That's Nanci Griffith's "Working In Corners." Elaine's "5 great Nanci Griffith performances" went up a little while ago and made me think of how much I enjoyed Nanci's work. Like everyone, my favorite album is the live one One Fair Summer Evening. Of the studio albums, my favorite is Storms. But I'm a Nanci fan so I like pretty much all of them. Men with half her talent became stars. Nanci did the work, she had the talent. Radio just wasn't a fan. But long after some of these men are forgotten, Nanci will still be remembered.
Lyla e-mailed to note Market Grow's recipe for Cajun Shrimp and Rice:
Ingredients:
- 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 1 bell pepper, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 cup long-grain rice
- 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- ½ teaspoon thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Fresh parsley, chopped (for garnish)
- Lemon wedges (for serving)
Instructions:
- Season the shrimp: In a bowl, toss the shrimp with Cajun seasoning until evenly coated. Set aside.
- Sauté the vegetables: Heat the olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and bell pepper, and sauté until softened, about 3-4 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook for another minute until fragrant.
- Cook the rice: Stir in the rice, smoked paprika, and thyme. Toast the rice for 2 minutes, stirring frequently to coat it with the spices. Add the diced tomatoes and broth, then season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 15-18 minutes, or until the rice is tender and has absorbed the liquid.
- Cook the shrimp: While the rice is cooking, heat a separate skillet over medium-high heat. Add the seasoned shrimp and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until the shrimp are pink and cooked through.
- Combine and serve: Once the rice is done, gently stir the cooked shrimp into the rice mixture. Remove from heat and garnish with fresh parsley.
Serve your Cajun Shrimp and Rice with lemon wedges for a bright, zesty finish. Enjoy this comforting and flavorful dish on its own or with a side of crusty bread!
"Spanish Fried Egg in the Kitchen" remember? Mona sent that recipe in. Tried it this morning and loved it. Thank you, Mona.
News? Julianne McShane (LGBTQ Nation) reports:
Paris Alexander had been in a destructive relationship for over a decade, learning to tolerate the intolerable even as the abuse progressed—first mental and emotional torment, then physical and sexual torture. Like many survivors, Alexander, who is nonbinary, stayed in the relationship hoping that it would improve. “We stick it out,” they said, “because we think that they’re going to change and come to their senses.”
Then, one day in September 2020, Alexander’s male partner beat them up and dragged them outside their Providence, Rhode Island, home by their hair. Wandering their neighborhood, covered in blood and desperate to flee, Alexander felt haunted by the years of forced isolation: “I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” they recall. A Google search on their phone led them to Sojourner House, which runs the state’s only shelter specifically for LGBTQ victims of intimate partner violence. Almost miraculously, there was some space. Finally, Alexander had caught a break.
At the shelter, known as RISE, Alexander focused on taking “baby steps” toward independence. They got a library card. They started individual therapy. They joined a weekly virtual LGBTQ support group, where they heard terms like “nonbinary,” “gender-queer,” and “gender fluid” for the first time. Back then, Alexander identified as a transgender woman and felt pressured to “look female as much as possible.” The support group taught them, “You don’t have to be [male or female]—you can just simply be who you are, and that’s okay.”
RISE is one of three shelters operated by Sojourner House, named for the 19th-century slave-turned-abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who was also an ardent advocate for women’s rights. Since its founding in 1976, the organization has served more than 60,000 people—1,800 last year alone. A small but critical part of this past year’s $7.4 million budget comes from the federal Crime Victims Fund, a pot of money created by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA. Across the country, VOCA helps pay for the hotlines survivors call in crisis, the shelters they flee to, and the advocates who accompany them to court and help them heal.
VOCA-supported programs helped almost 8 million people in fiscal year 2022–2023, funding nearly 3 million shelter beds and 2.3 million crisis-hotline calls, according to the Department of Justice. Those services have become more critical since the pandemic, as rates of intimate partner violence have soared, a housing crisis has made it even harder for survivors to flee, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given abusers another way to threaten pregnant survivors. But even as the need is growing, VOCA funding has been plummeting—and Congress has failed to act on what many advocates say may be the best hope for a legislative fix.
The current funding crisis is rooted in changes in DOJ policy that date back years. The Crime Victims Fund gets most of its money from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases, according to the department. Those fees and fines have been falling as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government. As a result, deposits into the pot shrank from a high of $6.6 billion in 2017 to $1.39 billion in fiscal year 2023. (Because of congressional caps, the actual amount of money disbursed is even lower.) These declines have trickled down to state agencies—which receive VOCA funds based on their state’s population size—and then to eligible programs. Rhode Island, which has one of the smallest populations, has seen a 54 percent drop in VOCA funds since 2017, to $2.9 million in the last fiscal year. California, the most populous state, went from receiving $218.9 million in VOCA funds in 2017 to $87 million over the same period.
Most states, including California, have managed to come up with some funding to offset the federal cuts, but the money is mostly temporary—lasting a year or two max. Fourteen states, including Rhode Island, did not appropriate any money in their most recent budgets to offset the VOCA cuts, I found in my reporting. This past spring, Rhode Island lawmakers proposed $2 million in supplemental funding, but the bill died in committee.
I’ve spent four months trying to understand how these extreme VOCA cuts are affecting domestic violence programs across the United States, doing more than two dozen interviews and tracking down budget data from every state. The picture that has emerged is deeply troubling: Lifesaving services for survivors are struggling to stay afloat, and experts fear what might happen if a long-term funding solution isn’t found.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:
Friday, November 1, 2024. Donald Trump threatens violence against Liz Cheney, Jennifer Lopez nails down why we need to vote for Kamala, and much more
He also attacked senior Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Adam Schiff and warned baselessly against “cheating” at the polls and forced sex-change operations in schools.
Vice President Harris closed out Thursday with a raully in Las Vegas in which singer and actor Jennifer Lopez emotionally endorsed her.
Donald Trump said former Rep. Liz Cheney is a “war hawk” who should be fired upon, as he raged against one of his most prominent intra-party critics while campaigning Thursday night in Arizona.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” the former president said at a campaign event in Glendale with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Trump also hurled insults at Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in House leadership, calling her “very dumb,” a “stupid person” and “the moron.”
Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president — who never accepted his 2020 loss — has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”
Cheney is perhaps the most vocal Republican critic of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his role in his supporters’ January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. She played a leading role on the House select committee that investigated the attack, and later was ousted from her deep-red Wyoming House seat by a Trump-backed primary opponent in 2022.
Cheney responded to Trump’s comments overnight, saying: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”
Over the course of just four years, male voters under 30 have shifted a net of 14 points towards Republicans, according to polling by the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics.
Citing inflation, immigration, the withering of the American dream, the left’s war on “toxic masculinity,” and the former president’s ability to bro-out with their favorite podcasters, young men told The Post what made them ready to get behind Trump this November.
“As far as young male voters are concerned, I feel like the Democrats have no message for them. The Democrats have totally ignored that base,” Alex Bruesewitz, a 27-year-old campaign advisor for Trump, told The Post.
This week, Kennedy told supporters that if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins, he has promised Kennedy “control of the public health agencies,” including the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnik later denied that Kennedy would have a job with HHS—although, at the same time, he said Kennedy had convinced him to pull vaccines from the market. Trump himself, at his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, seemed to lend credence to the idea of Kennedy leading on health: “I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said. Trump also said on a three-hour podcast episode with Joe Rogan last week that he’s told Kennedy, “Focus on health, focus—you can do whatever you want.” It’s not clear whether such a promise would have been made in exchange for Kennedy’s political endorsement, which would be illegal. But if Kennedy were to be put in charge of HHS, he would be leading the executive department that oversees the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, among others. In the meantime, Kennedy is an honorary co-chair on the Trump transition team, and claims to be “deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run FDA, NIH, and CDC.”
In his own speech at Madison Square Garden, Kennedy took aim at Democrats, saying they were once “the party that wanted to protect public health, and women’s sports”—a bizarre pairing that highlights his recent pivot to attacking trans athletes and gender-affirming care. Kennedy, who ran as a Democratic and then independent presidential candidate before throwing his support behind Trump, is also spreading misinformation on chronic health issues such as obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, and autism; on Tuesday, for example, he said diabetes could be “cured with good food.” In his Sunday speech, Kennedy characterized Trump as a president who would “protect our children … and women’s sports,” as well as “end the corruption at the federal agencies—at FDA, at NIH, at CDC, and at the CIA”—a constellation of bodies rarely joined together, which he implied are conducting surveillance upon and acting against the interests of the American people.
“This unbridled assault on science and scientists, it’s highly destabilizing for the country,” Baylor College of Medicine dean Peter Hotez, author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, told me earlier this year, a few months after Kennedy announced his run. But it’s not just Kennedy—Trump and other Republicans in Congress are also leading the charge to undermine expertise and further erode public trust in the government, he said. “This is what authoritarianism is all about,” Hotez said, lamenting “the collateral damage that it’s going to do to our democracy” and pointing to the ways Stalin portrayed scientists as public enemies during the Great Purge.
Benjamin
and Davies write: “Most Americans have been persuaded that Stein cannot
win the election.” It’s not a matter of being “persuaded”, any more
than we are “persuaded” that Trump did not win the last election. It’s
simply a fact. No one seriously imagines that Jill Stein will get more
than a few percent of the votes anywhere, so I don’t understand what is
served by encouraging anyone to think maybe she’'ll actually win. It’s
not honest.
I also don’t see that we should regard voting for Jill
Stein as just another individual decision, for which no one need be
apologetic. If it leads to a disaster, you should feel bad about it. And
it very well may.
I’ve fleshed out some of the reasons voting for the Green Party is destructive, in these pages; I won’t repeat them all. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/kamala-harris-gaza-2669543360.
Two
points. First, I don’t see how anyone here can honestly take the
position it doesn’t matter whether Trump or Harris is elected. We now
have a full fledged fascist party, the Republican Party. The Democrats
are far from a fascist party. Are progressives so locked into hating the
Democrats that they cannot see the dangers of fascism? Is Gaza the sole
issue that matters? Not whether we have a president who plans to deport
11 million people? Not climate change, not the elimination of honestly
counted elections? Not abortion rights? Not whether reactionaries
control the Supreme Court for another generation?
Yes, I know the
Democratic Party is a capitalist party dominated by capital. But that
doesn’t mean all the differences between Democrats and Republicans are
trivial. I’m actually mystified anyone could believe that or pretend to.
Second,
on whether building a third party is a realistic goal: There are
structural issues that make this very challenging in a political system
with single member districts, as opposed to multiparty list systems. The
single-member district system pushes very hard toward two major
parties. The trend is supported by the fact that – as is obviously the
case here – third parties tend to injure the party closest to them, and
voters grasp that, actually, yes, the lesser of two “evils” is better
than the worse of two evils. Especially when the supposedly ideal party
has no plan that would lead to victory.
Below is the Green Party’s percentage of the popular vote for President for every presidential election of this century:
2000 2.74%
2004 0.38%
2008 0.10%
2012 0.36%
2016 1.07%
2020 0.26%
There
have been downs and ups. But the Greens have had more than twenty
years, and we see no progression toward the Green Party playing a
significant role in American politics. Other than as a spoiler.
Can someone explain to me what the plan is to break out of this role, in which the Greens are either irrelevant or destructive?
- Kamala's Las Vegas Rally9 hours ago
