SAY WHAT?

SAY WHAT? - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Wednesday joined several local New York Democrats in condemning Starbucks' recent firing of two union leaders in the state, part of a string of terminations the company has carried out across the country in recent months as it tries to crush worker organizing.

"We are writing to express our dismay around the firings of Austin Locke and Joselyn Chuquillanqui, two Starbucks partners who were also union leaders at their stores," the New York lawmakers wrote in a letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and the rest of the company's management.

"We have heard reports that the company has been targeting pro-union partners and firing union leaders all over the country," they added. "We continue to stand by these workers and would like to remind you that all workers have the right to join a union, and that retaliation based on exercising these workplace rights is unlawful."

"We urge you to respect workers' right to organize and follow the law," the lawmakers continued. "We stand in solidarity with Austin and Joselyn, and other partners in New York, in calling for you to reinstate these two workers."

Starbucks has fired dozens of union leaders across the nation since December, when employees in Buffalo voted to form the company's first union in the U.S.

SAY WHAT? - Oh dear. Even though they've spent the last furious year shrieking "Fuck Joe Biden" at the guy they revile as a decrepit, Nazi, grooming, socialist pedophile, the sleepy old man evidently hurt the poor MAGA cultists' fragile feelings the other night in Philly with his "earthquake of truth" speech correctly labeling them "a threat to this country" and "semi-fascist," but why he bothered with "semi" is beyond us. Standing before a red-lit Independence Hall, Biden noted this was where the Constitution was written, "where we set in motion (this) extraordinary experiment of self-government with three simple words: 'We, the People.'” But now "equality and democracy are under assault," he warned. "Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." In his truth-telling, Biden noted, "Too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal," like the spectacle of the former Mobster-In-Chief still out here babbling that the Jan. 6 thugs are "very much in my mind" and if he's re-elected he would "look very, very strongly" (he still doesn't know any other adverbs) at pardoning them all from his prison cell.

SAY WHAT? - In our own ongoing "national security Hindenburg," a fed-up FBI just explosively got down to it in their latest filing against the deranged old man who stole state secrets after committing many, many other crimes, brazenly stashed them in his moldy hotel because lookit all the tawdry stuff he already got away with, and then kept/still is lying about it. A review in case you've once again sought solace under your rock: After Trump blithely, illegally took home a stash of classified information, he and his hapless merry-go-round of "lawyers" stonewalled the FBI for 18 months as they tried to get it back; when they issued a subpoena, he tossed them a few in January but kept obfuscating; when the FBI, no longer fucking around, got a search warrant, they found 33 more boxes with over 100 records, or double what he'd begrudgingly given them; he's still fighting/lying/making up gonzo arguments to get them back. Prosecutors' latest 36-page earthquake of a filing came only because Trump, in one more desperate, stupid stall, had filed his own incoherent request for an entirely pointless "special master" to oversee the investigation, thus giving the feds a chance to lay out their most comprehensive, damning, whoah-go-get-him account yet. 

SAY WHAT? - Citing the need to "reflect on the terrible toll of slavery," Joe Biden last weekend observed this country's first Slavery Remembrance Day, marking the "ignominious milestone" of the day in 1619 when the first slave ship, the British White Lion, landed in the American colonies at Virginia's Point Comfort. (Surreal names, all.) "More than 400 years ago, twenty enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the shores of what would become the United States," Biden said in a statement. "Millions more were stolen and sold in the centuries that followed, part of a system of slavery that is America’s original sin." The official recognition of those "sins worth hiding" came as a result of a bill introduced by Dem Rep. Al Green of Texas and Sen. Elizabeth Warren; it has passed in the House but will likely languish in the Senate. In their statements, Warren and Biden both pointedly reject the right's current white-washing of history. Warren: "The horrors of slavery can never be forgotten." Biden: "Great nations don’t hide from their history. They acknowledge their past, both the triumphs and the tragedies."

SAY WHAT? - Reproductive rights advocates on Wednesday warned that pregnant people across Texas are now at risk of facing life-threatening health crises without access to emergency abortion care, following a ruling by a federal judge who rejected guidance from the Biden administration.

U.S. District Judge James Hendrix's ruling Tuesday night rejected guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that—regardless of the state's abortion ban—would require Texas doctors to perform abortions in the case of a medical emergency.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court's right-wing majority in June, HHS issued guidance saying the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires medical professionals to provide abortion care to a pregnant patient experiencing a medical emergency.

The 1986 law requires anyone who comes to a hospital's emergency department to be "stabilized and treated," and the Biden administration argued that abortion care qualifies as stabilizing treatment for a pregnant person in a medical crisis.

Hendrix, who was appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump, sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and two doctors' associations in Texas which support forced pregnancy.

The ruling was handed down a month after the story of Houston resident Elizabeth Weller became public. Weller experienced a premature rupture of membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy, causing her own health and that of her fetus to decline. Weller was told that under Texas's abortion ban, she would have to wait until the fetal heartbeat stopped before having a medical abortion, even as her condition worsened. An ethics committee at her local hospital eventually determined she could receive care—after an ordeal she described to NPR as a "dystopian nightmare." 

SAY WHAT? - Because girls - also young, progressive, female political leaders - just wanna have fun, video emerged last week of Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin on a night out joyously dancing, singing, drinking and getting down with friends, a spectacle of glad normalcy that horrified dour male misogynists who harrumphed this was Just Not Done. Cue the ensuing "absolutely stupid political scandal" known as Partygate, a "very classic 'Finnish scandal,' which is actually not a scandal at all but because Finnish politics tend to be so uptight and slightly boring you have to get creative to stir things up." At 36, Marin is the world's youngest head of state; raised by two women, she is also a fierce supporter of LGBTQ rights, the happily married (straight) mother of a four-year-old, and the  multi-faceted, competent leader of a majority-women government who since being elected two years ago has successfully advocated for Finland to join NATO and navigated growing tensions with neighboring Russia after their invasion of Ukraine - all while periodically taking time out to attend music festivals, looking very cool yet. Still, because misogyny, Marin has been criticized for having a life beyond work; in the recently leaked video, she was filmed rowdily singing and dancing with several friends in the private VIP room of a nightclub in Helsinki.

SAY WHAT? - So....Given his hapless, tone-deaf, kamikaze campaign ads, maybe millionaire carpetbagger, quack huckster of magic-cure-everything pills, and "ridiculous performance artist that is Mehmet Oz" doesn't want to beat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman to become a GOP senator for Pennsylvania after all. Like several other famous but otherwise woefully unqualified GOP candidates, the guy who once ate a $2,000, gold-encrusted steak while playing a tacky doctor on TV carries as much ill-fitting baggage into a key battleground race as the traveling professor transformed, in a terrific MeidasTouch ad, into a slippery Wizard of Lies. Dorothy to the Wizard: "You're a very bad man." A well-known, Trump-endorsed snake-oil salesman - sex-bots! - Oz and his business got hit this summer with the largest ever class-action lawsuit settlement, over $5 million, for lying about a "magic weight loss cure" that wasn't; he later managed to whittle down the payment to $625,000, a pittance compared to an estimated net worth of over $100 million that would make him one of the fattest cats in the Senate. Not only is he a rich crook; he's also a famously longtime New Jersey resident who might actually still live there, despite running for the Senate seat in a hyper-localized Pennsylvania  where residents proudly identify by county, city, even neighborhood.

SAY WHAT? - Hoo boy. In the wake of an FBI search (not raid) that apoplectic MAGA-ites are hysterically, simultaneously likening to the KGB, Gestapo, Stasi, unsavory antics of Third-World thugs and "the worst attack on this republic in modern history," the guy who's repeatedly said "only the mob takes the 5th" just took the 5th over 440 times for six hours when asked by prosecutors reportedly armed with "pulverizing" evidence about his (pretty sordid-sounding) business practices. Still, furious if ignorant fans are shrieking that "if they can do that to a former president" - search his trashy McMansion - "imagine what they can do to you," and besides the IRS is coming for you and the FBI will probably plant something so now it's finally - finally! - time to bring out your guns for a shiny new civil war. One typical response among a gazillion came from gonzo Trumpy Arizona nominee for governor Kari Lake who feverishly charged "this illegitimate, corrupt Regime hates America," which is why, that "darkest day," "our Government, originally created by the people, turned against us." "Our Government is rotten to the core," she railed about a law enforcement agency doing its job. "These tyrants will stop at nothing. If we accept it, America is dead." Note to self: If clueless zealots like her gain power, she may have a point.

SAY WHAT? - Improbably, things just keep getting weirder. Even as the FBI raids "my beautiful home Mar-A-Lago," we have the mind-bending spectacle of venal, mendacious, murderous warmonger Dick 'Dr. Doom' Cheney - who lied us into war using junk intelligence, championed torture from "rectal re-hydrating" to waterboarding, and "would do it again" - emerging from the dark side to claim the moral high ground in a campaign ad for his daughter that eviscerates Orange Guy as a liar, loser, coward and greatest threat to the republic ever, except maybe for himself. So: Darth Vader trashing Gollum, Lord Voldemort ripping Elmer Gantry, Hannibal Lector torching The Joker. Yeah, no cognitive dissonance here. "In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," says Dick at the start of a spot for Liz, who's trailing in her Wyoming primary against Harriet 'Big-Lie' Hageman for calling out Trump for the tin-pot, sociopathic buffoon he is. "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie...He lost his election and he lost big." Oof. Harsh.

To cheesy musak we think is meant to sound patriotic, Cheney adds, “Liz is fearless...There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office.” Now, the conundrum. God love anyone, even named Cheney, working to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office. 'Cause, hey, c'mon. This is the guy who, just in this week's disclosures, griped he wished his generals were more like Hitler's; had flunkies giving campaign data to Russian agents; evidently really did flush documents down his toilets; is still out here idiotically babbling; and when the FBI executed a search warrant Monday night, ranted hysterically on his low-rent Truth Social that "these are dark times for our Nation" because Mar-A-Lago is "under siege, raided and occupied" by the FBI in "a weaponization of the Justice System (by) radical left Democrats (that) could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries," also Russia Russia Russia scam, impeachment hoax, and her emails, also antique furniture. So absolutely, take him down by any means necessary and before it's too late, though it may already be.

SAY WHAT? - In our first glimpse at a post-Dobbs political landscape, the reverberations are still flowing from the "thunderclap" of deep-red Kansas voting by a "staggering" margin to protect women's access to abortion as "every woman's choice, and not the government's." The explosive backfire on a key front of the right's culture wars came in a GOP-majority state long pivotal in the abortion fight - see the Summer of Mercy - and one so conservative it once banned Charlotte's Webfor "blasphemous" talking animals; its school libraries continue to ban books - The Handmaid's Tale, The Bluest Eye, The Hate U Give that looks at racist police, a Cats vs. Robots comicbook that mentions the word "nonbinary" - at a ferocious rate. Still, abruptly questioning a longtime, anti-choice narrative in their statehouse, Kansans came out in droves to tell those in power, "Get your hands off our bodies." Dobbs, said one, "woke up a giant."

Thank Alito. In the wake of a SCOTUS decision that "rolled a political grenade into every statehouse across the nation," residents of a heartland state Trump won by 15 points showed up in the biggest turnout for a midterm election, ever. Right-wingers had deliberately timed the vote during an August primary with typically very low, mostly Republican turnout; instead, more than 900,000 Kansans - double the number expected, four times the last primary, and almost what a presidential election draws - turned out for a landslide of 58.8% to 41.2% result. Contributing to the stunning numbers: 70% of newly registered Kansas voters were women. Twitter: "Lmao, GOP," "Thing I never thought I would say: Thank God for Kansas," and in nods to the Wizard of Oz, "Dorothy can go home now" and "We're not in Kansas anymore. Abortion rights: Yes, we are." 

SAY WHAT? - Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science! And now yeah, art! Encompassing every conceivable queasy contradiction, Albuquerque this weekend unveiled two larger-than-life, suitably menacing bronze statues to honor the city's fictional, iconic, enthralling and much beloved... umm...meth dealers from the masterful Breaking Bad. If you're still (understandably) under that rock: In the singular AMC show that ran from 2008 to 2013 - and is still zealously watched, debated and re-watched - Bryan Cranston plays Walter White, a schlubby, dispirited high school chemistry teacher who, after he's diagnosed with lung cancer, turns to cooking meth as a way to provide for his family once he's gone. In his gonzo new role, he recruits Jesse Pinkman, a hapless drop out, lost boy and two-bit drug dealer played by Aaron Paul, to help him navigate the city's criminal underworld. From this bleak premise sprouts Vince Gilligan's darkly hilarious, improbably moving, ever-blindsiding marvel of consummate writing, acting, directing, cinematography and music that set a twisted, artful, staggeringly high new bar - and begat two of the most epochal characters ever - in American drama. Thus do fans feverishly deem, say, BB's majestic Ozymandias episode, "The greatest achievement of mankind." Full disclosure: Yes, we love it.

SAY WHAT? - A mere month after the medieval anti-abortion ruling by a cabal of right-wing "fanatics and vandals" we still call SCOTUS, its effects are already cataclysmic. At least seven states have passed near-total bans and many more are working on them, some with monstrous features like Indiana's call for abortion-providers to serve up to six years in prison; experts predict a devastating impact on women's education, employment and income; a new study says it could lead to a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths. The ruling is viewed as so extreme that even Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly tried to reverse at least parts of it; with his failure, suggests Charlie Pierce, he should just resign: "Your work here is done...You've lost control of your majority (and) it's gone barking mad." With the help, one more time, of unconscionable, ever-complicit Susan Collins.

SAY WHAT? - With apologies to Charles Dickens, last week was the worst of weeks, offering grisly evidence of the cataclysmic injury to the quality of our political life and leaders these past few bleak years, from the shredding of women's rights reflected in gonzo contraception hearings to revelations of the "historic ignominy" of Trump's war on democracy. The ravaged result: Increasingly, rule by brownshirts, nitwits, charlatans and malignant clowns - ie: today's GOP - hungry for power at any cost. The dystopian spectacle of the House debating whether or not women should have access to an IUD was, of course, necessitated by the dystopian spectacle of a hard-right SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade; it, in turn led to the realization that Clarence Thomas' medieval definition of sinful - possibly including birth control, same-sex romance and marriage equality - is, in the words of Rep. Andy Kim, "not just an opinion of one man - this is their plan." In our new, post-Dobbs world, that means libraries in Oklahoma have been warned not to say the word "abortion" or help anyone find any information on "abortion," and abortion providers in Idaho, with a six-week abortion ban, face the "uniquely evil" risk of being sued by family members of a fetus, including those of a rapist.

SAY WHAT? - Because the world is too much with us, today we choose to celebrate humanitarian, hero, mensch and chef José Andrés, who with his extraordinary World Central Kitchen has now served over 100 million meals to besieged Ukrainians - in bunkers, at the border, in their often remote, rubble-strewn homes. With its mindless, pointed destruction of ports, borders and food supply chains, Andrés charges, Putin's war of hubris has also quickly become "a war on food." In response, WCKhas created the largest humanitarian effort in Ukraine, with an "army of goodness" - thousands of volunteer food-fighters both local and international - producing over 300,000 meals a day at 350 kitchens across Ukraine. The Chefs for Ukraine run a three-pronged operation: feeding refugees in the neighboring countries to which many Ukrainian women and children have fled - Poland,  Hungary, Slovakia - activating hundreds of kitchens in towns inside the war-torn country to feed those who remain, and stockpiling and transporting food so communities can cook for themselves.

SAY WHAT? - Horror. As a madman in Uvalde, Texas fired over 100 shots execution-style, murdering 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers, newly released security video shows a swarm of police armed with rifles, handguns, helmets, armor, bulletproof vests, shields, tear gas, gas masks and a sledgehammer standing in the hallway of Robb Elementary School for 77 minutes doing....nothing - though one did take time out, Lady-Macbeth-like, to wash his hands, and some of their colleagues outside were busy harrassing and handcuffing frantic parents. After some debate, and in conjunction with their news partners KVUE television station, the Austin American-Statesman just released the gut-churning video from school security cameras documenting the May 24 massacre. The paper published two versions of the video: one edited to just over four minutes highlighting critical moments; one covering in real time the entire, grisly, hour-and-22 minutes as the shooter crashed his truck outside, entered the school, shot his way into the classroom, and kept periodically, repeatedly shooting as police dawdled in the hallway for an hour and 14 minutes until a couple of them breached the classroom and killed the shooter. We see, the Statesman concludes, "dozens of sworn officers, local, state and federal - heavily armed - walking back and forth in the hallway, some leaving the camera frame and then reappearing, others training their weapons toward the classroom, talking, making cellphone calls, sending texts and looking at floor plans, but (not) attempting to enter the classrooms."

SAY WHAT? - In a stunning escalation of the barbarism pervading our national discourse, Honorable (sic) Justice 'Beer Boy' Brett Kavanaugh was "unduly harassed" at a swanky D.C. steakhouse last week by some "unruly protestors" who had the audacity to claim they have the freedom to decide what to do with their own bodies; thus did they ruthlessly "trample" the lying, deeply illegitimate justice's "freedom (to) eat dinner," which according to the court's deranged legal luminaries is almost equivalent to the freedom not to have to bear your rapist's baby or otherwise submit to forced child-bearing, but maybe not quite. The appalling  act of incivility by mouthy rabble took place at the baroque, Good-Fellas-like Morton's Steakhouse - "We answer the question: What if Outback was expensive as fuck?" - which boasts it caters to "DC's "power elite" and "decision-makers" even if they're really, really terrible decisions. And they have a dress code to prove it. Its pale customers must wear "business attire or smart casual" - no hoodies, ball caps, baggy pants - to enjoy the $25 Lump Crab Cake and $35 Margarita Millonaria before tucking into their $129 Tomahawk Rib-Eye and $12.50 loaded (1430 calories) baked potato and finishing off with a $16 espresso and $14 let-them-eat-Legendary-Hot-Chocolate Cake.

SAY WHAT? - Sadly, maddeningly, many of us find the vapid, doleful, allegedly-more-united-than-divided Biden, with his "serene platitudinous" rhetoric on our multiple cataclysms - gun carnage, Roe v. Wade, imperilled voting rights, failing institutions, flailing economy and oh yeah burning planet - not up to meeting the apocalyptic moment; hence the aggrieved plaint,  "FIGHT FOR US GODDAMNIT." In fiery contrast to his muted civility, we offer as a role model defiantly unmuted, fire-and-brimstone, no-fucks-left-to-give community activist and Louisiana Senate candidate Gary Chambers, who compellingly wields truth, fact, history, fury and "buck-wild" political messaging to call bullshit at every dark turn. A progressive 36-year-old native son of Baton Rouge - pro-choice, health care, reparations, equity - Chambers is running to unseat ghastly GOP Sen. John Kennedy under the righteous edict of Isaiah 1:17: "Do good. Seek justice." As both advocate and candidate, Chambers knows and repeatedly reels off the hard truths about his state, which ranks in the country's bottom 5% in every facet of life: 46th in health care, 48th in education, 49th in economy and environment, 50th in crime. "I live in the 2nd blackest state in the country," he declares, "and there's an immense amount of suffering here."

SAY WHAT? - In an unholy juxtaposition - cue panicked people running for their lives past a Klezmer band cheerily playing on unawares - Highland Park, Illinois celebrated "America's day (with) what has become a sickeningly American story" when a disturbed white kid armed with an AR-15 (shocker) exercised his less-than-well-regulated Second  Amendment rights by opening fire on a July 4 parade, killing seven innocents and wounding over two dozen. Police say Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, 21 - in another shocker, a gun-and-death-obsessed misfit whose past is "littered with red flags, including threatening to kill his whole family" - used an "unsecured" ladder to climb unseen to a rooftop in a "very random, very intentional" crime he'd planned for weeks. Police said he fired up to 70 shots; the victims ranged from eight to 88 years old. Crimo escaped but was soon taken into custody "without incident" - in contrast to, say, Jayland Walker, who Akron police shot 60 times during a chase after a traffic stop, not a mass killing, before they brought his body, handcuffed behind his back, to the morgue. Maybe Walker being black made a difference here? Naaah. Though white, Crimo's still been charged with seven murders; more charges are expected.

SAY WHAT? - A mournful reminder that as America's macro atrocities go on apace - against women, schoolchildren, immigrants and now the planet - so do its personal, everyday, often unseen acts of barbarity. Seven years after Freddie Gray (black) died of a broken neck in a Baltimore police van "rough ride" - and all six officers went free - Richard 'Randy' Cox (black) is paralyzed from a broken neck in a New Haven police van "rough ride." Cox, 36, was arrested on June 19 after someone at a party reported he had an apparently unlicensed gun tucked into his pants; handcuffed behind his back, he was loaded into a metal transport van with no seatbelts. At one point the driver, officer Oscar Diaz, stopped abruptly; body cam footage shows him lurch to a stop, followed by a sickening thud. Diaz said he was trying to avoid hitting another car, but footage shows he was speeding - 36 mph in a 25 mph zone - and residents say they often see police "careening around" in the vans to terrorize helpless prisoners inside. "Horrific" video released this week from inside the van shows Cox sitting uneasily in back as the van hurtles toward the station, trying to find a grip somewhere. When Diaz slams on the brakes, Cox' body suddenly, swiftly hurls along the smooth metal floor and cannonballs headfirst into the back of the van. He lies still. A few seconds later, you hear him softly whimper, "Help....help...help."

SAY WHAT? - Offering a glimmer of hope "the merchants of death are not invincible," Palestine Action has successfully, permanently shut down the London headquarters of Israel's largest arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, with multiple sites in the U.K., after pummeling them with six actions in six weeks. Elbit makes 85% of Israel's drone fleet along with bullets, tear gas, surveillance equipment et al; the company likes to boast its weapons systems are "battle-tested on Palestinians." The London closure marks Palestine Action's second rout of a British Elbit site in less than two years, prompting the group's defiant new slogan"2 Down, 8 To Go." London's office was also the site of the group's  inaugural action in an 18-month campaign that used fiery direct action and civil disobedience - occupations, blockades, defacement, smoke flares, throwing fake blood, locking themselves together - to demand the U.K. end its complicity with Israel's apartheid regime and #ShutElbitDown.

SAY WHAT?- Note: We were writing this when the news of Roe broke; it's hard to keep up with the deluge of atrocities by the cabal of extremists formerly known as SCOTUS. We hope to get to the abysmal criminalizing and corralling of women and their bodies soon, but we may need to take a break from the awful before we do.

In a ruling most sentient beings deemed a lethal "revolution in Second Amendment law," the right-wing "court that dark money built" cited dubious 300-year "history" to strike down New York's rigorous limits on concealed carry - and by extension gun restrictions now protecting 83 million people - dismissing the notion of "proper cause" to be packing in public or the bloody real-world implications of that dismissal and likely unleashing a flood of challenges to any and all gun-control measures. The "maximalist opinion" by Justice (sic) Clarence Thomas, a self-righteous standard-bearer for a party that inexplicably claims the right to regulate a uterus but not an AR-15, renders most of the nation's gun-control laws "presumptively unconstitutional." For advocates of common-sense gun laws, it is "the worst-case scenario," brought to us by the party that used to rail against legislating from the bench before they began a decades-long crusade to strip us of any rights except that of bearing arms, also babies. We're all the Wild West now - or maybe just Texas - and, as of Friday, Gilead.