First how much cruelty is a pork chop worth: As far as I am concerned no cruelty. Pigs are intelligent, sensitive -- and clean -- animals. They are treated horrifically.  I feel guilty eating pork chops and when I eat alone don't do it. I cannot find pork on sale in the markets I go to where I am assured it's a small farm or the pigs have been ( Read more... )

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Dear friends and readers,

#Happybirthday to President Biden, a very hard working and well meaning highly competent effective politician and good man. I am so relieved he is president. I wake up peacefully knowing the previous man, a ruthless (in all senses of the term) lawless criminal, is gone, no longer worried what bad things are happening, and ( Read more... )

I have again been watching the French series about WW2 in France, centering on the Nazi occupation of 1940-1945 and then fast forwarding briefly to 1946-7, 1975 and then 2002:  A French village.   Gentle readers, you must see it to learn about what is happening in the US today. I have written about it on three blogs: Seasons 1-2, Seasons 3-4, ( Read more... )

Friends and readers,

There is more urgency in my usual message: this week I'll put it: please open and listen to, or read these columns, which you might have missed.


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Last night on PBS Judy Woodruff parrotted Trump's false analogies and did not say using such false reasoning Trump is making false analogies and showing indifference to the health of other people. (I understand he did worry very much when he was told he shook the hand of someone who had shook the hand of someone who came down with coronavirus.)

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Today is the Virginia Democratic Primary.   I voted for Bernie Sanders -- around 7:20 am. I voted for him in 2016. I believe if he could win the presidency he has the integrity and strength and ideals in him to be another FDR. My daughters vote for Warren; Izzy has already voted (she was out of the house by 6 am): she voted for Warren as a woman ( Read more... )

Dear Friends ( Read more... )

So, last night Trump gave a speech adamently refusing to sign a bill to open the gov't. He wants a huge ineffective wall across the southern borders of the US; he talks of a humanitarian crises he causes and his solution is more detention camps.  He ignored the people who are now being required to work for no money and the people who have been ( Read more... )

And I saw no video program tell about him, though both the NYTimes and Washington Post published obituaries. The first is short and tells little; the second includes many words and qualifications intended to trivialize and cast Mr McReynolds in a negative life (such as he was not a communist, but a socialist -- the implication is to equate him with ( Read more... )