Good Day, Gnusies! Today is going to be a significant day with President Joe giving his first major speech before both houses of Congress tonight (A SOTU by any other name, is still a SOTU 🌹). I hope everyone is cueing up some quality TV time for tonight at 9ET (8CT; 7MT; 6PT). I’m looking forward to it!
I’ve been having some unexpected “downer” days lately and Monday was a doozy. The kind of day when it just seems like too much trouble to get out of your own way. Even with all the good news happening, I was feeling depressed by the continued ugliness of the reactionary forces arrayed against love, justice and progress. So, imagine my delight on Tuesday morning upon reading arhpdx’s introduction addressing EXACTLY the kind of malaise I (and apparently a lot of other people!) had been feeling!
This little exchange in yesterday’s comments seemed to have flown right out of my brain — I guess it truly is a thing that is being experienced widely:
chloris creator
Apr 27, 2021 at 07:29:03 AM
Also, arh, thanks for the words about the psychological difficulties so many of us are going through after these really difficult years. Sometimes it’s as if “I know things are better” without “I feel things are better.” It is hard to combat.
arhpdx
Apr 27, 2021 at 07:35:04 AM
Thanks, cc, I think that’s a perfect way of stating the problem. That problem of coordinating what we “know” and what we “feel” (brain vs. heart) tends to crop up a lot. And it’s always hard to overcome. In this case, I think what it boils down to is that we were so brutalized by the four years of The Former Guy that we’re having a really hard time feeling that the horror is actually over.
chloris creator
Apr 27, 2021 at 08:06:59 AM
That’s because part of me is not sure the horror is actually over. I know many on our side are working hard to clean things up, but we have the white supremacists and the anti-vaxxers and the climate deniers and the gun lovers and those who are just plain cruel. Also, I know we (collectively) let our guard down before, so I am afraid it will happen again.
And I am not sure this comment belongs here, because it’s not gnusy enough.
arhpdx
Apr 27, 2021 at 08:10:43 AM
I hear you, cc, and BTW, any comment from a Gnusie belongs here by definition. We don’t always have to be upbeat, though our main goal is to try to find the sunny side.
Seraph4377
Apr 27, 2021 at 09:02:45 AM
Yeah. I know what you mean. Considering that our victory was immediately followed by: 1) an attempt at coup through the legal system; 2) an attempt at a literal coup; 3) Republicans trying to block and sabotage all the good we’re trying to do, including things that are necessary to save hundreds of thousands of lives; 4) Republicans trying to lock in minority rule and make sure no one but them ever wins again; 5) People who are theoretically on our side helping them; and 6) that’s not even getting into the ongoing natural disaster and its effects, it feels like we can never rest or feel safe or trust nearly half the population again.
WolverineForTJatAW
Apr 27, 2021 at 09:09:06 AM
Agree entirely.
Mokurai
Apr 27, 2021 at 08:50:38 AM
We have been brutalized by nearly all of recorded history, except for the strand of people trying to do better against all odds. And here we are ready to extend that to the entire world, ending dire poverty and oppression and dread diseases and stupid civil wars, sometimes slowly and steadily, and sometimes in great leaps.
Hans Rosling devoted most of his career to explaining why things are better than you think, as in his book Factfulness and on the family Web site Gapminder.
We have tested thousands of people and they were systematically wrong about all this.
Upgrade your worldview
Knowing that what we are feeling is something that many other people around us (and around the world) are feeling is both reassuring and encouraging. While no one is naïve, it is encouraging to realize that our sense of reaching — yearning — toward a better, more just, world is likely a growing part of the zeitgeist, too.
I think tonight’s speech is going to be a BFD — President Joe is going to lay the groundwork for a reimagined partnership between government and the people they represent. Chances are, parts of this speech tonight will be quoted in the years ahead just like FDRs, Kennedy’s and Lincoln’s.
OK! First: music, and then on with the good news!
🎵 🎶 🎵
Smiling Joe & Democrats Continue to Bring the Good News
Things to watch for tonight:
How Biden's speech will make history, Kadia Goba, Axios, April 27, 2021.
President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday will be noteworthy not because of the COVID-restricted audience but because he'll stand before two women in the House Chamber.
Why it matters: The joint address is not a State of the Union speech, though it will have the usual trappings: an announcement of the president's arrival, and clapping as he walks down the aisle. Almost everything else will be different.
- There are 535 members of Congress and usually 1,600 people in the chamber. On Wednesday, the number will be capped at 200 — and no guests allowed. ✂️
- The biggest visible visual difference will be apparent when the president steps up to the podium. Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be seated in the two chairs behind him.
- It will be a first for the nation: the No. 1 and No. 2 people in the line of presidential succession are both women.
Biden to propose free preschool, as speech details emerge, Lisa Mascaro and Josh Boak, AP News, April 27, 2021.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will call for free preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, a $200 billion investment to be rolled out as part of his sweeping American Families Plan being unveiled Wednesday in an address to Congress.
The administration said the historic investment would benefit 5 million children and save the average family $13,000. It calls for providing federal funds to help the states offer preschool, with teachers and other employees earning $15 an hour. ✂️
The new details are part of Biden’s $1 trillion-plus package, an ambitious next phase of his massive infrastructure investment program, this one focused on so-called human infrastructure — child care, health care, education and other core aspects of the household architecture that undergird everyday life for countless Americans.
Together with Biden’s American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment to be funded by a corporate tax hike, they add up a whopping $4 trillion effort to fulfill his campaign vow to Build Back Better. The American Families Plan would be paid for by hiking taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, in keeping with the president’s vow not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year.
What to expect from Joe Biden’s first address to Congress, Gregory Svirnovskly, Vox, April 27, 2021.
The White House envisioned the American Rescue Plan as the first step in the federal response to the pandemic — it was seen as a tool to stop short-term economic damage and pave the way for a return to normal life. The actual recovery was meant to be taken care of by future plans, the first of which Biden unveiled in early April: the American Jobs Plan. ✂️
Biden can be expected to make a pitch for this plan Wednesday night, and will also detail the proposal’s counterpart, the American Families Plan. It’s a $1.8 trillion proposal focused on “human infrastructure” that would provide child care funding, universal prekindergarten programming, tuition-free community colleges, and paid family leave, along with extending the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. ✂️
The Biden administration is attempting to reclassify social welfare programs like medical leave and universal education access as a type of human infrastructure. He’ll hit on both of those points in his speech Wednesday as he attempts to drum up support from moderate Republicans in Congress and from Democrats who are wary of proposals veering from the political center.
Biden will also address the problems with policing
Above all, Biden wants to unify the country
First 100 Days
You can’t flip open a newspaper or click on an internet news site without finding one or more opinion pieces grading Joe Biden on his first 100 days. Here’s a sampling:
Joe Biden’s First 100 Days Reshaped America, Jonathan Chait, New Yorker Magazine, April 26, 2021.
During the first hundred days of Joe Biden’s presidency, it has dawned on Republicans that the man their standard-bearer once mocked as “Sleepy Joe” is a formidable adversary. And the quality that has made him so effective up to this point is, well, his sleepiness. “I think Biden is a disaster for the country, and his ideas are an atrocity. But he’s boring. He’s just boring,” complained alt-media personality Dan Bongino. This frustration is not confined to the party’s entertainment wing. “It’s always harder to fight against a nice person because usually people will sort of give him the benefit of the doubt,” grumbled Senator John Cornyn. At a recent speech to donors, Donald Trump was reduced to mocking his successor as “Saintly Joe Biden,” perhaps the feeblest moment in his decades-long career of schoolyard taunts.
It’s not that Saintly Joe invented the prototype of a president who acts politely. ✂️Treating everybody with unfailing courtesy is (or was) standard advice for any aspiring politician.
Biden’s advantage is that he’s not just nice; he’s also tedious. He is relentlessly enacting an ambitious domestic agenda — signing legislation that could cut child poverty by more than half, expanding Obamacare, and injecting the economy with a stimulus more than twice the size of what Obama’s Congress passed in 2009 — while arousing hardly any controversy. There’s nothing in Biden’s vanilla-ice-cream bromides for his critics to hook on to. Republicans can’t stop Biden because he is boring them to death.
Opinion: Trump’s first 100 days were sheer craziness. Biden’s are sheer competence. Max Boot, Washington Post, April 27, 2021.
When it comes to evaluating his first 100 days, Joe Biden has an unbeatable advantage: He is not Donald Trump. Simply by not inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol and not telling them to take hydroxychloroquine, President Biden looks infinitely better than his predecessor. There is, of course, much to be said in Biden’s favor beyond the obvious fact that he is the anti-Trump. But after the traumas of the past four years, I still marvel at the night-and-day differences. Even looking only at Trump’s first 100 days — and not what followed in the next 1,361 days — the comparison is lopsidedly, preposterously tilted in Biden’s favor.
Biden has been scandal-free.
Biden has picked well-qualified appointees who know what they are doing.
Biden is making real progress on the biggest issues facing America — the unemployment rate is declining while the number of vaccinations is skyrocketing. Oh, and the stock market has gone up more than twice as fast as it did under Trump, despite GOP predictions of doom.
Biden is reasserting America’s international leadership.
Biden is turning down the temperature on our politics.
What Biden's first 100 days might tell us about the rest of his presidency, Julian Zelizer, CNN, April 24, 2021.
Biden made his mark with the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion package offering a sweeping combination of relief, stimulus and longer-term assistance. The legislation provided aid to state and local governments, direct checks for American families, an expanded child tax credit, assistance to small businesses and homeowners, expanded unemployment compensation and more. In our era of polarized politics, and with a Republican Party hell-bent on obstruction, Biden used the budget reconciliation process to sidestep the chances of a filibuster, and the bill was passed on party lines. Unlike the New Deal programs, much of the relief is short-term assistance. But the American Rescue Plan is impressive in its breadth and it remains a substantial piece of legislation.
And Biden isn't stopping with this legislation. He has already started work on the American Jobs Plan, a sweeping infrastructure package that would inject $2 trillion into the foundation of our economy. The legislation would fund traditional infrastructure programs like bridges and roads, while improving broadband service, drinking water and the electric grid. Biden has also promised to fight climate change through electric vehicles and cleaner energy sources, while promoting racial equality. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Democrats can use the reconciliation process at least one more time, which could potentially pave the way for the bill's passage. ✂️
President Biden has also put himself on the map in his use of executive power. He has moved at a fervid pace to undo some of the key decisions from the Trump years. He reentered the Paris Climate Agreement, established a White House Gender Policy Council and revoked executive orders that limited immigration and justified separating families at the border.
Looks like Another good hire
Houston-area sheriff is named to lead immigration agency, Juan A. Lozano and Elliot Spagat, AP News, April 27, 2021.
HOUSTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated the sheriff of one of the nation’s most populous counties to lead the agency that deports people in the country illegally, picking a seasoned law enforcement official who sharply criticized Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, whose jurisdiction includes the Houston metropolitan area, was nominated director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency that has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since 2017.
After his election in 2016, Gonzalez fulfilled a campaign promise to withdraw Harris County from a federal partnership that authorizes sheriff’s deputies to enforce immigration laws, ending an agreement that had been in place since 2008. Such agreements grew from 35 to to 150 during Trump’s presidency, with many of those additions in Texas and Florida. ✂️
“I do not support ICE raids that threaten to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom do not represent a threat to the U.S.,” he wrote on Facebook in July 2019. “The focus should always be on clear & immediate safety threats. Not others who are not threats.”
Related:
ICE Will No Longer Arrest Immigrants At Courthouses Unless There’s A Public Safety Threat, Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeedNews, April 27, 2021.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration will issue a policy that sharply limits the immigrants whom ICE officers can arrest at courthouses after years of criticism of the practice, according to government officials and documents. The policy also applies to US Customs and Border Protection officials as well.
“Ensuring that individuals have access to the courts advances the fair administration of justice, promotes safety for crime victims, and helps to guarantee equal protection under the law,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The expansion of civil immigration arrests at courthouses during the prior administration had a chilling effect on individuals’ willingness to come to court or work cooperatively with law enforcement. Today’s guidance is the latest step in our efforts to focus our civil immigration enforcement resources on threats to homeland security and public safety.”
The policy will allow ICE officers to make civil immigration arrests in or near a courthouse only when it involves a national security matter, a risk of imminent death or harm to anyone, or a hot pursuit involving a public safety threat. Officers may also make an arrest at a courthouse if it appears evidence in a criminal case will be imminently destroyed, and they may request to make an arrest of a public safety threat if there is no safe alternative and they get approval from agency leaders.
“I want to do it, now make me do it”
Could Handsome Joe be channeling FDR? If so, Democrats are picking up what Joe is laying down:
Dozens Of Senate Democrats Urge Biden To Boost Refugee Admissions This Year, Joe Walsh, Forbes, April 27, 2021.
This fiscal year’s ceiling for refugee admissions currently stands at 15,000, the lowest number in decades, but Biden has pledged to increase that number by next month.
In an open letter Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and 32 other Democratic senators pressured Biden to more than quadruple this year’s refugee ceiling to 62,500, a level Biden proposed two months ago but the White House admitted this month “seems unlikely” due to logistical challenges.
The senators also called on Biden to set next fiscal year’s ceiling at 125,000, fulfilling a campaign promise to boost refugee admissions to their highest level since the 1990s.
Congressman champions Parental Leave
The First Congressman to Take Parental Leave Is Ready to Fight for It, Edward-Isaac Dovere, The Atlantic, April 27, 2021.
Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX)
The representative from Texas was the first member of Congress to take paternity leave, in 2019, when his first son was born. He’s now the second member of Congress to take paternity leave: His second son was born at the end of March.
At least, Allred was the first member of Congress to admit that he was taking paternity leave. Others may have snuck in a few days here and there, but if they did, they weren’t gone for long. Congress does not maintain a human-resources file. And like much of the rest of America, Congress doesn’t have an official paid-leave policy. When Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois gave birth to her second daughter, in 2018, she was told that if she took official leave, that could lead to her being stripped of some of her parliamentary rights in the chamber. Allred took two weeks with his first son and is taking a month with his second. He gives his staff three months of leave; every member of Congress is the CEO and HR director of their own office.
Allred isn’t the stereotype of a paid-leave advocate. His background will confuse people who think of paid leave as a “women’s issue” or one for bleeding-heart liberals and dreamy ideologues. He’s a 38-year-old former NFL player, a Black man who flipped a Republican district in 2018, held on to it in 2020, and is now waiting to see how Texas legislators gerrymander it ahead of next year’s midterms. He sees leave as a bipartisan issue, and backs up that belief with action: He was one of just a handful of Democrats who attended a paid-leave summit hosted by Ivanka Trump in December 2019, six days before he voted to impeach her father.
🎵 🎶🎵
⚖️ Legal Matters ⚖️
Trump Dragged Closer to Testifying in Protesters’ Suit Accusing His Guards of Assault, Kate Briquelet, Daily Beast, April 27, 2021.
Former President Donald Trump is one step closer to testifying in a New York lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who claim his bodyguards assaulted them in 2015. ✂️
While president, Trump had tried to quash a subpoena that would force him to testify at the civil trial in the Bronx and sit for a videotaped deposition beforehand. In 2019, his lawyers appealed a judge’s order denying his request.
On Tuesday, the state’s Appellate Division dismissed Trump’s appeal as moot. ✂️
Benjamin N. Dictor, an attorney for the protesters, said: “We are pleased with the Appellate Division’s decision and look forward to presenting Mr. Trump’s testimony at trial, as would be expected from any adverse party in litigation.”
Lawyers for Trump could not be reached for comment
👀
Things may be heating up around DJTjr:
In Sworn Testimony in Inauguration Scandal Case, Donald Trump Jr. Made Apparently False Statements, David Corn, Mother Jones, April 27, 2021,
On February 11, Donald Trump Jr. sat in front of his computer for a video deposition. He swore to tell the truth. But documents and a video obtained by Mother Jones—and recent legal filings—indicate that his testimony on key points was not accurate. ✂️
In his sworn testimony, Trump Jr. sidestepped the issue of whether this event was held for him and his siblings. And when he was asked if he had been “involved” in any inauguration events “like dinners, lunches, concerts,” he answered, “Not to my recollection. No.” Yet Racine’s filing places Trump Jr. in a key role related to the party that is at the center of the case against Trump’s inauguration committee and the Trump Organization. ✂️
Trump Jr.’s testimony in Congress during the Trump-Russia investigation in September 2017 also raised questions about his trustworthiness. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was not “aware” of any overseas governments other than Russia offering or providing assistance to the Trump camp in 2016. Yet eight months later, the New York Times revealed that during the 2016 campaign Trump Jr. had a meeting with George Nader, an emissary for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; Joel Zamel, an Israeli expert in social media manipulation; and Erik Prince, the infamous private security contractor and Trump backer. (Nader is now serving a 10-year sentence on child sex trafficking and pornography charges.) “The meeting,” the newspaper reported, “was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team.” After the Times story appeared, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) declared, he was “deeply concerned that…Donald Trump Jr. provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
LOL, Assh*le
Read the last sentence in the quoted excerpt — just for good measure!
Man in Viral Video Who Said He Couldn’t Be Arrested For Racist and Threatening Tirade Has Been Arrested For Racist and Threatening Tirade, Michael Luciano, Mediaite, April 27, 2021.
Police in Ohio have arrested a man who was captured in a now viral video delivering a racist and threatening diatribe against Black motorist working for Door Dash as her two-year-old daughter was in the car with her. James Rhodes of Stow, Ohio has been charged with aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation, David Begnaud of CBS News reports. ✂️
During a separate exchange with Rhodes, onlookers can be heard telling him to stop saying racist things. In response, he throws up his hands and asks, “What are they, gonna come arrest me?” ✂️
CBS’ Begnaud reports that Wyndham Ridge Apartments, where Rhodes lives, has initiated the process of evicting him.
💵 Economic Justice 💵
For decades, Republicans have succeeded in shifting the economic burden for keeping the lights on in the USA onto the backs of middle and working class Americans. Now at long last, that may begin to change:
Biden Seeks $80 Billion to Beef Up I.R.S. Audits of High-Earners, Jim Tankersley and Allen Rappeport, New York Times, April 27, 2021.
WASHINGTON — President Biden, looking to pay for his ambitious economic agenda and shift more of the nation’s tax burden to the wealthy, will propose giving the Internal Revenue Service an extra $80 billion and more authority over the next 10 years to help crack down on tax evasion by high-earners and large corporations.
The additional money and enforcement power will accompany new disclosure requirements for people who own businesses that are not organized as corporations — like many law firms and real estate partnerships — and for other high-earners who could be hiding income from the government. Mr. Biden’s goal is to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for child care, education and other programs while making it harder for high-earning Americans to evade or avoid taxes. ✂️
Empowering the I.R.S. is one of several proposals that Mr. Biden will unveil when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. His administration will portray that effort — coupled with new taxes it is proposing on corporations and the rich — as a way to level the tax playing field between typical American workers and very high-earners who employ sophisticated efforts to minimize or avoid taxation.
It’s So sensible it just might work!
Audit the Rich, Jordan Weissmann, Slate, April 27, 2021.
The president plans to propose $80 billion in additional new funding over a decade for the resource-starved agency in order to beef up enforcement against tax cheats. Averaged annually, it would be a two-thirds increase over its current budget of just under $12 billion. The administration believes this massive infusion of cash will help the IRS collect an extra $780 billion over a decade that would otherwise go missing. That money would be used to help finance the administration’s new package of family and antipoverty proposals, which it will unveil on Wednesday and is expected to cost around $1.8 trillion.
It’s a sensible, long-overdue move that could help fund badly needed social spending while bringing a modicum of fairness back to American’s run-down tax-enforcement system. The IRS has been gutted by years of budget cuts, largely thanks to Republicans who peddled a fiction that it had harassed conservative nonprofits, which reduced its workforce by 22 percent between 2010 and 2019 and left it with its lowest number of revenue agents since the 1950s. As a result, the agency’s audit rate has plunged by around half. With its depleted, shoestring budget, the agency has shied away from scrutinizing the tax returns of wealthy Americans—from 2012 to 2020 the number of millionaires audited fell by 72 percent—and devoted resources to chasing after poorer and working-class households that make mistakes filing for the Earned Income Tax Credit, both due to pressure from Republicans and because it’s easier than dealing with millionaires who can hire lawyers.
As the IRS has withered, the the country has allowed massive amounts of revenue to slip through its fingers each year. Earlier this month, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said that the country was allowing $1 trillion in taxes to go uncollected every year, much larger than the last official estimate of $441 billion a year on average form 2011 to 2013. “We do get outgunned,” he told lawmakers at a Senate finance committee hearing. The agency is struggling with new challenges, like the proliferation of cryptocurrency, as well as old ones, like offshore evasion.
🐘 Glimmers of Sanity in the MAGAverse 🐘
GOP Lawmakers Release Surprisingly Great COVID-19 Vaccine Ad, Igor Bobic, HuffPost, April 27, 2021.
Maybe some of them can still be saved from themselves.
Republican members of Congress who also happen to be medical professionals released a video on Tuesday encouraging people to get COVID-19 vaccinations ― an important public health message meant to counter vaccine hesitancy among their constituents.
The video, organized by the 18-member GOP “Doctors’ Caucus,” stresses the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and the U.S. government’s “rigorous and transparent” process of overseeing their development.
“The FDA did not skip any steps,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), an anesthesiologist and caucus co-chair, assures about COVID-19 vaccines in the ad.
“The only way to protect ourselves and your loved ones ― and to end the government’s restrictions on our freedoms ― is to take action and get the vaccine,” Rep. Greg Murphy (N.C.) added in the video, tailoring his pitch specifically to conservatives who opposed coronavirus lockdowns and other public health measures amid the pandemic.
A crack in the MAGA media dam? A New York Post story about Kamala Harris triggered conservative outrage. Almost all of it was wrong. Now the reporter has resigned. Paul Farhi, Washington Post, April 27, 2021.
A longtime New York Post reporter said she has resigned after being “ordered” to write a false story that claimed undocumented minors were being welcomed to the United States with copies of a children’s book written by Vice President Harris.
“The Kamala Harris story — an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against — was my breaking point,” Laura Italiano tweeted Tuesday afternoon, several hours after her viral article about the books had been deleted from the Post’s website and replaced with corrected versions.
Italiano, who has written for the Post since the 1990s, according to news archives, could not be immediately reached for comment.
🩺 💉 Health News 🩺 💉
CDC says many Americans can now go outside without a mask, Mike Stobbe, AP News, April 27, 2021.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its guidelines Tuesday on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers.
And those who are unvaccinated can go outside without masks in some situations, too.
The new guidance represents another carefully calibrated step on the road back to normal from the coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 570,000 people in U.S. ✂️
The change comes as more than half of U.S. adults — or about 140 million people — have received at least one dose of vaccine, and more than a third have been fully vaccinated. ✂️
“It’s the return of freedom,” Saag said. “It’s the return of us being able to do normal activities again. We’re not there yet, but we’re on the exit ramp. And that’s a beautiful thing.”
3 reasons most public masking is still important — even if you’re vaccinated, Katherine Harmon Courage, Voz News, April 27, 2021.
People are weird, man 😄
"This is the first vaccine in history where anyone has ever complained about not having symptoms,"
You Don't Have To Suffer To Benefit From COVID Vaccination — But Some Prefer It, Arthur Allen, NPR News, April 27, 2021.
Roughly half of those vaccinated with the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, and in particular women, experience unpleasantness — from hot, sore arms to chills, headache, fever and exhaustion. Some boast about the symptoms. They often welcome them.
Suspicion about what was in the shots grew in the mind of Patricia Mandatori, an Argentine immigrant in Los Angeles, when she hardly felt the needle going in after her first dose of the Moderna vaccine at a March appointment.
A day later, though, with satisfaction she says it "felt like a truck hit me. When I started to feel rotten I says, 'Yay, I got the vaccination.' I was happy. I felt relieved."
While the symptoms show your immune system is responding to the vaccine in a way that will protect against disease, evidence from clinical trials showed that people with few or no symptoms were also protected. Don't feel bad if you don't feel bad, the experts say.
My Local Good News (Chicago,Illinois)
Revival of the Arts in Chicago!
Opera is one of my musical loves — and our world-class opera house, the Lyric Opera, has been sorely missed during the pandemic. This week, the Lyric is back with an astonishingly innovative new production:
Lyric Opera’s ‘Twilight: Gods’ delivers a sensational drive-through Wagner — in an underground garage, Kyle MacMillan, Chicago Sun-Times, April 27, 2021.
Audiences experience this work from their cars, nine vehicles at a time (126 total per night) snaking through a blue-lit, maze-like path in the Millennium Lakeside Parking Garage with the help of dozens of guides along the way. They stop at six stations, where scenes from the original opera and added narrative are presented in segments that last 10 minutes or so. ✂️
Along the way are some startling sights, none more unexpected and other-worldly than what looks like an acre-wide expanse of 2,880 candles with 15 students of the Joffrey Academy of Dance shifting spotlights as they dance to a jazzy arrangement of Siegfried’s funeral music from “Götterdämmerung.” It is all part of the character’s funeral procession, which audience members take part in as they follow his hearse. ✂️
Nothing, though, tops mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin’s haunting aria as Waltraute, daughter of the great god, Wotan, as she laments the failing faculties of her father and tries to convince an unseen Brünnhilde to help him by returning the ring that is at the center of Wagner’s story.
Her performance is heightened by the strange and compelling intimacy of the dimly lit setting – just nine carloads of listeners (instead of potentially more than 3,000 in the Lyric Opera House) sharing this fleeting, communal moment.
Visual Art. We’ve also got the gorgeous new immersive Van Gogh exhibition at the Lighthouse ArtSpace at Germania Club happening right now and through the fall.
Feeling Optimistic About Chicago’s Future
Yes, we just lost a congressional seat due to — perhaps (if the census was accurate?) — out-migration. The conventional wisdom is that people are leaving Illinois in greater numbers than are coming in. Reasons given by talking heads vary from “high taxes” to “long winters” to “high crime”. Well, as Mokurai mentioned yesterday, there has always been a lot of bad stuff going on — everywhere — and in the overall scheme of things, life is actually better now than at nearly any other period in human history.
Chicago is a beautiful city full of interesting people, with a lot of challenges (just like any large city, and of course made even more challenging by decades of unfettered capitalism) and it feels like we are about to experience a renaissance. I’m not the only person who senses this. You can feel it in the air when you walk around the streets of Chicago. During the lockdown, our city was hard at work using the time to do infrastructure works while traffic was so sparse. Apartment buildings, businesses and even the empty hotels (!) continued to keep their sidewalks tidy and their little green spaces tended and planted with seasonal flowers. The message was clear — this pandemic will end and when it does, the City of Broad Shoulders will be ready!
Anyway, this opinion piece in yesterday’s paper made me smile (the writer could be coming from anywhere) : Why I can’t wait to move... to Chicago, Mark Cosin, Chicago Sun-Times, April 26, 2021.
Yeah, Chicago is beautiful!
It’s a tale we’d almost risk over-telling if it weren’t so incredible. Decimated in 1871, Chicago would aggressively charge into the future, remaking itself into a global icon that would literally host the world at a fair two decades later. Imagining myself as part of yet another rebuild — a “second” Second City? — is something too irresistible to ignore. ✂️
The future is objectively bright. The city and state are set to benefit from both a major COVID-19 relief bill and a potential infrastructure cash influx to bolster Chicago as a transit hub. Chicagoland is still rated as a “Top Metro” for corporate investment (last year saw 327 business expansions and relocations according to Site Selection Magazine). Startups in the Chicago area offer a return-on-investment that far outpaces national averages per a recent report. And Chicago continues to have one of the largest and most diversified economies in the world.
This is not to paper over the heavy lift for citizens and city leaders. There’s a reason a poll showed that 73% of residents think the city’s on the wrong track. Even its greatest boosters know Chicago has deep systemic problems that threaten to derail a robust recovery. The road ahead is not for the weak-willed. Luckily, if there’s something that Chicagoans are famous for — a virtue extolled by legendary writers in prose and poetry — it is hard work.
It’s a city that turns its back on pessimism. The city I know is not going into the future with misplaced idealism, but with bullish confidence in itself and its people.
🎶🎵🎶
⚡️ Lightning RoundUp ⚡️
⚡️ Yer Wonkette: World Hates America Little Bit Less Than Six Months Ago, Thanks Joe Biden! Evan Hurst, Wonkette, April 27, 2021.
⚡️Democrats Outline 'Care Infrastructure' Plan, With Paid Leave And Child Care, Kelsey Snell, NPR News, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ Biden's 1st 100 Days: A Look By The Numbers, Jason Breslow, NOR News, April 27, 2021.
⚡️Opinion: The lesson from the census: The GOP may have shot itself in the foot, Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ LOL: Biden admin has a message for Democrats -- 'Eating the rich is popular — so act like it': report, Bob Brigham, Raw Story, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ The White House can raise taxes on the wealthy without touching the tax code at all, Emiily Stewart, Vox, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ Meat beer, anyone? Opinion: Conservatives serve up a scary dish of nothingburgers, Molly Roberts, Washington Post, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ Too bad, so sad: The Republican Party Is Failing in Too Many Ways, Peter Suderman, New York Times (guest columnist), April 27, 2021.
⚡️More details on the Apple/Facebook story from last week: Breaking Point: How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook Became Foes, Mike Isaac and Jack Nicas, New York Times, April 26, 2021.
⚡️This guy...ew: All Of The Things That Matt Gaetz Most Definitely Did NOT Exchange For Sex, Josh Kovensky, TPM Muckraker, April 26, 2021.
⚡️ The Highs and Lows of the Pandemic Oscars, Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, April 26, 2021.
⚡️ The Lessons of the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Saga, Amy Davidson-Sorkin, The New Yorker, April 25, 2021.
⚡️When idealogues are elevated to power: The Supreme Court’s conservatives are quaking over cancel culture, Ian Milhiser, Vox, April 27, 2021.
⚡️ Lewandowski-Linked Lobby Shop Is the Latest Trump-Aligned Firm to Fall, Dan Friedman, MotherJones, April 27, 2021.
💗Here’s How You Can Help Build Our Democracy Back Better 💗
Put your beautiful bleeding heart into it!
Democratic litigation hero, Marc Elias was the legal eagle behind the 60 Big Lie losses after the election. Here’s his website, Democracy Docket. You can find information about current cases he is fighting to defend voting rights around the country, as well as actions you can take to help fight voter suppression at the link!
Write to voters around the country with Postcards to Voters. Progressive Muse usually posts an update on current campaigns in the comments and you can also check out the website. It’s easy, fun and it really works to GOTV!
🎩 Also, Goody posted a great list of links and I am going to borrow it because it’s great! 🎩
The only way they can win is by keeping people from voting. They are working like heck to make that happen and we need to do all we can to keep 2022 from being a year when they grab the Senate and House back from us.
How do we do that? Fight voter suppression!
What can you do?
- Contact your local representative NOW to encourage them to pass the For the People Act. This link makes it easy to do!
- The ACLU plays a key role in filing lawsuits that often stop voter suppression. Get involved with them at this link.
- The League of Women Voters work year-round to combat voter suppression through advocacy, grassroots organizing, legal action and public education. You can get involved with them at this link
- Volunteer with Black Votes Matter at this link. They have on the ground work in 10 states and people from other states can write postcards, phone bank, fundraise, and text.
- Spread The Vote works to get voters IDs before voting begins. You can volunteer with them at this link.
- Finally, when it comes time to pass HR1 (the new voting rights act) the Democrats will have to end the filibuster to do it. It will not pass without that. 10 Republicans will not vote for it. So, when the time comes, you will need to call, call, call and call your Senators to push them to do this. If you live in Arizona, Montana, or West Virginia, you may want to put in for some vacation time to really devote yourself to it. It will be the only option. Get ready!
HERE’S HOW TO CONTACT CONGRESS:
U.S. House of Representatives:* Telephone: 202-225-3121
* Website: http://www.house.gov/
U.S. Senate:* Telephone: 202-224-3121
* Website: http://www.senate.gov/
Find your member of Congress and contact him or her:
Contact your Representative
Contact your Senator
💙 RoundUp WindDown 💙
That’s it from me this week. I hope everyone has a very nice hump day and get in your provisions early so you can settle in and enjoy President Joe’s big speech tonight!
The Curlygirly and I remind you to take good care of yourself and those you love. Eat nutritious food, get some rest and try to get outdoors every day, if you can.
There is progressive energy in the air and of course the bad guys are not going to give up without a big fight. We have the majority, we have the momentum and we have love, truth and a desire for justice on our side. We will bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice, and we will need all our energy to do it. We are going to make this country and this world a better place.
Happy Wednesday, Gnusies! I am so honored to be in your company!
Mama could not decide on closing music, so you get a BIG picture of me today!
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