The Israeli-Palestinian issue goes back nearly a century when Britain, during World War I, pledged to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine under the Balfour Declaration. British troops took control of the territory from the Ottoman Empire at the end of October 1917. Large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine began, accelerated by Jewish…
Read More Israeli-Palestinian ConflictThe Happiness Lab [I took this class on Coursera and loved it. Learned a lot, too.] Truth Be Told 70 Over 70 [from an NYTimes article about talking with our elders] Come Through With Rebecca Carroll Hidden Brain [also program on NPR] Sooo Many White Guys This American Life Black Girl Songbook [So good] Fresh Air Resilient Black Women…
Read More Podcasts I LikeThe sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of primarily American litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters, and conspiracy theorists, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and to not be subject to any government statutes or proceedings unless they consent to them. The sovereign citizen movement is one of the main contemporary…
Read More Do You Know What the Sovereign Citizen Movement Is?“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer – a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.“ Frederick Douglass Every year on this day I make an assessment, from my own perspective, of how much…
Read More 4th of July thoughtsExpert conversations to catch up on from The Brookings Brief Inflation hits a 40-year high. New Consumer Price Index data show that inflation rose to a whopping 8.6% in May. On Twitter Spaces, David Wessel, Justin Wolfers, Jason Furman, and Wendy Edelberg discuss the latest numbers and what might come next. Prefer to read? This summary outlines five key points from the speakers. …
Read More Bits and PiecesBY SUSAN FREDERICK-GRAY JUNE 6, 2022 [Are you a UU? Let me know…] The Public Religion Research Institute recently highlighted an important statistic: nearly all Unitarian Universalists (97 percent) support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ people. It’s a similar story for reproductive rights—according to the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of Unitarian Universalists (UUs) support keeping abortion legal in all or…
Read More TRANSPHOBIC AND ANTI-ABORTION POLICIES ARE A DIRECT THREAT TO MY RELIGIOUS FREEDOMBY ANNIKA BROCKSCHMIDT MAY 16, 2022 This trailer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s new documentary The End of Men has drawn a lot of mockery online—especially when it became clear that the device covering the genitals isn’t a glowing Covid test, but that the naked man standing on a pile of stones is in fact bathing his testicles in UV light—a…
Read More LAUGH AT TUCKER CARLSON’S TANNING TESTICLES DOC ALL YOU WANT, BUT THE BULGING MUSCLES AND POTENT SPERM IMAGERY IS A FASCIST DREAMWhile they have varying backgrounds and experiences, a majority of Black Americans (76%) say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves. A significant share says that when something happens to Black people in their local communities, across the nation or around the globe, it affects what happens in their own lives.…
Read More Race is central to identity for Black Americans and affects how they connect with each otherBlair Levin Monday, April 18, 2022 Conventional wisdom holds that last year’s bipartisan passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) reflects the tradition of both parties wanting to deliver better roads and bridges—with nothing new to tell us about making progress elsewhere in our polarized, partisan environment. If anything, infrastructure is the exception that (barely)…
Read More Broadband bipartisanship: How did it happen and will it continue?Health Care — GOP preps for Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade BY PETER SULLIVAN, NATHANIEL WEIXEL AND JOSEPH CHOI – 04/12/22 Republicans are plotting out their messaging strategy in case the Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision authorizing abortion rights. The GOP strategy is to lead with science-based arguments and portray those in favor of abortion rights as extremists. The…
Read More GOP Preps for Supreme Court Ruling on Roe v. Wade