellphones, what has the modern world done to the way we communicate?”

https://collider.com/dont-look-up-images-leonardo-dicaprio-timothee-chalamet-meryl-streep/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

September 16, 2021

What the Critical Race Theory Panic Was Really About (and the Data to Prove It)

When, this past spring, a succession of stories about communities pushing back, angrily, against the supposed teaching of critical race theory in their school districts began to overtake my social media feeds, I had a hunch that it was a direct result of white fear. But a recent data analysis from NBC News confirms it.

Reporters found that the districts hosting some of the most combative debates over diversity and inclusion initiatives—including just teaching about racism—have seen a steady increase in students of color attending their schools. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, where parents have squared off over critical race theory, there has been a 52.4 percent increase in students of color since 1994. And in Loudoun County, Virginia, where the rights of transgender students and teaching racism have become ugly, loud battleground issues, there has been a 29.5 percent increase in that span of time.

If you’ve been following how whiteness has evolved since the 2016 election, this isn’t surprising. But it is nice to have the numbers to back it up. It reminded one of my colleagues of a similar, equally unsurprising yet very real finding following the Capitol riot. Political scientist Robert Pape, after going through polling and demographic data, discovered that most people who participated in the riots came to D.C. from places where residents were terrified of being replaced by people of color and immigrants. More specifically, as the New York Times put it, “counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists.”

“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Pape told the New York Times. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/critical-race-theory-nbc-news-school-districts-diversity-data.html

September 6, 2021

POLITICS Bernie Sanders Touts 'Progress' On Legalizing Marijuana And Ending The Drug War

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says Congress is “making progress” toward ending the drug war and federally legalizing marijuana, and it helps that more states are enacting the reform in the meantime.

At a town hall event focused on Democrats’ large-scale budget plan last week, a voter said he was going to ask Sanders the same question he posed two years ago about when lawmakers are “going to end the racist, idiotic drug war.” The Senate Budget Committee chairman responded that he’s “happy to give you a better answer than I gave it two years ago in the sense that I think we’re making progress.”

“My own view is that the so-called war on drugs has been an abysmal failure. It has destroyed god knows how many lives, disproportionately African American and Latino,” Sanders, a longstanding champion of marijuana reform, said at the Iowa event. “What you are now seeing is a radical change of consciousness with regard to that war. You are seeing state after state after state legalizing marijuana.”

“I would legalize marijuana nationally. I am supportive of that,” he added. “But we are making some progress in state after state.”

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bernie-sanders-touts-progress-on-legalizing-marijuana-and-ending-the-drug-war/