Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: in which we invoke yet more '70s TV sci-fi to describe current events.

Good news, everyone! The Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) has permanently banned fracking in the Delaware River watershed. This is a major victory, and you deserve congratulations if you contacted the DRBC. However, the DRBC also voted to start rulemaking processes for both selling water to frackers elsewhere and importing fracking wastewater from elsewhere, neither of which is a particularly good idea. When I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Surprise, surprise, a Wall Street Journal analysis finds that energy deregulation in the state of Texas has cost good Texans an extra $28 billion since 2004. Here's the thing about "more competition leading to lower prices": if people simply can't be without electricity, which is where we are as a civilization, then people don't have the bargaining power that more competition would help them use -- especially if governments don't enforce antitrust or collusion laws. At present, Texas has only two electricity providers; that's some "competition," there.

FAIR reminds us that, amid all the coverage of the Perseverance rover giving us brand new pictures of the surface of Mars, our "liberal" media ignored "the Plutonium Bullet We Dodged." Previous Mars probes did fine powering themselves with solar panels, but for some reason we powered Perseverance with Plutonium-238, which would have caused a lot of mayhem if it'd blown up on takeoff, and don't retort that there was only a one-in-100 chance it'd do that, because if it happens, and people die, and you can't drink the water anymore, you won't be telling future generations how unlikely all that was. Wasn't there a Space: 1999 episode about this kind of thing? I kid -- of course there was.

Teaneck, NJ, population 39,776 as of the 2010 Census, has banned its police from using facial recognition technology. Thankfully we only wait until paragraph 2 before hearing that facial recognition technology can't tell black folks apart any better than your Trumphole uncle can. We also learn that Teaneck is just getting around to making its police officers use body cameras, which, no, is not the same thing, not least because we don't use body cameras to identify people so much as we use them to determine if police officers are executing citizens without charge, which should be a much easier matter to determine with a camera.

Upon hearing that "Georgia Dems Take Gambling Hostage Over GOP Voting Bills," all I can say is you go, Georgia Democrats! "Passing a sports gambling bill" is about one-millionth as important as "ensuring everyone can vote," after all. It's a shame this sort of thing will only work on matters like sports betting where state Republicans are divided, but Democrats say they've already identified two more priorities where this might work. Rip the system, that's what I say. And send Chuck Schumer a bottle of whatever you're drinking.

Finally, in a peripherally-related note, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), not running for re-election in 2022, advances the novel theory that Joe Biden will violate an alleged "promise" of "working together" if he doesn't magically produce a COVID relief bill that a single Republican will vote for! Surely he knows that Republicans can continue to manufacture fake outrage over "not being consulted" simply by never voting for anything that might do anyone some good, as they've been doing for the entire McConnell Era. And again: the COVID-19 bill garners supermajority support among regular Americans in polls, meaning it must also garner bipartisan support among Americans. I know liberals are beyond tired of right-wing gaslighting; I can only hope that most other Americans are starting to get tired of that, too.

Action: concerning COVID relief, higher taxes on the rich, and *a la carte* cable packaging.

Our House votes on the COVID relief bill as early as today, so get on the horn with your House Reps and tell them to pass it. You can find your Reps' phone numbers, as always, by using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're viewing this page on a cellphone, the bottom of this page). I've gone over all the good things this bill would do if passed, and I'm not going to give too much space to Republican plaints that they weren't consulted enough on it ("you say that like it's a bad thing!"), or that it's "too big" ("you don't pull a baby out of a fire gradually!") or that it consists of a "progressive wish list" (again, "you say that like it's a bad thing!"). Instead, I'll note that the bill is extremely popular, with a Morning Consult/Politico poll finding that 76% of Americans support it, and -- are you listening, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? -- 60% of Republicans support it. There's that bipartisanship everyone in Washington says they're looking for! And Congress should follow our lead. (Don't be dispirited by the Senate parliamentarian's ruling against the inclusion of the $15/hour minimum wage hike in the budget reconciliation process. Your will is still your will, and your Reps need to hear from you that you, like most Americans, want that minimum wage hike.)

While you have your House Reps on the phone, you can tell them to stop being "hesitant" about raising taxes on the rich or rolling back the more nefarious parts of the Trump tax "reform." Then call your Senators and tell them the same thing. Seriously, in the article to which I've linked above, Democrats recycle all the stupid and offensive arguments for not raising taxes on the rich and on corporations -- Joe Manchin said it'd be "ridiculous" to raise taxes during a pandemic (though, to be fair, he walked that back somewhat later on), while Jon Tester said it'd be dangerous to do while unemployment is so high -- this just three years after complaining that the Trump tax "reform" would put us in the hole for decades! When is the right time to do the right thing, Sen. Tester? If these clowns don't raise taxes on corporations and the rich, they're going to lose their slim majorities in 2022, end of story. People generally don't love paying taxes, of course, but they also don't love folks who don't pay their fair share.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk you don't want to pay for evil cable channels like Fox News just so you can watch cable channels you like, like the Food Network. Those of you who've attended this blog for the last 16 years know what we're talking about, even if Free Press, for whatever reason, won't spell it out: we're talking about a la carte cable packaging, where you can pay for the channels you like and you don't have to subsidize the channels you don't like. As you know, folks pay about $2 a month for Fox News, which is actually a fairly high monthly price; now imagine what would happen if, say, 10 million Americans decided not to pay for Fox News. There goes Tucker Carlson's and Sean Hannity's annual salaries in a mere two and a half months! Yeah, Fox would fire all their straight news reporters first (however many of those are left!), but the only language evil news corporations understand is the language of money, and hey, I'm all about talking to people in the language they understand. So let's get to it.

Action: concerning "free" trade, voting rights, and pot legalization.

Yesterday we called our Reps and Senators to demand that they keep us out of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" which Barack Obama supported but which Donald Trump helped make toxic; today we tackle existing "free" trade dogma, as Rethink Trade helps you tell President Biden to stop blocking an emergency rules waiver that would otherwise allow COVID-19 vaccines and treatments to proliferate. Intellectual property is the issue here, as it often is, but in the middle of a pandemic, which is more important? That corporations maximize the profits they make from their "property," or that sick people get the treatment that'll make them well again? I would think you would say the latter is more important, if you're a decent human being. That must explain why the otherwise anti-"free" trade President Trump helped block the waiver in the first place, money being more important to him than anything else, except maybe drama. But he's gone, and we have no reason to keep his nefarious works going.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: our U.S. Supreme Court may have refused to hear several more cases in which our state Supreme Court ruled in favor of voting rights, but that doesn't mean our reactionary state legislature won't try to impose as many new voting restrictions as they can! We have a Democratic Governor for two more years who'll likely veto at least the worst of what they try to do, but why use him as a crutch? We can stop this ourselves if we speak out enough! Indeed, that's really the only thing that's ever worked. Hence common Cause helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject any bills that would restrict voting rights in the Commonwealth. You want some weapons-grade PR here? Call any Republican bill that restricts early voting or absentee voting or mail-in voting a "sore loser" bill. They're only trying to pass them because their guy lost Pennsylvania, and they also know the more folks vote, the more folks who'll likely vote against them. We don't have to take that.

Finally, our House passed a sweeping marijuana policy reform bill last Congress -- but Mitch McConnell sat on it, because he's Mob Boss Mitch. Mob Boss Mitch no longer controls the Senate, however, which means bills like last session's MORE Act (which would have legalized pot and commuted sentences and expunged records for some folks imprisoned on pot-related charges) might actually get a vote in the Senate this time! They wouldn't get around a filibuster, in theory, but we could speak out en masse and make it more difficult for Republicans to oppose it. And I bet fewer of them want to oppose it than they'd like us to think! More than half of America's states have either legalized it or reduced criminal penalties for possessing it, which means the legalization movement is much bigger than even the most insecure politician's jones for looking "tough on crime." So Watchdog.net helps you tell your Congressfolk to legalize pot and grant some criminal justice mercy to low-level pot offenders.

Action: concerning "free" trade, immigration, law and order, and corporate taxes.

Sam Knight at TruthOut suggests that President Biden could get us back into the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade agreement, and that his nominee for Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, could "lead the way." You have no need to consider exactly how Mr. Vilsack would get us to re-enter the TPP -- not when you could be calling your Reps and Senators and say no to re-entering the TPP. The TPP would not only have outsourced our jobs -- as even "free" trade supporters like Larry Summers ultimately admitted "free" trades do! -- but it would have nullified our laws, by expanding the "investor-state dispute settlement" system so that foreign investors could sue the taxpayer whenever we so much as passed an anti-pollution law that "cost" them money. The best thing Donald Trump ever did was withdraw our nation from the TPP; the second-best thing he ever did was negotiate a replacement for NAFTA that drastically curtailed the use of ISDS systems with Canada and Mexico. They think (or wish!) we've forgotten about all of that, so we've got to remind them.

Meanwhile, President Biden may have ended the "national emergency" Donald Trump used to fund his vanity border wall, but somehow we still have over 3,000 soldiers at the border. You could ask "if it's not a national emergency, why do we need troops there?," but we're not supposed to put soldiers at the border in the first place unless we're actually repelling an invasion. Which we're not! An invasion would consist of actual soldiers, not people fleeing oppressive governments, or even people just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Hence Win Without War helps you tell Defense Secretary Austin to withdraw soldiers from our Southern border. And again, don't brook any silliness from right-wingers about how some "caravan" of immigrants is coming here to "change who we are." Folks have been settling in other lands since time immemorial, and most of the folks who complain about immigrants today had ancestors who were once Those People, too. Now, of course, they say their ancestors were of course "the good ones"! But no matter how much they twist the facts, the facts will snap back. And it'll hurt when they do.

In other news, the New York Police Department plans to finalize its policy on the use of facial recognition technology, i.e., the technology worse at telling black folks apart than even your Trump-loving uncle. Fortunately, they're accepting comments on their proposed policy (which would, guess what, use facial recognition technology) until tomorrow, so Amnesty International helps you tell the NYPD to reject the use of facial recognition technology. As I've said, facial recognition technology isn't just an invasion of your privacy -- I mean, should police harassment be the result of literally any time you venture out into the public? Because that's what facial recognition technology allows them to do! It's also a bad system that just so happens to lead, far too often, to police harassing innocent black folks. And Amnesty International also reminds us that if you decide to visit New York as a tourist, your face will be in their database, too -- which will be a boon to the tourist industry in cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Boston, which have all banned facial recognition technology. You may want to remind the NYPD of that.

Finally, you've heard that big pharmaceutical corporations are paying billions of dollars in settlements over their role in addicting people to opioids -- but you may not know that those corporations can deduct the cost of settlements from their taxes! Nice work if you can get it! And, surprise, surprise, the Trump tax "reform" of 2017 and the tax-cuts-for-the-rich in the CARES Act from last year made this situation a whole lot worse. I'd ask "what good is it punishing corporations when they can just deduct the punishment from their taxes?," except I also know that, for some people, not punishing corporations for their obvious wrongdoing is a feature, not a bug. Hence Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to close the loopholes that enable these corporations to deduct their settlements from their taxes. If you or I mess up as badly as they have, we don't get a tax break. Maybe we should all become corporations, then! Yeah, they love it when we think like that, as recent events surrounding GameStop may have reminded you.

Around the table: some bad news disguised as good news, as well as some good news disguised as bad news.

Gallup finds 35% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, the highest rating Congress has received in this poll in a dozen years. What was happening a dozen years ago? Oh, right, a dozen years ago was the last time we thought Congress was going to do anything. In May of 2009, Congress actually had a 63% approval rating, and that would be something to write home about! And maybe this time, if we stay on them, they'll actually keep doing good works for their entire term and thus avoid the disaster of the 2010 midterms.

There's so much to say about the data in this USA Today report, but I will mention that when I see that nearly three-quarters of Trump voters say Joe Biden didn't really win the 2020 election, I'd still want to see similar poll figures for, say, the 2000 election; a lot of folks (myself included!) never called George W. Bush President after 2000, and they had a better case then than Trump voters do now. Trump voters point to a kaleidoscope of rubbish "voter fraud" evidence to justify their belief, but all we had to do was describe actual events in Florida.

When ProPublica reports on "How Texas Repeatedly Failed to Protect Its Power Grid Against Extreme Weather," the key word is, of course, "repeatedly." After all, it's not like a winter storm has never hit the Lone Star State! Most odious, perhaps, is the corporation that, you know, repeatedly had winter storm-related failures claiming it was just impossible to winterize because "(e)ach weather event (is) dynamic." How has anyone ever prepared for the future? It's just so hard! Unless you, you know, prepare for the worst you could imagine, using the best available science.

Right-wingers who whine about "cancel culture" should note that the Conservative (sic) Political Action Committee has un-invited a speaker named Young Pharaoh, who does not believe Judaism is a "real religion." He has other, ah, interesting beliefs, and seems to think everyone owes him a debate, which, given his propensity for using shouty caps, he'd probably "win" by yelling until the auditorium empties. And yet you do still to wonder if CPAC finds it easier to "cancel" him because he's not white.

A "senior House Republican" says he expects "zero" Republicans to vote for President Biden's COVID package in the House because there's been "(n)o effort to reach out to House Republicanss by the majority or White House." To which I say: we can only hope! You reach out to Republicans, they slap your hand back, plus they tried to overturn an election on the basis of complaints to ludicrous right-wing judges wouldn't bless them, so Democrats might as well try treating Republicans like they don't even exist, like I've been telling them to do since time immemorial.

Finally, in a related note, Sens. Romney (R-UT) and Cotton (R-AK) offer a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $10/hour, though it would also require businesses to use the ridiculous E-Verify system that purportedly catches out undocumented immigrant workers. Let this be the moment everyone finally sees that "reaching out to Republicans" doesn't get them to move, and that the only thing that does get them to move is standing your ground.

Action: concerning voting rights, Ted Cruz, our Post Office, and the filibuster.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today would be a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The For the People Act, as you know, contains a lot of goodies -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. I would be hard-pressed to think of good reasons to oppose any of those things, though I know right-wingers will keep yammering on about them. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression over the last 25 years to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. This bill still doesn't have a bill number at this writing, but go ahead and say you want it anyway -- the more of us who say we want it, the more likely it'll get introduced, and passed, and become law.

Meanwhile, both Daily Kos and MoveOn (wow, sounds like a fresh breath of 2004!) help you tell Sen. Ted Cruz to resign from our Senate. We don't even need to go back to his enabling of the January 6 attempted coup; all we need do is recount his sins from the past week! As millions of his constituents were left without electricity, water, or heat from an uncharacteristically bad winter storm, he flew with his family to Cancún, only returning several days early once news of his flight became known; he even requested that beleaguered Houston police (big storm, remember?) escort him through the airport before flying to Cancún and upon returning. Would it be piling on to mention that he's taunted other politicians for pulling similar stunts? No, it would not. And don't brook any gaslighting from right-wingers about how little Sen. Cruz could have done. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who does not exactly hail from a neighboring state, has raised close to $5 million for Texas food banks, while Beto O'Rourke, who almost beat Mr. Cruz in 2018, organized nearly a million wellness calls and delivered food and water to good Texans. Seems they're better Senators for Texas than Mr. Cruz is.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to appoint four decent human beings to our U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. And make no mistake about the end goal: the end goal is to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, because that's what a decent human being would do. A decent human being would not sit there and let himself be gaslit by Mr. DeJoy's "big plans" for our Post Office. The only big plan he has for our Post Office is to make it run so badly we'll be "forced" to use private (and more expensive) mail carriers for everything. Our Post Office is a jewel, its workers some of the most diligent I've ever seen, and don't let anyone tell you differently. And if we want real reforms for our Post Office, we should stop making it pre-pay decades of benefit funds in advance (the source of most of its money problems) and we should allow it to offer basic banking services again. Like so many other things, this just ain't that damn deep.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to eliminate the filibuster, then Common Cause still helps you do that. I know, I know, I used to say my fellow liberals were dumb for wanting to do that, but you know what? I was wrong; they weren't dumb, and since our Senate hasn't listened to any of my principled calls for making the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, I say take their damn toy away. Republicans filibustered even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama, and they should have suffered for them! I mean, filibustering legislation that would stop tax breaks from going to corporations that outsource their jobs? Everyone who filibustered that should have lost their next election! But it ain't just Democrat weakness (I mean, did they ever run ads about that?) to blame; it's also a system that lets them obstruct in the dark, without their nefarious deeds ever being brought to the light. And if you believe in accountability, you know it's got to stop.

Action: concerning COVID relief, the minimum wage, judicial gerrymandering, and right-wing Constitutional conventions.

Happy Monday, good peoples! Today's a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Vox has a pretty good summary of what's presently in the bill our House is writing, which includes $1400 checks for folks making under $75,000, $400 in weekly expanded unemployment benefits through August 29, and a $15/hour minimum wage. And in addition to funding more testing and tracing and funding the states, localities, public transportation, and other entities that have suffered from reduced tax revenues during this pandemic, the bill would also expand COBRA subsidies through September, expand Affordable Care Act subsidies, and expand working-family tax credits like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And say only two things to folks who worry that a $15/hour minimum wage would "shock the economy": one, the bill gradually increases the minimum wage and won't reach $15/hour for several years, and two, we've spent so much time talking about essential workers during a pandemic that we ought to start paying them like they're essential.

Speaking of the minimum wage, you might also want to call Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) and tell them to support the $15/hour minimum wage. (Phone numbers are 202.224.3954 and 202.224.4521, respectively.) Yeah, they "represent conservative states," but if they actually talked to the people they represent, as is their job; Sens. Manchin and Sinema might find a lot more support for the higher minimum wage than the phrase "conservative state" suggests. After all, polls tell us a majority of Republican voters want both the $15/hour minimum wage and the COVID bill passed via budget reconciliation, so it ain't us who are "out of touch." And too many of my fellow liberals keep misreading the politics, too! We can't coddle these Senators "to keep the majority." No one's going to vote Democrat in 2022 because "they sacrificed doing the right thing to doing it the right way." But a whole lot of people will vote Republican in 2022 because "Democrats had all the power and didn't do anything." We've seen this time and time again; how many more times must we see it?

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your PA state legislators to reject the "sore loser" judicial gerrymandering bill, HB 38, then Common Cause still helps you do that. Why "sore loser"? Because PA Republicans are mad that our state Supreme Court has mostly Democrats on it, and want to create "judicial districts" so they can get more Republicans on the Court. Period. If they wanted them on the Court so badly, they should have won all those 2015 Court elections they and their paymasters spent so damn much money on! Our activism against HB 38 has had positive effects: the House Judiciary Committee passed it, but narrowly, and now the state Senate Majority Leader says HB 38 won't pass the full legislature soon enough to get on the ballot by the May primary election. (HB 38, if it passes, would put the question of amending our state Constitution to mandate the creation of "judicial districts" on the ballot.) But HB 38 might make it through the legislature in time for the November election, and this is (to quote a phrase right-wingers love!) one baby we should strangle in its crib.

Finally, right-wing special interest groups (like ALEC!) want to stage an Article V Constitutional convention, which two-thirds of state legislatures could call and then use to pass a slew of anti-freedom constitutional amendments as soon as three-quarters of state legislatures ratify them. 34 state legislatures would have to call the convention; now guess how many state legislatures Republicans currently hold? That's right, 31, which is three states short, but with Republicans controlling the gerrymandering, ahem, redistricting process for the next decade, they may have their 34 with a quickness. They'd need 38 to enact the proposed amendments, but Article V gives no guidance as to how to conduct this convention, so you can only imagine how bad it'd get -- they'd make it "unconstitutional" to stop corporations from polluting, or stop vote suppression, or raise taxes on the rich, or even have Medicare or Social Security. Hence Common Cause helps you tell state legislators you oppose an Article V convention. They'll try to do this while no one's looking, so let's let them know we see them.

Around the table: state legislatures want to stop you from protesting! And other complete non-surprises.

Another year, another couple of dozen bills in state legislatures that would attack your right to protest peaceably, and if January 6 is the impetus for these bills, as some might presume, how come so many of them resemble pre-January 6 bills? Bills protecting your "right" to run over protestors, or shoot protestors "likely" to use violence, have nothing to do with the sense of entitlement that sparked January 6. But then, a lot of Americans believe, despite the evidence, that antifa and Black Lives Matter engineered the January 6 coup attempt, and politicians tend to chase the drama (particularly the drama they've already stoked!).

Hoo boy: House Republicans want to pass a bill, absurdly called the CONNECT Act, that would ban most municipal broadband networks, and they claim the bill would boost competition. So are they saying private corporations simply can't deliver better products and service than municipal governments could? Or are they saying the natural end-result of restraining government is increasing competition? They might be right about the first one, but they're full of soup about the second -- thanks to our government's hands-off approach, most folks in America don't have the option of dumping their monopoly crappy internet service provider for a better one. But if they had the option of municipal broadband, they could organize and demand better service, and if the municipality failed to redress their grievances, they could make heads roll. This ain't that deep.

Any reasonable person would take issue with some of the numbers offered in this NBC News article entitled "The GOP Is Rapidly Becoming the Blue-Collar Party." Like, for instance, the article doesn't tell you how many white blue-collar voters identified as Democrats in 2010 and 2020 (the numbers are 45% and 57%, respectively, for Republicans), and doesn't tell you how many white blue-collar voters there are, let alone how many Hispanic and black blue-collar voters there are. And going from 23% of Hispanic blue-collar voters in 2010 to 36% in 2020 is impressive, but still doesn't comprise a majority, and we don't learn how what part blue-collar voters comprise of all Hispanic voters. I suppose there might be something to it -- at least in the short run! -- but not as much as NBC News would like us to think.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) says he won't support Neera Tanden as OMB Director, virtually scuttling her nomination unless some Republican comes to her rescue. I'm no great fan of Ms. Tanden, so I don't care that he opposes her per se, but I care about his crappy reasoning (cf. "I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact" yadda yadda yadda), in which he seems blissfully unaware that just about every Republican says much nastier crap about Democrats than Ms. Tanden has ever said about Republicans. That reasoning is so crappy, in fact, that you might suspect it's a kind of Democrat drama, where Joe Manchin gets to claim a kill and then oppose nothing else of consequence. But I doubt that, and besides, if it perpetuates the myth that we should pursue "bipartisanship" with the people who burn your house down, it's bad drama.

Finally, if you're looking for a eulogy of Rush Limbaugh that doesn't walk on eggshells around his dittoheads, Anthony Dimaggio at Counterpunch writes one, concentrating mainly on Mr. Limbaugh's last decade of birtherism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, LGBTQ-phobia, and neofascism. Good to hear someone else saying Mr. Limbaugh is not a conservative, and his promotion of right-wing violence even after January 6 seals that case, if nothing else does. As pro-Trump as he was, you do have to wonder if the $600 million dollar man resented our former President for inspiring more devotion, such as it is -- after all, a man doesn't get that rich without being that needy.

Around the table: in which we take the whole "Republicans are leaving the party" narrative with the appropriate amount of salt.

Sick of hearing how "frozen windmills" (which even Gov. Abbott said only comprised 10% of Texas's power grid) supposedly left good Texans out in the cold? Greg Palast, America's Last Journalist, reminds us that deregulation left the Texas power grid vulnerable to winter storms, and that's not just about Texas refusing to join the federal power grid that could have enabled them to get free excess power from California this month -- it's about letting power utilities do whatever made them the most money, rather than whatever made the power grid the most reliable, as federal regulation mandated before the early '90s. Trigger alert: the woman with the $450 electric bill for one day's power who paid only $33 for the entire month of February last year.

It's tempting to watch the Arizona Republican Party's machinations in the wake of Mr. Trump's election loss and conclude that the party is dead, but remember that if Democrats do nothing over the next two years, a bet no one's ever lost their shirt taking, then even a rabid raccoon can become Arizona's Governor or beat Sen. Kelly in 2022. How would that work? The same way it always does: the crazy people get behind their nominee, and then the party regulars, sensing victory, "hold their noses" and tell themselves they can control the crazy people, a stratagem that has historically led to very little soul-searching among its practitioners.

In a related note, we can also make too much of reports like these, describing the thousands who've left the Republican Party after the January 6 attempted coup, and not just because "5,000 voters leaving the party" happens in the context of over 480,000 registered Republicans (and about twice as many independents, at least some of whom lean right) in Connecticut as of late October. You could argue that January 6 was probably the last straw for a lot of these folks -- or you could argue that folks may formally abandon a party and still not abandon it in their hearts, and that the next big election is almost two years away, and that's plenty of time for easily-imaginable circumstances (like, again, a do-nothing Democratic government) to bring them back.

How the mighty fall: Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D?-NY), lionized with such titles as "America's Boyfriend" for his performance as the anti-Trump during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, now finds himself more of a pariah after getting caught covering up COVID-related deaths at nursing homes. Our "liberal" media may have trouble understanding how this could have happened, but I suspect most real liberals don't; should we pretend to care about Mr. Cuomo's fall as a sort of rope-a-dope game for the American right? I kid, of course -- I'm a terrible liar, and why not just primary him out in 2022? No actors need apply.

Finally, you've heard that Ted Cruz is the Senator other Senators love to hate? Well, you have to wonder if his wife's friends view her similarly, after one of them in a group chat leaked her texts concerning their now-infamous Cancún trip to the New York Times. Yikes, Mrs. Cruz actually said their house was "FREEZING" (caps in original), and I bet millions of good Texans would have used more than all-caps to tell you how they felt! Of course, most good Texans also can't simply slip off in the middle of a pandemic to some $300-a-night hotel room south of the border when things get tough.

Action: concerning Guantánamo Bay, internet freedom, and pollution.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center and send its detainees to nations that respect human rights, then Amnesty International still helps you do that. Guantánamo has been a stain on our national soul for some 19 years now -- yes, a baby born just after we started sending "dangerous" "terror" "suspects" there would now be old enough to vote! And like the worst stains on our soul, it's a stain built on lies -- lies that these clowns "return" to "terrorism," lies that we ever got any actionable intelligence from torturing them, lies, even, that they were ever "terrorists," for if you can't charge someone with something after a decade, how was he a "terrorist"? More likely he was just an excuse to "look tough." But the road to hell is paved with the skulls of politicians who tried to "look tough." So let's help Joe Biden not be one of those. At least this decade, amirite?

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) that our internet should be a public utility and that they should reclaim it for us. In the old days, we called that "nationalizing," and during the era of actual Communists it had a bad name, but ain't nobody in contemporary America singing the praises of Comcast and Verizon, and besides, without UNIX and TCP-IP -- both Big Gummint creations! -- we wouldn't even have the internet we've got, so, by my lights, it's already ours. Making the internet a public utility would not only allow our FCC to bring back the net neutrality principles we all deserve as consumers, it'll help our FCC bring internet access to the 40 million Americans who still don't have broadband access (or any access!). 40 million underserved Americans in the COVID era, no less! But if we make our internet public again, then we should be able to serve all good Americans.

Finally, the Sierra Club helps you tell President Biden to enact strong auto fuel emission standards. Our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) does that, after all, and the Clean Car Standards were one of Barack Obama's signature achievements as President -- until Donald Trump took a big dump all over them, of course! Really, though, air pollution and its resulting health issues are not popular, nor are gas-guzzling cars that cost more to fill up at the pump. These are fairly easy things for intelligent people to grasp, yet our enemies still talk of the "higher sticker price" of cars that pollute less, as if you wouldn't recoup that cost through lower gas prices, as if the only thing that matters is how much money you have or spend right now. Frankly, that was never very conservative of the Trump Administration. But thrift remains a value that sustains us, and cleaner cars will help us sustain our values -- and ourselves.

Around the table: Republicans Acting Badly, Part 583.

Ian Millhiser at Vox reminds us that there must be 50 ways to fix the filibuster. (No, I won't keep that going.) He also reminds us that the filibuster gets changed all the time -- a Brookings Institution scholar counts 161 "provisions of law" that protect a bill from a Senate filibuster, and we didn't pass all 161 of them yesterday -- and proposes a number of reforms that would do us a lot of good, although "making Senators actually talk through their filibuster instead of just signaling a filibuster and then going off to dinner or the theatre" comes a little late in the discussion for my taste.

After Sen. Ron Johnson (A-WI) says that January 6 "didn't seem like an armed insurrection," the normally fair-to-middling fact-checking website Politifact takes the time to remind us that, yes, January 6 was, in point of fact, an armed insurrection. I guess I could be generous and say that Mr. Johnson hasn't been through too many armed insurrections and thus wouldn't know ha ha ha ha ha I kid of course -- Ron Johnson is gaslighting, and "only one shot fired" hides all the other weapons the seditionists brought, or, in the case of the one who attacked a police officer with an American flag, repurposed.

When you confront an article entitled "How to Live With Authoritarians," you may be tempted to respond "rule number one is don't coddle them." But authors Karen Stenner and Jessica Stern have a profound insight (or ten) to share. For example, "(a)uthoritarians’ fundamental aversion to diversity -- complexity and variety -- is distinct from traditional conservatives’ aversion to change -- which is more about novelty and uncertainty," and "those who are predisposed to favor freedom and diversity over authority and conformity must recognize that the authoritarian preference for oneness and sameness is largely innate and unlikely to change." Hence "(t)he new U.S. administration should promote equity and justice while avoiding a loud and provocative display of stances and messaging that unnecessarily aggravates authoritarians," which sure sounds like typical Democrat weakness, but really isn't, if you attend closely the word "unnecessarily" and if you're the kind of person who prefers getting things done to creating big dramas about them (which is to say, if you're the opposite of the kind of person Donald Trump is).

Folks are concentrating on the Washington County (PA) GOP Chair criticizing Sen. Toomey's vote to convict Donald Trump on impeachment charges because "we did not send him there to do the right thing," but of course it's far worse than that. Silly little Washington County GOP Chair, trying to convince us that Pat Toomey really only represents the Washington County GOP in the Senate -- or even Pennsylvania's Republicans -- and not all Pennsylvanians! I do get tired of right-wingers whining that they're not "represented" on those rare occasions Republican politicians don't march in jackboot lockstep with their urges. I've never agreed very much with our state's junior Senator, but I'm pretty sure this kind of thing is why Mr. Toomey decided to retire in 2022.

Finally, when I note that Rep. Jim Jordan (A-OH) thinks "cancel culture" is "the most dangerous thing happening in the country today," all I really hear is WAAAAAAAAH TEH LIBRULZ AREZ MEANZ TO MEZ!!!!! But you know, the whining isn't the worst thing about what he said. The slippery slope argument isn't the worst thing about what he said. Even calling "cancel culture" the "most dangerous thing" in America while a pandemic slashes its scythe through America isn't the worst thing about that. You know what's the worst thing about that? Jim Jordan literally enabled child molestation at a high school before getting elected to the House, but because he represents a deformed Tetris piece of a district, the voters can't cancel his sorry ass.

Action: concerning the 14th Amendment, police brutality, student loan debt, and social media.

James Wagstaffe at Real Security writes that it's "Time to Reconsider the 14th Amendment for Trump's Role in the Insurrection," and he's right. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution states that no one who has "taken an oath...to support the Constitution of the United States" but who has then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" our nation, "or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof" can hold office in state or federal government again. Surely Mr. Trump took that oath in January of 2017, and just as surely he "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" over a 2020 election result he didn't like and gave "aid and comfort" to those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 -- and all Congress would have to do is pass, via majority vote, a resolution affirming all of that. Maybe Senate Republicans can filibuster that resolution -- but maybe we should make them do that! Hence you may want to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to support barring Donald Trump from future office using the 14th Amendment.

Meanwhile, President Biden announced weeks ago that it would release an Executive Order concerning our police departments getting surplus weapons from the military, but, strangely, hasn't released the Order. Was he trying to get some unearned good will? Possibly. Did someone get to him and tell him you can't do that when we just had an insurrection at the Capitol? Possibly, but that someone would be an idiot, since we've already witnessed police use military weapons on protestors of color, and they sure didn't do that at the Capitol on January 6. Maybe it was just me, but they didn't even seem all that enthused about using pepper spray. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk and your President that it's time for action to keep military weapons out of the hands of police. If you want police to respond to situations more appropriately, you don't give them grenade launchers -- and grenade launchers don't help you find drug dealers, nor do they help you find financial predators.

In other news, Roots Action helps you helps you tell President Biden to cancel all federally-held student loan debt in America. Objections to this action that go I paid my student loan debt, why can't they? should be met with jealousy is not a good foundation for public policy. I mean, yeah, I'd rather I had the sense to consider this years ago, too, but the best time to do the right thing is always now, and cancelling federally-held student loan debt (which is most of it) is the right thing to do, and not just because it'll stimulate the economy like gangbusters. Basically, we sold Americans a bill of goods when we signed them up for these giant student loans! We, as a nation, told them a college degree is the only way to enter the middle class (a claim our grandparents would have dismissed!), and then we extorted them for considerably more than that education is worth, and certainly more than anyone should pay. College was affordable only a few generations ago, and we'll have to work to make it that way again, but a jubilee in the meantime is a good first step.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell Facebook to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Congressional and campaign pages permanently. You need not agree or disagree with her politics to sign this petition -- Ms. Greene has undeniably violated Facebook's terms of service with her various social media actions supporting violence and absurd conspiracy theories, and that's that. Ms. Greene herself would warn that booting her off Facebook would just make her stronger, but I doubt that, and even so, it should be hard to find right-wing nutjobs, just as it used to be hard to find pornography. I'm sure some folks will say this makes it harder for her to communicate with your constituents, but Facebook sure ain't the only way to do that -- what's wrong with having townhalls and meeting with constituents (which you can do even during a pandemic)? I suspect what's "wrong" with them is that politicians don't like facing accountability. But we need to make an America where accountability is what politicians should expect from Americans.

Action: concerning voting rights, new domestic terror legislation, the COUP Act, and saving our Post Office.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today would be a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). (If you're pressed for time, the Sierra Club also helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass the For the People Act.) The For the People Act contains a lot of goodies -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered -- and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression over the last 25 years to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. If your friends and neighbors complain, as Mitch McConnell did, that these are "Democrat power grabs," ask them why Republicans should lose if we do better at protecting the vote. If their answers mention "dead voters" or "suitcases in Georgia," remind them not to be so gullible.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the January 6 attempted coup, politicians have said they need new "domestic terror" legislation to help prevent such things from happening again -- but that's the way of the politicians, isn't it? They fuck up, so you have to give up more of your rights. Besides, there'd be a lot less domestic terrorism in America if folks could make ends meet and save some money and build a future and not get slammed by surprise medical bills, but no, the "free market" is "more important" than that. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Reps and Senators that "more domestic terrorism legislation" is not the answer. You may want to avoid saying things like "start using the tools you've got!", because, frankly, I think law enforcement has too many tools with which to "fight terrorism" already -- I would hate to see new legislation make the USA PATRIOT Act seem "not so bad after all." The best way to fight terrorism? Politicians should do their constituents' will rather than try to pull the wool over their eyes all the time. It's not so much to ask, really.

In other news, H.R. 276, the Congressional Oversight of Unjust Policing (or COUP) Act, would establish a Congressional commission and charge it with investigating exactly how Y'all-Qaeda were able to breach our Capitol on January 6. If you're sitting at home snorting that of course they didn't see it coming because the protestors were white! Duh!, rest assured that the COUP Act specifically mandates "an assessment on whether conscious and unconscious bias was a factor in the gross miscalculation of the risk posed by protestors to Members of Congress and staff on that date." If you're sitting at home squealing ANUTHUR BUREAUCRACIEZ!!!!, then ask yourself how you felt about all those Benghazi hearings Republican House Reps held back in the day, and if "that was different," be prepared to explain how. No, wait, I'll explain it: the Benghazi hearings were all about drumming up drama and enraging weak voters. Putting in writing our failures as a nation on January 6, on the other hand, might actually help us do better in advance of the next coup attempt. So People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolks to pass the COUP Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to replace our USPS's Board of Governors with folks who'll actually get our Post Office working the way it should, then MoveOn still helps you do that. "Getting our Post Office working the way it should" includes our USPS Board of Governors firing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's sorry ass, since he's the one trying to implement all the "innovations" that slow down our mail and make us pay more for it. We deserve a Post Office that runs as well as our postal workers do; indeed, our Constitution actually enumerates this task to our federal government. I still worry that Joe Biden agrees with Mr. DeJoy that we should privatize our Post Office, because "all it does is deliver junk mail" and "people don't write letters anymore, they write emails" or some such. If so, Mr. Biden should be more conscious of the fact that the Post Office literally delivered his 2020 victory, and it did so because we fought Mr. DeJoy tooth and nail to get that done. I wouldn't say it's "uncivil" to remind him of that.

UPDATE. I inadvertently identified the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act with its bill number from last session, and have thus corrected that error in the first paragraph above.

Around the table: in which we contemplate good things happening in America, however that's supposed to feel.

Jeet Heer at The Nation says "Trump's two impeachments are just the start of a long struggle to turn the former president into a pariah," and all I can say is: we can only hope! Next steps, for Mr. Heer, include criminal and civil charges against Mr. Trump and a Congressional investigation (not a 9.11-style "truth commission," necessarily) into the events of January 6; I would say our task, in the meantime, is to shame and shun anyone who still thinks Donald Trump is a God-among-men. For Trump votaries, anything civilized people do will just make him seem more the martyr, but let them see how their lives are when their devotion is all they have left.

There's no point sifting through Sen. Lindsey Graham's latest batch of word salad to figure out exactly how a Republican Congress would get rid of Vice President Harris, but he's correct that Lara Trump has become a viable candidate in the 2022 North Carolina Senate election. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville has lowered the bar for how stupid you can sound/be and still get elected, so yes, Lara Trump can win -- unless Democrats nominate someone who gives North Carolinians someone to vote for. I think state Sen. Erica Smith is that person; the problem is that national Democrats think anyone but Erica Smith is that person. They should know better -- I mean, the Cal Cunningham disaster was just three months ago, and he didn't lose solely because he couldn't keep it in his pants.

David Frum's latest at The Atlantic, arguing that more democracy would solve our problems much better than continued rule by Our Glorious Elites, is fascinating, not just because he argues that the Founders were wrong about the "fickleness and passion" of the masses, not just because he measures the Federalist Papers against the evidence of the last 15 years and finds it wanting, but because he all but says Our Glorious Elites actually cause all our problems. And in noting how the Senate's refusal to pass climate change or immigration reform legislation led President Obama to issue more regulations -- which President Trump tried to overturn, albeit with little success -- Mr. Frum not only proves his point that the kind of "minority" rule espoused by our Founders actually leads to more instability and chaos, he also remains a conservative in doing so, and generally I prefer folks stay true to themselves.

So why is Mexico's government turning away from renewable energy and toward coal at this relatively late date? It can't be "energy sovereignty," since Mexico gets sun and wind just like everyone else, and when they say renewable energy is "unreliable," they probably mean it doesn't "reliably" make money for someone, and even if in this instance that "someone" is the Mexican taxpayer, we shouldn't necessarily celebrate. It sounds like Mexican President López Obrador (a.k.a. AMLO) either doesn't have the guts to nationalize the largely-privatized renewable energy industry or thinks the Mexican government can't compete with it, and that's not exactly visionary reasoning there.

Finally, you've heard about the wintry storms battering Texas this week? Well, Laura Clawson at Daily Kos notes that President Biden has moved rather swiftly and decisively in this matter, whereas his predecessor "repeatedly delayed disaster aid to parts of the country he didn't think were sufficiently pro-Trump." Turns out that having a President with over half a century of experience in our federal government is not an unqualified evil, and I hope we'll be highlighting many such Goofus and Gallant moments over the next few years. What Trump votaries in Texas are saying right now I can only imagine. Are they blaming Jewish space lasers for the winter weather?

Action: concerning COVID relief, the minimum wage, the right to organize, and social media.

Happy Monday, good Americans! Today's as good a day as any to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass a vigorous COVID relief package. You may want to inform them, if they're of the Republican persuasion, that a recent The Hill/Harris X poll finds a sizable majority of Republicans support the notion of Democrats passing a bill through budget reconciliation without Republican votes. So when national Republicans whine about being "left out" of the deliberation process -- which is to laugh, of course, given how often Republicans do that to Democrats, the Trump tax "reform" being only the most recent obvious example -- remind them that most of their own right-leaning constituents don't agree with them. And when Republicans whine about the deficit -- which is also to laugh, since they clearly don't care about it when they're in power -- remind them that their constituents don't care about that, either. Funny how easily you can find actual bipartisanship among the people but only the fake kind among politicians.

And if you're from West Virginia or Arizona, you may also want to mention to Sens. Manchin (D?-WV) and Sinema (D?-AZ) that you support the $15/hour minimum wage. Already I've heard liberals saying that we have to cut these two some slack because they come from conservative states, but that gives them veto power over all legislation! Do you remember voting for the Manchin/Sinema ticket in 2020? No, you do not. These two won't lose their jobs in 2024 for "being too liberal," but they will lose their jobs for doing too little, and the sooner they learn that, the better for them and for us. At least Sen. Manchin says he'd support an $11/hour minimum wage; Sen. Sinema says we shouldn't raise the wage through budget reconciliation at all. But we just almost lost our damn government to violent assholes and we are thus, ah, not particularly obsessed with "the sanctity of Senate procedure" at this point in time. Besides, she's just going to vote against the hike if we do it the "right" way. Unless we flood her phone lines, of course.

Meanwhile, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act (which has no bill number at this writing) would, as its title suggests, better protect workers when they try to organize for better wages and working conditions. Bosses herding their workers into anti-union meetings, or firing organizers, or sending them endless text messages, or flat-out bullying them on the floor? All that could become a thing of the past if the PRO Act passes, since the bill would not only strengthen penalties corporations face and empower our National Labor Relations Board to force corporations to bargain with employees when they commit these transgressions, but it'd also empower workers to file civil lawsuits against them, too. Does your Tea Party uncle want to call all that "frivolous lawsuits"? But who files the most frivolous lawsuits again? Corporations and Donald Trump, by the evidence. So the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Reps and Senators to protect American workers by passing the PRO Act.

Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk and our President to enact legislation that would hold big tech corporations accountable for their misdeeds. And by "misdeeds" I mainly mean "allowing lies and extremist content to spread across our internet with no attempt to moderate the flow." Social media CEOs twiddled their thumbs for years, responding to any attempt to get them to do better by shrieking TEH FREE SPEECHEZ!!!!, but Facebook and Twitter aren't public utilities, they're private corporations -- best characterized as publishing houses even if our laws won't do that. Hence People for the American Way helps you call for these sites to actively moderate content. And I doubt "using algorithms" qualifies as "active moderation" -- I would call it passive moderation, in fact, and would it be piling on to note that the algorithms these best-and-brightest tech honchos develop too often spew out racist content? And that's just another reason why people, not algorithms, need to do our most important work.

Around the table: yeah, so *that* happened.

Senate acquits former President Donald Trump of incitement charge, as 57 out of 100 Senators vote to convict. Thus Mr. Trump can run for President again, and who thinks any Republicans can stop him in 2024 no matter how much they try to suck up to his votaries? Anyone? Bueller? We can stop him, of course, just like we did in 2020, but establishment Republicans can't, and since when do we think establishment Republicans are so good, anyway? They suck! In the meantime, circle Thursday, March 4 on your calendar, as the next day Trump supporters stamp their feet and stage a riot where people get hurt and die. (Surprise! It's a QAnon thing.)

Harvard-led study informs us that the air pollution from fossil fuel emissions caused one out of every five premature deaths in 2018. And when your right-wing friends retort that "nobody measures how many lives fossil fuels have lengthened ha ha ha snort," remind them that we can get people and essential goods around quickly and kill fewer people with pollution at the same time! I mean, if we can't, we'll really have to re-evaluate this whole "progress" thing.

Senate Republicans say a NASDAQ diversity plan that would require more women, folks of color, and LGBTQ folks on their corporate boards would hurt shareholders. Of course these Senators first unctuously declare their support for more diverse corporate boards, and then larding the "but" sentence with stock right-wing phrases such as "arbitrator of social policy" and "one-size-fits-all." But neither their fake concern nor their bad arguments can save them from supporting a kind of shareholder redlining -- don't let Those People on the board, or we'll lose money! isn't a far walk from Those People keep property values down.

Maria Bartiromo, Jeanne Pirro, and Lou Dobbs file a ludicrous motion to dismiss the Smartmatic lawsuit that names them. "Smartmatic lost money last year anyway" is the kind of thing you offer just to see if it'll stick, but more importantly, they're lying when they say they were "just covering issues" that "happened" to be of "public interest" -- they and their bosses chose those "matters of public interest," and we have every right to suspect they also chose what guests to interview about them so they could keep the lies going. And do you think Maria Bartiromo regrets that softball interview with Mr. Trump now? Insofar as she's capable of regret, of course.

Finally, Ari Berman at Mother Jones describes, at considerable length, how Republicans still hold most of the power in America. From the Senate giving outsized power to less-populous (and more right-leaning) states to state legislature gerrymandering House seats to the "feedback loop" where Republican-appointed judges help keep Republicans in power by sanctioning their vote suppression tactics, you'll find it all here, and the final sentence tells us what we can do about it: "Until democracy breaks them (i.e., the Republicans), they'll continue to break democracy." That's right, we have to break Republicans, in every race in every corner of America. Tainting all of them with the stain of January 6 would be a good start.

Action: concerning the attempted coup, MyPillow products, Amazon surveillance, and postal banking.

Despite the compelling case for conviction of Donald Trump our House has made all week, we have every reason to believe our Senators will fail to do their duty and convict our former President. At least, that's the way to bet -- though I'm starting to suspect that the way to bet is actually the opposite of how everyone else bets! In any case, Amnesty International helps you tell Acting Attorney General Wilkinson to investigate the events of January 6. If that seems like an "obsession" to you, quietly navigate away from this page, and go read something on Newsmax or OANN or whatever diddles your rage gland. I'm serious. If Donald Trump's months-long attempt to overturn the 2020 election doesn't obsess you, there's something deeply wrong with you as a citizen. And I suspect a DOJ investigation would turn up more useful information than even the House's impeachment case has done. After all, the House put its case together rather quickly, and I suspect we can learn a lot more by completing a more thorough investigation.

In a peripherally-related note, MoveOn helps you tell big warehouse corporation Costco to get MyPillow products out of its stores. MyPillow's CEO, after all, is Mike Lindell, who has trafficked in absurd "election fraud" theories and tried to goad Donald Trump into declaring martial law so he could overturn the election he lost by seven million votes, the election our cybersecurity chief said was the most secure in American history when he had every motivation to say the opposite. No, Mike Lindell does not have a "First Amendment right" to have his products at Costco locations. Our First Amendment protects him from going to jail merely for his bloviating (though for incitement to violence or terrorist threats, not so much). Our First Amendment does not grant a "right" to be free from the consequences of his actions. And to those who would be "wary" at the "chilling" effect of a Costco ban: you can navigate the fuck away from this page, too. You should be more scared to live in a society where no one pays for the evil they've done.

Meanwhile, Amazon is apparently installing surveillance cameras on their delivery vehicles, ostensibly to watch the drivers, I suppose, but how much surveillance does a corporation need to do on its employees? You don't need a proctoscope to know when a driver's slacking. And I'm old enough to remember when boosting workers' morale solved most workplace problems, but when you treat your workers as moneyjars, I guess morale matters little. And naturally, Amazon's surveillance won't just be on the drivers, it'll be on everything around them, and their recent history suggests they'd just be happy to share whatever their watchful eyes find with police, warrant or not. And if you're tempted to say if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, consider that an Amazon surveillance camera is also just another thing crooks can hack; how many strangers do you want observing your habits? Hence Fight for the Future helps you tell Amazon to stop making their delivery vehicles into Big Brother.

Finally, as part of our efforts to save our Post Office, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Postal Banking Act (no bill number at this writing), which would allow our U.S. Postal Service to offer basic banking services to good Americans. What's that I hear? Why don't they just go to the bank? Because banks don't like to serve a lot of urban and rural poor areas of America, that's why, which leaves a lot of good Americans with very few options -- like payday lenders! Should anyone have to put up with the choice of 300% death spiral loans or no loans just because they live where banks don't want to go? The Postal Banking Act (which various Congressfolk have introduced in previous Congresses) would offer savings and checking accounts, but would also offer small loans, which might well make payday lenders completely unnecessary. And our Postal Service used to offer these services until the late '60s, and there's no good reason they can't again.

Around the table: banksters ruin everything, and other lessons.

First, some good news: the Writers Guild of America (or WGA) won a two-year battle with their now largely bankster-funded talent agencies. And they didn't have to go on strike to do it! In fact, with all the TV that's on now, they still got a lot of work; they didn't have their old agents around to help them get work, but they worked around that. Read the whole thing, and be reminded of two lessons: 1) banksters ruin everything, and 2) but not if we all fight them together.

When I heard that Michigan state Senate Majority Mike Shirkey (R) claimed that the January 6 coup attempt was "all staged" and of course not at all started by the "Trump people" we were all able to identify as social media celebrities, I wondered how he felt when armed right-wingers stormed his own Capitol building last April. But when I found out he also said he'd thought of challenging Michigan's Democratic Governor to a fistfight, I had my answer. Some people just like violence.

A sizable group of Never Trumpers get together on a Zoom call to talk about maybe forming a new center-right party oh why do I bother. They will fail, not just because the "center" part of the "center-right" formulation is to laugh -- come on, Evan McMullin is not a moderate! John Sherman Cooper was a moderate! -- but because, well, all the enthusiasm is on the Trumphole side now.

Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel announces a 2022 Senate run, having recast himself as a Trumphole, though he so far hasn't recast himself as someone who can form a coherent thought outside of tired talking points. Maybe being a Trumphole will be enough, though I think either Tim Ryan or Dennis Kucinich would be formidable opponents, even in a Trump-captured Ohio; in the meantime, Josh Mandel is our new Face Even a Mother Could Punch. (Mr. Mandel also said it might take "months" or "years" or "decades" to prove that Mr. Trump actually "won" the 2020 election. Can't anybody tell what a con is anymore?)

American Enterprise Institute (or AEI) study finds nearly three in 10 Americans saying violence may be necessary to solve our thorny political problems; among Republicans, that number rises to almost four in 10. Of course, no one thinks they're violent unless pushed too far, and everyone defines "being pushed too far" differently. And though those definitions might range from "you attacked my family" to "you criticized my racism and sexism," they all seem apocalyptic to those who hold them. So we need to have a healthy sense of what's survival and what isn't -- and we also need to be ready to work around those who can't tell the difference.

Finally, in light of horrifying recent testimony at the Senate impeachment trial, David Frum finds Republicans "shrinking before the eyes of the whole country" in their complicity with the nefarious events of January 6, and their refusal to take real accountability for them. And for a moment I actually wondered for a minute why establishment Republicans seem to have such trouble getting rid of the dead wood in their party! Silly me -- the establishment is the dead wood, and the upstarts are doing just fine getting rid of them, though the journey from upstart to establishment will get shorter as time goes on. Remember when Marco Rubio was a fresh young Tea Party fellow? That was just a decade ago, and his good thing's about to end, whether Ivanka Trump ends it or not.

Action: concerning Wall Street taxes, COVID vaccines, judicial gerrymandering, and the Dakota Access pipeline.

Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 328, the Wall Street Tax Act of 2021, which would impose a 0.1% tax on Wall Street trading. That's one-tenth of one percent, "liberal" media -- not "one percent," not "10 percent," and not "100 percent." I've watched "liberal" media morons get all those mixed up; certainly none of them should ever be in charge of my morphine drip if I'm ever in a serious accident. 2.5 milligrams or 25 milligrams, what's the difference? Folks will tell you that taxing Wall Street trades will hurt your pensions, but don't you believe it -- if your pension fund has really invested in all that lightning-fast trading banksters seem to prefer, your pension needs to do differently. And don't let folks say we shouldn't do it because banksters will trade less, either -- so much Wall Street trading does nothing for our economy anyway, so that's not exactly a reason not to do it. Whether we collect a lot of tax revenue, or banksters act more responsible to avoid paying those taxes, it's a win-win, really.

Meanwhile, Rethink Trade helps you tell the Biden Administration to join a 100-nation effort to waive certain intellectual property rules during this ongoing pandemic. Here's what's happening: World Trade Organization rules allow corporations that make COVID-related vaccines and treatments to set onerous terms for their production and pricing, and the 100-nation coalition led by India and South Africa seeks waivers from these rules, so other corporations can ramp up production, so we can get this pandemic under control. You may well be asking yourself: self, don't these corporations deserve to make money from the fruits of their labors? I can answer that objection in at least two ways: 1) no, because there's a pandemic on, and our health is more important than their money, 2) still no, because the "fruits of their labors" also likely came from the fruits of taxpayer funding, and if our taxes funded the vaccines and the treatments, then we should get a considerable amount of say in how they're used.

In other news, Pennsylvania state legislators still aim to "gerrymander" state courts with HB 38, which would amend the state Constitution to insure that only citizens of certain "districts" can elect statewide judges, HB 38 passed out of the state House Judiciary Committee by an admittedly narrow 13-12 vote, one which has, apparently, given Republican legislators pause, but I wouldn't count on them staying "paused" if I were you! They waited until no one was looking in January for the Committee vote, so why wouldn't they try that again for the full House vote? Particularly since everyone who hears about the bill has a hard time getting their head around the notion that judges who serve the law have to come from particular areas. Remember that five of seven state Supreme Court Justices are Democrats and you'll understand the "reasoning," such as it is: HB 38 is a sore loser bill. Hence Fair Districts PA helps you call your PA state reps and tell them to reject the Sore Loser Bill, HB 38.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell President Biden to tell our Army Corps of Engineers to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. Yes, he shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, and good for him, but that ain't the only dangerous pipeline in America: the Dakota Access pipeline also runs through water tables providing clean water to millions of heartland Americans -- a fact the Lakota nation tried to tell us about in late 2016! -- and Dakota Access leaked upwards of five times its first year, including a notorious 200,000-gallon spill in November of 2017. But wait, there's more! The Dakota Access pipeline has taken a thumping in our courts, most recently late last month, as our D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an April 2020 ruling requiring a more thorough environmental impact statement from our Army Corps of Engineers. And since Dakota likely won't pass muster once our Corps completes that impact statement, maybe we can save them some embarrassment. It'd be the nice thing to do.

Action: concerning public lands, right-wing media, racism in health care, and saving our Post Office.

Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell President Biden to stop leasing and permitting for coal operations on our public lands. President Biden has lately put a stop to oil and gas drilling on public lands, but he's strangely left coal out, possibly calculating that he can't lose a single vote in a state like Pennsylvania in 2024, but possibly also calculating that coal, as an industry, is going south and doesn't need another punch in the face right now. But I would say building out renewable energy operations on public lands would be a smarter political move, as well as a smarter move generally. If coal corporations are crashing one by one, they hardly represent a threat to the political order, though their displaced workers might. But we can retrain them to rebuild a renewable energy infrastructure a whole lot more easily than we can "teach them to code." Construction and coding are different skills, after all. And if you really want to "build back better," you also have to build back smarter.

Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell big corporations to stop advertising on Fox News. I'd tell them to stop advertising on Newsmax and OANN, too, but Sum of Us must smell blood in the water. Fox News, as you know, faces a $2.7 billion defamation/disparagement lawsuit from Smartmatic over some of their nefarious "election fraud" claims, a lawsuit that seems to have made right-wing news organs a little less obnoxious generally. Now you may be tempted to say haven't they suffered enough? But the answer is no, they have not suffered enough. From calling Iraq War opponents traitors to fearmongering over immigrants to whining about the deficit to whining about regulations to demanding jackboot lockstep support for police who kill black folks without a trial or even a charge to carrying Donald Trump's water for four years, Fox News has done incalculable damage to our civilization, and the only just punishment for their evil works is annihilation. Advertisers finally pulling out in large numbers might, at last, help us begin that necessary work.

In other news, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 666, the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act. The bill would create a National Center for Racism and a Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program at our Centers for Disease Control; the latter program would operate within our CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. If your right-wing friends and neighbors protest ZOMG TEH BUREAUCRACIEZ MULTIPLIEZ!!!!!, remind them that corporations have bureaucracies, too, and maybe a bureaucracy dedicated to researching (and ultimately helping to prevent) the health care burdens we all know folks of color bear in America, and the unique amount of violence done to folks of color by our police isn't such a bad bureaucracy after all. Folks of color are less likely to be paid well, less likely to have health insurance, and more likely to live near a landfill, so we ought to do something about that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to appoint four decent human beings to our United States Postal Service's Board of Governors -- four decent human beings who might then decide to do the only decent thing and fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy -- then MoveOn still helps you do that. Just about every American who gets mail (i.e., every American) can testify, using only their own recent experiences, that he's not doing a good job, but I expect the right-wing media will whine that he's being "targeted" (or "hunted"!) by nefarious forces like us, even though we're really not "nefarious" -- we just want our Post Office to run well, as our Constitution guarantees. If I had a dollar for every lousy boss I've ever had I might not have to work another day, and I suspect most Americans (again, from sad experience) are at least as good at telling a good boss from a bad one as I am. But we certainly shouldn't tolerate bad leadership from our Post Office.

Around the table: in which I do not actually hate to pile on.

I've been remiss in noting that a London School of Economics study found that a half-century of tax-cuts-for-the-rich haven't "trickled down" to the poor, but have mainly benefited the rich, which will seem obvious to anyone who understands human nature even a little, but still, it's nice to have some science behind it. Of course, right-wingers will say and you're surprised? to avoid serious argument over the matter, when these would be the same right-wingers who have uncritically repeated trickle-down pablum for the last half-century. (Hey, it's shameless product plug time: here's a bumper sticker I made that's relevant to this topic.)

I've also been remiss to realize that yes, you can put a minimum wage hike in a budget bill subject to reconciliation, and therefore avoid Yet Another Senate Filibuster. President Biden expressed skepticism that the minimum wage hike would survive such scrutiny, but he should have known better, too, having successfully shepherded the Affordable Care Act through budget reconciliation in 2010. Sen. Sanders (I-VT), now Senate Budget Committee Chair, suggests that when our Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) declared that the minimum wage hike would affect federal deficits, they essentially made the minimum wage hike a budgetary matter. (As an aside, a $54 billion increase in the deficit over 10 years isn't very big. Remember those Trump tax cuts? $1.7 trillion over 10 years. So tell your Trumphole friends to take a seat.)

Don't breathe too easily over the news that only 2% of Americans have a positive view of the QAnon madness, because those 2% will all vote, and in a close election between a cowardly Democrat and an insane Republican, they could very easily be the difference. I'm a little more annoyed that some 11% are neutral toward QAnon, which I suppose means they haven't heard of it (meaning they live under a rock), want to keep an open mind (meaning their brains are about to fall out), or don't want to form an opinion until they know everything (how much of this pile of elephant dung does anyone need to see?). A proper conspiracy theorist would target that 11% hard, and if they get to them before we do, we're going to lose them.

I'm not impressed that the Arizona "shaman"/horn-wearer/Capitol seditionist has apologized for his wrongdoing, and not just because folks will say lots of things once they find their ass in a sling -- dude displays absolutely no understanding of why he was wrong. "I was wrong, period" doesn't actually explain much; in fact, one could easily view it as an attempt to forestall any analysis, from you or him, of why he's wrong. It's a long journey from "I want to change America" to "I'm going to overthrow our government," and if you ask forgiveness by saying "I was wrong, period" without elaborating on any part of that journey, then I'm going to suspect you're bullshitting. Do you want the people who would forgive you to think you're bullshitting? (Hate to pile on, but saying Mr. Trump "let a lot of peaceful people down" should help you remember that Mr. Angeli, or Chansley, or whatever, was most decidedly not peaceful on January 6.)

Finally, Kenyan engineer Nzambi Matee creates a brick made of plastic waste and sand that can hold twice as much weight as concrete blocks. And her corporation gets a lot of the unrecyclable plastic it uses for free (at least until packaging plants figure out they're sitting on a gold mine!). They use it for paving stones, and I would wonder whether her bricks are too light for, say, building a house, but still, any time you turn trash into something useful, you win. I wish her the best.

Action: concerning voting rights, Guantánamo Bay, and voting security.

Happy Tuesday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). H.R. 1 would enact sweeping voting rights reforms, including campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. Neither of these bills are budget-related, so Republicans will be able to filibuster them (unless Senate Democrats get rid of the filibuster, or force Republicans to talk through a filibuster), but I say let them say they're against helping more people vote. That won't go down too well with folks of color, and I dare say it won't go down too well with independents, either.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to close our detention center at the Guantánamo Bay once and for all. You'll remember that President Obama tried to close it, only to hear a bunch of not-in-my-backyard whining from Congressfolk of both parties (ain't bipartisanship grand?). ZOMG what if one of those terrorists had to be detained in my state? Those would be the "terrorists" our government literally couldn't charge with a crime after 10 years; if you can't charge someone with a crime after detaining them for 10 years, you're either incompetent or a fascist -- or, more likely, a fascist pretending to be incompetent. And don't brook any stupidity about folks we can't even call "terrorists" "returning" to terrorism, for Guantánamo Bay remains a stain on our collective soul as Americans, and we should scrub that stain right out. But remember: we don't locate America's greatness in our "infallibility," for only a coward or a fascist does that. We locate America's greatness in our struggle to right our wrongs. This is more our heritage than whatever OANN teaches is our heritage.

Meanwhile, our U.S. Election Assistance Commission (or EAC) plans to vote soon on the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0, which would ostensibly enhance election security -- if it didn't plan on allowing voting machines to have wireless devices in them! The standard actually says a voting machine can have a wireless device in it if the voting machine doesn't actually use it, but then why have it? So hackers can exploit the very presence of a wireless device and manipulate elections from afar? Somebody didn't think this through -- or, possibly, someone did. And funny thing, we actually convinced the EAC to include a strong wireless ban in its standards last year -- but now they want to water that standard down so that it's useless! I wonder who got to them. In any event, Public Citizen helps you tell our EAC to reject voting machines with wireless devices in them. Remember: if you don't trust wireless systems to handle your banking (and you shouldn't!), then you certainly can't trust wireless systems with your vote. And yes, elections were pretty secure in 2020, but that doesn't mean we sit back, it means we keep working.

Around the table: evil and its incessant drama, part 399.

Impending bill would let big tech corporations essentially create local governments in Nevada -- and the idea has the support of Nevada's Governor, nominal Democrat Steve Sisolak. All because the local government supposedly is "inadequate alone to provide the flexibility and resources conducive to making the State a leader in attracting and retaining new forms and types of businesses and fostering" blah blah blah. Seriously, what a terrible idea: corporations only account to shareholders; governments account to people. When it doesn't work as well as it should, we must hold them accountable -- and holding a private corporation accountable is a lot harder when you're not a shareholder.

Rachel Kraus at Mashable gives us "9 Scary Revelations From 40 years of Facial Recognition Research." Didn't know it'd been going on that long, did you? Well, it has, and it was a Department of Defense idea, of course, and facial recognition works a lot better in studies than it does in the real world -- a truism you'll grasp more easily once you learn that facial recognition researchers started by having (mostly white) people sit for portraits. That's three of the nine revelations; the other six probably won't surprise you, but the article contains a lot of good data and argument in one place.

As you may know, Parler's former CEO got fired last month, and now he's taking to the airwaves to talk about how "betrayed" he feels by Parler investor Rebekah Mercer: "I thought I knew her. She invited my family on trips with them and everything. I thought that she was, generally speaking, I thought she was being real. And then she just abruptly has her people fire me and doesn't even talk to me about it." So how on Earth did he not know what he was getting into? Oh, because "I don't judge anybody by the press that I see," to which Carl Sagan might have responded have an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out. Again, this is why we shouldn't worship CEOs -- too many of them are either awfully stupid or just pretending to be.

Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers call his upcoming Senate trial "political theater." Well, they would know! I mean, the defendant acts out this big drama all the damn time. As an aside, NPR's summary of the incident leaves more than a few things out, things that would make you more likely to want Mr. Trump convicted. I would never have thought that an op-ed coming from Barbara Comstock and Charles Boustany would enlighten on this matter better than an NPR news report, but here we are.

Upon hearing that the Biden Administration plans to "punish" Congressional Republicans who vote against his American Rescue Plan with (among other things) "midterm attack ads and "a giant outreach effort," all I can say is: we can only hope! A man does get tired of Democrat weakness, after all. As nice as it would be for Democrats to do works that are obviously good, like Medicare-for-All or a massive renewable energy infrastructure build, Democrats' complete unwillingness to run on the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was cowardly. It couldn't have been that hard, if all those Democrats running on it in 2018 took our House back from Republicans.

Finally, the New York Times wrings its hands that all these defamation lawsuits that seem to be stemming the tide of right-wing noise in the news have "raised uneasy questions about how to police a news media that counts on First Amendment protections," but I find that an easy knot to split: if a media organ tells lies that hurt people, people can hurt them back. That's why defamation lawsuits exist. And if you're worried about rich people suing or countersuing the aggrieved into silence, you pass an anti-SLAPP law. C'mon, I'm an hourly-paid schmuck and I know this stuff.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and keeping big tech out of our government.

Happy Monday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them, once again, to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Ignore the pablum from the chattering class about how the Biden plan isn't "bipartisan" enough! As far as I'm concerned, Republicans sacrificed their "right" to "bipartisan" consideration once they spent two months trying to overturn an election and then enabled a coup, and in any case they should listen more closely to their actual constituents, who support a $15/hour minimum wage and $2,000 monthly checks and funding for states and localities more than those who "represent" them want us to think. And if you're anxious about funding the bill, we could tax millionaire income at 91%, tax capital gains and corporate profits over $1 million at 55%, and tax million-dollar estates at 55%. We could also tax billionaire wealth, as Sen. Warren (D-MA) proposed even before billionaires made out like bandits in this pandemic! (Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, regardless of whether it's part of a pandemic package or not.)

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of his impeachment charge, and prevent him from ever running for or holding office in America again. We all saw what happened on TV in real time, but nonetheless I'd like to note that two far-right former Congressfolk have made an excellent case for Mr. Trump's conviction. In a Roll Call op-ed provocatively titled "Republicans, If This Isn't Impeachable, What Is?", former Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Charles Boustany of Louisiana cite (among other things) the numerous actual threats Mr. Trump, his son, and his supporters made on January 6, plus they directly address the cowardly argument that it'd be "divisive" to convict him: "Some say we must move on. But it is clear that Trump and his mob still aren’t moving on. Trump, his family and supporters continue to threaten political revenge and have shown no remorse for their actions. Angry Trump supporters continue to make dangerous threats." See, it can't just be us who act civilized all the time -- it's a burden all civilized folks must bear.

Hate to make this phone call to your Senators extra long, but go ahead and tell them to end the filibuster, too. I know, I'd also prefer to make the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, and if that's what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema really have in mind I'll give them all the credit in the world, but I doubt they're that slick, and I've been advocating the talking filibuster for over a decade now, and I know I'm not the only one, and I know all the alleged parliamentary geniuses in Congress can see the problem just as well as I can, and yet they do nothing about it, so we might as well speak the language that they understand. Don't brook any silliness about the "sanctity of the institution." What, exactly, is sacred about the filibuster? Sorry, Russell Kirk acolytes, but just because we've been doing it a certain way forever doesn't make it "sacred." The best the filibuster does for us is make it easy for Democrats to oppose bad bills when they're in the minority. That's not playing to win, though -- that's playing not to lose. And you don't value "the sanctity of the institution" over, you know, justice.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), No Big Tech helps you tell President Biden to reject putting big tech corporation lobbyists into positions in our government. Folks all over America are done worshiping CEOs, and even the politicians are starting to catch on, yet big tech CEOs still seem to wow politicians with their alleged smarts. But what have these Big Brains at Big Tech have gotten us? Easier ways to consume more art, and what else? Do we have a cure for cancer? No. Do we have a renewable energy grid? No. Do we have research bases on the moon and Mars? No -- though we do have "space tourism" for the wealthy. Do we have a cure for poverty? No -- though we do have big tech CEOs claiming we can retrain coal miners to write code like people can be so easily contorted. Even Tesla's electric cars sure are taking their sweet time coming down to the price a working family can afford. So how we get people in government who know what they're doing?

Around the table: the wheel turns.

I've been remiss in noting that we've scored a major foreign policy victory lately, after President Biden ended all logistical and military support for "offensive operations in the war in Yemen." It doesn't end the war, by any stretch of the imagination, but it does end our unconstitutional involvement therein. And with the UAE also making noises about getting out of this mess, we may one day be able to say we actually used our immense power for good -- by not using our immense power for evil.

One day after Smarmatic files its massive defamation lawsuit against Fox News and several of its "personalities" including Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business Channel cancels Mr. Dobbs's show. As you know, Mr. Dobbs passed along "election fraud" lies on his show like they were hot potatoes; Fox News pretends they planned this cancellation all along, but we know better, for the demises of Roger Ailes and a certain legendary 8pm blowhard remind us that nothing gets Fox News to move like a lawsuit. To think there was a time (the summer of 2008, to be precise) when it looked like Lou Dobbs could go either way! Then Barack Obama became President, and Mr. Dobbs got on the birther train, and that dream died.

On the occasion of Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO, FAIR finds our "liberal" media too anxious to lionize him without mentioning that our Federal Trade Commission just caught Amazon stealing tips from delivery drivers and forced them to cough up nearly $62 million as restitution. We're generally too quick to call executives "self-made," not just because they generally get ahead on the backs of their workers, but because they too often get ahead by cheating those workers, as evidenced by the FTC settlement.

In a peripherally-related note, our National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) has ruled that Amazon can't require workers at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse to vote in-person at a union election, which means workers can vote by mail. This increases chances that the Bessemer workers will vote in favor of organizing, and lest we attribute this ruling to Joe Biden's election, fairness forces me to concede that our NLRB has consistently ruled in favor of voting-by-mail in union elections throughout this pandemic, which began, contra what Fox News would like you to believe, under President Trump. As a side note, Amazon's union-busting tactics will piss you off -- even "stay friendly" looks less like an exhortation to workplace civility than a threat.

My Pillow CEO/martial law enthusiast Mike Lindell produces a two-hour documentary, confidently titled Absolute Proof, which is chock full of bogus "election fraud" claims. And apparently One America News Network has been running it a lot -- but with a disclaimer at the beginning saying this is all Mr. Lindell's "opinion." I doubt that disclaimer will save them from lawsuits, but at least we can observe the difference between the big bully on the block and the upstart -- when Fox News gets sued, they fire people, but if OANN got sued, they'd probably have to shut down.

Finally, what to make of the news that Rep. Lauren Boebert (Q-CO) paid off almost $20,000 in unpaid insurance-related liens on her infamous restaurant just a few weeks after claiming a little over $20,000 in campaign-related "mileage reimbursements." I suppose it is remotely possible these two events are completely unrelated, but I'd be a schmuck to accept that notion at face value, and the whole thing makes me think (once again!) that, even with the most strident right-wingers, the grift really is the point.

Around the table: chickens come home to roost, part 773.

So what's the worst thing about Larry Summers's hand-wringing that the American Rescue Plan might be too big? I was all ready to say it was his fear of "inflationary pressures" that never seem to come no matter how often right-wingers whine about it, or his argument about "the gap between actual and potential output" like that matters to working families who can't pay the rent. But no, the worst thing about his op-ed is this: he praises the plan's "rejection of austerity orthodoxy" like he hasn't been one of the architects of austerity orthodoxy in America for decades! Which tells you he doesn't mean it! And not that I've done the math, but paragraph 9 sounds like absolute horseshit.

The Biden Administration is mulling sending masks to every American household. Cue right-wing whining about FREEDUMZ!!!!!! and tracking devices (not to mention mask-burning videos!) in 3...2...1...

Amazon finally offers an encryption option for its Ring doorbells -- but you still have to opt in to it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is right to note that, really, Ring should make encryption the default setting. I'll let them tell the rest of it: "EFF expends a lot of effort fighting against Ring and other Internet connected home security devices -- but we do it for good reason. Police departments that could not legally build and use a large-scale government surveillance network are using Ring cameras as a loophole to avoid public input and accountability. Consumers’ choice to buy a camera cannot and should not be a way to launder mass surveillance and streamline digital racial profiling."

Former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) comments at length over the (entirely deserved!) troubles Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is having these days. Surprise, surprise, he's learned not a damn thing about a damn thing, and why did he need 24 hours to prepare a response to Kevin McCarthy in 2019 about all the noxious and racist crap he's said for over a decade? I would think that any self-respecting asshole with a trail of slime that long would be ready to account for himself at length at any moment, lest he be regarded as a whiner as well as an asshole. But I guess that's how he wants to be remembered.

Voting machine corporation Smartmatic follows in Dominion's footsteps by filing a $2.7 billion defamation/disparagement lawsuit against certain right-wing media organs (Fox News) and certain right-wing political operatives and media "personalities" (Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Maria Bartiromo among others). I don't look forward to right-wingers incessantly whining about TEH FRIVOLUZ LAWSUITZ!!!!!, but if it takes the threat of getting sued, or even a successful lawsuit, to finally make certain media organs act responsibly, I won't complain about it. (After all, as Russell Kirk used to say, rights have responsibilities!)

Finally, Charlie Cook is an estimable political analyst, so I'm gobsmacked that he thinks the Biden Administration's refusal to yield to Republican demands on the American Rescue Plan is stupid. Good Americans don't care very much about the two parties cooperating in the best of times, but, ah, he does know that the Republicans spent two months trying to nullify the 2020 election, right? And he does know that right-wingers, incited by a Republican President and encouraged by over 100 Republican Congressfolk, attempted a coup on January 6? Given these events, he should be wondering why anyone would want to work with Republicans.

Action: concerning tax-cuts-for-the-rich and saving our Postal Service.

Some 120 Congressional Democrats (out of 271, so it's not as many as it seems!) have written a letter demanding the repeal of the "net operating loss" tax break from the CARES Act, which we've been calling the hedge fund tax cut, since that's basically what it is. The hedge fund tax cut delivers an extra $1.6 million, on average, to just 43,000 Americans, and you ain't one of these 43,000 Americans, because they're all millionaires. You may want to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to repeal the hedge fund tax cut from the CARES Act; repealing this particular slab of corporate welfare would save us $25 billion annually, which could help pay for whatever COVID relief bill that comes out of this Congress. You know what'd help pay for that bill even more? Raising taxes on millionaire income and corporate profits. Go ahead and remind your Reps and Senators of that; the evidence suggests that they can never hear it enough.

While you have your Reps and Senators on the phone, go ahead and tell them to support H.R. 2382/S. 2965, the USPS Fairness Act, which would simply repeal the law mandating that our Post Office prepay decades' worth of pension funding in advance. That may sound like a fiscally-responsible move, but it's almost crippled our Post Office's ability to operate in the present day! Which means it's not, in fact, a "fiscally-responsible" move. In fact, one could excuse you for thinking it's actually a cynical and evil move, one designed to make the Post Office collapse in the present under the weight of its future obligations! And that's the way of the cynical and the evil, isn't it, as far as our government is concerned? They deliberately run some popular government agency into the ground, and then claim that the only solution is to sell it off to their cronies! We need to fight such cynicism and evil wherever we see it, so let's fight it here.

Action: concerning government spying, the war on Yemen, and big ag monopolies.

Today's a good day to tell your Congressfolk, once again, that they should not use the January 6 attempted coup as a pretext to pass all sorts of draconian "anti-terror" laws that do nothing but clamp down on good Americans' free speech. After all, we all know that's exactly how that's going to work! Our government will more likely use new anti-terror laws against liberals and folks of color than against the right-wing assholes whose seditious behavior presumably spurred the laws, and how come our government doesn't have enough tools to foil these plots already? They have warrantless wiretapping and NSA data-vacuuming, and they were still helpless against an attempted coup plotted virtually out in the open on social media? Why, it's enough to make you think our government simply doesn't have the will to stop these clowns. That's why we're here: to lend the steel in their spine so they can go after them, but only with the tools our Constitution allows.

Meanwhile, I have two action alerts relating to our ongoing (and unconstitutional) involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen: in one, from World Beyond War, you would tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the war on Yemen via the War Powers Act, and in the other, from Win Without War, you would tell Secretary of State Antony Blinken to end all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Congress tried a War Powers resolution in 2019, only to see former President Trump veto it, and President Biden has lately frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is good, but we need to make that a permanent freeze. Folks who wring their hands over what will become of the Middle East if we stop arming Saudi Arabia need to consider three things: 1) that Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian government, and we shouldn't sell weapons to authoritarians, 2) that the Middle East is always in chaos because governments like ours meddle in their affairs, and 3) why would we worry about intricate power struggles when we have more weapons than anyone else? If we're a strong nation, we should act like it. And strong nations act with brains and heart more than firepower.

Finally, Food and Water Action helps you tell President Biden to issue an Executive Order freezing big agribusiness mergers and investigating the monopoly practices of the industry. Even those of us who have generally approved of his Executive Orders thus far must ask: what would be the legal authority of such an order? Well, our Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission already have the legal authority to approve and disapprove corporate mergers, and our President can instruct them how to approach these matters -- you know, just like the last President did, by instructing his Justice Department to disapprove mergers involving his supposed enemies! And even though judges have ignored it in recent years, ample legal precedent establishes our government's authority to stop mergers for the public good. And proving that big ag mergers injure the public good ain't a big lift -- when a few actors control a market, they get to dictate terms to everyone else in the market, and we're talking the food we eat here, so let's get cracking.

Around the table: the "importance" of compromise, and other zombies.

Ho hum, the Sunday morning news programs won't STFU about the necessity of President Biden "compromising" with Republicans. He did talk about unity in his inaugural address, after all! But he did not actually talk about compromise there, and recent polling suggests that a growing number of Americans are sick of "compromising" with people who never compromise and respond to lost elections by fomenting insurrection. Julie Hollar hits it after noting (among other things) that almost 60% of Republican respondents have no problem with a $2 trillion relief bill and nearly half of them support a $15/hour minimum wage: "That’s remarkable 'unity' -- when you look for it in the public, rather than in the twisted world of Washington."

Candice Bernd at TruthOut reminds us that President Biden might be tearing down Donald Trump's vanity border wall, but still prefers a "technological wall" at the border. And that "wall" will include drones, facial recognition, and AI, three things we should not use to do anything nearly as much as we already do. Facial recognition, in particular, has no place at the border, since it has more trouble telling folks of color apart than your Tea Party uncle does. I note this development just in case anyone still thinks liberals will just say yessir to everything Joe Biden does.

The New York Times wonders if Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), "a Democrat with roots in the blue-collar Youngstown region and close ties to organized labor," "can win" a 2022 Senate race in an "increasingly Republican state." Well, let's see: he has opposed "fast-track" authority for "free" trade deals, voted against the 2011 South Korea, Panama, and Colombia "free" trade pacts, vigorously opposed the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," and voted for the USMCA in 2019, which is a vast improvement on NAFTA and a considerably better trade deal than the others I've named. He also ran against the Iraq War in 2002 (and still won his House race by 14 points) and has tried to repeal the 2001 AUMF for years now. So, yeah, anti-"free" trade: check! Anti-war? Check! Verdict: yes, he can win, just like Sherrod Brown has been doing in Ohio for decades. You have just learned more useful information about how Tim Ryan might do in an Ohio Senate race than you would have from the Times article.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announces he'll run for the Republican nomination for Governor of California -- either in 2022, or earlier, if Gavin Newsom faces a recall. A fiscal conservative/social liberal in the Tom Ridge mold, Mr. Faulconer is basically the Republican establishment's entire bench in California, and he could beat Gov. Newsom either in a recall or a general election -- unless, of course, some far-right maniac gets out in front of him, and California still has more than enough of those.

When we read about Republican "infighting" over such personalities as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Liz Cheney, we are reminded, I would hope, that the the whole purpose of Republican "infighting" is to suggest they're a diverse party when they're really not, and to make you feel more "independent" when you identify with one or the other. In other words, it's drama. And, really, the whole purpose of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene is to make people like Liz Cheney more palatable. How many liberals would have defended Liz Cheney in 2019? I suspect the correct answer is "none," and one shudders to think what Republicans will come up with to make Ms. Greene more palatable! An actual rabid raccoon, perhaps?

Finally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) says he hasn't formed an opinion on the aforementioned Rep. Greene because, and I quote, "(t)ravel in this weather it's been a little rough looking at any news or whatever." He's like the fellow who says he's late for his 4am shift because of traffic. Seriously, I propose that we start calling obviously lame excuses "tubervilles" -- I might consider my life complete if "that's a real tuberville, right there" becomes an idiomatic expression. To think that Alabama could have re-elected the man who put two of the Birmingham bombers in jail, but instead chose this guy.

Action: concerning COVID relief, police in schools, and corporate donations to sore losers.

So President Biden met with the 10 Republican "moderates" who proposed a COVID relief package less than one third the size of his proposal, and so we ask: these are the moderates of the party lowballing Mr. Biden? (One might also wonder how Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas can be a "moderate" and a co-founder of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, but I digress.) So go ahead and call your Reps and Senators and tell them what you want from a COVID relief package: more funding for testing and tracing, $2,000 checks every month (versus one $1,000 check from the moderates), funding for states and localities (versus nothing), a $15/hour minimum wage (ditto), paid family leave (ditto), and higher enhanced unemployment benefits (you get the picture). You might also mention rolling back the CARES Act's hedge fund tax cut and raising taxes on corporations and millionaire income. Remember: people want good government more than "bipartisan" government, and nobody wants to "unify" with people who hurt them.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Counseling Not Criminalization Act. This bill (which has no House or Senate bill numbers as of this writing) came up in the last Congress, too; it would replace police officers (who too often attack school children) with counselors and nurses (who can deal with a child's problems more appropriately). I mean none of that to slight police officers; I often say that we shouldn't use cops as the Swiss Army knives of our civilization, and that we shouldn't run to them with every conceivable request for assistance from the state -- and we certainly shouldn't do that after we've trained them to be ready to be violent at a moment's notice! Cops patrol schools for only two reasons: 1) someone well-meaning sees them as a natural solution to a discipline problem, and 2) someone cynical sees them as a way to prove a fake toughness. So let's get police out of schools, and let's get people in there who we've actually trained to help kids do better.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big corporations to stop financing the political campaigns of the politicians who tried to overturn the 2020 election, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. Big corporate campaign donations are already unpopular, so big corporate donations to politicians who tried to overturn the election because they're a bunch of big whiny babies should be even more unpopular -- but only if we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR. 147 Congressional Republicans aided and abetted the attempted coup on our Capitol, and it doesn't matter how many of them voted the way they did because they were afraid not to -- if they can be threatened into submission that easily, they shouldn't be in Congress to begin with. And no, wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR isn't "the same" as threatening Congressfolk with violence. The former is civilized behavior, but threats aren't. It's shameful we even have to explain that.

Action: concerning voting rights, insurance redlining, and saving our Post Office.

Today's a good day to call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to pass both H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (which has no bill numbers at this writing). The For the People Act has almost everything -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and no more "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act by requiring pre-clearance from our Justice Department for voting law changes in any area of our nation with a record of vote suppression, not just areas in the South. Who could be against more good Americans voting? Oh, right -- people who can't get majorities in elections. Well, they don't deserve more say than us.

Meanwhile, we learn from Consumer Reports that some big car insurance corporations will ask some people their job title and education level and use that info to set a rate quotation. And please understand that by "some people" I mean people of color. What does education level have to do with your driving record, you ask? Nothing -- some of the most educated people are the absolute worst drivers, and other folks with a high school diploma drive very well. I could make a similar notation about salary, and that's without noting that folks with higher salaries can obviously afford higher insurance rates, so why do they need a handout? No, these questions sound an awful like redlining to me. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell big car insurance corporations Progressive and GEICO to stop using irrelevant information in a clandestine effort to charge folks of color more for their car insurance. Brothers and sisters already have enough trouble getting better pay and more education in our society, so let's not heap more trouble on them.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to do all he can to save our Post Office, then Progress America still helps you do that. Specifically, Progress America will help you tell Mr. Biden to appoint four decent, hard-working Americans to our USPS Board of Governors (the Board has six Governors total), so that they can fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and institute some actual reforms, versus the DeJoy "reforms" that have led to longer wait times for mail. (As an aside, you've heard that Mr. DeJoy was a logistics executive, but don't assume that means he knows anything about logistics. Executives don't know anything about anything but redistributing income upward from their workers to themselves.) We don't need Post Office privatization, so that big corporations can give us far worse service while bleeding us for more money. We need a Post Office that serves good Americans, and Mr. Biden can begin to achieve that goal by appointing decent human beings to our USPS Board of Governors. So let's get to it.

Around the table: oh, look, another coup over "election fraud."

Myanmar's military seize power in coup, detaining democratically-elected leaders including Nobel laureate and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. You may be tempted to think that, ah, given recent events in our Capitol last month, Republicans would pause before saying very much about a military coup arising over alleged election fraud, but then you remember that nothing gives Republicans pause, and they're no doubt blaming all of this on Joe Biden as we speak. He was Vice President for eight years, what did he do? Seriously, I don't even need to check.

The Philadelphia Inquirer removed comment sections from all but some of its sports articles on Monday, for the following reason: "(c)ommenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring." In other words, assholes ruin everything, and though I wouldn't dismiss the idea that paid moderators could make it better, I also think we have many other ways to express ourselves than internet comment sections. Folks remember letters to the editor, right? Or blogs? Or email?

Another year, another record-setting year of profits for Netflix in which the streaming corporation paid almost nothing in corporate income taxes. Didn't they say lower corporate taxes would reduce tax avoidance and prevent corporations from going overseas? I may never have heard anything more false in my lifetime, and I hear a lot of false things these days, as I'm sure you do, too. Seriously, bring the 55% corporate tax rate back. It can't possibly do more harm than corporations do now that they're so "free" from the "burden" of taxation.

"Dozens" of Bush Mobb officials are leaving the Republican Party because they think it's become a cult of personality. They're right, of course, but (at the risk of beating a dead horse) these are still the same people who either called us traitor for opposing the Iraq war or did nothing while other people called us traitor, and I don't see any evidence that they feel any remorse over it. And George W. Bush had his little cult of personality, too. No, I think the RNC Chair is right, that the party's having a little "spat" and they'll "come together" again -- and now with even more crazy!

Finally, around four dozen protestors in Los Angeles shut down COVID vaccine distribution at Dodger Stadium for about an hour. Organizers apparently told protestors to "please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple," and what helps you connect with folks better than calling them "sheeple"? Seriously, this is yet another reminder that right-wingers aren't about "freedom of choice": they're about their freedom of choice overruling your freedom of choice. In other words, they're fascists.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and another polluting pipeline.

The Biden Administration apparently wants to get the American Rescue Plan through Congress badly enough that they put Vice President Harris on TV in Arizona and West Virginia (from which recalcitrant "moderate" Senators Sinema and Manchin hail) to plug the plan. Hence you may want to call your Reps and Senators (you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page -- or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone -- to find their phone numbers) and tell them how you feel about the plan. You may want to tell them that you want to keep the American Rescue Plan's $15/hour minimum wage, paid family leave, expanded funding for testing and vaccination, and expanded funding to states and localities, plus you'd add $2,000 checks every month and higher enhanced unemployment benefits, and you'd pay for it by repealing the CARES Act's massive hedge fund tax cut, plus a 55% tax on corporate profits and capital gains over $1 million and a 91% tax on income over $1 million. Hey, they're only supposed to negotiate with us!

While you've got your Senators on the phone, go ahead and tell them to convict Donald Trump of the incitement impeachment charge, and punish him by barring him from ever running for office again. Hey, actions have consequences! Or were conservatives lying every time they ever told us that? We're told we won't get very many Republican votes to convict, but duty is duty, and I don't just mean our duty to express our will, I mean the Senators' duty to do their job! You may be thinking that the failure of President Andrew Johnson's impeachment in the 1860s was "not that big a deal," but nothing could be further from the truth! When the Senate failed (by one vote!) to remove President Johnson, they signaled that America was done working to heal the damage caused by slavery; not long thereafter, Jim Crow flourished in the South, which meant another hundred years of direct damage to black folks in America. Surely our Senators don't want to be on the wrong side of history yet again.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster now. As you know, I've said for many years that we need to reform the filibuster, by making Senators actually hold the floor and talk for 30 hours like Jimmy Stewart does in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, rather than simply signal their intention not to cut off debate and promptly go out to dinner or the theater. I don't regret saying that -- I was telling the truth as best I understood it at the time. But Republicans have abused the filibuster over the last dozen years or so, such that even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama as President couldn't pass simply because Republicans still had 47 or 45 or 41 Senators, and (this is important!) because Republicans acted as a body in doing so, and because our "liberal" media did such a bad job covering these matters, no Republican Senator ever suffered for their obstruction. Actions have consequences, after all -- but Republican Senators won't suffer them unless we abolish the filibuster.

Finally, President Biden reversed former President Trump's Executive Order allowing further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which effectively killed it, and no, I will not entertain yowling about TEH NINETIEZ THOUSANDZ OFZ TEH JOBZ LOSTZ!!!!!, because building pipelines that pollute our water table is not the only way to create jobs. Why, building out a national renewable energy grid would create a lot of jobs! But I digress, perhaps. The Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota would, if completed, spur many similar concerns about clean water and pipeline safety -- why, it was a mere 10 years ago that an Enbridge pipeline ruptured and caused the largest inland oil spill ever in America, ensuring that 40 square miles of the Kalamazoo watershed would be, ah, flavored with oil. Hence both Daily Kos and 350 Local Group Network help you tell President Biden to put an end to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline as well. Hate to pile on, but Native American groups also oppose Line 3; maybe they get a say, too?

Around the table: unforgiven, part 837.

10 "moderate" Republicans make their COVID-19 counterproposal -- and their plan is less than a third of the size of Mr. Biden's. They imagine that if he ignores them they'll be able to say he wasn't really willing to work with them, but Jesus Mary and Joseph we all saw what happened on January 6, and there aren't that many folks who thought we should "work with Republicans" in the first place. And dig Rob Portman of Ohio citing the deficits he helped run up by voting for the 2017 tax "reform" and the two previous corporate welfare-drenched COVID relief packages as a reason not to do something bigger now. A little self-awareness would go a long way.

Mother Jones catches a big pro-Trump online forum actually scrubbing all of its posts between December 19 and January 6 -- which would just so happen to include posts relating to the attempted coup on the 6th. And thus the moderators open themselves up to charges of evidence tampering, since some of these posts had, like, maps of the Capitol and such. Right-wingers whine that all kinds of things are Orwellian these days, but literally removing almost three weeks of posts from your site's historical record is actually Orwellian.

Houston-based immigration lawyer finally says goodbye to the Republican Party, after apparently trying to make his fellow Republicans see the error of their ways these past four years. "I don't pray to any man" makes me want to like him, and I don't want to appear to criticize his apparent laser-focus on immigration policy, but I've been in an unforgiving mood lately, for reasons you might imagine, so I still wonder what, if anything, Mr. Monty had to say of his fellow Republicans calling us "traitor" for opposing the Iraq war back in the day.

Speaking of being unforgiving, I literally don't care that Steve Bannon actually challenged Rudy Giuliani's latest pile of hot-and-steaming on the former's podcast, not so much because challenging Rudy Giuliani is fish-in-a-barrel territory these days, but because Mr. Flood-the-Zone-With-Shit knows that pretending to be "independent" and pretending to "take on your own people" freezes people so you can go in for the rhetorical kill. But I would hope it freezes fewer people than it used to.

Finally, CNN and MSNBC appear, at long last, to compete with Fox News on a level playing field, not so much because CNN and MSNBC are gaining viewers as because Fox News is losing them. I long to live in an era where we hear the words "right-wing news channel" and immediately think "crazy so don't watch even for the laughs," but in the meantime, suffice it to say that even a junkie can only take in so much junk, and once you have multiple sources of junk available to you, well, it's hard for any one dealer to rise above the rest. Did I say junk? I meant rage. Insofar as there's a difference.