Thieves in the Temple.

Action: another Trump nominee, another pro-discrimination bill, and another attempt to destroy the NEA and the NEH.

You might have noticed that Andrew Puzder's nomination as Secretary of Labor has been, well, somewhat delayed -- by his apparent inability to submit the necessary paperwork in a timely manner, that inability itself brought on by (stop me if you've heard this before!) a complex web of investments that would raise conflict of interest questions. And unlike President Trump, Mr. Puzder would be bound by law to resolve any such conflicts. Well, we the people can put this matter to rest by swarming our Senators' phone lines with requests that they reject the nomination of Mr. Puzder to head up the Labor Department. (Remember to call both their D.C. offices and their local offices, particularly if their D.C. offices still purport to have full mailboxes.) You could cite Mr. Puzder's numerous conflicts as a reason, or you could cite his virulent hostility to overtime pay and paid sick leave and even breaks. No, I'm serious -- this is a guy who looks at someone on a break and sees someone who could be doing something. You and I, being people who do actual work, might look at a worker on a break and see someone who needs to recharge and collect oneself, but then we're also not folks accustomed to making other people watch our balls swing. And I'm pretty sure that's not our failure.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee state Senate planned to vote on a nefarious "religious liberty" bill, SB 127, on Monday, but have delayed the vote until this morning after receiving a lot of feedback about it, and I can't imagine that feedback was positive. The Tennessee Equality Project (which does amazing work, by the way) has dubbed SB 127 the "License to Discriminate" bill, because it would let Tennessee businesses discriminate against whomever they like (but most likely gays, women, and transgendered folk) merely because of their "religious beliefs" -- and they'll be able to do that even if they get taxpayer money from the good citizens of Tennessee! I'm not sure how many times I can say this: the First Amendment protects your right to your religious beliefs, but it does not protect your "right" to deny other people their rights. And if you take taxpayer money, you have to follow the law, and since the law forbids discrimination, you can't discriminate, even if your Jesus is as mean a bastard as you. Thus the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state legislators to reject SB 127, and thus reject "religious" discrimination.

In other news, you may have heard that Mr. Trump's budget would zero out funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. You probably also know that zeroing out such funding would mean "saving" a few hundred million dollars annually out of a several trillion dollar budget, making claims that WE'RE BROKE!!!! or DEFICITZ ARE TEH EVILZ!!!! particularly absurd in this context. And I'm sure you also know by now that those few hundred million dollars annually get America a lot of bang for the buck -- unlike the F-35 fighter jet, one of which currently costs, on average, about $175 million, meaning you could currently fund the entirety of the NEA and the NEH with fewer than two of the planes that Lockheed still can't make work in combat after 25 years of trying. If you need reminding why we need an NEA and an NEH, you probably also need reminding why we need civilization, and I'm not reinventing that wheel for you. Suffice it to say that Donald Trump obviously believes that whatever doesn't make money is worthless, and civilized people should never accept that from anyone, let alone the President. Thus Sign Here Now helps you tell Congress to reject any Trump budget that eliminates the NEA and the NEH.

Action: living in a bankster paradise!

The Chinese government has sentenced Ilham Tohti to life in prison, officially for "separatism" -- didn't know "separatism" could get you life in jail somewhere on Earth, did you? -- but basically for his lifelong activism in support of the Uyghur population, one of some 55 ethnic minorities officially recognized by the Chinese government. Mr. Tohti, an economist by training, has long agitated for greater regional autonomy for the Uyghurs, who mainly live in southwestern China -- and who wouldn't, if they lived in a country that blends the worst aspects of Communism and capitalism?. But I guess "official recognition" comes with "great responsibilities," like toeing the Chinese government's line. Nobody who speaks their mind and peacefully tries to get a better life for their people should be imprisoned for life, and when even our current Secretary of State has called for Mr. Tohti's release, you begin to suspect Mr. Tohti might really be the "Uyghur Mandela," as he's been called. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Chinese government to free Mr. Tohti.

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has tapped yet another Goldman-Sachs bankster (you know, besides Steve "Don't Call Me Racist" Bannon) for his brain trust, this time nominating hedge fund manager Steve Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury. Remember when Donald Trump said hedge fund managers "get away with murder"? I guess that was for us "little people." So how did Mr. Mnuchin make his money? Oh, the same way any average hard-working salt-of-the-earth does -- by foreclosing on homeowners in ways that one federal judge called "harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive," including (but not limited to!) foreclosing on an elderly homeowner after she made a payment error of 27 cents. 27 cents! And naturally, Mr. Mnuchin wants to take down the modest Dodd-Frank reforms once he takes control of Treasury, reforms which have prevented banksters from sending our economy into freefall again. This is not someone we want in our government -- a person whose life work is hurting other people for personal gain. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to block Mr. Mnuchin from becoming Secretary of the Treasury.

Finally, though it's hard to keep up with all the awful characters Donald Trump is trying to put in charge of our government (why, it's almost like that's the idea!), the National Womens' Law Center helps you tell your Senators to oppose the nomination of Rep. Tom Price of Georgia as Health and Human Services Secretary. Mr. Price's opposition to abortion doesn't annoy me so much as does his opposition to birth control -- I mean, where does he think you begin to reduce abortions? With chastity belts? Mr. Price also took gleeful part in that Planned Parenthood witch-hunt, and is also a steadfast votary of privatizing Medicare. It boggles the mind that anyone still thinks Mr. Trump will actually stop other Republicans from privatizing Medicare -- if you're planning to do that, you don't put a staunch Medicare-privatizer in charge of HHS, which, guess what, oversees the administration of Medicare! Mr. Price's notions aren't "fresh" or "new" or "innovative," and "draining the swamp" doesn't mean putting even bigger assholes in charge of stuff.

Action: net neutrality, political prisoners, genetically-modified food, and Arctic drilling.

Another day, another emergency: some fool in the House of Representatives has attached, to a must-pass House financial services appropriations bill, language that would prevent the FCC from using any budgeted funds to enforce the net neutrality rules it proposed earlier this year. Because millions of people from across the political spectrum speaking with one voice against corporate control of the internet means, apparently, nothing to Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) (whose phone number is 202.225.2501, by the way), and because any must-pass appropriations bill can and must be taken hostage on behalf of anyone's corporate paymasters! But remember: the fight for justice isn't over until you draw your last breath, because any time you can get your government to do something good for America, you still have to keep fighting the corrupt corporate lackeys who want to take it from you. And take it they will, unless we speak out. So Free Press helps you tell your House Reps to reject any attempt to hold our government's funding hostage to corporate extremists who want to destroy net neutrality.

In other urgent matters, earlier this month the Saudi Arabian Supreme Court upheld the sentence of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi of 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, putatively for "insulting Islam" and for violating Saudi Arabian information technology laws, but actually for bringing together good Saudi citizens online to speak freely about political and religious matters. Yes, this still happens in the world, and don't think a lot of your fellow Americans wouldn't like it to happen here, too -- though, of course, they wouldn't like it to happen to them. I tell the Saudi Arabian authorities the same thing I tell right-wingers in this country afraid of being told "happy holidays!" when they're out shopping: if your faith is strong, you don't need government intervention to prevent it from being insulted. Mr. Badawi, meanwhile, isn't in very good health, but the Saudis could start lashing him again as early as tomorrow. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Saudi Arabian government to free Mr. Badawi immediately and stop oppressing political prisoners.

Meanwhile, the USDA is, no doubt because they're being compelled, beginning to overhaul their system for regulating genetically-modified crops, and Friends of the Earth helps you tell the USDA to enact vigorous reforms that protect the environment and protect good Americans from harm. We know where it gets us when we don't keep a vigorous watch over GMOs: we get GMOs invading organic farms (and then GMO manufacturing corporations suing said forms for "intellectual property theft" I kid you not), and we get carcinogenic pesticides sprayed on crops like they were water. I do not, incidentally, accept arguments that "we've always messed with crop genetics," for two reasons: one, we've never messed with crop genetics in a way such that we can't anticipate the outcome, and two, we've never messed with crop genetics for the sole purpose of making crops more resistant to proprietary pesticides. And the pro-GMO "science" comes mostly from the corporations making the GMOs (since they tend to throw lawyers at researchers who purchase seed and experiment on their own). Think maybe they might be a little biased?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration to keep corporations like Shell from drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. We know drilling in the Arctic is a bad idea because cleaning up the inevitable spill is even harder than it is in more temperate areas of the world, and also because we don't know enough about the wildlife in the region to know what awful effects drilling will have. We do know enough about the endangered bowhead whale, however, to know that the noise of drilling, ice-breaking, and seismic testing is deafening, as in literally deafening. You might well be saying, well, that's a shame, but we need to get ourselves free of Middle Eastern oil, but setting aside the many other ways we could be getting off foreign oil, you may not be considering that whales won't just use sign language if they're deaf -- they're going to lose their ability to communicate with other whales, which is life-or-death to the bowhead whale. Which makes Arctic drilling cruel as well as foolish.

Action: against torturing bloggers, militarizing law enforcement, and drilling in the Arctic.

Saudi Arabian blogger and activist Raif Badawi -- sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for the shocking crime of discussing religion and politics on his blog -- has reportedly not received his 50 lashes, scheduled on Fridays, for nearly two months now. Perhaps that means the Saudi government knows the whole world is watching -- or perhaps it means Mr. Badawi is not a well man (he suffers from hypertension to begin with, and being tortured in prison doesn't exactly make you healthier). Either way, Amnesty International helps you tell the Saudi Arabian government to release Raif Badawi, while Avaaz helps you urge the German Vice Chancellor, visiting Saudi Arabia as we speak, to advocate for Mr. Badawi's release. Do they not realize that, in torturing Mr. Badawi, they reinforce our opinion that they're intolerant, hateful, and insecure? Do they not realize that religion doesn't need a state's help propping it up? Do they not realize that dissent makes faith stronger, not weaker?

Meanwhile, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) has reintroduced H.R. 1232, the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, and if it's the same bill he introduced last Congress (again, congress.gov has been very slow in getting these details to us lately), it would stop the free flow of military weapons to local and state police departments. It might have a harder time passing this Congress than the last one, this Congress being even more packed with people who think you hate America if you criticize the actions of some police officers, but right is right and duty is duty. And I suspect rank-and-file police officers think the same way we do about this matter -- that big guns and big tanks and big armor actually aren't that effective in doing real police work, and that walking a beat and getting to know a community would prevent more problems than more and bigger weapons ever would. Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1232 and help police do the job they're supposed to do. Because that, not blind obedience, is our job as citizens.

Finally, the Obama Administration may have protected a good chunk of Alaska's coast from drilling, but (as often happens with the Obama Administration) they're prepared to let oil and gas corporations go drill-happy in the rest of the Arctic area we control, as well as off the Atlantic coasts. It'd be too easy to simply respond "Spillageddon in the Gulf" and "Shell oil rig running aground" to these desires, but the fact of the matter is this: the oil and gas corporations have no real incentive to drill safely. No, really -- even if they get caught breaking the law, as BP has done, their penalties become tax write-offs, which essentially means a new bailout every time they let a big spill happen. And they will let it happen, and it will do decades-long damage everywhere it happens -- and in the Arctic, a spill will be much harder to clean up. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell our government to reject oil and gas drilling in the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans, while the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell the Department of the Interior to stop Arctic drilling, and CREDO helps you tell Interior to stop Atlantic drilling.

Action: starring a horrible, no good, very bad spending bill, plus items about Social Security, oppression in Saudi Arabia, and GMO salmon.

Today the House plans to vote on a bill keeping our government running; the Senate may follow. And this bill is a real stinker. Chief among any reasonable person's complaints against the bill is it allows banksters to gamble in derivatives with taxpayer money. You know what that means, right, good folks? More bailouts -- and maybe they'll get to steal our savings accounts this time. But it gets worse: rich folks could be allowed to contribute ten times as much money to political parties as they're currently allowed to do. And the bill also cuts OSHA funding, raises limits on trucker work hours, and lets big agricultural corporations dump more crap in our water -- because a vote for Republicans is, apparently, a vote for workplace accidents, getting killed on the highway, and poisoned water, in addition to a vote for banksters and corporate campaign ads. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to remove all the poison pills attached to this spending measure, or vote against it. And yes I would rather shut down our government than pass this bill. We deserve more from our government than the back of its hand.

Meanwhile, the Strengthening Social Security Act -- which would fund increased Social Security benefits by subjecting income over $117,000 to the payroll tax -- lost both its Senate champions in 2014, one (Tom Harkin of Iowa) to retirement and the other (Mark Begich of Alaska) to a Republican opponent. But Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio will reintroduce the bill when the Senate reconvenes in January; that Senate will have more knuckle-draggers than any Senate in recent memory, but to paraphrase a famous philosopher, you go to war with the Senate you have, not the Senate you wish you had. And if the new Republican majority refuses to listen to us, let them suffer the shame of doing so, because not only is Social Security very popular (keeping, as it does, so many seniors out of poverty), so is increasing Social Security benefits. And to hell with those who say we feel "entitled" to everything -- we worked for it, we paid into it, we fought for it, so it's ours. Social Security Works helps you tell your Senators to support the Strengthening Social Security Act in the new Congress.

In other news, Saudi Arabia has imprisoned Raif Badawi since 2012, for the following supposed crimes: "setting up a website that undermines general security," "ridiculing Islamic religious figures," and "going beyond the realm of obedience." What had he actually done? He had hosted a website from which some writers had criticized religious officials, and had alleged that one Islamic school had become a "den for terrorists." The Saudi government tried to get him for "apostasy," too, which carries a death sentence, but haven't succeeded, though not for lack of trying. Think of whether anyone in the United States, crazy as this country has become, has advocated putting people in jail for criticizing religious figures. No one has, at least not yet. And even Harry Reid's pet bills, SOPA and PIPA, which would have stifled internet free speech in the name of "copyright infringement" and "security," met with such forceful opposition that they couldn't pass. But clearly Saudi Arabian elites must learn, even more than our elites must learn, that free speech doesn't "undermine" our security but enhances it. Amnesty International helps you tell Saudi Arabia to free Mr. Badawi.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FDA to keep AquaBounty's genetically-modified salmon off our supermarket shelves, then CREDO still helps you do that. What's the problem with Aquabounty's genetically-modified salmon? After all, AquaBounty says it safe, and what motive could it possibly have for lying, besides, you know, making gobs and gobs of money? Aquabounty has modified this salmon so that it grows twice as fast as salmon normally grow and eats five times what normal salmon eat, which means it would wreak havoc on nearby aquatic environments if it ever escapes a fish farm -- which it will, sooner or later, especially given AquaBounty's well-documented inability to keep its own salmon within its Panama breeding facility. You have to wonder if that's the idea -- to turn all salmon into perpetual teenage salmon, consequences to the food chain be damned. It gets worse: our government doesn't require labeling of GMO food, so the only way you'll know you haven't eaten it is if you eat USDA-certified organic salmon -- and, well, when Aquabounty's salmon gets out, maybe not even then.

Action: war with Syria, human rights in Eritrea, and poultry inspection.

Congress has come back to work; please feel free to boo, and when you're done, you may want to tell them how you feel about Mr. Obama's wish to attack Syria, using action tools from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Avaaz, and the People's Email Network. Now I was just looking around on the internet, as I do occasionally, and I saw that Secretary Kerry announced the release of videos from the August 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria. Then I clicked through to the Senate Intelligence Committee website hosting the videos, and saw this note: "Each of these 13 videos explicitly claim to show victims of a chemical or poison gas attack." So the videos "claim" to show victims of a chemical attack, and don't even assert, apparently, that you'll be able to blame the Syrian government for this attack -- wow, how Bush-league. (I also don't know why they said "explicitly," but maybe I'm just piling on.)

Meanwhile, Eritrea has been an independent nation for 20 years now, but it has a long way to go on its journey to self-sufficiency and freedom -- it has, apparently, built a vast underground network of torture centers and has "disappeared" over 10,000 good citizens, including journalists and members of religious organizations. Eritrea does, as a point of law, imprison those who don't practice one of the nation's four "registered" religions -- which exclude non-Sunni Muslim denominations and, since 2002, most Christian denominations as well -- while Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea dead last among world nations in media freedom, right behind North Korea. But most people don't know much about Eritrea, and surely Eritrea wouldn't want the first thing everyone learns about it to be that it treats its dissenters so horribly, right? So Amnesty International helps you tell the Eritrean President to end the torture and detention in Eritrea.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the USDA not to outsource its chicken inspection functions to the very poultry processing corporations who are making the chicken, then Food and Watch Watch helps you do that. In other news, federal prisons plan to turn over all the cell keys to the prisoners, and banking regulators are going to let banks ensure their derivatives don't crash the economy. OK, that second one's real, but no less absurd than the others. Seriously, who lets food-processing corporations police themselves? The most corporation-friendly Department of Agriculture we've ever had, of course. No, Mr. Obama's USDA is worse than Mr. Bush's -- why, even Tha Bush Mobb couldn't stomach continuing a similar self-inspection program for chicken makers, and for good reason: no inspectors will find the pus and feces and blood and bile on birds if they have to look at three birds per second.