Sunday Funday: Women’s History Month Edition

Al Franken: GOP on CRT: (10 minutes)

  • Katenji Brown Jackson is nominated as the first black woman for a seat on the SCOTUS
  • As President Biden gives his first State of the Union Address he is backed by VP Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, women who have achieved the highest level ever in our government.

History makers to start off Women’s History month.

To do my part I will be watching the Iowa women’s basketball team led by the transcendent star Caitlin Clark win the Big 10’s tournament championship. This follows watching many hours of the Iowa state Girl’s basketball tourney plus some of the Illinois girl’s tourney.

What Happened last week?

A) Gallows humor: A joke tweeted out of Ukraine said people will not have to declare what on their income taxes this year?

B) The Biden Administration Labor numbers remain super strong with how many new hires in February?

C) Women’s History: What FDR cabinet member is credited with developing policies on Social Security and Labor (including policy on unions)?

D) Who tied for the Big Ten’s Women’s basketball regular season championship last Sunday?

E) In one of the world’s worst nightmares, Russian troops laid siege to what kind of a structure Thursday night into Friday?

F) As summer turns to fall in Australia, massive rains caused huge flooding in what two Australian population centers?

G) What American senator called for Putin’s assassination by ’someone in Russia”?

H) To cover their number of losses in Ukraine, the Russian Army is doing what to the bodies of their fallen soldiers?

I) Governor Reynolds took what step to aid Ukraine last week?

J) Russia has blacked access to what tech giant inside its borders?

K) Who was the ecologist writer whose path breaking book, “Silent Spring” in 1962 initiated the environmental movement?

L) According to an IPCC report last week, the dangers caused by what are mounting so fast that it is almost beyond man or nature to mitigate them now?

M) Approximately what is the current value of the ruble?

N) Which two Republican congress members heckled President Biden during the SOTU as he spoke of his son who died of brain cancer?

O) Vice-President Kamala Harris is taking part in what commemoration this weekend?

P) What woman, born in Kyiv, Ukraine and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin grew up to be Israeli prime minister from 1969 to 1974?

Q) Last weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference selected who for second place in their presidential straw poll?

R) What normally neutral country broke that tradition to join EU sanctions against Russia?

S) Guy Wesley Reffitt, 3 percenter on trial for his part in the January 6th attack on our government, targeted what government leader that day?

T) Governor Reynolds signed a bill banning what group of people from participating in sports in Iowa?

“In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell

Answers:

A) Stolen Russian tanks

B) 678,000

C) Frances Perkins.

D) Your Iowa Hawkeyes!

E) Europe’s largest nuclear power plant located in Ukraine.

F) Brisbane (up to 4 feet of rain) and Sydney

G) Lindsey Graham – great propaganda for Putin

H) cremating them in portable crematoriums

I) She banned the sale of Russian made vodka! It is the least she could do.

J) Facebook

K) Rachel Carson

L) climate change

M) 8/10ths of a penny as of Friday night (I think that makes a Big Mac about 700 rubles?)

N) Lauren Boebert and Majorie Taylor Greene – real classy.

O) the 57th commemoration of the crossing of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama

P) Golda Meir

Q) Ron DeSantis of Florida

R) Switzerland

S) Nancy Pelosi

T) Transgenders.

If any normal American acted in their workplace the way Marjorie Taylor Greene acted last night, they would be fired from their job. – Marcus Flowers who is running to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene

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The Trump-Putin Network

 The Lincoln Project (2 minutes):

A most interesting article in Thursday’s Guardian explores the deep ties between associates of the former president and the Kremlin with current leader Vladimir Putin. This is information that has been out in the cyber world for a long time – since before the 2016 election – but this article really helps to pull the ties together.

Putin had and still has a plan to overturn the world order and bring an end to western style democracies. By using disinformation campaigns and useful stooges in various western democracies Putin would be able to slowly, almost imperceptibly to some, transform democracies to autocracies. He would also be able to break up western alliances that stood in stark opposition to what he was doing in Russia.

The tools were friendly news sources throughout the world and wide open social networks where wild lies could gain credence. As author Rebecca Soling describes it taking place in the US:

In 2014, the Putin regime invaded Ukraine’s Crimea. In 2016, the same regime invaded the United States. The former took place as a conventional military operation; the latter was a spectacular case of cyberwarfare, including disinformation that it was happening at all and promulgation of a lot of talking points still devoutly repeated by many. It was a vast social-media influencing project that took many forms as it sought to sow discord and confusion, even attempting to dissuade Black voters from voting.

Additionally, Russian intelligence targeted voter rolls in all 50 states, which is not thought to have had consequences, but demonstrated the reach and ambition of online interference. This weekend, British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr said on Twitter, “We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it ‘meddling.’ We used words like ‘interference.’ It wasn’t. It was warfare. We’ve been under military attack for eight years now.”

As she notes, Putin’s minions were not only directing their attention to the United States, and included pro-Brexit efforts and support for France’s far-right racist National Front party. The US interference – you could call it cyberwarfare, or informational invasion – took many forms. Stunningly, a number of left-wing news sources and pundits devoted themselves to denying the reality of the intervention and calling those who were hostile to the Putin regime cold-war red-scare right-wingers, as if contemporary Russia was a glorious socialist republic rather than a country ruled by a dictatorial ex-KGB agent with a record of murdering journalists, imprisoning dissenters, embezzling tens of billions and leading a global neofascist white supremacist revival. In discrediting the news stories and attacking critics of the Russian government, they provided crucial cover for Trump.

<< skip >>

What’s striking in retrospect is that all of this was made possible by corruption and amorality inside the United States. It was Silicon Valley’s mercenary amorality that created weapons and vulnerabilities and sat by pocketing the profit as they were exploited to destructive ends. It was corrupt Americans – from Manafort to Trump himself – that gave Putin his influence. It was international players such as WikiLeaks and Cambridge Analytica that helped. It was corruption of media outlets such as Fox News that continued – in Tucker Carlson’s case until last week’s invasion of Ukraine caught up with him – to defend Putin and spread disinformation.

The Republican party met its new leader by matching his corruption, and by covering up his crimes and protecting him from consequences, including two impeachments. The second impeachment was for a violent invasion of Congress, not by a foreign power, but by right-wingers inflamed by lies instigated by Trump and amplified by many in the party. They have become willing collaborators in an attempt to sabotage free and fair elections, the rule of law, and truth itself. As author Rebecca Soling describes it taking place in the US:

Speculation since Putin’s open aggression and invasion of Ukraine has been that just as in 2016, he had his minions working the social media for a Trump victory. Was Putin also working behind the scenes in the January 6th attempt overthrow the US government and have Trump returned to power by force? Hopefully, such questions will be answered by the January 6th committee.

Had Trump been reinstalled would he have looked the other way as Putin overran Ukraine? 

Iowans need to be aware of the Trump connection to Putin. They also need to understand that most of Iowa’s leading Republicans are acolytes of Trump. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will not answer yet who won the 2020 election, thus playing into the disinformation game. How hard can it be to admit the truth?

Besides Miller-Meeks strange refusal to answer a straight forward question, Iowans had the sight of Iowa’s Republican leaders – Grassley, Reynolds, Hinson and Miller-Meeks welcoming Trump to Iowa last October. At this rally all four paid homage to Trump – which in turn gives approval to what he has done. Shameful!

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Iowa Has A Choice For Governor

Iowa has a choice this fall. DeJear for Governor

 In a rather surprising editorial in the Des Moines Register last week John and Terri Hale wrote about encounters with former Iowans at various places around the country. After some banter, they said, a common theme came up:

An example: On a beautiful 71-degree Arizona day, we met a couple from central Iowa and began a conversation.

They were in their late 60s. After chatting about the weather, careers, children and grandchildren, etc. they wanted to talk about current events in Iowa and the latest headlines from the Iowa Capitol.

The conversation took an unexpected turn when one of them volunteered: “I used to be proud to be an Iowan.”

<< skip >>

A great deal of the conversation focused on the vast decline in the attitudes and tactics of too many of our elected officials at the state level; people who:

This is followed by a list that include many of the common complaints of Iowans living in the state. Why are we promised rosy promises only to get schools systems that have fallen greatly, lower wages and on and on.

Please read the article. The lists of what was Iowa before and what is Iowa today is an eye opener. The arc is downward with no bottom apparently. 

From Iowa’s news media we generally get the idea that things are hunky-dory in Iowa. Why we even have a governor so prominent that she was picked to give the Republican response to the Presidents State of the Union address. Iowa’s media seldom covers what Iowans really feel. News about what the Republican choke hold on the state is usually covered in a positive manner.

The one-party rule that we have in Iowa looks like it is about to deliver another year of underfunding for Iowa’s schools, a budget that seems geared to turn Iowa into another disastrous experiment in Republican fiscal policies and more policies that give to the rich and punish the poor. One party rule is never good for the governed.

The other day I was listening to the radio as I was working about the house. Someone quoted a statistic that struck me as quite interesting. This person said Iowa is the only state in the union whose population has not doubled since 1900. A quick check on Wikipedia shows Iowa with 2,231,853 in 1900 and 3,190,000 in 2020. 

We all know young Iowans leave the state in droves. Not many return. Few will return when the jobs pay much less than other states and the tax burden lands on the young as the legislature cuts taxes for the wealthy and elderly. Instead of crying about workforce weakness, Governor Reynolds should be doing something about the underlying problems that are driving people away.

Like many I was once very proud of Iowa’s public school system that always was rated at or near the top of the nation’s schools. Now we have a governor and a legislature that is doing all it can to undermine that system and drive it into the lowest echelon of the nations schools. 

Bankrupting the public schools through vouchers to private schools financed by public school budgets, lower and lower school budgeting and the loss of good teachers year in and year out are not selling points.

Reynolds will not fix these problems. She is the driving force behind most of these problems. There will be an alternative this fall. We simply can not let Reynolds keep driving Iowa into a hole. Deidre DeJear is looking more and more like the young visionary leader Iowa desperately needs.

Posted in 2022 Election campaign, Budget, Economy, iowa legislature 2022, Jobs, Kim Reynolds | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Talking Union At REI

REI workers in NYC voted to unionize on Wednesday.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/rei-union-rwdsu-soho/

Talking Union at REI

by David Leshtz

For those of you who I have not had the chance to meet, I use he/him pronouns and I’m speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples.”

The opening words of a presentation by a community activist, a college teaching assistant, a performing artist? Perhaps a progressive city council candidate? Guess again.

They were spoken by REI’s CEO Eric Artz in an address earlier this month to the employees of REI SoHo, the company’s flagship store in New York City. Artz, who was paid approximately $3.2 million in 2019, wanted his workers to understand why he doesn’t “think that introducing a union is the right thing for our employees.”

Employees listening to Artz’s podcast rolled their eyes as he reeled off the standard anti-union playbook, depicting a union—in this case, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)—as if it were a third party, not made up of the workers themselves. He assured them that “REI is on a journey to become a more impactful organization” where workers can “bring your authentic self.” He did not address the fact that most of the store’s workers are kept below 40 hours a week and don’t get health insurance for at least a year, often longer. They have short notice and no input on their schedules. They don’t believe they’re paid a living wage. They feel they have little say in their workplace.

I visited the three-story SoHo store recently. It was a busy place on a weekday, bulging with high-end camping and climbing gear, with clothes for every outdoor activity. Most of the workers gave me a thumbs-up or said, “I like your button” (“Union Yes!”). They were primarily under 30 and primarily white, with many wearing similar buttons (“Stand up, keep fighting”). I spoke with one worker I’ll call Bud, who told me that he lives near the store but that some commute from nearly two hours away. He said a solid majority of the store workers signed cards for an election. REI declined to voluntarily recognize the union.

Bud likes his job but scoffed at the CEO’s appropriation of “social justice language,” and he laughed at the sudden appearance of free Panera cards for the employees. He resents what he sees as management’s disinformation campaign against RWSDU and his fellow employees. Particularly obfuscating was a document posted in the break room by management citing contract amendments at a nearby Macy’s store as what REI workers could expect if they unionized.

One older worker, a decade-long employee not wearing a union button, told me he was undecided on how to vote. This worker is full-time, has a regular schedule, and receives full benefits. Younger colleagues are sympathetic to the fear of change but are hoping workers like him will come around.

REI reported revenue of $2.75 billion in 2020. Nationally, the company has approximately 11,000 workers at 165 retail outlets. As with Starbucks, pro-union employees believe a victory at the SoHo store could open the door for their counterparts across the country. REI is trying, step by corporate step, to defeat the union drive, but is using softer rhetoric to avoid further alienating its workers. The company’s website and other materials describe it as a “co-op community” with a commitment “to put our values front and center in everything we do.”

The more than 100 employees at REI in SoHo will vote in person at the store on March 2 to decide whether to form a union. Workers across the country will be watching.

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DeJear Gains 10,000 Twitter Followers After Reynolds Speech

What the hell was she even talking about?  The speech was total gibberish. It was not a response to what Biden actually said or any other real thing.  Yikes.

The good news is Reynolds’ opponent in the governor’s race Democrat Deidre DeJear gained 10,000 Twitter followers overnight. You can support DeJear by following her on Twitter and Facebook. Make a donation on her campaign website dejearforiowa.com/.

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Watch President Biden’s SOTU Address

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Watch Iowa Press Reporters’ Roundtable

Watch if you can stomach it.  So many people have told me they don’t watch anymore because they can’t stomach it. This weekend’s program wasn’t terrible off and on. They were a little snide about Republicans here and there but no serious criticism.  They talk about the evil Republicans so nonchalantly as if their corrupt behavior is merely a curiosity if they acknowledge it at all. They use words like “interesting” and “fascinating” and crack jokes about the legislature, glorifying the Republicans’ political advantages, focusing on what Republicans want, what Republicans “believe,” forcing the viewer to listen to Kay talk up Joni Ernst and her  criticisms of President Biden as if she is something more than an installed right wing puppet.  And no one on the stage had the nerve to point out that the flat tax Republicans passed is not fair. No, they just said that’s what the Democrats think. Glad they’re having a good time watching Republicans ruin everything. Watch the show then send them some feedback. https://www.iowapbs.org/contact

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Book Review: The Hidden History of Big Brother in America

In The Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy, author Thom Hartmann focuses on Big Data and its consequences for all aspects of our lives. In the framework of surveillance and social control, Hartmann traces the history of surveillance and the threat of violence to control behavior, thought, and belief by our political and social masters.

Referencing George Orwell’s book 1984, Hartmann wrote, “Orwell was only slightly off the mark. Big Brother types of government, and Thought Police types of social control, are now widespread in the world and incompatible with democracy.”

What makes this book timely is the way Trump campaigns used Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to scrape personal data about tens of millions of voters from the internet, and then custom target them with tens of thousands of distinct daily ads designed to either persuade people to vote for Trump or not vote at all. On the day of the third presidential debate in October 2020, Hartmann wrote, team Trump ran 175,000 variations of ads micro-targeting voters. These ads were, for the most part, not publicly seen.

Here in Iowa the Republican legislature seeks to control our behavior with legislation intended to address perceived constituent needs. Iowa Republicans approach it with a dull knife. For example, because of feedback and paranoia about transgender girls, Republicans introduced legislation to ban trans females from Title IX activities. This legislation would create discrimination for sure, and potentially a bullying environment for children. They seek to control our behavior and even such crude attempts at social control are anti-democratic. By using bludgeoning methods, Iowa Republicans were not nearly as effective as Trump’s use of Big Data to spy on voters and use what they found to influence their decisions.

Whether one is liberal, conservative, libertarian or whatever, we have concerns about how Big Data firms like Google, Facebook, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, and others surveil and use data we consider to be private. In the beginning we considered such data collection and use to be for advertising like generating sales for a brand of energy drink. Whether it is conservatives who have paranoid feelings that “Big Data” is collecting personal information, censoring and manipulating people, liberals who see companies like Cambridge Analytica violating their privacy, or Amazon Ring customers concerned about law enforcement gaining warrantless access to video from the camera at their doorstep, Big Brother is watching us, eroding our privacy, and threatening our democracy.

Thom Hartmann

In The Hidden History of Big Brother in America, Hartmann uses extensive examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on our lives. He traces the history of surveillance and social control, looking back to how Big Brother invented whiteness to keep order, and how surveillance began to be employed as a way to modify behavior. “The goal of those who violate privacy and use surveillance is almost always social control and behavior modification,” Hartmann wrote.

Big Data threatens privacy and enables surveillance, Hartmann wrote. The lack of alternatives to lifestyles that involve feeding into Big Data leads to almost forced participation in surveillance by Big Brother. Surveillance and lack of privacy are a threat to freedom, he wrote, because the information gathered can be abused, people have a right not to be observed, and being observed is an intervention that can affect those who are observed.

Are we doomed to live under Big Brother’s watchful eye? How much social and political control should corporations have in society? How much Big Brother will modern people tolerate? For discussion of answers to these timely questions and more, I recommend the Hidden History of Big Brother in America.

Thom Hartmann is a four-time winner of the Project Censored Award, a New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two books, and America’s #1 progressive talk radio show host. His show is syndicated on local for-profit and nonprofit stations and broadcasts nationwide and worldwide. It is also simulcast on television in nearly 60 million US and Canadian homes.

To buy a copy of the Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy, click here. The book is available March 8, 2022.

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Scrambled Thoughts As Russia Invades Ukraine

can’t forget this picture from a couple of years ago

I am putting some thoughts down on paper to maybe help clear my mind as Russia invades Ukraine. In my humble opinion, it is similar naked aggression Germany used in Poland. It is scary.

  • My first thought is that the approval that our former president showered on Putin contributed to Putin’s decision to invade. Putin no doubt feels that the US is so divided he could take the chance that  our response would be muted by internal politics.

Considering that the Republican Party seems with little exception to be making excuses for Putin’s invasion, Putin may be calculating correctly. Expect the Republicans to make contradictory claims on this situation both blaming Biden and calling for harder sanctions, perhaps involvement and yet not condemning Putin. Our press will not question this.

  • Right wing autocracies are on the rise throughout the world. It is like a world infestation with tendrils popping up in even what are considered to be the most democratic of states. Trump was the manifestation in the US. Maintaining unity on sanctions may be one of the trickiest political accomplishments ever. Even within NATO, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, a right wing autocrat, is wavering.
  • Economically Russia is not a huge player with a GDP lower than individual states Texas or California. Their big trump card internationally is their oil and gas products. Many wonder if they will be able to sustain feeding and supplying an army at war and in occupation. Here is where what China decides to do may become critical.
  • Thus China may take this opportunity to press for overtaking Taiwan. Strike while the enemy is distracted. If China gets belligerent, what does the US and her allies do?
  • One of the deep background movements that is certainly contributing to this instability is the extreme right’s world wide push to undermine stable governments though lies, disinformation, disruption and refusal to follow laws. Our former president is probably the prime example of this strategy in action. His continuing Big Lie that the election was stolen from him is perhaps the prime example of disinformation.
  • Disinformation factories run mostly out of Russia have and are flooding the social networks with such disinformation. Throughout the world, but especially in the US there is a an audience hungry for every lie.
  • Finally the US will pay a price in economic disruption especially inflation and price gouging by corporations. As always, the US will look for a scapegoat. I suspect the overwhelmingly right wing press will conveniently and lazily blame Biden.

I also can’t help but wonder if Donald Trump has any role in this at all. One of Trump’s biggest motivators is revenge on anyone who he perceives as having slighted him in any way. If you remember Trump’s first impeachment was about how he (Trump) used the withholding of aid to Ukraine as threat to get Ukraine President Zelensky to create false stories about then citizen Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter.

Since Trump never sees himself at fault for anything, my guess is that Trump has held a grudge against Zelensky for causing him trouble leading to his first impeachment. Trump haa been just waiting for that chance at revenge.

Here is hoping that Republicans can put down their constant campaigning and join the president and the world in doing what they can to condemn Russia.

Just my thoughts folks. Which means they are just something to consider, nothing else.

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Sunday Funday: Thinking Basketball Edition

The last time Iowa and Michigan met, the Hawks came up a bit short: (2 minutes)

I make no apologies for this: I am a basketball fan, mostly a college basketball fan. This year college basketball is probably as scrambled as it has been in a long time, maybe ever. That is on the men’s side. On the women’s side there seems to be something of a pecking order, but still somewhat scrambled.

Our family has been solid women’s basketball fans since our girls were small. Sundays at Carver Arena watching C. Vivian Stringer put out solid teams year after year. Lisa Bluder has kept that tradition up in a big way. This year’s team is really special. This afternoon at 3PM on ESPN2 they face off against league leading Michigan. As I understand it, if Iowa wins they are regular season champions.

We can’t get to the Arena anymore, but thanks to TV we have seen most of the games. Watching Caitlin Clark has been a real pleasure. She is simply one of the most exciting players I have ever seen, male or female. The whole team is solid. With some breaks and some smart play I look for the Hawks to go deep in the tourney.

We watched Thursday’s game with Stringer’s current team, Rutgers. Unfortunately Stringer is on a leave of absence this year. But we did get to see Michelle (Ice) Edwards as an assistant coach for Rutgers. Thus we got to see two of Iowa’s greatest basketball players ever on the same floor – Ice Edwards and Caitlin Clark. Don’t get much better than that.

Back to your regular scheduled reality.

A) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated world news this week. Who is the president of Ukraine?

B) The State of the Union address takes place Tuesday night. Who did the Republicans pick to give their response this year?

C) The head of Russians space agency threatened to let what happen in retaliation for western sanctions against Russia?

D) At this transition between black history month and women’s history month we ask – who was the first black woman to lie in honor in the US capitol?

E) ‘Putin is a genius” stated what disgraced US leader last week?

F) What Iowa politician was put in “Facebook jail” for posting material that was deemed “false information”?

G) The site of what nuclear disaster has been taken over by Russian soldiers who are holding it “hostage”?

H) Four major US drug manufacturers agreed to pay $26 Billion to settle claims in lawsuits concerning what?

I) Huge protests are taking place illegally against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in what country?

J) the waiting is over and we have a nominee for the SCOTUS. Who is it?

K) Cardinal of Eldon became the 4th school district in Iowa to adopt what unusual school schedule?

L) What country came to Russia’s aid by lifting all restrictions on wheat purchases on Russian wheat thus giving Russia some needed money?

M) What major tech billionaire and his brother are under SEC scrutiny for insider trading?

N) As we lurch toward the first black woman nominee to SCOTUS, who was the first black Justice?

O) Who was the first woman poet laureate of the US?

P) Finnish Skier Remi Lindholm finished in 28th place in the 30KM cross country skiing but more famously suffered what injury in last week’s Olympics?

Q) What animated kids series ended a 25 year run of PBS?

R) A 500 pound black bear with what nickname has been cited as the bear breaking into many homes near California’s Lake Tahoe?

S) The verdict in the trial of the three policemen who were with Derek Chauvin when George Floyd was murdered was what?

T) In Michigan, all three Republican candidates for Attorney General said they opposed what SCOTUS ruling that outlawed prosecuting married couples for using birth control?

I’m old enough to remember when folks who stole classified documents were called spies.. – Eileen Marie Sarah tweet

Answers:

A) Volodymyr Zelensky

B) Kim Reynolds

C) He threatened to let the space station fall out of orbit. If that happened it would be unlikely to fall on Russia.

D) Rosa Parks

E) the former president

F) Chuck Grassley

G) Chernobyl

H) opioids

I) Russia – right near the Kremlin.

J) Ketanji Brown Jackson

K) 4 day weeks

L) China

M) Elon Musk of Tesla

N) Thurgood Marshall

O) Rita Dove (1952)

P) He suffered a frozen penis

Q) Arthur 

R) Hank the Tank

S) Guilty 

T) Griswold v. Connecticut  – this is where the republicans are going, folks

Am I the only journalist who remembers that Donald Trump’s first impeachment was over his withholding aid to Ukraine as he tried to get info from Zelensky on Hunter Biden to use against Joe Biden in the 2020 election? – Victoria Brownworth

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