After the first two Starbucks stores unionized in December, something unbelievable has happened: 78 Starbucks stores in 23 states have filed for union elections. It’s spreading like wildfire.
A Rhodes Scholar barista and the fight to unionize Starbucks. It started with one store in December, now it's 78… and counting. https://t.co/HG8NHP2EEX
So let me get this straight: Elon Musk claims to want to save humanity by creating a space colony, but doesn't want workers to join a union and has reportedly created a racist workplace?
“As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him.”
“In conversations with senators and would-be senators, Mr. McConnell is blunt about the damage he believes Mr. Trump has done to the G.O.P., according to those who have spoken to him. Privately, he has declared he won’t let unelectable “goofballs” win Republican primaries.”
I wrote a column about how obscene it is that the NYT is preemptively throwing cold water on investigating Trump after he's caught red-handed, after hyping Hillary's emails as a matter of urgent public concern: https://t.co/IZqqemxGxn
Being a complete idiot would get you fired from most jobs. Republicans elect them.
How about this for a modest proposal: channeling Reagan and the air traffic controllers… Revoke the licenses and permits for any trucker engaged in this illegal stoppage?
Not an original point, but these ppl w trucks are getting a pretty soft reaction to blocking supply chain compared to those protecting land & water/blocking pipelines. And compared to those who've blocked freeways in BLM protests. It's bananas that this is going on:
— christina d'ache is now @inquiline@mastodon.social (@scrivenix) February 11, 2022
Read this whole thread for more on how far right religious organizations are driving a lot of this, not because they actually care about protecting children, but because they want things like LGBTQ+ artwork and sexual health info censored from the Internet https://t.co/uvOafGiIZm
— @team@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon (@fightfortheftr) February 8, 2022
It's important to understand some of the groups pushing for EARN IT are lying about who they really are. For example, NCOSE, which bills itself as a child protection organization, used to be called "Morality in the Media." They're an anti-LGBTQ hate group https://t.co/wX21YodDfc
— @team@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon (@fightfortheftr) February 8, 2022
Here's our full story on the arrival of the American Trucker Convoys — who, how, and where they're planning.
It's fake accounts in Romania AND big-money antivaxxers in California.
When I'd still argue with them, conservative Christians would define atheism as a religion, evolution was a religion, even quantum mechanics was a religion, etc. It always struck me as odd that they of all people would use "religion" as an insult.
Oh Klem. Do you not understand the difference between a right and a freedom? The Pettus Bridge marchers were seeking to exercise their voting “rights” as granted in the Constitution. Truckers, or for that matter, anyone operating on public highways, are exercising a privilege that comes with defined conditions and restrictions. They have the freedom to choose whether they want to cross the border, and comply with the conditions, or take local gigs only. And all this over a freakin” vaccine when the truckers have MANDATORY medical exams as conditions for their licenses. Remember the way the Selma to Montgomery marchers disrupted the supply chain and threw thousands of people out of work? Remember the swastika flags? The open expressions of anti-Semtisim? Remember the calls to overthrow the government? Remember? ‘Cause I don’t.
What we are witnessing is PRICE GOUGING, NOT INFLATION.
INFLATION is when business owners raise prices commensurate with higher costs to make ends meet.
But when corporations are reporting record all-time profits, raising prices is NOT INFLATION, it is PRICE GOUGING to capitalize on supply chain disruptions caused by a national emergency.
McDonald’s profits soared 59% in 2021, to $7.5 billion.
ExxonMobil reported a $8.9 billion in profits in the FOURTH QUARTER ALONE, while it was jacking up prices to new records.
Numerous other companies jacked up prices while raking in record profits in 2021.
Donald Trump crashed the economy, destroyed the supply chain, blew up international trade relations by imposing ridiculous tariffs that hurt farmers and consumers, mishandled a pandemic that exploded into a worldwide economic crisis and now as Biden is putting people back, restoring consumer confidence, which stimulates demand, but the devastation wrought by Trump on the supply chain is taking longer to undo, especially as anti-science right wing nut jobs continue to undermine recovery from the Trump plague.
If there were a hurricane, tornado, flood or wildfire and vendors were charging $20 for a bottle of water, they would be arrested. We need to see some of the corporate heads who have tripled their profits on the backs of consumers being frog-marched into the Big House.
Yes as the science changes so does the government advice. Normal and acceptable. Anything else is propaganda by those who deny science and want to promote confusion and dissent.
Right wing cartoon sites I have commented on today.
In an interview Thursday with the Daily Signal, a conservative media site, the U.S. senator from Kentucky said “it’d be great” if the protests spread to Washington, D.C., when asked about his thoughts on the protests and how the nation’s capital would react if they spread south across the border.
“The thing is, it wouldn’t shut the city down because the government workers haven’t come to work in two years anyway, so I don’t know if it’d affect D.C.,” Paul joked. “It’d be nice change. We’d actually have some traffic.”
“I hope the truckers do come to America, and I hope they clog up cities,” Paul said. “We’re seeing a break in the dam now. Several Democratic governors are finally sort of relinquishing. What they’re finding is moms and dads are upset about this, they’re not just Republicans. Everybody is upset about this.”
Remember Rand Paul has large investments in medical companies that produce treatments for covid. it is to his benefit to keep people getting sick and needing medical help / treatment for Covid. So why do what is right when he can stuff his pockets with money from the suffering of the people.
"The thing is, it wouldn't shut the city down because the government workers haven't come to work in two years anyway, so I don't know if it'd affect D.C.," Paul joked. "It'd be nice change. We'd actually have some traffic." https://t.co/m1cXuQAoNZ
Rand Paul calls on truckers to blockade the Super Bowl and DC: “I’m all for it. Civil disobedience .. is a time-honored tradition in our country from slavery to civil rights to you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.” pic.twitter.com/zvCBTe9wkg
The nature preserve on the US-Mexico border became a target of rightwing ire after it opposed construction of Trump’s wall
Marianna Treviño-Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Center: ‘I used to believe much better of people.’ Photograph: John L Mone/AP
In Mission, Texas, on the border between the US and Mexico, sits the National Butterfly Center. A 100-acre nature preserve once exclusively dedicated to the conservation of plants and wildlife, it has now been thrust into the national spotlight and become a focal point of divisions over the country’s immigration policy.
This week, the butterfly center was forced to close its doors indefinitely amid ongoing threats from far-right conspiracists and QAnon followers who falsely claim it is a haven for human-trafficking and illegal migration.
“They’re not conspiracies, they’re just outright lies,” Marianna Treviño-Wright, the executive director of the National Butterfly Center, told the Guardian. “I think that’s a very important point that needs to be made. As long as they’re called ‘conspiracies’, then it seems like there’s some plausibility.”
The North American Butterfly Association (NABA), which runs the center, decided to close it down indefinitely on Wednesday as a precautionary measure, after being warned to “be armed at all times or out of town” during a We Stand America rally in support of a border wall.
The butterfly center first attracted the attention of the far right in 2017. Treviño-Wright and the NABA made headlines for suing the organizations behind the construction of a section of Donald Trump’s border wall after they sought to build straight through the butterfly preserve. Those groups included We Build the Wall, led by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and founder Brian Kolfage, which is now facing corruption and fraud charges.
Conspiracy theories about the butterfly center snowballed after Kolfage posted a series of tweets, claiming it was run by “left wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda” and asserting without evidence that “rampant sex trade” was taking place on the property. Treviño-Wright said an increase in online and in-person harassment soon followed.
A court date for the case about the section of border wall on the center’s property has not been set yet.
Treviño-Wright said since the lawsuit she has faced personal threats and on one occasion, assault, by the extremist Virginia Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe who visited the butterfly center last month and demanded to see “‘illegals crossing on rafts”. In an audio recording of the visit, Lowe is heard claiming baselessly that Treviño-Wright was “OK with children being sex-trafficked, raped and murdered”.
“It’s utterly ridiculous that instead of Democrats and a pizza joint, it’s immigrants and a butterfly center,” Treviño-Wright said, comparing the situation to the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy that took off in 2016 in an attempt to paint the then presidential candidate Hilary Clinton as a proponent of human trafficking.
The butterfly center’s closure this week did not come as a surprise to Treviño-Wright.
“This has been escalating. Not just the attacks on us, but the agenda in the political landscape. I think it makes sense for the [NABA] board to pump the brakes. If this madness is going to continue until the midterms or, God forbid, beyond that, we need to have personnel and a plan in place to protect ourselves as best as possible to be prepared for this horrible situation.”
Marianna Treviño-Wright stands near a section of the new border wall in Mission, Texas. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
Treviño-Wright said the construction of sections of the border wall, andthe subsequent vitriol that came from QAnon followers and Trump supporters, had a profound effect on the butterfly center and its staff.
“When you’re targeted by laws that are designed to be destructive, it’s very difficult to continue operations as normal. So it’s been disruptive. It’s been destructive. And it’s made it very difficult for us to focus on our mission, which is environmental conservation and education.”
Choking back tears, Treviño-Wright explained the events of recent years had put a strain on her mental health and personal relationships.
“It really has made me a misanthrope. I used to believe much better of people, but now I’m afraid to even go to the grocery store because I can’t trust that the person with the cart next to me doesn’t believe” the lies, Treviño-Wright said.
On her accidental venture into political activism, Treviño-Wright called herself: “Utterly reluctant, unwilling, and anxious-to-not-be-here-or-be-doing-this-any-more.”
The butterfly center is now sharing strategies for dealing with confrontational conspiracists with the Children’s Museum of Denver, which was forcibly shut down after anti-maskers frequently directed their anger towards staff.
Treviño-Wright said she didn’t know if her center would reopen, but “certainly hope[s] it does.
“It’s a magical place and it’s a place I’ve poured the last 10 years of my life into developing and defending. I hope there’s a wonderful future in store for the National Butterfly Center, but as long as these people get away with these things, I’m not sure of anything. Not just for anything but for our entire country.
“It’s just unbelievable that somehow things have reached this point in American history that a nature center stands at the crossroads of whether our country slides full-on into authoritarianism or our democratic republic survives.”
Miami-Dade Elections Department 2021-22 records show more than 5,000 registered Democrats switched their party affiliation to Republican. The increase comes just as more victims of third-party registrations are coming forward to report that their voter registration was altered without their permission.
All of the victims were older than 65 years old, live in Miami-Dade County, and all of them were outraged when they learned they were registered as Republicans. “People are being taken advantage of,” Sen. Annette Taddeo said. “Lots of these people don’t speak English or are elderly.”
Sometime in early December, Juan A. Salazar, a 77-year-old Dominican living in Little Havana, exited the elevator of his building tower in his electric wheelchair to get some fresh air in the parking lot out front, as he usually does.
But he recalls that on that particular day, a group of three canvassers wearing red caps and t-shirts that said “Republican Party of Florida” approached him.
According to Salazar, the three workers asked him if he wanted to fill out an application to get his new voter ID card. He told the canvassers there was no need — he knew he got one automatically in the mail before every general election. But the canvassers insisted. “You will get it faster,” Salazar recalled them saying.
Several Miami residents, many of whom are Hispanic and over 60 years old, are now coming forward with their own claims about having their party affiliation changed from Democrat to Republican after interacting with canvassers. https://t.co/JFwLvfw40F
Last Nov, Florida Republican voter registration surpassed Democrats by @ 4,000 votes. Included in that- >5,000 Miami Dade Democrats recorded as “switched”. Now more senior voters are telling us- they didn’t know their party affiliations changed. Our report tonight @WPLGLocal10 ⏩ pic.twitter.com/HiVzHSZSEV
The financier famed for bankrolling some of Steve Bannon’s best-known ventures, as well as the far-right strategist’s jet-setting lifestyle, is in deep trouble for steering a $28 million yacht—the same boat where federal agents arrested Bannon in 2020—out of American waters.
A New York judge slapped Guo Wengui, who also uses the aliases Kwok Ho Wan and Miles Guo, with $134 million in contempt of court fines on Wednesday for violating multiple restraining orders barring him from selling or relocating the boat or any other property he controls.
The high price tag results from nearly a year of the fugitive Chinese national defying the court’s order that he return the craft to a U.S. port—an order that carried a daily forfeiture of $500,000.
The yacht is being sought as an asset to cover unpaid loans allegedly owed to a Hong Kong investment firm.
Wengui is also the chief financial backer of the social media platform GETTR.
Several years ago he and Bannon flew banner planes around Manhattan which declared them to be the Chinese government in exile.
Wengui presently lives in a $68 million Manhattan penthouse.
A New York judge slapped Guo Wengui with $134 million in contempt of court fines on Wednesday for violating multiple restraining orders barring him from selling or relocating the boat or any other property he controls. https://t.co/yBwR1f7ZgS
Scottie's Playtime 
What we are witnessing is PRICE GOUGING, NOT INFLATION.
INFLATION is when business owners raise prices commensurate with higher costs to make ends meet.
But when corporations are reporting record all-time profits, raising prices is NOT INFLATION, it is PRICE GOUGING to capitalize on supply chain disruptions caused by a national emergency.
McDonald’s profits soared 59% in 2021, to $7.5 billion.
ExxonMobil reported a $8.9 billion in profits in the FOURTH QUARTER ALONE, while it was jacking up prices to new records.
Numerous other companies jacked up prices while raking in record profits in 2021.
Donald Trump crashed the economy, destroyed the supply chain, blew up international trade relations by imposing ridiculous tariffs that hurt farmers and consumers, mishandled a pandemic that exploded into a worldwide economic crisis and now as Biden is putting people back, restoring consumer confidence, which stimulates demand, but the devastation wrought by Trump on the supply chain is taking longer to undo, especially as anti-science right wing nut jobs continue to undermine recovery from the Trump plague.
If there were a hurricane, tornado, flood or wildfire and vendors were charging $20 for a bottle of water, they would be arrested. We need to see some of the corporate heads who have tripled their profits on the backs of consumers being frog-marched into the Big House.