Janet Mills DISASTROUS Maine Senate Town Hall
One thing that was not mentioned is the reason Cuba has such poverty is all the US sanctions over 60 years. When Obama lifted sanctions things got much better for Cuba. The Cuban government is not the problem and when there was less sanctions the people were happy with the government. We are the bad guys in this. We, the US government is refusing to let any other country send any supplies because we demand they have a capitalist oligarchy system of government mimicking the US one. How is that working out for us? Cuba has free universal medical. Free education. Do we? But that is the old guy mentality that every country should / must do and be as the US and profit must be king. All this reparation for what was nationalized? Why? US corporations and wealthy land owners were raping the land and hogging the profit and goods. They had a better system if left alone. But again the old red scare from the USSR days. Remember “better off dead than red”? The US must push democracy and oligarchy. Venezuela was the same thing, we did not like that they had a government for the people, a socialist / communist one and they nationalized the oil systems because the profits were not going to the Venezuelan people but to western corporations. Other countries have a right to their own resources. But remember tRump demanding that Ukraine give up half of its mineral rights to the US / tRump family? Hugs
It’s a blog entry by Jenny Lawson, about one of her books. I haven’t been able to open her WP blog for a few weeks, now; I get the page that says it’s an unsafe connection. I either don’t know how, or can’t get a whole post in the WP Reader, but I did get this whole post in email, so I’ll copy & paste it here. Jenny is funny, but this is not good news about Texas and literacy.
Read on blog or Reader Today they banned my book. It was not the first. It won’t be the last. Here’s what I want you to know . |
| This is not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about how I’m about to go on book tour for my new book in a few days. Instead I am writing about the fact that I was just informed that my first book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was banned from the high school library of a nearby town I love and visit often. Honestly, I’m not that upset about my book being banned. I’ve had so many letters from young people who felt they’d been helped by my books but it does have some profanity and so I can understand the reasoning even if I disagree with it. What I am upset about is the stories about how New Braunfels ISD has pulled more that 1,500 books from their school library shelves after the Texas’ Republican-backed book banning law (senate bill 13) passed. The bill ordered all public school libraries to review books for “profane” and “indecent” content and I guess Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was deemed too dangerous for high schoolers. Weirdly, my book was not on the original list of the 1,500 books triggered for review on March 13 but a week ago it was added to the New Braunfels ISD website as being removed for being “non-compliant”. (I’ve been called worse.) I guess 1,500 books weren’t enough. But then, it’s never enough for book banners.This is going to happen more and more. It used to be a rarer thing…almost a badge of courage to have a book banned. Now? It’s everywhere…this war against books and ideas and people. Reading is how you fall in love with people different from you, and how you develop compassion for them…because if you love them, you want to protect them. But there are some people who don’t want you to love others. They need you to fear them. Books save lives. They have saved mine. Books are safety nets for so many of us, and right now those nets are being cut.The list of banned books is incredible in length and includes so many that I adore. Equally upsetting is the fact that so many classics that shaped me have been pulled from the shelves and placed into restricted sections where they can only be accessed by students enrolled in Advanced Placement Literature, because God forbid a normal high school student would want to read the works of dangerous writers like *checks the list* Jane Austen and Emily Brontë (whose name they misspelled). Sometimes it feels like we’re living in A Brave New World (restricted) and that the book burning of Fahrenheit 451 (restricted) is closer than ever, with no Sense and Sensibility (restricted) about what this will cost. It feels like we’re going through The Crucible (restricted) and are caught in a Catch-22 (restricted) where we can’t convince people how terrible it is to ban books because they either don’t know the power of books or they absolutely know it and fear it. It’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (banned) how book banners go out on some kind of A Discovery of Witches (banned) and fight against Acceptance (banned) and of diversity, while we are losing All The Beauty in the World (banned). America is a Beautiful Country (banned) in so many ways, but we will lose so much of that beauty if we don’t make Changes (banned) to cherish and embrace and grow what makes us Educated (banned) and compassionate. The diversity of voices is necessary…it is a reflection of who we are and who we want to be. A plethora of ideas and voices and experiences…This Is What America Looks Like (banned). We can’t just pretend that Everything’s Fine (banned) and that this is just an overreaction of Anxious People (banned). Do you think this is what the founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton (banned) envisioned? I’m going to stop here because I’m sure you can see that this dumb paragraph is WAY TOO EASY TO WRITE because there are so many books they have issues with and you probably get the picture already but y’all….Jane Eyre? The Color Purple? The Odyssey? Crime and Punishment?? THIS IS WHAT WE’RE SAVING TEENAGERS FROM? So what can you do? You can buy books that are being targeted, especially those written by the LGBTQ+ authors or authors of color because they are being targeted the most. Supporting those authors tells publishing to keep producing those books because they are needed. Publishers will lose money if libraries become afraid to purchase books and so we need to make sure that they know the audience is there and greedy for diverse voices. Get a library card and start checking out those books and more, to prove to the government that libraries need funding and that people care about reading. Read to your children. Read in front of your children. Talk online about the books that you love so that your passion ignites others. If you’re a parent you can get involved with your school to make sure this doesn’t happen in your school and you can protest it if it happens. You can vote out the people who seem to be obsessed with freedom, but mainly when it’s their freedom to take away yours and your children’s. You can run against school board members who are book banners and show up at the meetings. You can keep updated by following organizations like PEN AMERICA, or the Texas Freedom to Read Project or Authors Against Book Bans. *deep breath* This is probably filled with typos and is not really the sort of thing that I should be writing the day before I leave to start my book tour but it’s important. When books and thoughts and people are suppressed, we all lose. Keep fighting the good fight, friends. It’s worth it. Comment |
(Just under an hour, so more than a snip or a bit, but it’s not only necessary, it’s fascinating. Or else I’m just that big a geek.)
Fifty years prior to rumors of fascism circling President Trump, activist and philosopher Angela Davis made a spooky prediction about dictatorship in the U.S.
President Donald Trump’s administration continues to stand on shaky ground amid bombshell resignations and rumors of a dictatorship brewing. But in the midst of these unprecedented times, one Black political activist’s warning could offer a shocking reality for Americans… even if the message came 55 years earlier.
Trump’s return to the White House was met with fierce criticism from leaders like former Vice President Kamala Harris and his own former chief of staff, John Kelly, who explicitly declared that Trump fits “into the general definition of fascist.” But while terms like “fascist” and “dictator” have found a comfortable place in American politics today, activists like Angela Davis were among the loudest opponents of fascism nearly six decades ago.
By the 1970s, the Cold War against the Soviet Union revamped fears of a possible fascist regime in the States– notably from many Black Panthers. While awaiting trial for murder, Davis spoke with filmmaker Peter Davis about the likelihood that America would be ruled by a dictator.
“We are closer to fascism than we’ve ever been before,” Davis said from a California prison in 1971. But while the political activist stopped short of declaring fascism had officially made its mark in the U.S. then, her scary prediction has arguably taken a new light in 2026. (SNIP-click the title to read the rest; it’s not at all long)
Emily Gregory defeats Republican Jon Maples in district that is home to US president’s Palm Beach estate
Democrats managed to flip a seat in the Florida state house in the district that is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Emily Gregory, a Democrat, defeated Republican Jon Maples, who had an endorsement from the US president, in the special election in Florida’s 87th state house district. The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening, with Gregory, a public health expert and small business owner, leading by more than 2 percentage points.
The Republican who previously held the seat had won by 19 percentage points in 2024.
Trump voted in the race via mail-in ballot, despite criticizing the practice as “mail-in cheating” during an event in Tennessee this week. The president has long attacked voting by mail, describing it as a scam and arguing it creates fraud in elections. He still opted to vote by mail in the race although he was recently in Palm Beach, where early in-person voting was under way until Sunday.
The president had urged voters to back Maples, a financial adviser who describes himself as an “America-First patriot”. Maples had faced scrutiny in recent weeks over allegations that he did not live in the district in which he was running, claims that he denied.
Democrats have said that Gregory’s win shows voters frustrated over rising costs are moving away from Trump and the Republican party.
“Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms,” Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said on social media. “A Trump +11 district in his own backyard shouldn’t be in play for Democrats, but tonight proves Republicans are vulnerable everywhere.”
State Democrats have flipped 29 districts since Trump’s election, Williams said.
314 Action, a political committee that works to get Democratic scientists elected to office, had endorsed Gregory and praised her win, writing in a statement that “a Stem wave is coming”.
“Emily won because Floridians trust her to make decisions based on evidence not ideology,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, the group’s president. “She’s bringing science back to the state house and heading to the [state] capitol on a mission to lower costs, restore healthcare and bring down the temperature in Tallahassee.”
No bombs, no warships, no solid food on Tuesdays before executions on Wednesdays. Even while being bombed and threatened with warships.

Political prisoners in 56 different prisons across the country continued their hunger strike in the 113th week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign. Members of this campaign, while condemning the widespread and arbitrary executions, particularly the execution of several protesters on the eve of Nowruz, called these actions an attempt by the regime to instill fear and terror in society. The striking prisoners, warning about the dire conditions of the prisons and the risk of execution for recent detainees in the shadow of communication blackouts, called upon the international community and human rights organizations to increase pressure on the Iranian regime to halt these sentences and secure the release of political prisoners.
Please find the full text of the statement by the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign below:
The “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign congratulates the general public of Iran, and especially the families of those who lost their lives in the Dey [January] 1404 uprising and all the executed individuals of the past year who were massacred by the despotic and repressive “Velayat-e Faqih” regime, on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr and Nowruz 1405. We express our utmost thanks and appreciation to all individuals, teachers’ trade syndicates, retirees, workers, and families of those sentenced to death, as well as independent media and all those who served as the voice for death row inmates, and we hope that the year 1405 will be the year of Iran’s freedom—an Iran without torture and executions.
The execution regime has hanged over 2,650 of our compatriots in various parts of the country over the past year. Cruelly, on the eve of Nowruz, it executed three brave youths named Mehdi Ghasemi, Saeed Davoudi, and Saleh Mohammadi, who had been arrested during the Dey [January] protests, in Qom, and hanged another prisoner named Kourosh Keyvani on charges of espionage in Karaj Central Prison.

We, the members of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign, while condemning the arbitrary and brutal executions carried out with the aim of creating fear and terror in society, call upon the United Nations, various countries, and human rights organizations to exert pressure on the Iranian regime so that the minimum rights of prisoners are respected. This is particularly crucial for those prisoners who have been arrested in recent months and are enduring torture in the midst of media silence and internet blackouts, facing the risk of death sentences; we also demand the release of political prisoners. Especially under the conditions of bombardments, the lives of prisoners are exposed to a double threat, and many prisoners are suffering from a lack of food and medical care. In the past week, dozens of prisoners in Chabahar Prison were killed and wounded by prison guards due to their protests against the lack of food supplies.
It should be noted that over the past two weeks, the statement of this campaign (Weeks 111 and 112) was not published due to communication blackouts.
The “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign in its 113th week is on hunger strike in the following 56 prisons:
Evin Prison (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Ghezel Hesar Prison (Units 2, 3, and 4), Karaj Central Prison, Karaj Fardis Prison, Greater Tehran Prison, Qarchak Prison, Khorin Prison of Varamin, Choubindar Prison of Qazvin, Ahar Prison, Arak Prison, Langarud Prison of Qom, Khorramabad Prison, Borujerd Prison, Yasuj Prison, Asadabad Prison of Isfahan, Dastgerd Prison of Isfahan, Sheiban Prison of Ahvaz, Sepidar Prison of Ahvaz (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Nezam Prison of Shiraz, Adelabad Prison of Shiraz (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Firuzabad Prison of Fars, Dehdasht Prison, Zahedan Prison (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Borazjan Prison, Ramhormoz Prison, Behbahan Prison, Bam Prison, Yazd Prison (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Kahnuj Prison, Tabas Prison, Birjand Central Prison, Mashhad Prison, Gorgan Prison, Sabzevar Prison, Gonbad-e Kavus Prison, Qaemshahr Prison, Rasht Prison (Men’s and Women’s Wards), Rudsar Prison, Haviq Prison of Talesh, Azbaram Prison of Lahijan, Dizelabad Prison of Kermanshah, Ardabil Prison, Tabriz Prison, Urmia Prison, Salmas Prison, Khoy Prison, Naqadeh Prison, Miandoab Prison, Mahabad Prison, Bukan Prison, Saqqez Prison, Baneh Prison, Marivan Prison, Sanandaj Prison, Kamyaran Prison, and Ilam Prison.
Week 113
Tuesday, 4 Farvardin 1404
#No_to_Execution_Tuesdays_Campaign
(Remember Clay Jones writes a blog entry under his comics on Substack, and they’re Gold. Just click through right there on the title.)


https://www.gocomics.com/heathcliff/2026/03/23
It’s our friend Bee!
Josh Johnson11 hours agoProbably my most requested topic ever. Do your thing for the algo so everyone knows new set will be live premiering Tuesday at 9pm eastern Friends ❤️

(Don’t forget!)
Josh Johnson 7 hours agoH i Friends, good news! I am hosting @TheDailyShow this week Tuesday – Thursday. Do your thing for the algo so more people see it. Guests this week are Sterling K. Brown, Mero, and Eiza González. March 24-26 on Comedy Central and Paramount
