🗞️Absolutely incredible reporting here by the @AP

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

🗞️The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

🗞️Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.

🗞️“I was in a field with a hoe in my hand with maybe like a hundred other women. We were standing in a line very closely together, and we had to raise our hoes up at the exact same time and count ‘One, two, three, chop!’” said Faye Jacobs, who worked on prison farms in Arkansas.

🗞️Jacobs, who was released in 2018 after more than 26 years, said the only pay she received was two rolls of toilet paper a week, toothpaste and a few menstrual pads each month.

🗞️Former Angola prisoner, Curtis Davis, talks about his time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary during a 2021 interview near a former antebellum slave plantation near Angola, La. The Myrtles, as the antebellum home is known, sits just 20 miles away from where men toil in the fields of Angola.

🗞️“Slavery has not been abolished,” said Davis, who spent more than 25 years at the penitentiary and is now fighting to change state laws that allow for forced labor in prisons. “It is still operating in present tense. Nothing has changed.”

READ THIS:

apnews.com/article/prison… @AP 🗞️It's a damn shame it has become so hard to share these things here, because everybody needs to read it.

📌WARNING: If you still don't think we are EXACTLY where Germany was in the early-1930s, you need to immediately read one of these history books the fascist GOP is so eagerly trying to ban ... 📌The parallels are absolutely chilling, and obvious.

📌And with the orange traitor's Hitler-esque vermin speech, these fascists are no longer trying to hide it.

📌They are appealing to the 40% of America who actually find authoritarianism appealing.
You read that right.

📌A few words about the duplicitous phony, and lifetime political loser and grifter, Steve Schmidt.

<continued> 📌Lately, Schmidt has been hearing those voices in that empty, round planet that sits atop his neck.

📌Schmidt knows better than I do that those voices always lead to trouble and the certain demise of whatever political poison he's out there pushing.

📌You need to understand — I mean REALLY understand — what is going on in Wisconsin right now:
In April, we elected Janet Protasiewicz (pictured) to the Supreme Court by 11 points. This was a crushing landslide in an otherwise close swing state.
<more> 📌One of the reasons she won so handily, is because the vast majority of this state is tired of our gerrymandered government, and want FAIR MAPS to FINALLY be drawn.

📌Protasiewicz’s win gave the Liberals a long-sought 4-3 advantage in the Court ...

📌On this day 59 years ago, these three young men disappeared near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. They were Freedom Summer civil rights workers

📌They weren't found until August 4, when the FBI exhumed all three bodies below an earthen dam on a local farm.

<more> 📌Throughout the fall of 1964, the FBI continued investigating the case. State and local law enforcement DID NOT PURSUE IT, claiming insufficient evidence.

<more>

📌I was tempted to spike the ball on this Garland news, but deleted it. Yes, I think he has done an appalling job dealing with the attempted coup and attack on America.

📌What most concerns me, though, is this notion that we should not criticize people in our own party.

<more> 📌There is a real danger in not forcing our representatives in power to account for themselves -- no matter who they work for, or were appointed by.

📌NOBODY deserves a blank check.

📌While there have always been ardent partisans, this is a fairly new phenomena.

<more>

📌Father's Day is a complicated place for some of us ... I believe my father is still alive, but wouldn't shed a tear if it turned out he was dead ...

📌It was 1965, and my mom and dad had been on the outs for as long as I could remember, which was a long five years.

<more> 📌It was the only thing I knew at the time, so all that screaming, yelling and breaking just seemed like a part of life’s bumpy natural landscape.

<more>

🇺🇸 American Forces Network provides popular TV and radio programs to our troops and their families overseas. It is an invaluable service and brings back a bit of home to its viewers & listeners. I subscribed during 6+ years overseas with Stars & Stripes.
However ...

<more> 🇺🇸 As great as AFN is, anti-American, dangerous propaganda should not be anywhere near it. When Fox "News" ran this outlandish chyron during its coverage last night, it not only crossed a line, it obliterated it.

<more>

🇺🇸 The most important service you can perform for your country right now is to make sure you share the indictment, "United States vs. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta" EVERYWHERE.

🇺🇸 It is stunning in scope and surprisingly easy to cut through.

<more> d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06… 🇺🇸 Trump actually implicates HIMSELF in the document time and time again. There are no "gray" areas.

🇺🇸 It is also clear, all these top-secret documents should never have been in his possession AND HE KNEW IT.

🇺🇸 I shared this document on Facebook this morning.

<more>

📌RANT WARNING: Forget Trump for a minute, PLEASE, and let's think of how much better off all of AMERICA would be if the petulant son of a bitch had just done what we expect of our children and gracefully conceded defeat in 2020, while vowing to try harder next time? 📌But noooooooo ... not with this orange, loser, miserable fuck.

📌The GOP is banning books and using weapon-grade propaganda like a club to beat the credibility out of our free & fair elections.

📌Our "Supreme" Court is dominated by proven perjurers and bought-off goons, who hide behind their robes and represent the worst of America.

<more> 📌History is a threat to these people because it only serves as a tip for their next bankrupt play.

📌There are more & more guns everyday, proving that it isn't our children's lives nor democracy they value, as much as it is unchecked toxic masculinity in all its pathetic forms.

📌NOTE TO DEMOCRACY-HATING REPUBLICANS AND JOHN DURHAM: In his report, Robert Mueller concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law."

📌Further ... 📌... he indicted 26 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations. The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and other Americans campaign-related charges.

📌Further ...

📌SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — A giant unmanned SpaceX rocket failed catastrophically and blew up shortly after takeoff Thursday.

<more> 📌Attempts by SpaceX owner Elon Musk to paint the disaster as a success mirror similar pathetic efforts to mitigate the multi-billion dollar losses he's suffered since being forced to purchase Twitter by a judge after outbidding himself by tens of billions of dollars.

<more>

📌I am deeply, deeply disappointed in this #DominionvFox settlement.

📌As a career journalist, I hate Murdoch, his disgusting network, and the ghouls it employs with every, single fiber of my soul. The stain they have left on my profession will never wash out.

<more> 📌Since launching his attack on America by standing up his Fox propaganda outlet in 1996, the Australian-born Murdoch and his wretched team of cancerous carnival-barking hyenas have blown more hot air across this planet than all the stinking, coal-burning factories combined.

🇺🇸As President Carter chases one more sunrise, I want to put this out there: I did not vote for him in 1980.

🇺🇸 I take no real pride in typing that, and if I'm being honest, and I was the person I am now doing the voting then, he might have got my vote.

🇺🇸 Please understand ... 🇺🇸 In 1980, I was fresh out of the Navy, and laid off after working construction for a couple of months.
I resisted collecting unemployment, but relented, before finding a job at a delicatessen.

🇺🇸 When that place closed, I was broke, and on the brink of homelessness.

📌Some great reporting by the @nytimes out of Ukraine today. Russia is in deep, deep trouble:

KYIV, Ukraine — As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters. 📌"The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus."

📌20 years ago today millions of us marched against the prospect of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

📌I was the Managing Editor of Stars & Stripes at the time and couldn't believe how little regard our own government had for the lives of our troops and their families.

<more> 📌I could not believe the bloodlust that would accompany the "shock and awe" of blasting to smithereens thousands of innocent civilians on live television, all to support a BIG LIE.

📌I stood in the newsroom disgusted, and went back into my office to cry.

🌹On Valentine's Day, I offer you my favorite poem.
(Dedicated to those I have loved on so many yesterdays, and those who I will love again tomorrow. -Peace ...)

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been 🌹

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

🌹

📌I'm sharing this dangerous article for free from the WaPo because my subscription allows it.

📌It is written the day before the Midterms and absolutely destroys Democrats for the losses they are about to incur.

📌Except that never happened.

<more>

wapo.st/3JeQZQV 📌There is nothing necessarily wrong with an opinion piece that offers up ridiculous opinions. I have written a few of those myself.

📌But, dang, this one was riddled with them.

<more>

🗞️Traitor Trump called the working press "the enemy of the people." (That is projection in its rawest form.) But it was also an attack on truth itself and yet more projection by a phony who lied 30,573 times in office.

🗞️The similarities between Musk and Trump are striking. 🗞️They operate in tiny worlds where they make up the rules that govern their tiny lives and the unfortunate and/or pathetic people around them. They are both spoiled little brats who never evolved into men.

🗞️When they can no longer control their environment, they lash out.

📌BREAKING: Musico was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison, followed by his son-in-law Morrison at 10 years, and Bellar at seven.
apnews.com/article/crime-… 📌Speaking in a recorded video, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer urged Judge Thomas Wilson to “impose a sentence that meets the gravity of the damage they have done to our democracy.”