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And we should really hope it works at scale, because 60% of world production of lithium is available at the Salton Sea Geothermal Field, it's permitted, it's sustainable, and it's about 10 million times less destructive than hard rock mining.
Title 42 is no longer just a Trump-era policy. This harmful, anti-Black & brown policy is now an official position of the Biden administration.
This announcement is unconscionable & will result in the continuation of life-threatening harm to vulnerable migrant communities. https://t.co/is4XgHea2f
"This group of taxpayers have historically been targeted not because they account most tax under-reporting but because they are easy marks in an era when IRS…relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions." pic.twitter.com/N22WucJe0L
Yeee-haaah! That Gen Zer proudly hails from my neck of the woods.🙂👍 C’mon, Maxwell, make us FL Progressives proud.☮️T and R x 2, Ms. Benny!! ☮️🙂👍 Thanks for doing the weekend Nest hosting. Hope your body is continuing to heal. ✊
Harvard isn’t the worst institution in the US. It has some pluses as well as minuses. It finally appointed a BIPOC woman president. The institution that has the potential to be one of the worst is the U of FL in general, now that DeSantis appointed Ben Sass, someone the faculty and students did not wish to be the president/chancellor.
In 1969, when Black Americans were prevented from swimming alongside whites, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him and cool his feet in a pool. pic.twitter.com/fdhMA7zJh7
Normally, the First Lady of a state is not terribly newsworthy to me. But this article from the Chicago Sun-Times illustrates the Pritzkers’ rise in prominence in the Dem party–and perhaps aspirations for president one day. Both have been very active in politics early on.
In her first four years as Illinois’ first lady, Mary Kathryn (nee Muenster) Pritzker, 55, from Sioux Falls, S.D., was a rare news bite.
Now, on the eve of the second inaugural of her husband, the wife of Gov. J.B. Pritzker — billionaire scion of the Hyatt Hotel dynasty — agreed to sit down for an exclusive peek inside “M.K.’s world.”
It is a world of a schedule on steroids, the timetable of a social worker and socialite, a doyenne managing two homes, three farms, a governor’s mansion belonging to the state of Illinois, and a passion for criminal justice focused on women incarcerated in Illinois prisons.
“I’d like to think my husband and I have become partners in knowing everybody counts, especially fighting for the voiceless and the powerless,” says the first lady, who chuckles about “their vastly different backgrounds growing up.
“No one could have imagined this union,” she says. “J.B. and I came from two very different worlds, wound up working on the same floor of the Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and met on a blind lunch date. The lunch cost J.B. a total of $4.80.”
She has spent the past four years dealing with two teenagers in the midst of the COVID pandemic, curating a collection of Illinois art and historic furniture for the newly rebuilt governor’s mansion, reviving the state’s poet laureate and arts program and, without fanfare, visiting prisons to interview incarcerated women throughout Illinois.
“Decades ago, I met an entire family of women serving time at Cook County Jail,” she says. “The grandmother was serving time for murder. Her daughter and granddaughter were in serious criminal muck. Prison was their home. It was a nightmare.”
M.K., whose nickname was born during her college years, grew up in Nebraska and the South Dakota prairie. Her future husband grew up in a big-city environment in California.
“It’s probably why I have learned to love Springfield — its warmth, its size, like my Sioux Falls hometown. It’s very familiar territory to me. Rural. A feel of the west. Very low key.
“And I got to do the fun job of redecorating a newly restored house,” she says, having been educated in historic decorative arts and architecture and now writing a book on the governor’s mansion makeover, which is set for publication later this year.
“It was a cold, gray day when I walked into the governor’s mansion before the Inaugural. I was so nervous. I had a giant learning curve ahead of me.”
Photos of all 40 former Illinois first ladies — found in the attic and reframed by M.K. — now occupy prominent mansion wall space. Historic recipes have now been culled from first ladies’ old cookbooks. And Mary Todd Lincoln’s almond cake is now served for dessert at mansion dinners.
The current first lady says she learned “true skills” on the farm of her “Grandma Marce.”
“She taught me to sew, crochet, make chocolate cake, take care of animals like ‘retired’ horses and, as the church’s secretary who handled donations, she taught me bookkeeping. It’s served me well.
“I may have gotten in trouble ringing the church bells, but mornings of feeding the pigs, farm work and building forts out of twigs kept my brother and I busy.”
A farm has never been far from M.K.’s front door.
“My dad, Ted, grew up on a little farm in Nebraska, a land grant to my family during the Civil War,” she says. “I own it now.
“My dad was the first person in the family to go to college, where he met my mom, who eventually became a state senator. Dad served as chief of staff to South Dakota Gov. Richard Kneip, the next-to-last Democrat to serve as the state’s governor since 1978.”
Last year, M.K., an avatar for women’s health issues, was credited by Secretary of State Jesse White with helping push creation of a new, streamlined state ID program for prisoners approaching release, which is now managed by that office.
“They desperately need to find housing and jobs upon exit from prison,” she says. “Imagine not even being able to access your birth certificate or proof you ever paid a bill lost or misplaced while you were lost in the prison system.
“If you incarcerate a mother, you are also incarcerating her children. And 86% of women in state prison are serving sentences for nonviolent crimes.”
An equestrian and horse devotee, M.K. was given six miniature cows by her husband. “They are wonderful,” she said of her herd of six: Huey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Crouton, Peaches, Blondie and Alice, all at their farm in Wisconsin.
Surely, a whiff of wonder on a farm once owned by a beloved grandmother named Marcelene.
wpDiscuz
Posting tweets by progressives, some whom may join the Squad at some juncture. We’ll see!
Our Musketeers!! You go, girls (and guys)!! 🙂
🇺🇸🗽✊ Okay, you all, get ready to fight the FRight fruities this summer over the debt limit, SS, and Medicare. We The People are right behind ya!✊✊🇺🇸
✊👏 On my trusty iPad. I can get the emojis a lot easier on this device than on my crusty ole warhorse desktop.
ICYMI:
Rogers of AL was ready to lunge at Matt Gaetz, but I’m certain many were ready to given it was nearly midnight.
Back on the ole desktop. Gaetz is just another Desh1tface and Orange Maggot: a showboater. Problem is the idiot yahoos who fall for these jerks.
I CAN believe it, as the GQP resembles other 3rd world countries that have fights breaking out on their legislative floors quite frequently
As we all know, this will be one h3lluva dysfunctional House! 🙁 And that’s with climate catastrophe staring right in our face!
Byedone is a RW fossil. Where’s the surprise?
or put it another way…
That got crankin’ with the Raygun Curse.
i couldnt resist
Sad, isn’t it? Let’s see how long he lasts.
Yeee-haaah! That Gen Zer proudly hails from my neck of the woods.🙂👍 C’mon, Maxwell, make us FL Progressives proud.☮️T and R x 2, Ms. Benny!! ☮️🙂👍 Thanks for doing the weekend Nest hosting. Hope your body is continuing to heal. ✊
https://twitter.com/davidrkadler/status/1611431708775092250?s=20&t=m8gEOO_WRcJ9egcG6BcTIg
Classical, pathetic illustration of a yahoo per Jonathan Swift. One reason why I am not impressed with the Ivy Leagues and Hah-vad.
Harvard isn’t the worst institution in the US. It has some pluses as well as minuses. It finally appointed a BIPOC woman president. The institution that has the potential to be one of the worst is the U of FL in general, now that DeSantis appointed Ben Sass, someone the faculty and students did not wish to be the president/chancellor.
You can also make that statement about the University of Chicago where Milton Friedman came from. Talk about stupid and backwards.
I suppose, although they have noteworthy alums. One of them is the new Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions committee. 🙂
Normally, the First Lady of a state is not terribly newsworthy to me. But this article from the Chicago Sun-Times illustrates the Pritzkers’ rise in prominence in the Dem party–and perhaps aspirations for president one day. Both have been very active in politics early on.
First lady M.K. Pritzker on husband Gov. J.B. Pritzker, interviewing incarcerated women, family
👏👏🙂
I know this is a few years old but missed it and i figured to pass it along in case others missed it as well.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled