Warren’s Medicare for All plan has some interesting financing methods. Since it is expensive, it requires an increase in taxes. But it’s a progressive increase, undoing some of the bennies the ultra-rich got from previous Republican tax cuts. And more interestingly, it restructures some taxes in ways that seem targeted right at the financial sector, and at the rentiers who have taken far too much out of the economy without actually producing anything. It’s radical, but in a way pro-capitalist, because it encourages capital to be spent productively, rather than on financial tricks.

Tom Steyer suspended his presidential campaign and called Sen. Lindsey Graham a disaster after the South Carolina primary.
Steyer said, “And let me say this. I, of course, will be supporting — I’ve said from every Democrat is a million times better than trump. Trump is a disaster. And let me say this. I mean, we’re in South Carolina. Lindsey graham’s a disaster. He’s a disaster for the people here. So, of course, I’ll be working on that.”

…….The database obtained by The Associated Press profiles the internment of 311 individuals with relatives abroad and lists information on more than 2,000 of their relatives, neighbors and friends. Each entry includes the detainee’s name, address, national identity number, detention date and location, along with a detailed dossier on their family, religious and neighborhood background, the reason for detention, and a decision on whether or not to release them. Issued within the past year, the documents do not indicate which government department compiled them or for whom.

Taken as a whole, the information offers the fullest and most personal view yet into how Chinese officials decided who to put into and let out of detention camps, as part of a massive crackdown that has locked away more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims.

The database emphasizes that the Chinese government focused on religion as a reason for detention — not just political extremism, as authorities claim, but ordinary activities such as praying, attending a mosque, or even growing a long beard. It also shows the role of family: People with detained relatives are far more likely to end up in a camp themselves, uprooting and criminalizing entire families like Emer’s in the process.

For many Poles, both in the U.S. and beyond, Paczki Day is the kickoff to Lent, the 40 days of fasting and prayer that Catholics and many other Christians in liturgical traditions observe leading up to Easter.
But one needn’t be religious to enjoy a paczek.

“Some people have waning beliefs on their religion, but even if you’re not, you know, 100% Catholic, you’re still 100% Polish Roman Catholic because everything in Polish tradition and the holidays is revolving around the church,” said Bartlomiej Kolatek, general manager of Kolatek’s Bakery on the Northwest Side of Chicago.

In the U.S., Paczki Day comes on what others may call Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday, a day some celebrate by eating pancakes.
The idea is the same: To feast before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday — and maybe to use up some of those tempting foods in the cupboards, like sugar and butter and alcohol.

No less than six of the paczki available this week at Kolatek’s Bakery include fillings flavored with alcohol, including rum and an egg liqueur called advocaat.

Trump’s acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf was humiliated and revealed to be completely unprepared during a Senate hearing on the coronavirus.

Wolf’s performance was brutal and a dazzling display of Trumpian government incompetence. Wolf couldn’t accurately state the number of Coronavirus cases in the United States. He guessed fourteen. The real number is thirty-five.

Video of Wolf being questioned by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)

In an exchange filmed in December but tweeted out only last week, Bloomberg told Sarah Pearson, a Milwaukee activist and organizer who is also a supporter of rival candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, that he is a strong supporter of the Muslim community and its rights. He also claimed: "We only went into mosques when they asked us to come in."

When Pearson pressed him further on the surveillance, Bloomberg said the police "only went in when the mosque or the imam asked ... period. End of story."

Facts First: Mosques and other Islamic organizations were surveilled without being asked or notified during the Bloomberg mayoralty that began in 2002, including with secret informants and undercover officers. Muslim leaders in New York City and in New Jersey, where the NYPD also conducted surveillance, say Bloomberg's claim that the police went into mosques only when invited in is categorically false. Adam Goldman, a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize as part of an Associated Press team that exposed the surveillance program, says the same.