New Polls Show Anti-Trump Isn’t Enough to Beat GOP

With six months to go before the midterm election, new national polls are showing that the Democratic Party’s much-touted momentum to gain control of the House has stalled out. The latest numbers tell us a lot about the limits of denouncing Donald Trump without offering much more than a return to the old status quo.

 

Under the headline “Democrats’ 2018 Advantage Is Nearly Gone,” CNN reportedWednesday that nationwide polling found “the generic congressional ballot has continued to tighten” -- “with the Democrats’ edge over Republicans within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the first time this cycle.”

 

Big Pharma Wants People on Antidepressants Forever and It’s Working

30 Apr 2018– Antidepressants were once considered a short-term therapy to help people get over a troubled time. All that changed with the debut of the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant drug ads on TV, and the promotion of the now-discredited “chemical imbalance” theory of depression. Though there is almost no evidence of the theory––that SSRI antidepressants correct deficits in brain levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter––antidepressants became blockbusters for Pharma.

May Volunteer Workday

Trees and a pond, tall grass and a white gazebo

Saturday, May 12, 9am-12pm
Goodale Park, 101 Buttles Ave.
Our next workday of the season is just around the corner!

Help keep Columbus, Ohio's oldest (and BEST!) city park looking beautiful. Weeding, watering, litter pickup and more. Our 13+ gardens are 100% volunteer planted and maintained. Can you lend a hand? 

Join us Saturday, May 12th, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Goodale Park. Meet at the Caretaker's Residence in the center of the park (use Park St driveway into the park and follow until it dead-ends). Please wear weather-appropriate clothing, as we will be working outdoors. 

A weather update will be posted on Facebook (Friends of Goodale Park) and on our Twitter page (@GoodaleParkFrnd) at 8am the morning of the event, so please check before heading to the park. 

Got tools? Bring 'em! We have a supply of garden gloves and tools, but we always need more. Hand trowels, shovels, and clippers (non-electric, please) are always in demand. 

Need more info? Email Emily at volunteercoordinator@goodalepark.org.

Lee Camp interview

Bob interviews Lee Camp from Redacted Tonight and talks about the history of the Kent State shootings that happened May 4, 1970

http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/by/title/the_other_side_of_the_news_may_4_20...

PolyMet’s Tailings Ponds are not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things (and Neither are Husky’s Hydrofluoric Acid Storage Tanks)

The first (of many) junior mining company that wants to mine copper in northeast Minnesota’s water-rich, relatively unspoiled forest and lakes region is the PolyMet Mining Corporation that is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

 

PolyMet is a Canadian Penny Stock mining company that you can buy on the NYSE for 81 cents a share. It’s peak share price over the past 12 months was $1.36 a share, but it isn’t on anybody “buy” list at the moment.

 

PolyMet has never mined anything in its life and has never earned a single penny producing anything of value. It is a front group for Glencore, a multinational mining, commodities and oil and gas trading company that is based in Switzerland. Both groups prefer remaining hidden behind boardroom walls. PolyMet’s daily operations are totally funded by mostly greedy institutional investors and loans from deep-pocketed Glencore. Neither corporation should have any credibility in the minds of right-thinking individuals. I will explain that stance later in the column.

 

Three Mothers — Tres Madres

Black and white photo of three women, two black and one Latina smiling at the camera

Thursday May 10, 7pm, Columbus Mennonite Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave.

We are building a future where mothers and their children can be together.

As Mother’s Day approaches, join us for an intersectional, sacred, and movement-building conversation where three women will come together to share their stories as mothers.

• A Mexican immigrant mother who has been in sanctuary for seven months and is fighting to be at home with her family.

• An African-American mother whose son was killed by the Columbus Police Department.

• A refugee mother who had to choose which son to leave in Uganda because she could only bring one child with her.

We will release a short video of their story and share individual and collective actions on how we must fight to keep mothers with their children.

Hosted by Solidarity with Edith Espinal.

Contact: SolidaritywithEdithEspinal@gmail.com

21 days in … a vacuum

Young looking Asian man with no smile but clapping his hands

Well, not really a vacuum. The past three weeks have been more like the space between our planets which is actually full of all kinds of stuff but doesn’t have much happening. The bloated Congress has been typically idle, and the administration has spent most of its time battling through an increasingly large number of scandals. Then there’s the solar wind that blows in all directions, constantly moving but achieving no forward progress. That’s been the Democrats’ lackadaisical plans for the next couple of years and the executive branch’s staffing changes. It is said that a lot can happen in a day, but following national politics makes it impossible to believe.

NATIVE SON Theater Review

Note: This review contains plot spoilers.]

 

I “celebrated” Karl Marx’s 200th birthday by attending a theatrical version of the 1940 novel Native Son by onetime Communist Party USA member Richard Wright. As adapted by playwright/screenwriter Nambi E. Kelley, Antaeus Theatre Company’s SoCal premiere of Nambi’s play is anything but namby-pamby. Indeed, viewer beware: this is a very disturbing, upsetting one-acter and those who prefer for their stage outings to be innocuous entertainments might want to skip this relentlessly hard hitting drama. After all, as dramatist Bertolt Brecht noted in The Threepenny Opera: “Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.” 

 

DPRK Hot Takes

Peace and the Nuclear Paradox

Whenever the topic is nuclear weapons, I remain in a state of disbelief that we can talk about them “strategically” — that language allows us to maintain such a distance from the reality of what they do, we can casually debate their use.

Consider, in the context of the sudden rush of alarming news that Donald Trump may trash the Iran nuclear agreement on May 12, on the false grounds that Iran is in violation of it, this piece of news from several months ago:

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