Shouts and cheers, honking horns, people banging on drums. Oshkosh! No kings – at least not today. I’m with my sister and great nephew, attending the nearest national rally, about 20 miles south of their home in Appleton, Wisconsin. I’m up here with them because I’m getting cataract surgery (left eye tomorrow), but what the heck, Saturday is open. Let’s go to the No Kings rally.
Browsing: Opinions
Then today, on a morning bike ride, I saw a massive snapper the size of a watermelon, slowly making her way across the asphalt. I got off my bike and paused the podcast I’d been listening to: Peter Beinart’s interview of Israeli journalist Gideon Levy.
None of us should be silent about the recent use of federal agents by this administration to bully, arrest, and investigate political opponents. Just as none of us should accept as normal or okay its use of the military against Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
President Trump announced that the US had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. Then he messaged that “now is the time for peace.” No, it is time for war. No negotiating, just giving Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu precisely what he wanted–the bunker-busting bombs that the Israeli leader had been dreaming of being used. Trump now is co-owner of a war that can only end badly for all sides.
On the surface, the case seems like a straightforward fraud investigation: two employees at the Bay County Tax Collector’s Office were allegedly issuing Florida driver’s licenses to individuals who didn’t meet legal requirements, bypassing required testing and documentation in exchange for financial compensation. According to BCSO, the fraudulent activity was captured on DMV surveillance, and many of those who received licenses were traveling from across Florida to take advantage of this illicit service.
As a hostile backlash to racial justice and gender equality wipes out desperately-needed corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the latest Fortune 500 rankings marked two revealing milestones.
Call a thing what it is!
America, conceived in iniquity by white mortal men in 1776, remains grounded in a white supremacy ideology. The Founding Fathers recognized that within this new Country, they possessed a rare opportunity to experiment using Democracy to manage this government and its people. Despite the Founding Fathers faithful efforts of establishing separate branches of government to guard against a Monarch, they recognized that they could not account for man’s eroding integrity and America’s ensuing mortality.
Imagine a private company wants to build a potentially dangerous pipeline through your backyard and the government decides your rights as a property owner matter less than the profits of said company. And it uses eminent domain – the power to seize private land for public use – to take control over part of your land as a gift to the company. For four years now, farmers and other landowners, environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and Iowans from all walks of life have come together to fight this outrageous idea.
In the lead-up to Israel’s devastating attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military leadership, Pres. Trump posed as a peacemaker and concerned bystander. He said that he much preferred a nuclear deal with Iran to war but hinted that he might not be able to keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ordering a strike.