*Grassroots progressive groups on Tuesday urged Democratic congressional leaders to ignore Republicans, right-wing members of their own party, and neoliberal economists who are pushing lawmakers to hit the brakes on federal spending as inflation surges to levels not seen in decades.

The US is in danger of a recession. To cut spending now would make that recession worse, as it did for President Hoover in 1930: it hoovered up the jobs, and dumped Americans into Hoovervilles. The way to avoid a recession, as Keynes taught and FDR carried out, is to increase government spending. The US government learned to do this, until the plutocrats came to dominate the government in the 1980. Now a recession is an opportunity for the richest to get richer.

This article proposes a fallacious argument for imposing a cease-fire on Ukraine, to be followed by negotiations under circumstances that would give Putin the territory he has conquered plus wherever else he demands.

The article starts by assuming that continued war can mean, for Ukraine, nothing other than continuing destruction and advance by the Putin forces. This is called "defeatism". I don't think it is true.

It continues by claiming that the only way to save Ukraine from putative violent defeat by Putin is to cease the fighting under conditions that compel defeat by negotiating. Putin will insist on all of Ukraine he wants by threatening to renew the war, after having brought copious supplies.

That outcome follows from that defeatism, but that defeatism is a supposition, not fact. Ukrainians do not want to be "saved" by forcing them to give up the fight. They want the chance to fight and win some of their country back.

As Putin's army gets ever weaker, he will become willing to settle for less and less. After enough damage, he will settle for taking what's left of his army out of Ukraine so that he can remain in power in Russia.

T he EU is considering an anti-SLAPP directive.

A study estimated that 21% of all reptile species are "threatened" or worse. This covers all the reptile species whose status is known well enough to determine whether each one is threatened. There are species whose conditions are so little known that scientists find it hard to determine whether they are threatened; those were omitted from the survey.

Manchin is having a meeting with billionaires who carry no political affiliation except "we want more riches".