Ray Torres is the director of the short film

Beyond Credit Unions

The film is available for groups to show. Contact Ray at 215 753 9022

Flyer

Also: Press Release

I kinda like this as an anthem for the left these days.

Brief history of PRAWN

• Network groups, organizations, and individuals to stop the repression caused by "never ending wars" at home and abroad, by the US corporate military state
• Support organizations having common ground
• Educate and activate the general public

• East Timor & Indonesia Networks (ETAN)
  
• Delco Waging Peace
  
• Granny Peace Brigade - Philadelphia
• Otherjones - A blog by Deena Stryker
  
• Media Tank  
• Philly Against War
• Northeast Philly for Peace & Justice
  
• Philadelphia Veterans For Peace
• Wounds of War
• Northwest Greens
• Progressive Democracy of South Jersey (PDSJ)
• UFPJ-Delaware Valley Network
• UPenn - FASWI
• Delaware Valley Veterans for America

National Organizations

• United For Peace & Justice (UFPJ)
• World Can't Wait
• ACLU's Blog of Rights

Upcoming Events

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Midsection archive

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Rally to observe 1st Annivesary of invasion of Ukraine

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Rally to observe 2nd Anniversary of Nuclear Ban Treaty

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2nd Anniversary of attack on Capitol

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Pre-Election round-up

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AFL-CIO parade & Housing rally

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Anti-Nuclear War 16Jul

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Pro-Choice march 24Jun2022

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Poor People's Campaign Washington DC

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March For Our Lives gun safety demo

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Pro-Choice Rally by Democrats

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Poor People's March

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Supporting Ukraine

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Pro-Ukrainian Rally

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No War with Russia Rally

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Poor People's Campaign

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Pro-Palestinian Demonstration

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March for Palestinians

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Protesting Israel's attack on Palestine

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Defund the Pentagon

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2nd Amazon-Alabama protest

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Union demonstration Amazon-Alabama

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Nuclear weapons declared illegal by UN

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Getting signatures

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BLM March - September

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Pro-Post Office protest

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Rally at African-American Museum

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BLM March 13 June

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Black Lives Matter marches - 6-8 June

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Info, articles, etc.

The lies of Fox News and how they couldn’t stop.

Zelenskyy talks about himself and how he relates to his family in wartime.
Soldier explains how he keeps clean in the trenches.
Recruitment video in Japanese.
Ukrainians are sick and tired of everyone wanting to own their productive, fertile land. A discussion of the making of Medieval rye bread.

Biden shows how to ridicule his opponents with a bit of class and style.

February

Huh! So former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (One of the most useless, inconsequential Speakers ever) scolded Rupert Murdoch behind closed doors because, Heaven forfend!, he didn't want to do anything that might have interrupted the flow of money from being on the Fox Board of Directors.

Uuh...whut?!?!?! Representative Greene makes a sound and sensible point? She does, actually. She’s very rightly concerned that releasing too much footage of the January 6^th tapes could tell foreign adversaries things that we’d prefer they not know. Wish she’d realized that earlier, but better late than never.

Good! A plurality of voters blame the correct party for the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine.

Railroad unions “denounced a business model known as ‘precision scheduled railroading,’ which aims to boost profits by running bigger and faster trains with smaller crews”
Yep, we need to nationalize the railroads.

CNN continues its lurch to the right. Why aren’t viewers informed they’re watching a lobbyist for Norfolk Southern discussing the East Palestine train derailment in East Palestine?

"Scott's speech was a relentlessly partisan screed accusing Joe Biden and 'the left' of pursuing a 'blueprint for ruining America,'" she quoted

and when Senator Scott described his critique, it was clear that the quote was absolutely on target. Scott describes a series of problems that preceded the Biden Administration and that progressives did not make worse. His first target, inflation, has been improving over the last several months.

Zelenskyy reviews an eventful week. He also makes it clear that Ukraine won’t rest until Crimea is restored as a province of Ukraine.
Bakhmut’s pretty much a desert at this point.
“The Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) are getting replaced with a new unit called the ‘Assault Unit’ …” Really not much bigger than a BTG and so few tanks! Daily Kos does a detailed review of this.
A soldier looks back on what Bucha was like before the war.
Apparently, Pink Floyd (David Gilmour) doesn’t agree with Roger Waters on the war. Gilmour has Ukrainian relatives.

Detailed review of the Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) and their replacement, the Assault Unit, which really isn’t much of an improvement. The equivalent US unit, an independent unit that can carry out missions on its own, is called the Armored Brigade Combat Teams (ABCT) and it has almost six times the personnel and almost nine times the tanks.

Ha, ha, ha! Nikki Haley’s most important activity at the UN was to compose a book! In other words, she was so bored and useless after beating up on Palestinians, she was left with plenty of time to write a book!

Julia Ioffe's grandfather assures her that Ukrainians will remember what the Russians have done for a long time! An Irish person in the comments agrees and brings up Cromwell and Drogheda (1649).

"Jessa Duggar Reveals She Had a Miscarriage: 'I Just Immediately Started Crying'"
You have to read this piece to the end and you have to know what the terms mean, but yeah. The message is “Abortion for me, but not for thee.” Because, y’know, some people are mature and responsible, but I mean, not everybody can deal with such difficult decisions!

Politicians can oppose aid to Ukraine all they want, but they might want to take a look at how many Eastern Europeans, as well as just Ukrainians, live in their district. They’re hardly a majority anywhere, but they’re numerous enough to tip an election.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, claims that he sees videos of Black people beating up white people every day. I’ve never seen even one such video. That of course doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but it does mean that Adams is seeking these out, whether consciously or not!

Nope. When a privately-owned corporation decides not to carry the shows of another privately-owned corporation, 1. it isn’t censorship and 2. why is a senator getting involved? Doesn’t the senator have anything better to do to improve the lives of his constituents?

After yet another failed attack on Vuhledar: “Morale in the Russian unit is abysmal.”

She is one of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian civilians who have gone missing after they were abducted or detained following interrogations at Russia’s notorious ‘filtration’ camps.

Neither Ukrainians nor Russians want to discuss Russian anti-Putin partisans. Ukrainians want them to be safe, Russians don’t want to be embarrassed.
A piece on Ukrainians in Russia, trying to keep conducting guerrilla activities. Video on same subject.

This is the type of footage the left doesn’t want you to see.

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! Right-wingers want us to be angry about a guy getting pushed off a ledge and obviously landing on his feet? If this is the most shocking and horrifying thing Tucker Carlson will uncover, liberals have nothing to be concerned about!

Okay, and why do forgotten towns in conservative states struggle against uncaring mega-corporations? Absolutely, positively guarantee you it’s not because of Democratic policies!

All right! Friday night dancing!

Several Republican factions on debt ceiling controversy, one of which wants a default, period. One member explains “I’ve made commitments and I’ve run on fiscal responsibility.” Of course, default would be an utter catastrophe, so it’s far from clear what he means.

So among the “improvements” Elon Musk has brought to Twitter are to make the blue check mark indicating a “verified” account completely useless. There’s no actual verification process as the blue check marks are simply sold for cash.

That’s gotta do something to your head when your girlfriend leaves you for someone like Chelsea Manning. No wonder Elon Musk is having such problems!

This phase of the war started a year ago, but the war overall started in April 2014.
Russian troops mutiny near Vuhledar and refuse to advance.
Hackers make air raid sirens in Russian cities go off.
Double tap attack. Rescuers were shelled upon arrival.
Piece on Mariupol.
The Russian invasion was a very closely held secret until it happened. Putin not as good a leader as Stalin was.
Suspending the START Agreement was a blackmail attempt. Russia can’t make any progress anyway.
What our blogger wrote a year ago.
US aid up to $30.4 billion.

Ukraine is supplied with up to 30 balloons a month that look just like HIMARS, other rocket systems and howitzers. They use empty shell casings to improve the realism of the target. The cost ration is a multi-thousand dollar missile versus a realistic target that costs in the hundreds of dollars.

The wannabe fascist dictator objects to people pointing out his fascist and dictatorial tendencies.

Florida Governor DeSantis is a fascist, part 16,784.

Wow! Between wanting to trash Social Security, desperately and kind of pathetically seeking the approval of MAGA voters (Spoiler alert: He's not going to win their approval) and taking a hard-line anti-choice stance (he thinks abortion pills should be made illegal), I'd be very surprised if Pence got over 1% in the first primary.

Ivanka & Jared subpoenaed. Interesting because one or both was in the room when Trump & Pence talked, so Special Counsel Smith will begin with their testimony.

A discussion of Wagner Group tactics.
Ukrainian military academy graduated today.
22 million tons of food was exported to 43 countries over the past seven months.
A film clip discusses "Magyar's birds," reconnaissance drones.
Wagner mercenary battle tactics. Blogger recommends more NATO-style tactics for Ukrainians, more initiative from below.
The Russian Winter offensive has been in full swing for a while.
Looking back on the year.

What an awful list! 1. Smaller government means upper-income whites crush all the other groups. 
2. States running education means colleges reject large groups of people, Remedial education would be needed to bring students up to speed. 
3. Killing off the planet via fossil fuels? Oh yeah Great idea!
4. Republicans are actually rethinking this as it’s a really stupid excuse for having lost elections. 
5. Yeah, okay.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs takes on the “woke” accusation.

Ukraine has been fighting for independence from Russia for a very long time. Yesterday was the anniversary of “the Heavenly Hundred - who died nine years ago for Ukrainian freedom and democracy.”
The GBU-39 Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb might be in use. Mariupol is beyond HIIMARS range,but got hit.
History of EuroMaidan or Revolution of Dignity.
In 2014: “Russia has done a good job ... exploiting an all too credulous American news media, to assert that the popular uprising in Ukraine is almost exclusively the work of Ukrainian neo-fascists and neo-NAZIs.” Yes, there were Nazis within the Ukrainian protest movement, but also many other factions.

Rep. Eastman says it’s a benefit to society when children who are victims of abuse die...

I think the Representative is probably stating something accurate, but wow! What a cruel, heartless, vicious thing to say! And yes, I’m sure he’s a “pro-lifer.”

Yep! Sure enough, he proposed HB 215, which says “the Constitution of the State of Alaska never intended ... to recognize a right of a person to take the life of an innocent child…”

So it seems Russians were very tempted to fire missiles at Kyiv while Biden was there, but decided not to because VP Harris would have been less restrained and would have brought Armageddon closer. The piece looks at various other Russians and Representative Greene.

“Yesterday, we wondered how President Biden’s Kyiv visit would land with Russians. (Summary of the consensus: it makes Putin look like a weak chump.)”

According to Putin, bad relations are all America’s fault.

What bothers me about the statements made by Representative Greene is the assertion that she and Speaker McCarthy are just "releasing the tapes." No, McCarthy earlier spoke of the Twitter Files as though they were just a release of information. They weren't and the J6 tapes won't be. In both cases, information is handed over to highly partisan writers who will very deliberately construct a narrative made to make liberals look bad and right-wingers look like heroes.

Trump "was asked whether he trusted Putin more than the US intelligence community it 'could be the toughest question I've ever been asked as a politician'"
Actually, it was a really easy call and he totally whiffed on it. BTW, I re-watched the footage of Trump getting that question and he didn’t appear to regard it as a hard question at all.

Again, Medea Benjamin completely fails to explain what she wants to see in a Ukraine-Russia peace deal. She’s, as usual, extremely vague about that. Is Ukraine expected to surrender land, land that Russia has no right to take? Is she at all concerned about rewarding aggression? Wouldn’t China be more likely to start a war over Taiwan if Russia is successful in getting a favorable deal? How about kidnapped Ukrainians who have been taken to Russia? We are left with no answers.

Ultimate goal of Ukraine – according to the Ukrainian Maria Abdul, the goal is very simple and straightforward, Ukraine wants all of its land back!

Benjamin said that polls tell of a weakening American resolve. Gallup took a poll on February 6, 2023. 

A stable 65% of U.S. adults prefer that the United States support Ukraine in reclaiming its territory, even if that results in a prolonged conflict.

Main concern of anti-war Republicans seems to be that the US is writing a “blank check” to endlessly spend money on a foreign conflict.

Good! James O'Keefe, who founded Project Veritas, has been fired by Project Veritas. He revealed he simply isn't competent to run the organization.

Oh, good grief! No only does Nikki Haley mess up on when the Constitution was written, but yes, the American Army was “unstoppable” only because they were allied with the French! It took until the Civil War for the US military to be considered as being on a par with European powers.

Good heavens! Melania Trump is still carrying on about the new presidential couple disregarding her designs fo the White House? Definitely page A17 stuff! Had she actually accomplished anything significant during her time there, she wouldn’t have to obsess over stuff that nobody cares about. IMHO, choosing to specialize in manners and bullying on the internet was, quite obviously, a really bad choice! Most of all, because she herself doesn’t really care about the issue.

Legacy of a wasted four years in the White House.

Seymour Hersh is a celebrated investigative reporter, but how credible is his accusation that US covert operatives blew up the Nord Steam pipeline?

Yup! Railroads need to be owned by the public!

Zelenskyy tells us the status of many matters, both on the front and internally.
Bakhmut looking ever-more encircled, but Russian casualties remain very high.
Wagner mercenary group replaced by regular Russian army soldiers.
Press conference on Wagner mercenaries.
Report on a Black Sea Cossack named Girkin. Wagner mercenaries need ammunition and reinforcements aren’t getting them.
People “don’t realize that this series of sputtering pushes is the offensive.” Biden doesn’t agree and thinks the Russian Spring offensive hasn’t begun yet.

Governor DeSantis is not only a fascist, he’s willing to make Florida high school education worthless. No Florida high school students will go directly into any college in the country if they graduate with this junk.

Whoa! President Biden visits Ukraine!

Biden visits Kyiv.
He and Zelenskyy discussed what their common objectives were.
Bucha’s streetlights are all on!
Russia’s Winter Offensive began three weeks ago. They’ve made at best, incremental gains. Offensive now is draining Russian strength.
Prigozhin (runs Wagner mercenaries) “is forced to ‘apologise and obey’ to get ammunition…”

Aww! Matt Taibbi’s upset because everyone’s figured out that the “Twitter Files” are highly biased and not very significant anyways.

Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes) is producing a grown-up graphic novel that will be out in October.

Of course Governor DeSantis fired the person who revealed the empty bookshelves in a middle school, thereby revealing his book-cancellation policy.

On Senator Fetterman checking himself into the hospital for depression.

Most power outages have been fixed. Zelenskyy has been promised “concrete legal consequences for the terrorist state.”
Something blew up deep in Russian-occupied territory!
Systematic destruction of Ukrainian-language books.
“Two missiles flew in a close proximity to nuclear reactors of South-Ukrainian NPP.
Long-range missiles and MiG jets will go to Ukraine.
US Secretary of State formally accuses Russia of war crimes.

Amazingly bad sub-heading: Rs & Ds “have sharply divergent approaches to repairing the [Social Security & Medicare] programs.” No they don’t. Democrats want to fix the programs (not at all hard to do) while Republicans want to cut them! Only one side wishes to fix the programs.

Former President Jimmy Carter enters hospice care, meaning they'll try to make him comfortable, but won't try to save his life.
He was an okay president and a marvelous ex-president.

Nice testimonial.    Accomplishments.

Story by Rachel Maddow.

With the train derailment in East Palestine, OH, Fox News and Republicans are trying to make it sound as though derailments are a highly unusual thing that almost never happens. In 2004, there were almost 2,500 derailments. Thankfully, we've been making great progress in subsequent years, but there were still over a thousand in 2014.

Yeah, the libertarian idea of how to manage water in community outside of Scottsdale, Arizona appeared to be a workable idea until, y'know, theory crashed headlong into reality! People tried to sell me on libertarianism back in my Freshman year at college. Yep, never took.

Scientists have figured out the deadline for humanity to de-carbonize in order to survive. Let’s not put too much faith in that. Let’s work to beat that deadline.

Major and important distinction between Ukrainian and Russian armies is that Ukraine has NCOs and Russia is dependent on the “zerg rush” as pretty much their only tactic. As we’ve seen the zerg rush can be defeated, but an army with a strong NCO corps is really hard to beat.
Russians make a bit of progress around Bakhmut.
Wagner mercenary group begging for more ammunition.
Representative Gaetz is leading the Congressional faction that wants to abandon Ukraine.
Ukraine and air power.
German intelligence determines that the location of HIMARS and IRIS-T rockets are an important target for Russian intelligence.
Russia’s having a hard time generating enough forces to keep up with losses.

"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"
Good stuff! Another “family” film as the old and new Ant-Man and the old and new Wasp are joined by yet another family member. Two old Marvel villains are also introduced.

Republican National Committee presents: "24 minutes of Democrats denying election results."
But Democrats never tried to overturn the 2016 election by saying that the people actually voted for Clinton. Trump has been repeatedly saying that actually, the people voted for him overwhelmingly and that Biden's share of the 2020 vote didn't outnumber his by 7 million.

Nikki Haley is from India and has always had the option of declaring herself to be “Asian.” She is deliberately and consciously choosing to classify herself as “white.” Both designations are legal and it's up to her which one she classifies herself as.

Judiciary Chairman Jordan complains that Democrats are always blaming Trump. But in the case of the derailment at East Palestine OH, yes, the Trump Administration took regulatory actions that enabled the disaster. So I guess Jordan would prefer that we ignore Trump’s very real responsibility and blame their preferred scapegoat of the day?

Florida Governor DeSantis is using taxpayer money ($10 million) to illegally ship migrants off to Sanctuary cities. This, of course, treats living people as plastic chess pieces in a political game.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian fellow who’s in charge of the Wagner mercenaries (They’ve been charging against and around the town of Bakhmut for the past several months, losing up to 20k troops) is actually proud of his role in the 2016 election and promises to keep interfering.

The Russian Children’s Right Commissioner doesn’t appear to understand her job.
Zelenskyy talks to the Berlin Film Festival.
Wagner mercenaries begging the Russians for ammunition.
US Ambassador reviews the war on the eve of its first anniversary.

So Pence pretty much just wants to repeat the younger George Bush's Social Security plan of 2005. Did anybody ever tell Pence how that plan worked out? That Bush's popularity never recovered from that?

During Trump’s Administration, it was a source of great pride for Republicans that they got so many judges placed. Biden has made great progress toward exceeding that number. As the House is unlikely to produce any bills that the Senate is likely to take up, expect many more confirmations!

His own family? Welll, that's a different story. He has eight children from three women, one of his sons is a male model in London (None are in the military) while ordinary Russians fighting in Ukraine go by the name of “mobiks.” The name is a combination of “mobilized” and “vatnik,” and means those forced into conscription.

Simlarly, Mitt Romney in 2007 had “five strapping sons,” all of whom were of military age, none of whom were in uniform while the Iraq War was still raging. It was a bit of a political problem for him.

White House prepared to use the idea of the trillion-dollar coin to head off default if we get too close.

Reconnaissance balloons being used by Russia over Ukraine.
If the war in Ukraine were to suddenly end tomorrow, the greatest need would be the clearance of mines. As Ukraine progresses, mine-clearance is their biggest priority.
Decent news from around Bakhmut.
Russians are on the attack because Putin is insisting on it. That gives Ukraine the initiative to either attack or defend.
Light tanks from France will arrive by end of February.
Ukrainian economy becomes more integrated with economy of EU.
Russia has stolen over 6k children from Ukraine. 30 bodies of people who died a violent death while under Russian occupation.

Aww! Sad to hear this! Raquel Welch has passed on.

A few days ago, it was clear that Ukraine had no interest in peace talks with Russia under the current conditions. With this report, it's quite clear that the opposite is also true, that Russia has no interest in peace talks either.

Representative Boebert thinks learning about governing from Rachel Maddow would be...a bad thing?!?!?! Let's have a look-see on who's undoubtedly a hero of hers. Representative Jordan, who's never gotten a bill passed, is conducting hearings that are such a complete cluster#$@%, even Fox News isn't carrying them!

Joe Rogan and Matt Taibbi say Elon Musk is unfairly being portrayed as a right-winger.

And you can make a great case for that, if you ignore Musk's words and actions for the past several months. 

The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab points out that by moving Ukrainian children into Russia, that's a war crime. 

Instead of blaming Transportation Secretary Buttigieg for a train derailment, we could look at the Trump Administration and how they rolled back an Obama rule that had kept rail tanks from exploding near communities.

BTW, setting the toxins on fire was the decision of the Governor of Ohio. Buttigieg had absolutely nothing to do with that decision.

“Fortress Bakhmut” now has ts own anthem.
The significance and urgency of the struggle.
Russians deliberately killed aid workers. They knew full well that the aid workers were unarmed non-combatants.
The exodus of Russians fleeing Russia is certainly over 500k and probably as many as a million. “Russia’s Communications Ministry reported that 10 percent of the country’s IT workers had left in 2022” Their reason is simply that of self-preservation not anti-war.

Trump’s 2020 campaign team spent $600k for a research group to examine that election and to see whether there was any fraud. They were told “No.”

Sarah Silverman on her first Daily Show episode.

An extremely important video to watch for the people who want NATO to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine. What’s in it for Russia’s neighbors? How does Eastern Europe benefit from NATO granting concessions to Russia? How would Ukraine benefit from Russia taking chunks of Ukrainian territory?

No, y’all just need to stop watching the Super Bowl if you’re so angry that their half-time shows are so “woke” (in other words, so dominated by Black people).

"Tuberville: A society that allows abortion up to and past the moment of birth after the baby has been born is not progressive, it’s barbaric"
I can understand allowing abortion up until birth if the woman can’t give birth and survive, in other words, if it’s her life or that of the child. Abortion after birth? Uh, that’s just plain murder.

Satellites prove to be an extremely useful aid to earthquake rescue efforts.

Only way for Russians to deal with this tactic (Ukrainians shoot artillery shells that break up and scatter anti-tank mines) by Ukrainians is combined arms warfare. They need to have armor and infantry advance together, the infantry to clear mines as the tanks cover their advance. As that appears to be beyond their capabilities, their attempts to take Vuhledar seem doomed to failure.

Dealing with Governor DeSantis and the New College.

"Jordan: Our Hearing Was Bipartisan Because We Invited Tulsi Gabbard"
Uuh...whut?!?!?! Tulsi Gabbard is a Democrat? Since when? Gabbard accused Hillary Clinton of turning other Democratic candidates against her, but Democrats in general considered Gabbard to be a Russian asset.

There is no “responsible” way to cut Social Security and absolutely no need to do so. The comparison to defense spending is an apple to oranges.

Putin doesn’t appear to be aware of the situation.
Offensive North of Bakhmut. Ukrainians hang on.
Russians continue to make fruitless assaults against Vuhledar.
Cold of Winter is ending and the situation in Europe and Ukraine never got close to forcing anyone to beg Russia for mercy.
Russia and Iran. Russia’s running short on missiles.
Yet another balloon shot down over Lake Huron.

The reporter Matt Taibbi bemoans that the Twitter Files was seen by the public as a one-sided "partisan pissing match!" The files covered only things that made liberals look bad! Now we're learning they ignored items that made conservatives look bad! Sorry, 100% their fault!

The “Two-State Solution” is a dodge for avoiding the reality of apartheid being applied to Palestinians.

Wow! The NY Times has a really, really bad new columnist! I had seen a few positive pieces on Governor DeSantis since Covid hit and usually went over to the death figures to see how Florida was doing. I was like “Why are people praising him for how he’s handling Covid? He’s doing a terrible job!” This columnist praises him anyway.