In American popular culture, the pejorative socialist! is hurled with much the same venom as Klaus Kinski’s bureaucrat! The closest we Americans have come to socialism, let alone a socialist revolution, was the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt and the legacy of Social Security.

Vermont Senator, Progressive and Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has run as an Independent since 1990 and refers to himself as a Democratic Socialist. Reactionaries not with standing, that is an honorable designation.

Writing in Is Bernie Sanders really a socialist? Or just redefining socialism for America? for The Guardian, Dan Roberts wonders if Americans can see past the vitriol.

Perhaps a more interesting question therefore is not whether Bernie Sanders qualifies as a socialist among the purists but whether he can rehabilitate the word as a more neutral political term in the capitalist heartlands of America.

“He has the capacity to reintroduce the word socialism without its negative connotations,” argues [George Washington University history professor Eric] Arnesen. “I don’t know how likely it is, but it is certainly a possibility that in the current environment will lose some of the sting it once had.”

He believes it may help explain why Sanders is so willing to continue being described in this way, despite the word’s past toxicity.

“If you have called yourself over the years a socialist and if your opponents are hurling the term at you, you can either run from the term and then you look like a flip-flopper or you can take the label and say: ‘And your point is? It’s not a dirty word’,” adds Arnesen.

Own the word Bernie!

This is the reason I turn off my Internet connection when I need to accomplish complicated tasks and why, when I do have my modem turned on, I really like Foxfire’s Reader View plugin.

Scott Adams shares:

There are days when my brain is flying in so many directions that I have to literally chant aloud what I need to do next in order to focus. Here’s what that can look like.

Me chanting: Find the file, find the file, find the file, find the file; Open the file, open the file, open the file; Search for the keyword, search for the keyword, search for the keyword, search for the keyword; copy the paragraph, copy the paragraph, copy the paragraph; paste it into Word, paste it into Word, paste it into Word…

In the sixty seconds it might take to complete a simple task of finding and copying some text, I would normally have seven-to-ten important thoughts that have to be acted on right away. For example, I might remember an upcoming meeting I forgot to write down. If I interrupt my task to add it to my calendar, I will improve my odds of making it to the meeting. But if I let the diversion win, I will likely get diverted again and again by equally “urgent” tasks until I wake up in a corn field miles from home with a donkey, a toaster, and no memory of how it all happened.

So, as a defense against distractions, I sometimes need to chant my current steps as I do them. And it helps me focus.

I’m wondering if you have as many distractions in your life. And if you do, can the chanting help you too?

Yes, chanting has helped me a number of times, even before I ran up the Internet on-ramp back in 1980.

I was spanked as a child a half dozen times or so—usually for not owning up to my crime—and received perhaps three or four swats. I survived. As an adult, however, I have to seriously question whether the spankings did more harm than good and what corporal punishment says about our society.

That is why this headline caught my attention: Suffolk man charged with excessively spanking child at Wal-Mart. Kate Mishkin writes:

A Suffolk man was charged with excessively spanking a 3-year-old male in a Wal-Mart parking lot, according to police.

The police were called at around 5:40 p.m. Friday to the store in the 1200 block of N. Main St. in Suffolk after a man was reported spanking a child in the store and its parking lot. Jessie Albert Lee Holloman Jr., 62, was arrested on charges of abuse and neglect of a child and causing cruelty and injuries to a child. Child Protective Services was contacted and the child is in custody of his mother, police said

In America we ought to consider who celebrated this particular issuance of corporal punishment and why they chose to do so. I think that the mother involved chose to use the words I just lost it when later interviewed is also telling. Anyone acting after just losing it is unlikely to be engaging in a good action.

I forgive Steve Winkler his lede—I won’t repeat the abomination here—because I think the rest of what he writes is spot on.

Since independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made his bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination official, he has, rather quickly, raised millions of dollars in small donations and attracted overflow crowds wherever he speaks. And despite the confusion of the mainstream media—the Washington Post, for example, called Sanders’ rise “unexpected” and on par with Donald Trump—he’s not just some frumpy old white guy on a rant. He’s a seasoned, left-leaning politician primed to deliver a progressive message to a public both eager to embrace another option on the left and to be able to chose from more than just a Democrat or a Republican.

Political party designations are suspicious for someone, like me, who grew up in the southern United States, where Democrats ruled until the great 1970s switch-a-roo put Republicans in the driver’s seat. The “good ole boy” Democratic voters—the yellow dogs—gave themselves over entirely to the Republicans, while Democratic politicians, too, inched closer to the right, abandoning whatever principles they might have once had for the “triangulation” of Bill Clinton and the other Baby Boomer donkeys who sold out to the same corporate companies and tough-on-the-poor rhetoric as their counterparts across the aisle. But up in Vermont, where Birkenstock hippies are neighbors with live-free-or-die libertarians, Sanders was a true independent.

Independent of the banks, independent of the corporations, independent of the billionaires.

This could work.

What has Democratic Party presidential candidate, and U.S. Senator for Vermont, Bernie Sanders done for the people who have never voted for him in the past? Pushing through an $11 billion package for an additional 10,000 urban rural healthcare clinics in all 50 states and creating 20,000 more primary healthcare physicians, dentists and nurses is just one example.

Bernie Sanders on community health centers in the ACA from The Intercept on Vimeo.

Lee Fang, in GOP Officials Publicly Denounce Bernie Sanders’ Obamacare Expansion, Quietly Request Funding for The//Intercept writes:

The conventional wisdom on Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is that he’s a charming if impractical dreamer, a pie-in-the-sky socialist who’s good at inspiring young people and aging hippies, but hopeless at the knife fighting that real-life politics requires.

Despite the inherent limitations of a self-described democratic socialist who eschews the norms of Beltway fundraising, the Democratic presidential candidate from Vermont has won legislative victory after victory on an issue that has been dear to him since his days as Burlington’s mayor.

That issue is the simultaneously benign and revolutionary expansion of federally qualified community health clinics.

Over the years, Sanders has tucked away funding for health centers in appropriation bills signed by George W. Bush, into Barack Obama’s stimulus program, and through the earmarking process. But his biggest achievement came in 2010 through the Affordable Care Act. In a series of high-stakes legislative maneuvers, Sanders struck a deal to include $11 billion for health clinics in the law.

The result has made an indelible mark on American health care, extending the number of people served by clinics from 18 million before the ACA to an expected 28 million next year.

As one would expect, the program was largely met with plaudits from patients and public health experts, but it has also won praise from even the biggest Obamacare critics on Capitol Hill. In letters I obtained through multiple record requests, dozens of Republican lawmakers, including members of the House and Senate leadership, have privately praised the ACA clinic funding, calling health centers a vital provider in both rural and urban communities.

To Sanders, the clinics have served as an alternative to his preferred single-payer system. Community health centers accept anyone regardless of health, insurance status or ability to pay. They are founded and managed by a board composed of patients and local residents, so each center is customized to fit the needs of a community. No two health centers are alike.

We are talking about nothing less than a revolution in primary health care in America, indeed.

Also at The//Intercept: The Intercept’s Summer Reading List.

Previously…

As citizens of a conquered and occupied nation, Scots understand the realities of being silenced, imprisoned and executed for opposing the will of a foreign religion and royal house.

“We believe that every human being has a fundamental right to express their opinion which is also enshrined in the United Nations Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ and stressed that Saudi Arabia being a key member of United Nations must honour its UN treaties,” Global Minorities Alliance vice-chairperson Shahid Khan said Saturday.

“We as GMA defend the right of all persecuted and oppressed communities around the world and stand in solidarity with Raif Badawi and his family and all those voices around the world who have been advocating the freedom of Raif which has been denied to him because of his liberal views on Islam and call for his immediate release.”

“Our thoughts are with Mr Badawi’s family that is facing this challenge with a hope in hearts and we continue to support Mr Badawi’s courageous wife, Ensaf Haider and her children at this difficult times of their lives”, said Mr Khan.

Might Raif Badawi’s growing iconic status, like that of Nelson Madela and so many others around the world, energize all peoples?

Dune, one of the 18 books that have shaped my world, was first published by Chilton on 1 October 1965. One of the very few DVD/Blu-Ray discs in my collection is the David Lynch vision of Dune.

Hari Kunzru celebrates the golden anniversary:

During the period he wrote Dune, his wife Beverly Ann was the main bread-winner, her own writing career sidelined by a job producing advertising copy for department stores.

Soon, Herbert’s research into dunes became research into deserts and desert cultures. It overpowered his article about the heroism of the men of the USDA (proposed title “They Stopped the Moving Sands”) and became two short SF novels, serialised in Analnog Science Fact & Fiction, one of the more prestigious genre magazines. Unsatisfied, Herbert industriously reworked his two stories into a single, giant epic. The prevailing publishing wisdom of the time had it that SF readers liked their stories short. Dune (400 pages in its first hardcover edition, almost 900 in the paperback on my desk) was rejected by more than 20 houses before being accepted by Chilton, a Philadelphia operation known for trade and hobby magazines such as Motor Age, Jewelers’ Circular and the no-doubt-diverting Dry Goods Economist.

The rest, is epic.

I always enjoy the Merriam-Webster Ask The Editor videos. While I have my own quirks—over vs. more than being one particularly irritating example*—I appreciate the squishy language aspect brought to the table by the editors. Language Arts teachers across the United States, and possibly in the rest of the English-speaking world, notwithstanding, words are what we say they are, and we can fight over meaning and usage.

*More and less are used for quantities—I have more than a dozen apples, not I have over a dozen apples—and over and under are used for position—the bridge is over the creek, the dog dug under the fence.

The annual reading of the Declaration of Independence on National Public Radio…

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

The Guardian emails:

Dear Jeff,

We thought you’d like to know that the Keep it in the Ground campaign has now attracted royal support. Prince Charles gave a speech on Thursday night in London on climate change in which he spoke of a need to “re-wire” the global economy and curb fossil fuel subsidies.

The prince also made special mention of Keep it in the Ground:

I can only welcome and commend the Guardian’s campaign, which has proved so clear, compelling and powerfully resonant with many millions of people around the world. The ‘Keep it in the Ground’ campaign is the first action of its kind from such a newspaper, and has—like the broader fossil fuel divestment movement—focused the mind very considerably as to the scale of the transition before us.

The prince went on to say:

The “Divest/Invest” movement has recently seen significant and increasingly broad-based support, and has sharpened investors’ focus, not just on the risks of holding hydrocarbon stocks within their portfolios, but also to the ever more pressing need to divert vastly more capital into clean energy, low-carbon investments and infrastructure projects.

You can read the full speech and watch a video of the prince speaking here.

Yours sincerely,

James Randerson, Assistant National News Editor

Keep Carbon In The Ground…

Objects in the mirror are closer than they seem. Take that to the bank!

What began as a progressive pipe dream—that a rabble-rousing senator from the nation’s second least populous state could wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from one of the most well-known politicians in recent history—is starting to seem plausible.

By way of massive rallies, grassroots politicking and a record-setting number small donations, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is winning over progressive voters, convincing them that his underdog campaign has a fighting chance against Hillary Clinton’s well-oiled—and extraordinarily well-funded—political machine.

On Thursday, the Sanders campaign announced it raised $15m since 30 April from 250,000 donors, many of whom have made small contributions online. In contrast, Barack Obama attracted only 180,000 donors during the first quarter of his presidential campaign in 2007, which has been considered the benchmark for online fundraising by an insurgent candidate in modern presidential politics.

The senator, propelled by a groundswell of support, is also gaining ground on Clinton in polls emerging from across the early voting states.

Get involved on 29 July.

We are now 11 days into summer and Gary Younge is not hopeful.

For the past couple of years the summers, like hurricanes, have had names. Not single names like Katrina or Floyd—but full names like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Like hurricanes, their arrival was both predictable and predicted, and yet somehow, when they landed, the effect was still shocking.

We do not yet know the name that will be attached to this particular season. He is still out there, playing Call of Duty, finding a way to feed his family or working to pay off his student loans. He (and it probably will be a he) has no idea that his days are numbered; and we have no idea what the number of those days will be.

The precise alchemy that makes one particular death politically totemic while others go unmourned beyond their families and communities is not quite clear. Video helps, but is not essential. Some footage of cops rolling up like death squads and effectively executing people who posed no real threat has barely pricked the popular imagination. When the authorities fail to heed community outrage, or substantively investigate, let alone discipline, the police, the situation can become explosive. An underlying, ongoing tension between authorities and those being policed has been a factor in some cases. So, we do not know quite why his death will capture the political imagination in a way that others will not.

But we do know, with gruesome certainty, that his number will come up – that one day he will be slain in cold blood by a policeman (once again it probably will be a man) who is supposed to protect him and his community. We know this because it is statistically inevitable and has historical precedent. We know this because we have seen it happen again and again. We know this because this is not just how America works; it is how America was built. Like a hurricane, we know it is coming—we just do not yet know where or when or how much damage it will do.

Summer is riot season.

When I was an undergraduate student at Ohio University we jokingly referred to the Annual Spring Riot, a counterpoint to our Halloween uprising.

No one is laughing this summer.

The House of Saud really, really likes the number 1,000.

Ludovica Iaccino, in Pakistan’s controversial Zaid Hamid faces 1,000 lashes and 8 years in jail for criticising kingdom, writes:

A Pakistani political commentator has been reportedly sentenced to eight years in jail with 1,000 lashes after allegedly delivering a speech criticising Saudi Arabia’s regime.

Pakistan authorities said Zaid Hamid was arrested and taken into custody while travelling to Medina with his wife earlier in June.

“Our embassy in Riyadh has informed us that Mr Zaid Hamid was arrested about two weeks ago. Since then, the embassy has been working with the local authorities to get consular access,” Foreign Office spokesperson Qazi Khalilullah was quoted in the Daily Pakistan as saying.

“Due to the efforts of the embassy, his wife was able to talk to him. Again, due to the efforts of the embassy, his wife will be able to meet with him on 30 June,” he said but gave no further comments on the possible charges.

Pakistan media sources say Hamid has been sentenced to eight years in jail with 1,000 lashes although official confirmation from Saudi Arabia has not yet been issued.

I have written extensively about Badawi this year because his story is a canary in the mine. He is not alone in receiving barbarian treatment at the hands of the House of Saud. Hamid is simply one more example of the brutal evil to be found in one of our treasured allies.

Hmmm… Maybe he was thinking of these Red Tails…

Expressing moral indignation when human rights are violated is all well and good, taking the high ground should never interfere with profits, or at least Britain’s Ministry of Justice seems to think so.

The legality of a bid by the commercial arm of the Ministry of Justice to provide services for Saudi Arabia’s prisons is to be challenged in the high court.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights is launching a judicial review of the tender, alleging that the department has no legal power to carry out the activity.

The existence of the MoJ’s commercial body, Just Solutions International, was revealed earlier this year but little is known about its purpose or operations.

Lawyers for GCHR allege that competing for profit-making contracts for consultancy services overseas is not a “governmental purpose”.

Other than raising revenue for the MoJ, the organisation argues, JSI’s aims are not of public benefit and therefore it is “ultra vires”, or beyond the powers, of ministers to operate such a scheme.

The MoJ has so far declined to release detailed information about the deal. Saudi Arabia has been widely criticised for its human rights record. There has been an international outcry over the case of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes for advocating freedom of expression online.

Melanie Gingell of GCHR stated: “By providing services to the Saudi prison and probation service the UK is lending legitimacy and indirectly supporting such abuses.

“It is hypocritical of the government to publicly condemn barbarity such as is meted out to Raif Badawi, while at the same time implicitly condoning such activities by bidding to provide services on a commercial basis to those who perpetrate the abuses. ”

Somehow I simply find hypocritical inadequate in this instance. Perhaps criminal would be better?

Here in Cleveland we have our own five victims of FBI entrapment, but they are far from alone. In Entrapped, a film produced for The//Intercept

In 2007, five men were arrested and accused of plotting to attack the Fort Dix military base near Trenton, New Jersey. Among them were the brothers Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka. Their case involved highly paid government informants with criminal histories, one of whom worked over the course of roughly 18 months to attempt to implicate them in a plot. Though none of the Duka brothers would ever plan any putative plot, they were ultimately all sentenced to life in prison. They remain incarcerated today.

This film by Razan Ghalayini, which includes raw surveillance footage and other video documentation that was used against the Duka brothers in court, shows the impact of the case on the Duka family.

The Intercept’s investigation into the case of the Fort Dix Five can be found in Christie’s Conspiracy—The Real Story Behind the Fort Dix Five Terror Plot.

The Bush-Obama Security Scheme strolls on…

Like the famous Burma Shave signs of the last century, the road signs use humor to make important points about safe driving. Would 21st century Americans respond to this approach?

Alan Rushbridger chose Naomi Klein to kick-off his last hurrah as editor of The Guardian, his Keep Carbon In The Ground campaign. Now, arguably the single most influential religious leader on the planet, Pope Francis, has also turned to Klein, described by The Guardian as one of the world’s most high-profile social activists and a ferocious critic of 21st-century capitalism. What does the Pope want Klein to do?

Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen, scientists and activists to debate climate change action. Klein, who campaigns for an overhaul of the global financial system to tackle climate change, told the Observer she was surprised but delighted to receive the invitation from Turkson’s office.

“The fact that they invited me indicates they’re not backing down from the fight. A lot of people have patted the pope on the head, but said he’s wrong on the economics. I think he’s right on the economics,” she said, referring to Pope Francis’s recent publication of an encyclical on the environment.

The climate change denial machine has been in full, Chicken Little, pants-shitting mode since news of the pope’s encyclical first leaked late last year.

Expect Klein to be elevated to Whore of Babylon status any minute.

Keep Carbon In The Ground…

I know that a lot of people lament losing Jon Stewart, but the rabbi taught his pupils well.