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Dear Hon. Senators Rios, Quezada, and Alston:                                                                    Monday, May 30, 2022

HB2780 is coming before the Rules Committee at 1 pm on Tuesday, May 31. 

Sexual Politics

In the weeks since Supreme Court Grand Inquisitor Justice Samuel Alito’s anti-choice screed was disclosed, amidst all of the mass protests, speechifying, pontificating, punditry, etc., I noticed that something essential to the abortion brouhaha was completely missing from what passes for public discourse in this country: That sexual intercourse for pleasure and intimacy is under attack.

In our age of artificial insemination, etc., male/female copulation is still the main source of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion has, among other things, served as a backup, a sort of court of last resort to prevent the birth of unplanned babies. In essence, what all angry pro-abortion female protesters are saying is: “We want to enjoy sexual intercourse without the fear and/or consequences of getting ‘knocked up.’” Birth control, including abortion, are ways individuals accept responsibility for and consciously acknowledge that they are sexual beings – and good for them, they shouldn’t be slut-shamed for owning their sensuality, which is their right. To paraphrase the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper: Girls – and boys – just want to have fun.

here’s no plausible way to dispute that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is spreading racist conspiracy theories, but Glenn Greenwald has been trying anyway. 

Since Greenwald—a former Salon columnist, and after that a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the Guardian — departed from The Intercept in September 2020, he’s become a stalwart defender of Fox, and Carlson in particular. As Carlson has gained in viewership and impact—he’s the most widely watched cable news host in the US—his commentary and political positions have come under increased scrutiny. With that attention has come intense criticism. But he has Greenwald in his corner, who has let forth a flood of pro-Carlson arguments, primarily delivered on Twitter, his medium of choice.

Michigan’s Palisades nuke has just shut early for the same reason California’s two reactors at Diablo Canyon must now go down-- immediate safety concerns at a badly deteriorated reactor.

Safe energy activists fought for decades to close Palisades. Opened in 1971, it was costly, wasteful and grew increasingly dangerous as it inevitably decayed.

Finally scheduled to close on May 31, Entergy-- one of America’s biggest nuke operators-- stunned the world by taking it down on May 20, reducing the US reactor fleet from 93 to 92.

Our 95th Green Grassroots Election Protection (GREE-GREE) zoom begins with celebrations of the shut-down of Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant and the ouster of Australia’s awful right-wing anti-Earth prime minister.  

TATANKA BRICCA embraces new labor union support for Green New Deal legislation as it proceeds in California.

We also honor Russian diplomat BORIS BONDAROV for his enormously courageous denunciation of dictator Putin’s fascist assault on the people of Ukraine. 

MIKE HERSH and STEVE ROSENFELD give us the rundown on key primary races, including Pennsylvania and Oregon.

CAROLYN HARDING updates the insanity of gerrymandering in Ohio and her own expulsion from the State House…also known as the Hall of the Living Dead.

LYNN BERNSTEIN and JOHN BRAKEY update their own expulsions from the parking lot (!) of the election center in Wake County, North Carolina, along with commentary from JOEL SEGAL.

JULIE WEINER and LULU FRIESDAT report on major confrontations over voting machines and other election issues in New York.

PAT MARIDA explains the latest pro-nuke push in Ohio.

The Nakba is back on the Palestinian agenda. 

 For nearly three decades, Palestinians were told that the Nakba - or Catastrophe - is a thing of the past. That real peace requires compromises and sacrifices, therefore, the original sin that has led to the destruction of their historic homeland should be entirely removed from any ‘pragmatic’ political discourse. They were urged to move on. 

 The consequences of that shift in narrative were dire. Disowning the Nakba, the single most important event that shaped modern Palestinian history, has resulted in more than political division between the so-called radicals and the supposedly peace-loving pragmatists, the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. It also divided Palestinian communities in Palestine and across the world around political, ideological and class lines. 

Another terrorist slips into the classroom, into the news.

Does anyone understand this? Even if guns are easily, readily available, why, why, why? I find it impossible even to be angry — it’s hard to be angry under incomprehensible circumstances.

Instead, I find myself imagining George W. Bush giving a speech in which he condemns the latest horrific murders at . . . but instead of saying Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, he blurts out “Iraq.”

Israel’s coalition government of right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is on the verge of collapse, which is unsurprising. Israeli politics, after all, is among the most fractious in the world, and this particular coalition was born out of the obsessive desire to dethrone Israel’s former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Netanyahu was successfully ousted in June 2021, Bennett’s coalition has been left to contend with the painful reality that its odd political components have very little in common. 

On April 6, Israeli lawmaker Ildit Salman defected from the coalition, leaving Bennett and his temporary allies wrangling with the fact that their Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) coalition no longer has a majority. Now that the Knesset count stands at 60-60, a single defection could potentially send Israelis back to the voting booth, which has been quite habitual recently. 

The real Founders of American society were not the 55 rich white male interlopers who staged a coup d’etat in 1787-9 … and whose misogynist progeny have always wanted to ban abortion.

Our true Original Founders were the Indigenous matriarchs who ran most of America for thousands of years before the first whites set foot here.

For tens of centuries they controlled their pregnancies by herbal means. The idea that any government (tribal or otherwise) could rule a woman’s uterus would evoke disbelief and contempt from men and women alike.

In fact most North American tribes were run by women. The chieftains were commonly male. But they were chosen and could be removed at will by the matriarchs, who ran the homes and gardens, raised the children and made the major decisions about the future of the tribe.

As one Indigenous matriarch has explained, the men were allowed to be chiefs because “it makes them feel important and it gives them something to do.”

There were indeed tribes where men dominated. For many white “Christian” historians, the idea that females ran any society remains impossible to comprehend.

Three years ago, we helped write a report for RootsAction.org targeting 15 corporate Democrats in Congress who deserved to be “primaried.” We called the report “Bad Blues.” A common reaction back then was that those establishment pols were too strong and entrenched to be defeated.

On Tuesday, yet another “Bad Blue” apparently went down to defeat – with seven-term Congressman Kurt Schrader of Oregon running way behind community activist Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the slowly tallied Democratic primary.

Schrader is not the first “Bad Blue” on our list to face defeat by a progressive challenger. And he’s unlikely to be the last.

The incumbent heavily outspent McLeod-Skinner – thanks to lavish funding from big pharma and other corporate PACs – but Schrader was out-organized on the ground. McLeod-Skinner called him “the Joe Manchin of the House.”