IMPORTANT READS

COVID WATCH - At this point last year, we hoped we'd be on the other side of COVID-19.

COVID WATCH - California’s COVID-19 deaths are skewing younger, with the average age dropping seven years in September.

DATELINE BEJING - Chinese hardliners just had their stance justified by the erratic, verging on unhinged, behavior in the United States and by its military. 

COVID WATCH - In the late 19th century, people protested against mandatory smallpox vaccines. Despite them, today we live in a world without smallpox.

TOM DISPATCH-Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight.

GUN SAFETY - Anti-LGBTQ congresswoman and gun nut Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says she’s very concerned about children’s safety, like when she falsely claimed that transgender people prey on children.

THe SUPREMES - Democrats cannot disgrace the Supreme Court by packing it (adding seats to it). It is already a disgrace.

CAPITAL & MAIN-This year, natural disasters across the country — including epochal drought conditions and devastating wildfires in California —

TERRORISM ROOTS-Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the U.S. and Saudi governments to neutralize it as a live political issue. 

WOMEN'S RIGHTS - Back in the 19th century, Texas was awash in vigilante groups. In those dark years, various self-appointed “law enforcers” modeled after the Texas Rangers embarked on a decades-long campaign of ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples in the western territory.

HOUSING - California’s eviction protections will almost certainly not be extended once they expire after Sept. 30, the state Assembly Housing chairperson said today.

PEACE VOICE - We pretend to have enemies, but mostly what we “have” are people whose lives simply don’t matter.

COMMENTARY-Humanity emerged from the 20^th century leaving behind the Spanish Flu, two World Wars, the Great Depression, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Cold War, colonialism, overt racism, imperialism, the military-industrial complex. . .lots of really bad stuff that we were relieved to see in our rearview mirror. 

WEALTH WATCH - Is it not extraordinary that in a country that claims to be as enlightened and advanced as ours, the combined wealth of three individuals – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett – exceeds the total wealth of the bottom half of Americans?

REMEMBERING 9-11 - September 11 is approaching – the 20th anniversary of the most startling event in the lifetime of most adults.

9-11 PERSPECTIVE - Twenty years have now passed since 9/11.

TEXAS GONE WILD - One of the many preposterous claims coming from supporters of the vicious new Texas law against abortion is that bounty hunters — standing to gain a $10,000 reward from the state — will somehow be “whistleblowers.”

COMMENTARY - They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.”

CLIMATE CHANGE - I'm a climate scientist and on Wednesday night, I watched the rain outside my New York City window break the local record for the most accumulation in an hour.

SCOTUS WATCH - The conservative U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order in the dead of night Wednesday leaving Texas' draconian abortion ban in place, a move that effectively overturns Roe v. Wade and imperils reproductive rights across much of the United States.

CUBA WATCH - The strategy of the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba committee has focused on ending the US embargo of Cuba through extensive outreach to union struggles, nurses protests for adequate PPE, civil rights and Medicare for All rallies, campaigns against police killings and brutality, Palestinian marches and every opportunity to win new support.