RT America: 'Texas Senator Wendy Davis Stops Anti-Abortion bill With 13-Hour Filibuster'

Source:Russia Today- Texas State Senator Wendy Davis.

Source:FreeState MD 

"Texas Senator Wendy Davis Stops Anti-Abortion bill With 13-Hour Filibuster" 

From Russia Today

"RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya) (Russian: Россия Сегодня)[9] is a Russian state-controlled[1] international news television network funded by the Russian government.[16][17] It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an autonomous non-profit organization founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[8][18] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[19][20][21] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (2010–2022),[22][23] RT UK (2014–2022) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[6][7]

RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[58] and conspiracy theories.[65] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[72]

In 2012, RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence.[73] Referring to the Russo-Georgian War, she stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[17][74] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[75]

RT was banned in Ukraine in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea;[76] Latvia and Lithuania implemented similar bans in 2020.[77][78] Germany banned RT DE in February 2022.[79] After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland and then the entire European Union as well as Canada announced they were formally banning RT as well, while independent service providers in over 10 countries suspended broadcasts of RT.[80][81][82] Social media websites followed by blocking external links to RT's website and restricting access to RT's content.[83][84] Microsoft removed RT from their app store and de-ranked their search results on Bing,[85][86] while Apple removed the RT app from all countries except for Russia." 

From Wikipedia

I'm somewhat surprised that Texas Senate Republicans didn't cut off Senator Wendy Davis long before now. Unless, you need a 2'3 vote ti cut off filibusters in the Texas Senate, as opposed to 3-5 in the U.S. Senate. Because Texas Republicans not only control the Governor's Mansion, but both chambers of the Texas Legislature with large majorities. .

TIME Magazine: Josh Sanburn: 'California Corrections: How a State Picks Thousands of Inmates to Take Out of Prison'

Source:TIME Magazine- San Quentin Prison, California.

Source:FreeState MD

“Last week, a three-judge panel ordered the state of California to reduce its prison population by almost 10,000 inmates before the end of the year.

The order is the latest in a decades-long struggle over the state’s overcrowded prisons, which the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2011 for violating the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The state, however, argues that the condition of its prisons has significantly improved since the first lawsuit was filed in 1990, especially its prison healthcare system. California is the only state to have triggered federal involvement over prison conditions.

A three-judge panel made up of two U.S. district judges and one from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is ordering the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% overcapacity. California’s prisons now hold about 119,000 inmates and are 150% overcapacity, which means about 9,500 inmates will need to be released. But how?

Despite the dramatic ruling and the headlines that followed, California has already had plenty of practice adjusting its prison population.

(VIDEO: How Yoga Can Help in California’s Overcrowded Prisons)

“Prisoners are released every single day,” says Don Specter of the Prison Law Office, which provides free legal advice to California inmates. “This is not a dramatic number of prisoners.”

Since the Supreme Court ruling, California’s prison population has fallen by about 25,000 inmates thanks to a process called realignment, according to Jeffrey Callison, press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Realignment sends offenders convicted of non-violent, non-serious or non-sexual felonies to jail. In the past, many of those offenders would have been sent to prison.

In May, the state sent a plan to the three-judge panel to ease prison crowding, which would release more than 600 prisoners who are low risk (often elderly or frail) or have earned “good time credits” for good behavior. The proposal would also transfer about 1,700 inmates to a new prison scheduled to open this month, send 1,250 to “conservation” or “fire camps” to fight fires, lease about 1,600 cells in county jails, divert low-risk offenders to community correctional facilities, lease private prisons and expand rehabilitative programs. Still, the plan is a couple thousand short of the 9,500 number the court is mandating.

On Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown began circulating legislation to reduce the prison population, according to the Los Angeles Times, but a number of legislators, including the state Senate leader, are pushing the governor to keep fighting it. Last week, Gov. Brown requested an immediate stay of “this unprecedented order.”

Callison says the state will request a stay from the three-judge panel this week. If it’s denied, the governor will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court – while halfheartedly going along with the federal court order.”

From TIME Magazine

CSPAN: William F. Buckley vs George McGovern (1997)

Source:Hertha Oveido- Firing Line publisher and columnist William F. Buckley.

Source:FreeState MD 

"William Frank Buckley, Jr. ( 24, 1925 --  27, 2008) was a conservative American author and commentator. More Buckley: 

welcome like and subscribe to my channel for more vidéo !

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to run for President when she sought the Democratic nomination in 1972. WNYC .

Episode FLS106, Recorded on  13, 1989 Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. (George Stanley) McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith." 

From Hertha Oveido

The title of the debate is essentially William F. Buckley vs George McGovern: Liberalism vs Conservatism. The problem with that is that even though William F. Buckley was obviously a Conservative in the political sense, a Classical Conservative, Constitutional Conservative, perhaps even a Conservative Libertarian, George McGovern was never a Liberal, at least in the classical sense. 

Senator McGovern called himself a Liberal, he met the mainstream media and Hollywood pop culture stereotypes of what it means to be a Liberal, except for being religious, a military veteran, and even an American patriot who not only loved his country, but who thought for. Everywhere outside of the United States and in the rest of developed world and perhaps even everywhere in the developing world, George McGovern would be called a Socialist, or a Social Democrat, or a Democratic Socialist. 

In the rest of the developed world, except for perhaps Canada, Liberals are considered Center-Right, not Center-Left, because they're seen as people who believe in liberal democracy (not social democracy) and individual rights, (not collective rights) as well as limited government. (Not expansionist government) 

Everywhere outside of the United States, except for perhaps Canada, William F. Buckley would be the Liberal in this debate and George McGovern would be the Socialist, or Social Democrat. 

The Nation: Katrina Vanden Heuvel- ‘An Oregon Trail to End Student Debt’

Source:The Nation- a little early to be celebrating Halloween, especially if you think that holiday is racist.

Source:FreeState MD 

“The new public education financing model is not only a progressive victory for the state, but also a common-sense national model on an issue where Congress has been derelict.” 

From The Nation

Under the Oregon college affordability plan (at least according to Katrina Vanden Heuvel) students in Oregon do not pay for any of their college education while in college. But pay three percent of their working income for the next twenty years after they graduate from college.

So lets say someone averages seventy-thousand dollars more for the less for the first twenty years, after leaving college, which is not unrealistic, in other words one million four thousand dollars over a twenty year period, that comes out to them paying forty-two thousand dollars.

The average cost of a college education right now is over hundred-thousand dollars. So that would leave colleges with a sixty-thousand dollar hole per college graduate. They simply can’t afford that. What we need to do instead is find a way to pay for that entire college education in an affordable way that makes higher education universal for all Americans.

What I’m in favor of is creating Universal College Savings Accounts or UCSA. Something I’ve already proposed on this blog. Which is for each kid that is born their parents would be able to set up an account for each student tax-free. That would be matched by their employer and perhaps even the Federal Government, or we could allow the states to set up their own systems and parents would have eighteen years to come up with the hundred-thousand dollars they would need to send each kid to college. Low-income parents, would get their contributions tax-free, but also would get that money back in a tax credit.

We should also be expanding the Federal Government college academies like with the Armed Forces. And have an academy that covers Justice, Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs (to use as examples) that graduates of these academies would have to serve in these services after graduating like with the military.

The fact is and I know Social Democrats hate hearing this, but there’s no such thing as a free education anywhere in the world. And not even in the most socialist of countries. We have to pay for our education one way or the other and have to do it in a way that is fiscally responsible in a way that those bills get paid, but also so everyone has access to higher education. Like we have access to K-12.