On Sunday, April 14, 2024, Iran fired about 170 drones, more than 120 ballistic missiles, and more than 30 cruise missiles from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and areas controlled by Hezbollah in Lebanon toward Israel.
I do not know if this question is related. But I want to know how we can demand the Logan Act be used to stop Trump from running a “shadow foreign policy” while Joe Biden is POTUS. No private citizen (which Trump is) is supposed to meet with or have his people meet with foreign governments the way Trump is!
I made the same comment on another Substack. I don’t understand how tfg hasn’t been charged with violating the Logan Act. But then, there’s so much he’s managed to violate and get away with.
Who should we be writing to insist that they initiate this? I mean, our do nothing House of Reps as led by Mike Johnson, of Seven Mountain Madness, is getting nothing done except to avoid legislating and taking recesses. Does he even take himself seriously? If so, how sad for him.
Hey! Don’t insult Benedict Arnold! Arnold was a great patriot and a revolutionary hero. He stymied the British invasion into northern New York at the battle of Valcour Island, and was the most important American commander at the decisive battle of Saratoga. His treason was largely a matter of professional frustration and personal pique. After he went over to the British, he led a Loyalist campaign in Virginia, so that he has the distinction of being the best general on both sides in the same war. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Kenneth Roberts wrote a series of novels that dealt with Arnold’s story. You can find them on Amazon.
I hear you Jon. I have read of his contributions and his military expertise. Point taken. But regardless, the name has come to symbolize treason and we jump to it when we look for analogies.
In the future, I suspect another name may supplant it.
Where did the Trump -Putin connection come from? It was a fantasy cooked up by the Clinton's and echoed by the media. Its a lie. Brennan briefed Obama in the summer of 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planned to tie Trump to Putin to take attention away from her email scandal.
BTW Clinton kept and stored highly classified documents illegally. When those records were subpoenaed she bleached bit the server and destroyed her phones with hammers. Of course when the FBI investigated they didn't to prosecute. NO raids, no indictments, nada.
I wish there was one shred of logic in your proposal. Once Hillary Clinton lost the election, who was president? If there was anything there there with Clinton don't you think Trumps operatives would have discovered it?
But wait, maybe all those emails are still in the basement of the pizza parlor along with Hunter Bidens laptop and all the guns he owned. That's probably the same basement they buried Tony Soprano!
Oh come on. They've been hard at work on the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, the Liberty in Laundry Act, the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, the Clothes Dryer Reliability Act, the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act and the Refrigerator Freedom Act.
becky, you know all these appliances are so very important and now need congressional protection because having energy efficient appliances is not patriotic. I hate it when the dishwasher rebels. And now the dryer has put up an American flag and the washer is complaining about us being woke. We have a houseful of books about those subjects that a true American shouldn't know about and the heat pump has threatened to burn them.
Their misplaced attention to "home appliance patriotism" is inexcusable, but may provide some fruitful campaign statements from their Denocrat opponents.
Do people even KNOW that is what the House has been up to instead of dealing with things like our own border security, Asian security issues, Israel and Gaza, and Ukraine!
But they were also hard at work investigating and impeaching Sec'y Mayorkas, and today the Senate gave the repubs their well deserved reward! It went something like, "Go home and get your shine-box"
Let's just all resolve NOW to be very vocal about this come November! Vote Republican = recess; Vote Democrat = action. Obviously, I'm not in the advertising business, but you get my drift.
I wish we could be as vocal and as active NOW as in decades ago when people gathered in front of the Congress and the Supreme Court and protested the lack of representation of their views. While I dread violence as threatened by the MAGAfascists ultra-extremists, I hate being sidelined, silenced, hogtied by threats. It seems like we're already in a non-democratic country when we see our views and our institutions disregarded and abused by what is clearly a violent minority answering to a vengeful Trump and Putin combination.
Yeah, the world has changed SO much, Roxanna. I can recall going to a local Vietnam war moratorium here in Cleveland, maybe 1970ish, and there were probably 20,000 people who showed up! Can't imagine much of anything drawing that kind of protest response today. But stay tuned; I can kinda feel a change in the air, and it could get very interesting real soon. As Heather says, "Democracy Awakening"!!
Thats what I was wondering - they just literally got back from a "recess"! I have to wonder - is there any "rule, norm or possibility etc" to prevent these one after another "recesses" & maybe have them do their job? You know the supposed reason for their being there & raking in over $170k a year!!!!!!!
The Representatives are exhausted by all the work they are doing. Or, Mike Johnson has to make another visit to Mar-a-Lago to get instructions from the Orange Speaker of the House.
He wants to remain speaker and if they are in recess, nothing can happen. And they have to fund raise since the RNC now exists to pay death star's legal bills. We are now seeing ads for Ds in the House primaries here in Oregon, so the Ds are busy helping candidates who can actually win in November.
Your answer is less tongue-in-cheek than mine. I think you are right on both counts: Remaining Speaker for two more weeks and the need to raise campaign funds.
Lynell.. Recess? Obviously, to me anyway, they're all constipated as-the-devil and about to piss-their-pants as well..! Perhaps it's their diet of spoiled goods. Maybe quit accepting care-packages from their friends in the Russian "Intelligence" community residing close by. And, I'm not referring to the ones with diplomatic plates either!
His confusion is showing up as a huge internal conflict between his complete adoption of Christianity as a national priority, and his role in government which specifically bans it. That's intrusion.
MAGA Mike is a pseudo Christian. If actions are not good news for the poor and vulnerable of society,it's heresy. Period. To leave Ukraine so vulnerable when we could help is sinful. MAGA Mike and his ilk are trying to force a form of Christianity on the country. That is the opposite of what Jesus did.
These ChINOs are only interested in punishing the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable. God favors the godly with riches and strength. That's how you know who's who.
I, personally, would expect that he firmly believes he is doing God’s work. Most likely God wants peace and fewer bombs with Putin going forward to rebuild a Soviet homeland. There is no earthly explanation for what Mike Johnson is doing. Let’s remember his stated, “If you want to know my world view, read the Bible.” The centuries old fiction writing surely offers anyone who reads it great clarity.
I just read Genesis....KJV. As far as I can tell God is promising a lot of really old guys(hundreds of years old) that their lines will rule in one case from the Nile to the Euphrates. Later this became smaller as it wasn't really practical. There is a lot of concern about perpetuating "seed", that is, patriarchal family descendants. There's also incest, rape, and violence and in Eden God is angry because his creations discovered sex, as that is what the Tree of Knowledge was about. So then He had to make all sorts of promises about male lines. After Lot's wife turned to salt, his two daughters were so concerned with the continuance of his seed that they got him drunk and laid with him. Now that's devotion.
Got to remind ourselves that the concept of God is an idea, however that does or does not affect anyone; further interpretations should not in any way be the business of government. Each of us has a responsibility to govern our own minds - as any literate Jew can tell you from our 2k years of talmudic and weekly contemplating of those mysterious life instructions.....
Yeh.. And, Separation of Church & State.., what a great concept. Seems to be partly woiking. I mean they(?) are tax-exempt right...? Well, that was certainly a start, huh. But, it seems to have gone adrift too. Gotta 'right' the ship.Taking the "oathe of office" seriously would be a start.
Thank you. I have just contacted the Department of Justice via their contact form asking them to apply the Logan Act to both Trump and Grenell. https://www.justice.gov/contact-us
That anything but a BLUE TSUNAMI might work is as big a joke as the hostage positioned MAGAs. Been there.Done that. We’re in year four of delays, justice subterfuge, and strangle hold tactics spelling nothing but chaos and desperation from their House. It’s not OUR HOUSE. Until the complicit are voted out it won’t be. The Logan Act? Seems to me well intentioned stopgaps are now just vague laws reinterpreted by again …the hostage people….PRINCIPLE IS DAMNED….all the way through the SCOTUS.
The continuous Democratic wins/seats taken/ground swelling grass roots fund raising steadily tells the story louder and louder…
I’d like to hear your list complete with the date THEIR position is up. Mine is growing …Massie wasn’t on it..wasn’t …is now. It started with the 147 at first impeachment. There are no innocents.Its FAR too late for a feigned stand.
I’m not running scared . I’m disappointed with my own knowledge of how this SHOULD BE working. Apparently there’s boatloads like me. (Today’s class is The Logan Act -thanks btw).
See I was under the impression that my regular vote would install people carrying forth The American Dream..what my father died for in ‘44 . I’m not sure when it changed..but IT DID. IT was a very contemplated sneaky plan ..long in perpetuity. Many see TFG as the culprit , he played into the plan , a gloved fit , hand made.
Are the majority of Americans really White Supremists that came out of the woodwork in 2016? Or can the Constitution be again a stand for ‘all people are created equal’?.. . 11/5/2024 will tell.
I am hard pressed to understand the ever present Russian influence , they stood beside us against Hitler but seemingly are present everywhere war breaks out having ‘gone in and disrupted covertly’ ( well acknowledging US has done this a few times too) .
I can’t change my mind Ukraine is probably the last foothold in Europe .Needs to be fully supported. When Zelensky this week stated Israel isn’t a NATO alliance and yet US is supporting ( the hostages strangling here I know) …really underscored the volumes already written.
Thank you for your post, which I fully agree with. I heard Zelensky's interview and his well taken point that Isreal is not a part of NATO and yet is fully supplied
with weapons. I
understand not
wanting to start a
proxy war with Russia, but its obscene that Mike Johnson is withholding critical support from Ukraine, as their infrastructure is being destroyed and people killed. If Ukraine is allowed to be destroyed, there will such chaos throughout the world as Russia continues its aggressive & destabilizing strategies. We need to be stopping that now, before it happens, not watching Mike Johnson & our House of Representatives continue to delay providing essential support for Ukraine.
I also listened to Zelensky and thought, he's going about this the wrong way, he needs to stress that Israel is not the only place where Jews were attacked, he is also a Jew and Russia, in it's attempt to devour Ukraine, is killing fellow Jews. In the thousands of children taken to Russia for reprogramming, how many are Jewish?
I would go out on a limb and say he has gotten away with more stuff, more crimes than any other private US citizen has managed to get away without repercussions.
Trump claims the Dems are trying to take him out politically. He claims they're after him. That's paranoia. His paranoia does not mean he did not commit crimes.
Jared failed to meet the criteria to receive a security clearance and so daddy-in-law had to grant him the clearance. I hope you are right about Jared being investigated once the election is over and the Democrats take back the House.
Where is Jared in all of this? In China? In Saudi Arabia? Looking after trump's interest in the new real estate deal in the mid east (Oman?) He's not making statements like the rantings of Don Jr, no videos, no press......sounds of silence. probably eating Ivanka's home made latkes or a Seder dinner. Wait! those are Jewish things, and doesn't trump not like Jewish people?
Perhaps keeping a low profile is one’s best hope of making sure the whole unsightly mess fades in that distant trash pile chock full of the forgotten debris of short attention spans.
If tRUMP had to deal with one more indictment ie violating the Logan Act, he wouldn't have time for his naps in court. And if you're going to add more crimes, how about tacking on the fact he never stopped making money off all his businesses while he was prz. The Emoluments (even spel-chek didn't help me out with this one but you know what I mean) clause. That's uncounted millions of profit.
Gwen, given TFFG’s apparent health/mental health issues, particularly increasing dementia-related observations, it is not surprising that he may nod off & be disruptive when he is supposed to sit still and comport himself appropriately.
Why are so many Trump condos and properties sold to Russians and/or dark LLC’s? Why are almost all the Trump licensee deals in counties within the Russian sphere of influence? Yes, emoluments clause is appropriate here.
And the Democrats, especially Biden, are bending over backward to avoid fanning the flames of dt’s incessant incendiary claims that his criminal issues are merely partisan uses of the judiciary… but when is the point when the gloves come off, when some fire extinguishing equipment will be used and will that happen ? Would it help?
This is why we have to pursue his current trials and why voting is so important. Those few years Trump had in power gave him the power to install what we are now calling loyalists, I call them traitors. He needs more lawsuits? He needs to focused upon for the crimes for which we have indictments and get him removed from society. And yes, he should. Perhaps from prison.
Steve, I was pondering this very issue today whilst running errands…my thoughts kept going to the shenanigans TFFG is doing & his meddling….to the point of him mentioning that he has an “envoy” (forget the guy’s name), receiving foreign dignitaries at Mara Lago (didn’t he call it the “southern White House” when he was in office?) & that Congress members meet/speak with him regularly & seem to follow his direction (shame on them!!!). I tried to remember if any former prez has done anything similar, but could only recall situations when former presidents, sometimes more than one, would work together in coordination with the administration-in-office for humanitarian causes. My jaw has hit the floor so many times in response to what he does that I’ll probably need reconstructive surgery!!!!
Have you seen the statement by Chris Sununu explaining??? why he will be voting for the dumpster (or endorsing - not sure which - maybe both). Because according to him 51% of people will vote for tffg. This is the "honest, upfront, vocal" conservative Sununu up to this point!! (Sorry the exclamation points get away from me these days)
Maggie, A couldn’t believe that a governor of a northern state said that.
Yes, NH has been known as bent Republican for a long time, but that statement? Another little t sycophant. Like Barbara Keating my jaw has dropped so many times I too may also need plastic surgery.
Samm, to me ANYONE in Congress or Fed/state elected office that endorses/chooses to vote for TFFG is pretty much on board with the ideas/plans (long ago hatched) in the “mandate” Project 2025, irrespective of who might be the next “R” POTUS.
I don't believe it. I've been hearing the 50/50 scenario between the Democrats and the Republicans for a long time, but not so much about the Independents which outnumber both! My guess is the majority of those Independents will heavily lean toward retaining Democracy over voting for an autocratic criminal madman!
It may come to a rational decision by those foreign governments once Iran has nuclear weapons ( thanks to Mango Unchained). Israel is not the only country in Iran’s nuclear crosshairs.
Since Nixon worked put a deal with Vietnam to undermine President Lyndon B. Johnson to hold off on a plan to end the Vietnam war until after the election.
My guess on that is that although this law goes back to 1799, only 2 people were ever charged, both in mid 1800’s and both not convicted. In today’s courts of delay,delay delay, appeal, appeal, appeal, my guess is too little too late. It must be vote Blue in all ballots local to federal until this ship can be righted and return to real governing by the people, for the people.
I'm SO with you!! This has been horrifying me, that they are able to do this! It's like they're now completely trying to ignore that the elected government exists and just bully on past!
You mean the same way the Clinton rolled around the world selling influence and collecting envelopes? The world was a hell of a lot safer when Trump was President. Dictatorships stayed in their lane because they were afraid of Trump.
The Logan Act is essentially incomplete. It states what is not allowed but provides no implementaional text. It's one more situation where we expected our legislators to deal in good faith and with good intentions toward the nation's best interests.
Mending the gaps in the Act is the job of the same corrupt do-nothing Repub Congresscritters abusing it, but since they're currently benefitting from those weaknesses they are utterly non-motivated to do so!
Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realize what is happening to them by just looking around their own world? .... Author, Remote Viewer. Former Spec. Assist. to the CNO
Biden's goodness and Trump's evilness do not matter as much as "hate the libs". Hate the libs is of paramount importance over their own welfare and the welfare of their sisters, brothers, mothers, father's. I know, I have hate the libs relatives.
Wendyl, I’m sorry that you have hating relatives. I think that it’s more than “hate the libs”; I think that it’s “hate people different from me (the others) and anyone who supports them “.
Yeah, I agree that one of the reasons they hate the libs is because we tend to embrace "other" and find community with multi-colored, multi-gendered, multi-cultural "others." Biden's goodness is wanting to support all the "others". God forbid!
". . . by just looking around their own world," yes, Sam?
Might you be suggesting that some schools in America might use humanities as to how to look at our "own world"?
The novels, films, songs, photographs, memoirs, and other arts are there. Good ones. Great ones. Wonderful ones. Might students learn from their better teachers how to use them to see the detailed complexities of people as individuals in complex situations?
There is a lot of nuance in most of these "detailed complexities" for sure. Simplistic answers which become political slogans usually just rev up polarization. The border "crisis" is one great example.
Yes, Robin, the bad qualities you mention grow like weeds all the more with humanities absent.
And another Yes, to how the imposition of standardized testing (in the U.S. and allied countries as well) both further helped kill humanities and further put on steroids all the numbers-gaming, commodification, and other packaging vulgarities of the billionaire classes.
Another commenter on Heather's site, Jude Ellen, told me of a book on this by a Canadian, Max Wyman. I couldn't get a copy anywhere in Japan, where I live, but my son in Big Sur got one for me, and just sent it. I'll try to report on it after it arrives and I've had a chance to peruse.
Phil, how I wish that education provided greater opportunities for students to learn from exposure to the humanities. Much of my reading of late has been on the subject of consciousness itself, how we receive and process information, and how or whether we act on what we are exposed to. I’m inclined to think that it’s actually possible for some to be incapable of evaluating, let alone analyzing material or of foreseeing consequences. . The MAGA mind set. Lest anyone think I am claiming that there is a superior kind of individual who can engage in analysis etc. ,I’m not. I think only that it is likely that evolution has left us in this predicament.
Standardized tests seem to leave their victims without the necessary skill sets to evaluate material, even if they have the capability of doing so. The whole experiment has been such a waste. Let us hope we learn from it.
It's been a huge economic boon to the billionaire classes, Jean.
They invested early in the commodifying, numbering, packaging of all life -- and the killing of humanities that did otherwise.
It started in the U.S., then spread to the world. Almost everywhere now teachers teach to the test -- which are machine gradable, so there's zero human about any of it.
Worse, tests have devolved to neuter anything local, regional, or otherwise human in language. See Diane Ravitch, "The Language Police" (2003) and Minae Mizumura "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English edition Columbia University Press, 2016).
But the profit-taking from the standardized testing death industry has been just as great as that from the billionaires spreading hate and divisiveness -- around the world -- from social media algorithms.
Sorry to communicate in this round about way. My comments get returned. I have the feeling you and I are somehow talking past each other. Don’t know how to respond to your last.
Don't forget the anti-vax movement and of course what all this has had on covid mortality. On rural American mortality, don't forget suicide, this tops the list among that demographic. Incidentally, far more than mass shootings.
I’m going to hop on my Covid bandwagon for a minute.
The world wants to think that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. Last week was the first week in many many months that the US suffered fewer than 1,000 Covid deaths. Per week. And that’s with little testing, and without attribution of deaths from the sequelae of Covid. Excess mortality is the only metric we still have that might accurately reflect the continuing impact of the pandemic. Vaccine uptake remains abysmal, particularly in the demographic you are referencing.
I, too, wish that Covid were over. I’d love to be back to “normal” but I’m immunocompromised from cancer treatment, so I’m not. While I’m not worried about acute Covid since I’m well vaccinated, I am very concerned about Long Covid. We don’t know, we *can’t* know, what the long term effects of having this virus might be. My own cancer was caused by a virus I likely caught 40 or so years ago, without even knowing I had it. What will populations look like 40 years from now?
We are failing our children. In the four years of this pandemic, we have not done the things that we know how to do to protect people from airborne illness. Proper Covid mitigation needs to be layered, and it needs especially to include ventilation and filtration in schools, which remain a driver of infections in our communities. But also in other public spaces. Mitigation still needs to include filtration and ventilation indoors, vaccination, testing and isolation when sick, and masking when community levels are high. We are doing none of those things, and now we are threatened anew by measles and avian flu outbreaks. We need to do better.
I hear you, KR. I lost my "novid" status 6 weeks age after a trip to the coast that included eating in a very crowded restaurant one evening. For me, it was nothing worse than a bad cold (which I thought I had picked up from our housemate) and only tested myself because I wanted to go to band rehearsal...
My wife (no surprise) also caught it, and her symptoms were both very different and more severe (albeit still quite mild compared to earlier cases in friends of ours).
I’m sorry you got it, Ally, but damn well done for avoiding it so long. I’ve had it twice, both times brought home by my husband. I adore him, but he’s just not careful. The third time he got it I made him go to a B&B, because he won’t stay isolated in the house. That worked. I get that it’s awful to wear a mask all day, especially when you’re a professor and lecturing. It’s much easier for me, since I only need to wear one intermittently as I don’t have a job. The two times we both had it, I was sick for far longer than he was. He cleared the infection in less than a week, while I continued to test positive for almost three weeks. That’s the effect of my compromised immune system, and it makes me worried about what all that virus is doing in me for so long. Is it damaging organs? Is it mutating? Who knows.
There are things I think are worth risking Covid for, but going to the grocery store isn’t one of them! So I wear my high quality N95 and ignore the looks. We’ve traveled to Italy twice, and diligent masking while traveling has worked for that. No clue what my husband does when he’s traveling without me. He doesn’t like to be the only one masking. I couldn’t care less myself. I make him test serially after he travels, since it seems the only way to stay safe myself. And in fact, that worked for his third infection, at least to keep it away from me. He’s coming home this evening from a conference, and will be met at the door by masked me offering him a test 😅
You cannot be too careful. I still mask at the grocery store, hardware store, and I won't eat at a "dine in" restaurant unless I can sit outside. I will put a mask on when I go through a drive through (usually coffee) when the cashier is wearing a mask.
That’s basically what I do too. With our long winters, it’s a lot of months without going out! My husband does go out, especially to a bar weekly for his jazz jam sessions. That makes me so nervous. But it’s his joy, and I just try to keep my anxiety at a simmer. Not worth losing my happy marriage over it.
I wonder how we would feel-react if a couple 747’s flew into the Rocky Mountains every week, covid ie the plague has been doing that for years now, while the insipid bastard didn’t start the plague, he with his unique worldview did almost nothing to stop it.
Beyond doing nothing to stop it, he weaponized the mitigations we do have. It’s his fault that masking was rejected here. It’s his fault that the CDC is a shadow of its former glory.
He is so foolish. If he had done even a halfway adequate job on Covid, I’m fairly sure he would have won reelection.
KR, your “bandwagon” needs a national, or make that an international, tour!!! Keep bangin’ that drum!!!! Mitigation efforts need to be strengthened & improved not only for today, but also for what else might be coming down the pike.
Thanks 🙏 this is absolutely horrendous news and yet it’s difficult, isn’t it, to find the charitable fibre to help those who don’t want any. Can you venture an informed guess about what is that rate ? -> « dying (!!!!) at a much higher rate…. »
« … The results show that the gap in overall death rates between Democratic and Republican counties increased more than sixfold from 2001 to 2019, especially for white populations, and was driven mainly by deaths due to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, unintentional injuries, and suicide. »…
They don’t know what is happening in Blue states. They aren’t aware of what they are being denied. The propaganda they receive has been 100% effective. The few that try to bring the message have their voices eliminated.
Again, I have to wonder why the members of the House are earning a salary on the dole as it seems, since they are not working for it. To close down for recess repeatedly should be a big story in the press, but it is not. How about schools having this many "recesses"? It is crazy that they are not getting anything done and still get to earn a salary. That needs to be addressed, perhaps in ballot initiatives. How many days should the members of the house have to work to get paid their full salary? How many recesses should be paid? What if they do not get anything done while in session. Their job is to legislate. Are they doing this in reverse by not passing bills to get things done? If so, they legislate in the negative. I feel desperate to get Ukraine aid, and think of Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantruming-Trump legislating too, even though he is not an elected official, he cannot let go of trying to govern the USA all for his own selfish purposes, and the idiots in the House that are his Handmaidens go along with whatever he wants. The press for its part does almost nothing to call any of this out. With them, I can stop paying for their services, since they are not providing them. We should not have a system where our mainstream press is privately owned. In Germany the television and radio are paid for by the people having to pay a fee.
Can someone please explain to me why enough Rep's don't sign Discharge Petition #9 and bring the aid for Ukraine bill to the floor for a vote? If there are enough votes for the bill, then why haven't enough people signed the discharge petition? TY.
I think that with more than one discharge petition circulating it is dividing up the support for each one, so none has enough support. I am wanting Biden to do a workaround. He must have some powers as president that he can exercise. It is like he and MAGA Mike are waiting each other out to see who will push through Ukrainian aid first. It will have political repercussions for each of them. I just want to know what Biden could do to work-around Congress if need be.
Not at all. Actually, so many reasons to be afraid to stand up to Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantraming-Trump! Heather herself talked about the donor concerns that wealthy donors will not fund them if they do, and then there is the mafia affect. Hitlers perfect combination fear and reward, more simply known as the carrot and the stick. If you cannot afford to protect your family then you cannot afford to stand up to him. However, voting is private. Let us see where these threats lead come voting day.
He suggested that a supporter or two try to get on the jury so they could screw up the works. Maybe I could too, but I've been much to vocal. You would be too, no doubt
I thought it fascinating that they went back years on that juror’s Facebook history to eliminate her because she filmed people celebrating against trump. I’d be arrested right off the bat if “investigated.” Proudly.
Yeah....even I laughed when Mikey compared himself to Moses. (I then thought to myself: Bro, you're def gonna be wandering in the desert for 40 years!)
What will desperate politicians do to stay out of jail? Use this interactive infographic to compare Netanyahu and Trump on corruption cases, attacking the courts, stoking violence and religious extremism. Swipe right for Netanyahu. Left for Trump. Birds of a feather...
'The desperate alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea' as reported by Adam Taylor for Today's WorldView in The Washington Post:
'It is increasingly common in Washington to view the various conflicts around the world as part of one big narrative. That is hardly without reason. As The Washington Post reported this week, U.S. officials say Iran has bolstered its defenses against a potential retaliatory strike by Israel with the purchase of Russian weapons, part of a strategic alliance forged by Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the extensive use of Iranian-manufactured drones there.'
'Moscow hasn’t just been looking to Tehran for a mutually beneficial relationship. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to North Korea to meet with that nation’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Un, and cement a deal that gave Russian troops much-needed ammunition and other war materials in exchange for more advanced technology coveted by Pyongyang.'
'But the most significant partner by far in this convergence is China, which provided a trade lifeline for Russia amid Western sanctions. U.S. officials told the Associated Press last week that much of this support goes beyond regular business, however, with China surging exports of technology that Russia can use to produce missiles, tanks and planes — making up for both battlefield losses and export controls by the United States and its allies.'
'Iran, Russia, North Korea and China are part of a far broader group of nations and movements — among their ranks include the relatively small but influential groups like Hamas and the Houthis — that seem to be opposed to the West. Some Western officials, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have repeatedly suggested these countries mark a new “axis of evil” — a reference to a phrase infamously used by President George W. Bush at the start of the war on terror.'
'The man who coined that phrase apparently sees this new alliance as even broader. “The world faces a global alignment of dictators, thugs and aggressors, from Tehran to Moscow to Beijing to Palm Beach,” David Frum, the former White House speechwriter, said on X this week after Iran’s failed attack on Israel — the last item on his list, a reference to Florida man and former president Donald Trump.'
'It’s flawed to view this as simply an “axis of evil 2.0,” however. That’s partly because the original idea was a stretch at best. Two of the three countries in the original “axis,” Iran and Iraq, were helmed by diametrically opposed ideologies at that point — the former led by a Shiite theocracy, the other a Pan-Arab nationalism led by Sunnis — who had not long before fought a bloody, brutal war. The final nation, the totalitarian socialist state North Korea, was literally and figuratively half a world away.'
'The new alignment is similarly misaligned. Russia’s state capitalist society may ally itself with domestic religious forces like the powerful Russian Orthodox Church, but it has little overlap with the Islamic doctrine espoused by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or its sectarian Shiite allies. While China and North Korea both espouse socialist forms of government, the official rhetoric and practical implementation of these ideologies in the two nations is significantly different. Even in recent history, they have found themselves at points of tension.'
'This means that unlike the Cold War, where ideology at least nominally bound the Communist bloc against the West, what we have now is better understood as a “marriage of convenience” between a number of disparate nations.'
'That doesn’t mean it will end in divorce, however. What’s driving these agreements is not just convenience, but also desperation. Sanctions and export controls have pushed Russia — which once enjoyed booming trade with Europe and the United States despite tensions — to turn to China, even if the trade relationship is clearly unfavorable. While none of the nations can stand up to America’s military might, they all have individual strengths that the others hope to learn from.'
'To put it another way: If Putin wants to keep fighting his war in Ukraine and survive punishing economic isolation from the Western-led global economic order, he has little option but to turn east to China. If China views the future of the global order as a great power battle between itself and the United States, it needs all of the help it can muster — and Russia’s rich natural resources and some of its military technology will be of big aid here.'
'Desperation can drive dangerous situations. Two of the four in this alignment are undeniably powerful nations, while the two smaller nations — Iran and North Korea — have considerable capabilities of their own, most notably including Tehran’s network of aligned movements in the Middle East.'
'Three of the four are nuclear-armed; Iran is not far off. As permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia both played constructive roles in setting norms before, including on arms control measures for both Iran and North Korea. Without them, those efforts are foundering.' (WAPO) Copied in full.
Thanks for the additional details Fern. So again, it comes down to Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei. Said yet another way by Churchill, "..... "if Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
'Fact-Checking Spock: Was the “Enemy of My Enemy” Guy Really Killed by His “Friend”?' (Slate)
'In the West, the proverb eventually found a more recognizable form in Latin. Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei (“my friend, the enemy of my enemy”) was a common saying by the early 18th century, when it appeared in books otherwise written in Italian (by 1711), written in German (by 1721), and translated into Spanish (by 1723).'
'From there, the axiom may have entered English through French. As Garson O’Toole, the self-styled Quote Investigator, pointed out to me, the expression “every enemy’s enemy is a friend” was described as a “popular” line of reasoning in an 1825 English translation of a French book, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans. The adage took on the more familiar English phrasing, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” by the late 19th century. The first recorded instance for this phrasing comes from Gabriel Manigault, who in his 1884 Political Creed described the sense that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” as a' “natural feeling.”
I started to edit ↑, but changed my mind - 'nuff said. My use of a Latin translator does in fact 'sound' fancier, implying some larger depth, insight.... whatever by the user, except 'this one.' I'm as flummoxed as anyone here, and come to learn. I'm grateful that I get to do that here; To learn from the teacher and my fellow students. Gratitude to all herein. Even those of differing opinions, fact based or not still teach me something valuable, patience and tolerance when I think about it in hindsight.
Thanks Fern. I can't help but draw some parallels with the amalgam of conservative ideologies that make up the Right in the US. Rampant Capitalists, Evangelicals, Un-churched Culture Warriors, Nihilists seeking only power, and to a lesser extent, Remnant Republicans (as evidenced by my stupid governor, Chris Sununu), are all in an uneasy bed together united only by their hatred of "the Libs". I believe this is where the real divisions and dangers in American politics lie, not in liberal vs conservative. That dynamic has existed for decades, and we still managed to function as a nation. With this new(ish) dynamic, I'm not so sure.
Fern, thank you for sharing this; I know that it was a lot of work. We need to remember (as with Liz Cheney) that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.
Bravo, Fern for position reasons for us to examine why the members of this current axis of evil are misaligned in so many ways. However I do wonder if they agree that on the common goal of being disruptors, each in its own way, the power with which the West has dominated the globe at least since the end of WWII. Iran is determined disrupt countries that aren’t theocracies, Russia is determined to disrupt the tenets of democracy held by Ukraine and other countries on its borders, North Korea has chosen to disrupt the West by its continual nuclear threats as well as providing munitions to Russia and China, Victor Orban though still in the EU is unflinchingly developing a theocratic democracy and openly promoting his tactics to other Western countries, and Xi’s China with it’s determination to disrupt the West economically as well as partner with Russia and covertly supply Russia in its disruptive attempt to subvert the political paradigms of the West. I probably could’ve mentioned more but even though their tactics look very different I can see their commonality in their goal of being disruptors. Am I way of track here?
Margaret, thank you for the probative comment. Now, there are coalitions of nation states, overt & covert, 'disruptors' to use your term working together. Geopolitical warfare has developed complexities as some countries like YEMEN have separate factions controlling separate controlled zones.
Heather's reference to the former CENTOM Commander is relevant here as he was an experienced YEMEN counter-military actor.
If you will tolerate another song reference to Bobby Zimmerman from Minnesota, the song for which he got an Oscar: 🎶A lot of stuff has gone under the Bridge, a lot of other stuff too🎶.... 🎶I feel like my heads'n a Noose & any moment now things are going to Break loose 🎶 ... 🎶 But, things have Changed 🎶
Margaret, I appreciated your sense of these countries' goals and connections, but cannot vouch for their short to long time plans or their firm connections ...'The Times They Are A-Changin'
I totally get your point and know “these times they are a changin” that’s why I was trying to convey that they are all in the process of changing Independently, at least on the surface, but all are committed to disrupt the West’s architecture of the global order in their own unique ways.
What does it say about my junior high brain that I love "...Florida man, D***** T****"? I mean, when the bizarre news articles all seem to say "Florida man does unbelievably stupid thing and gets hurt" (my favorite being the guy who used a live .22 long rifle cartridge to replace a fuse. Said replacement attained enough of the requirements involved for the cartridge to discharge, and hit the driver "right between the legs" damaging is scrotal sac and contents therein.)
We lived in KC, MO for a couple of years before moving to Indy.
"Florida Man" has nothing on "Missouri Man" as far as Darwin proving actions go.
My in-laws lived on a small acreage south of Nixa, MO in the late 1980's. While we were visiting them a neighbor shot and killed his long time helping hand who supposedly had been smashing pumpkins in the bosses pumpkin patch. The PPO (pumpkin patch owner) threw the dead man into the back of his pick-up and brought him to the sheriff's office and confessed. No charges were ever filed against the PPO. No reason why was ever given. My guess- justifiable homicide?
I still shake my head at how backward and ignorant so many of these Missouri yahoos are. The nightly local news in KC and Springfield, MO was likely the most entertaining of anywhere we've lived, in a macabre sort of way.
“(David Sanger of the New York Times reminded readers yesterday that in 2015, in a deal with seven countries after two years of negotiations, Iran agreed to surrender 97% of its uranium, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and Iran returned to developing weapons-grade uranium.) “
So much of chump’s actions against America are forgotten amidst the “nostalgia” I read about. We need more reminders, although I’m sure most of us don’t need them. Apparently some soft brain types do.
Gigi, I think it is not only up to the MAGAs but all Americans to understand the nuclear possibilities these days. Thank you pointing to David Sanger's article. It follows:
'With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught'
'The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.'
'By David E. Sanger'
'David E. Sanger has covered the Middle East and superpower conflict for several decades and reported from Washington.'
'April 15, 2024'
'When Iran agreed to a deal in 2015 that would require it to surrender 97 percent of the uranium it could use to make nuclear bombs, Russia and China worked alongside the United States and Europe to get the pact done.'
'The Russians even took Iran’s nuclear fuel, for a hefty fee, prompting celebratory declarations that President Vladimir V. Putin could cooperate with the West on critical security issues and help constrain a disruptive regime in a volatile region.'
'A lot has changed in the subsequent nine years. China and Russia are now more aligned with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to an American-led order, along with the likes of North Korea. When President Biden gathered the leaders of six nations for a video call from the White House on Sunday to plot a common strategy for de-escalating the crisis between Israel and Iran, there was no chance of getting anyone from Beijing or Moscow on the screen.'
'The disappearance of that unified front is one of the many factors that make this moment seem “particularly dangerous,” 'said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,' “maybe the most dangerous in decades.”
'But it is hardly the only one.' (NYTimes) See gifted link below.
Thank you for sharing it all. It’s a serious situation the tffg can only make worse, whether or not he’s prez. Glenn Kirschner said he needs to be jailed for violating the gag order 3x. 🙏🏼
While Johnson is "working" on getting some version of the supplemental bill for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the discharge petition is still in play, but stalled. We can help by calling those reps to sign on.
At some point we may choose to elect adults to Congress. That would be at least refreshing and, perhaps, constructive. The pain required to reform our election system to permit that will test us to the limit. Our current approach is: problem solvers, do not apply. Our grandchildren are counting on us.
We have the capacity to sweep the elections. How? Register more Democrats to save democracy. FT6 is trying to register as many as 13 million people who trend heavily Democratic. Attend an informational Zoom.
Even in Tejas. Look at the demographics. Probably at least a million unregistered women, who trend Democratic. Rafael Cruz is as much a liability as the orange antichrist. How can any Catholic support blasphemy? The base can be expanded. FT6!
The MAGATs can't handle the visceral attack. Trump hates dogs. Stole from kids with cancer.
Running for the school board. "My opponent supports people who hates dogs and stole from kids with cancer!"
Abbott is popular, he loves chump. People need to dis all repubs in Texas. Not a decent one. Yet I read such glowing reviews of Abbott. The evil who wants to be VP.
I detect in Heather's today some hope by her for some unity by some Arab states.
Several, she recounts here, helped Israel fend off the Iranian drones and missiles.
But will it, can it, add up?
Key is Palestine on the West Bank -- that Israel will agree to hold off its settlers from continuing to steal its land, continuing to provoke murders and harassments of Palestinians by those far-right settlers.
If Israel does respect Palestinians enough to grant them enough West Bank territory for a legitimate state, those Arab neighbors -- seeing Israel as finally legit about peace -- could put up the funds and security aid that Thomas Friedman has long been prophesizing.
Peace could reign there. Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah would all have their fire quenched by a real Palestinian state on the West Bank. Could be.
Can Republicans in Congress back funds for those stranded in Gaza insanity? Can their far-right Israeli settler colleagues defer to the Palestinian state -- and peace -- which Arab neighbors appear to back?
And schools in the region? Don't let me get started on that again.
Do you really believe that the parents and families of 14,000 slaughtered children say - "oh well, they're dead - we won't hold it against the Israelis, we'll go on suffering as long as the US and Israel are rich and happy"?
And what's that "grant them enough West Bank territory"? are you completely insane?
Tell me nobody can be that stunningly, amazingly, over the top stupid - I had smarter farts.
Jeri, I hope that the Israeli people remember that majority-Muslim countries came to their defense against Iran. Maybe they will consider a true two-state solution with firm rules against creeping settlements by Israelis.
Bibi started creeping settlements long ago. I have been waiting for the pushback. No surprise, but neither is the effort to destroy Israel. Wish for a tad of humanity;.
This was posted yesterday in the WAPO. I think Don Snoreleone would be terrible for the economy. Don't you?
Catherine Rampell
This might be Trump’s most inflationary, economically destructive idea yet
Remind me again why Americans think Donald Trump would be so much better on inflation and the economy?
Trump’s policy team is reportedly scheming to devalue the U.S. dollar. This might well be Trump’s most inflationary and economically destructive idea yet. That’s quite an achievement, considering everything else he and his advisers have cooked up (universal tariff hikes, deficit-financed tax cuts, huge reductions in the labor force, etc.).
Trump’s objective, Politico reports, is to boost U.S. exports and reduce imports. Basically, if a dollar buys, say, fewer euros or Japanese yen than it currently does, that makes U.S.-made products look a little cheaper and potentially more attractive to European and Japanese customers (among others). So, hey, maybe this could help some U.S. companies trying to sell products abroad.
That is, until you consider everything else that might happen if we deliberately tried to weaken our currency, which would open a Pandora’s shipping container of disastrous consequences.
It’s true the dollar is unusually strong right now, although probably not for reasons Trump is happy about. Exchange rates typically reflect a country’s macroeconomic conditions (among other factors, such as interest rates). Thanks to a variety of factors — including our relatively limited exposure to the war in Ukraine — we’re doing better than most of our peer countries. In the words of Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist, “The U.S. economy has been on a tear.”
The relative strength of the dollar does make U.S.-made goods less attractive, though with so many other countries in or edging toward recession, our potential global customers might not be feeling terribly flush anyway. I suppose if Trump tanked the U.S. economy, whether on purpose or otherwise, that might achieve his objective of swiftly weakening the dollar and shrinking trade deficits.
If not via recession, how would Team Trump weaken our currency? That’s not totally clear. He might try to force the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. This is something Trump already wants to do for other reasons. (For instance, he owes a lot of debt, so lower rates would help his own finances.) Or maybe he would bully lots of other countries into raising their interest rates, which seems unlikely to happen. But if it did, it might result in a global recession.
Or perhaps he would tax foreign financial flows into the United States, as some senators have proposed. This, too, would likely tank the economy, according to Peterson Institute for International Economics fellow Maurice Obstfeld.
(Noticing any themes here?)
Whatever the mechanism, a weaker dollar would likely lead to higher prices for American consumers — and not just during their summer vacations to Italy. Americans buy a lot of imported goods, from fruit to toys to cars to home furnishings. Those would all get more expensive as the purchasing power of the dollar fell.
So much for Trump’s pledge to vanquish inflation. And that’s not the only problem with his plan.
Perhaps some U.S. exports would get more competitive, as Trump hopes. Ironically, though, some U.S. industries that stand to benefit most from a weaker dollar are not exactly Republican darlings. They include Big Tech, Hollywood and higher education, sectors that enjoy some combination of being quite competitive at exporting things and/or having large offshore profits, which would become more valuable.
There’s also a risk that other countries won’t want to go along with Trump’s scheme. Our trading partners might engage in a series of countermeasures to keep their currencies from appreciating against the dollar, which we might meet with counter-countermeasures, and so on. In other words, we might see a sequel to the trade wars Trump previously initiate.
Global trade or currency wars would, again, likely be bad for pretty much everyone, including U.S. businesses and consumers.
Deliberately weakening the dollar, or even attempting to, also threatens its role as the world’s “reserve currency.” We have a stable government that has reliably paid its bills and doesn’t do dodgy things to deliberately manipulate the value of its fiat currency. As a result, the dollar is widely used in international trade and dollar-denominated U.S. government debt is in high demand.
The fact that U.S. dollars are considered a virtually risk-free store of value gives the United States some huge privileges. It enables us to keep spending more than we collect in taxes, because it’s cheap and easy for our government to borrow to finance ever-growing deficits. Eroding the dollar’s global use might make it more expensive for the U.S. government to keep borrowing so much (which means taxes might need to rise, or spending decline, to cover budget shortfalls).
We might also weaken our ability to impose sanctions upon countries, businesses or individuals whose actions we disapprove of because dollars are used so often in international transactions and we have some ability to restrict those transactions.
Then again, maybe we should give Trump some credit. Reducing our global influence, and specifically our ability to punish certain global villains, might be exactly what he wants.
He'd be terrible for the economy in the same proportion he'd benefit the billionaire classes.
Same proportion he'd benefit the Clarence court's medievalists, Handmaid's-Tale-rendering, and haters of democracy and its former rule of law (that Clarence court now mostly all bribed, perjured, corrupted).
Same proportion he'd benefit the dictators, evangelicals, and social media and nationalist spreaders of hate worldwide.
Same proportion he'd benefit the U.S.'s AR-15 and other mass murder industry.
Same proportion he'd benefit the standardized testers now worldwide expanded to killing humanities in schools.
Same proportion he'd float all the fossil fuel royal and corporate murderers.
Gary, your last sentence is accurate, 100% what he wants. The other thing that he wants is to be a dictator, pure and simple. His followers have no <insert colorful metaphor of your choice> clue that they are not included in the batch that will benefit from said dictator, only that they can hate the others and own the libs.
The Palestinian project has always been about stealing the land back from the Jews who have thwarted their supposed national aspirations. After the most successful terrorist raid in their history, Palestinians are rewarded with land? And we think that's going to inspire them to make peace? Seems very naive.
There is nothing "supposed" about Palestinian national aspirations. They were there long before the Ashkenazis from Europe-- influenced by Herzl, Jabotinsky and others-- commenced their migration to Palestine before WWII. "Stealing" the land back is thus a non-sequiter as it was theirs in the first place. And the ghastly terrorism on October 7th by Hamas cannot be assigned to all Palestinians as your statement seems to imply. Finally, when one of the most powerful militaries in the world has already killed over 30,000 of your people, it would seem that the Nation doing the killing, not those being killed, need to be inspired to make peace.
'Prepared for, and under the guidance of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable
Rights of the Palestinian People'
'UNITED NATIONS'
'New York, 1980'
'I. PALESTINE IN HISTORY'
'The “Palestine problem” of today had its origin in policies introduced while Palestine was a responsibility of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. A report issued in 1930 by a commission* appointed with the approval of the League of Nations contains what might be the closest to an objective survey of the early history of Palestine. The following summary is taken from that report.'
'In early times, Palestine was inhabited by Semitic peoples, the earliest being the Canaanites. According to tradition, Abraham, the common ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs, came from Ur to Canaan.'
'When the tribes of Israel came to Palestine after their captivity in Egypt, they were united into one kingdom by King David in 1000 B.C. This kingdom reached its greatest heights under King David’s son, Solomon, who built the first Temple of Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. However, after Solomon’s death, the history of the people of Israel – or rather of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah – is a record of civil wars and struggles with alien tribes.'
' About 720 B.C., the Assyrians destroyed the kingdom of Israel and carried its inhabitants away as captives. About 600 B.C., the Babylonian King Nebuchadenezzar attacked the kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple in 567 B.C. Most of the inhabitants were carried into captivity. Fifty years later, when the Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon, the Jews were able to return to Palestine. By about 515 B.C. they had rebuilt Solomon’s temple.'
'In 332 B.C., the Jews came under the domination of the Macedonians, who treated them harshly. In about 170 B.C., a Jewish revolt was quelled, and the second Temple was destroyed. Following the Macedonian rule was a period of independence to a certain extent. This lasted until the Roman conquest by Pompey, who entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. In 70 A.D., Titus destroyed the city. All that remained of the second Temple was the Western Wall which became known as the Wailing Wall.' (UN) See link below.
Fern, I believe my wife found that document on our last longish road trip, and read that to me. I remember that the source from the document she read (although I couldn't find it in this link) cited is the Bible and other religious texts.
Yes, it's clear that the Arabs in Palestine have been extremely consistent in their rejection of the Jewish national home. They have also been consistent in making the main thrust of their politics the reversal of that situation. The fact that they have clearly failed does not seem to have impacted their political goals. They seem to believe that if the Palestinians make things unpleasant enough, the Israelis will pack up and go home. And in fact they're getting the opposite of that effect.
The October 7th attacks are 100% consistent with the overall arc of Palestinian operations, just more effective than they have been in the past. It is disingenuous to suggest it is some aberration, in fact the Oct 7 attack is among the most popular things that Hamas has done for their public opinion for years! And let's also not forget that a huge number of those 30,000 killed are enemy combatants.
The "Jewish National Home" you speak of is Palestine. As the Palestinians were not allowed a choice by the British Mandate nor the UN when their land was proclaimed the State of Israel, thirty some odd years after their betrayal by Balfour, perhaps "rejection " is understandable.
As for your blithely waving away the unpleasant fact that an ongoing genocide of an impoverished and helpless People continues at the hands of the Likud led "sole democracy in the Middle East" by dehumanizing the victims of that genocide with the false slur of "enemy combatants ", need we say more?
"The "Jewish National Home" you speak of is Palestine. As the Palestinians were not allowed a choice by the British Mandate nor the UN when their land was proclaimed the State of Israel, thirty some odd years after their betrayal by Balfour, perhaps "rejection " is understandable."
So what's the solution? The Israelis are there, they're not going anywhere. At what poin can the Palestinians swallow their pride and take a deal? Even if you wholly believe the Palestinain origin story, which is highly questionable, the Israeli story is not going away.
"As for your blithely waving away the unpleasant fact that an ongoing genocide of an impoverished and helpless People continues at the hands of the Likud led "sole democracy in the Middle East" by dehumanizing the victims of that genocide with the false slur of "enemy combatants "
Oh please, what a ridiculous statement. You believe the Hamasniks have vanished in thin air and the IDF has managed to kill not a one? Totally laughable.
Did I just read that?!? How many deals have they already taken, from UN Resolutions to Camp David to Madrid, to Oslo, and otherwise both public and private, ALL having been unfulfilled or repudiated by various (mostly Likud) Israeli governments, while the fanatical Hassidim continue to build their settlements on Palestinian occupied territory??!?
No sir, it's not my statement that seeks to shine the light on the humanity of the Palestinian people, it's your fallacious and inhumanely dismissive one that is laughable, as well as dangerous.
Israel is a country build on not much more but victimhood and entitlement. And now they managed to have about 80% of the worlds population standing against it.
The judgement if the state of Israel or the state of Palestine exist at the end of this century is still out. I hope for the Palestinians.
Those West Bank settlements are the monkey wrench in the whole machine. While I posit that Israel won the territory in a defensive war and can do with it what it wants, I am also convinced that doing anything but dismantling those settlements and leaving the West Bank to a future Palestinian state is in the best interest of Israel. I don't see Israel agreeing to it though, at least not in the foreseeable future. Biden's tenuous coalition of zarab countries to support Israel in defending against Iran's attack might be a first step in getting Israel to trust the land for peace option again. It worked very well with Egypt. Will it have another chance to work in our lifetime?
Next in my list of hopeless wishes -- that schools in the region unite in programs of English classes teaching essay writing skills to "others" as individuals in the various linguistic and sectarian communities.
I just read from Robert Hubble’s Substack the following statement: “The Senate will not convict Mayorkas, but delivery of the articles of impeachment triggers a complicated process that requires the Senate to begin trial proceedings on Wednesday, April 17. The Senate is required to conduct trial six days a week until a verdict is reached.”. So, in other words, MAGA in the House just tied the Senate up with the sham impeachment trial at a time when we need the Senate to deal with whatever changes to the aid bills the House passes. Looks like MTG and her goon squad have figured out the rules enough to allow them to be effective political terrorists.
Let’s not miss in the first sentence that Iran fired missiles from Iraq. IRAQ!!
Have we forgotten our false war in Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (none), punish perpetrators of 911 (not involved), protect oil fields (didn’t), stop terrorism (didn’t), and protect the Iraqi people (didn’t)?
And now Iran controls Iraq such that they launch missiles at Israel.
What did W achieve with that war? Nothing! Massive loss of innocent lives 10x that of Gaza, $2 trillion, loss of global respect, and the big one, we handed over control or Iraq to Iran!!
OMG, only Donald Trump could make us forget what a catastrophe W Bush was and how W brought America to its knees and pushed us over a cliff.
Thank you Professor Richardson for your excellent summary, I learned a few things from it. There has been a whirlwind of events since Oct. 7. The most concerning situation for me is the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Many thousands of children have been killed there and I resent the fact that my tax dollars are partly responsible for the slaughter of innocents. There must be a permanent cease fire now. If Joe Biden does not use all his powers to bring about a cease fire immediately, it may cost him votes in November, and that would add to this tragedy. Action must be taken now, to save the lives of children and civilians in Gaza.
Yes I agree the death, destruction and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza is too horrible already, it can't keep going on like this. Approximately 13,000 innocent children and babies have been killed out of the total of nearly 34,000 people killed in Gaza. Supposedly Republicans care about unborn babies and innocent children but somehow they don't seem too concerned when they are Palestinian babies or children that are being killed or blown to bits. There must be a permanent cease fire!
I am concerned that it is going to have an effect on the election too.
Yesterday there were coordinated Pro-Palestinian protests across the nation and apparently around the world.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Golden Gate Bridge was completely shut down for about 5 hours during the morning commute as well as 880 near downtown Oakland shut down for almost 7-8 hours. During the late afternoon and evening protests were held at the Tesla plant near Fremont off of 880. Other protests in Seattle, Chicago, Eugene, Oregon, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC and more cities and airports.
It was very disruptive and created chaos and anxiety, not really helping matters from my perspective but not even close to what people in Gaza or Ukraine are having to endure or suffer through.
Here is what the protests were intending to accomplish:
"Pro-Palestinian demonstrators carried out a coordinated, coast-to-coast protest Monday, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation’s busiest airports and bridges as protesters called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
The group behind the large-scale protests is called A15, a movement that called for a coordinated economic blockade on April 15 in an effort to free Palestine.
“There is a need to shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy,” the group wrote online."
I only heard about it via a Facebook community chat from the town where I was the daytime deputy for the last 5 years I worked. Most of those comments were disgusting, to say the least.
Yeah I was surprised to see Eugene, Oregon on there, would have thought Portland would have more impact or attention. Guess they were just trying to shut down I-5.
I do not know if this question is related. But I want to know how we can demand the Logan Act be used to stop Trump from running a “shadow foreign policy” while Joe Biden is POTUS. No private citizen (which Trump is) is supposed to meet with or have his people meet with foreign governments the way Trump is!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
I made the same comment on another Substack. I don’t understand how tfg hasn’t been charged with violating the Logan Act. But then, there’s so much he’s managed to violate and get away with.
Who should we be writing to insist that they initiate this? I mean, our do nothing House of Reps as led by Mike Johnson, of Seven Mountain Madness, is getting nothing done except to avoid legislating and taking recesses. Does he even take himself seriously? If so, how sad for him.
Does anybody know what the excuse is for taking another recess?
Indeed. Another 10 day vacation as the world burns, people starve and are threatened with extermination?
Moscow Mike will be recorded as the Benedict Arnold of our time.
Hey! Don’t insult Benedict Arnold! Arnold was a great patriot and a revolutionary hero. He stymied the British invasion into northern New York at the battle of Valcour Island, and was the most important American commander at the decisive battle of Saratoga. His treason was largely a matter of professional frustration and personal pique. After he went over to the British, he led a Loyalist campaign in Virginia, so that he has the distinction of being the best general on both sides in the same war. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Kenneth Roberts wrote a series of novels that dealt with Arnold’s story. You can find them on Amazon.
I hear you Jon. I have read of his contributions and his military expertise. Point taken. But regardless, the name has come to symbolize treason and we jump to it when we look for analogies.
In the future, I suspect another name may supplant it.
Our reps in Congress get more recesses than kids in pre-K.
And they act more like pre-K kids than some 4 year olds I know.
Exactly so, and with much more cause that the Benedict Arnold of the Revolutionary War.
"Moscow Mike" will be recorded as a stupid, spineless sycophant.
Are you talking the Zelensky puppets?
Where did the Trump -Putin connection come from? It was a fantasy cooked up by the Clinton's and echoed by the media. Its a lie. Brennan briefed Obama in the summer of 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planned to tie Trump to Putin to take attention away from her email scandal.
BTW Clinton kept and stored highly classified documents illegally. When those records were subpoenaed she bleached bit the server and destroyed her phones with hammers. Of course when the FBI investigated they didn't to prosecute. NO raids, no indictments, nada.
Why? Because she is a leftist democrat.
I wish there was one shred of logic in your proposal. Once Hillary Clinton lost the election, who was president? If there was anything there there with Clinton don't you think Trumps operatives would have discovered it?
But wait, maybe all those emails are still in the basement of the pizza parlor along with Hunter Bidens laptop and all the guns he owned. That's probably the same basement they buried Tony Soprano!
See? I can invent conspiracies for fun as well?
It seems they have hardly been back in session 🤷🏻♀️
Ukraine needs help NOW!!
Oh come on. They've been hard at work on the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, the Liberty in Laundry Act, the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, the Clothes Dryer Reliability Act, the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act and the Refrigerator Freedom Act.
I wish I was joking.
becky, you know all these appliances are so very important and now need congressional protection because having energy efficient appliances is not patriotic. I hate it when the dishwasher rebels. And now the dryer has put up an American flag and the washer is complaining about us being woke. We have a houseful of books about those subjects that a true American shouldn't know about and the heat pump has threatened to burn them.
I wish you were joking, too, Becky 😕
Their misplaced attention to "home appliance patriotism" is inexcusable, but may provide some fruitful campaign statements from their Denocrat opponents.
I wish you were joking, too….
Do people even KNOW that is what the House has been up to instead of dealing with things like our own border security, Asian security issues, Israel and Gaza, and Ukraine!
Hands off our Home Appliances Act!! …. !
Just more Republican Political Theatre. The clown show continues....
It seems like our kitchen appliances are getting more consideration and more support for their freedom than people are.
😪
Well done, Becky! Perfecto. 🤣
But they were also hard at work investigating and impeaching Sec'y Mayorkas, and today the Senate gave the repubs their well deserved reward! It went something like, "Go home and get your shine-box"
Let's just all resolve NOW to be very vocal about this come November! Vote Republican = recess; Vote Democrat = action. Obviously, I'm not in the advertising business, but you get my drift.
I wish we could be as vocal and as active NOW as in decades ago when people gathered in front of the Congress and the Supreme Court and protested the lack of representation of their views. While I dread violence as threatened by the MAGAfascists ultra-extremists, I hate being sidelined, silenced, hogtied by threats. It seems like we're already in a non-democratic country when we see our views and our institutions disregarded and abused by what is clearly a violent minority answering to a vengeful Trump and Putin combination.
Yeah, the world has changed SO much, Roxanna. I can recall going to a local Vietnam war moratorium here in Cleveland, maybe 1970ish, and there were probably 20,000 people who showed up! Can't imagine much of anything drawing that kind of protest response today. But stay tuned; I can kinda feel a change in the air, and it could get very interesting real soon. As Heather says, "Democracy Awakening"!!
I think some anti-Israeli folks have done some protesting.
Spot on...I like it, Daniel!
Even "Big Media" can find a way to play with that.
Thats what I was wondering - they just literally got back from a "recess"! I have to wonder - is there any "rule, norm or possibility etc" to prevent these one after another "recesses" & maybe have them do their job? You know the supposed reason for their being there & raking in over $170k a year!!!!!!!
The Representatives are exhausted by all the work they are doing. Or, Mike Johnson has to make another visit to Mar-a-Lago to get instructions from the Orange Speaker of the House.
He wants to remain speaker and if they are in recess, nothing can happen. And they have to fund raise since the RNC now exists to pay death star's legal bills. We are now seeing ads for Ds in the House primaries here in Oregon, so the Ds are busy helping candidates who can actually win in November.
Michele
Your answer is less tongue-in-cheek than mine. I think you are right on both counts: Remaining Speaker for two more weeks and the need to raise campaign funds.
Lynell.. Recess? Obviously, to me anyway, they're all constipated as-the-devil and about to piss-their-pants as well..! Perhaps it's their diet of spoiled goods. Maybe quit accepting care-packages from their friends in the Russian "Intelligence" community residing close by. And, I'm not referring to the ones with diplomatic plates either!
That was exactly the question I had this morning.
Morning, Lynell. I don't, this is the first I have heard of it.
Afternoon, Ally! Well, we'll probably never know why another recess. Why should we? We're just the ones paying their salaries.
His confusion is showing up as a huge internal conflict between his complete adoption of Christianity as a national priority, and his role in government which specifically bans it. That's intrusion.
MAGA Mike is a pseudo Christian. If actions are not good news for the poor and vulnerable of society,it's heresy. Period. To leave Ukraine so vulnerable when we could help is sinful. MAGA Mike and his ilk are trying to force a form of Christianity on the country. That is the opposite of what Jesus did.
These ChINOs are only interested in punishing the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable. God favors the godly with riches and strength. That's how you know who's who.
True, Becky. The only gospel *any of them* have read is Osteen’s prosperity gospel.
Hmmm. Jesus asked people to give up their riches and follow him.
I, personally, would expect that he firmly believes he is doing God’s work. Most likely God wants peace and fewer bombs with Putin going forward to rebuild a Soviet homeland. There is no earthly explanation for what Mike Johnson is doing. Let’s remember his stated, “If you want to know my world view, read the Bible.” The centuries old fiction writing surely offers anyone who reads it great clarity.
I just read Genesis....KJV. As far as I can tell God is promising a lot of really old guys(hundreds of years old) that their lines will rule in one case from the Nile to the Euphrates. Later this became smaller as it wasn't really practical. There is a lot of concern about perpetuating "seed", that is, patriarchal family descendants. There's also incest, rape, and violence and in Eden God is angry because his creations discovered sex, as that is what the Tree of Knowledge was about. So then He had to make all sorts of promises about male lines. After Lot's wife turned to salt, his two daughters were so concerned with the continuance of his seed that they got him drunk and laid with him. Now that's devotion.
Got to remind ourselves that the concept of God is an idea, however that does or does not affect anyone; further interpretations should not in any way be the business of government. Each of us has a responsibility to govern our own minds - as any literate Jew can tell you from our 2k years of talmudic and weekly contemplating of those mysterious life instructions.....
Right on!!
Yeh.. And, Separation of Church & State.., what a great concept. Seems to be partly woiking. I mean they(?) are tax-exempt right...? Well, that was certainly a start, huh. But, it seems to have gone adrift too. Gotta 'right' the ship.Taking the "oathe of office" seriously would be a start.
Who should we be writing to insist that they initiate this?
DOJ. Ask for a preliminary injunction, if not a TRO. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/temporary_restraining_order
Thank you. I have just contacted the Department of Justice via their contact form asking them to apply the Logan Act to both Trump and Grenell. https://www.justice.gov/contact-us
Thank you! One more request sent to the DOJ.
And another
Thanks for making it easy for us to make the request to the appropriate department to apply the Logan Act to former President Trump!
Just sent. Thank you for this info.
How many of trumps sycophants work at DOJ?
Thanks for the contact. I wrote, too.
One more request sent.
Me too.
That anything but a BLUE TSUNAMI might work is as big a joke as the hostage positioned MAGAs. Been there.Done that. We’re in year four of delays, justice subterfuge, and strangle hold tactics spelling nothing but chaos and desperation from their House. It’s not OUR HOUSE. Until the complicit are voted out it won’t be. The Logan Act? Seems to me well intentioned stopgaps are now just vague laws reinterpreted by again …the hostage people….PRINCIPLE IS DAMNED….all the way through the SCOTUS.
The continuous Democratic wins/seats taken/ground swelling grass roots fund raising steadily tells the story louder and louder…
I’d like to hear your list complete with the date THEIR position is up. Mine is growing …Massie wasn’t on it..wasn’t …is now. It started with the 147 at first impeachment. There are no innocents.Its FAR too late for a feigned stand.
I’m not running scared . I’m disappointed with my own knowledge of how this SHOULD BE working. Apparently there’s boatloads like me. (Today’s class is The Logan Act -thanks btw).
See I was under the impression that my regular vote would install people carrying forth The American Dream..what my father died for in ‘44 . I’m not sure when it changed..but IT DID. IT was a very contemplated sneaky plan ..long in perpetuity. Many see TFG as the culprit , he played into the plan , a gloved fit , hand made.
Are the majority of Americans really White Supremists that came out of the woodwork in 2016? Or can the Constitution be again a stand for ‘all people are created equal’?.. . 11/5/2024 will tell.
I am hard pressed to understand the ever present Russian influence , they stood beside us against Hitler but seemingly are present everywhere war breaks out having ‘gone in and disrupted covertly’ ( well acknowledging US has done this a few times too) .
I can’t change my mind Ukraine is probably the last foothold in Europe .Needs to be fully supported. When Zelensky this week stated Israel isn’t a NATO alliance and yet US is supporting ( the hostages strangling here I know) …really underscored the volumes already written.
💙💙VOTE OUT ALL THE COMPLICIT💙💙
Thank you for your post, which I fully agree with. I heard Zelensky's interview and his well taken point that Isreal is not a part of NATO and yet is fully supplied
with weapons. I
understand not
wanting to start a
proxy war with Russia, but its obscene that Mike Johnson is withholding critical support from Ukraine, as their infrastructure is being destroyed and people killed. If Ukraine is allowed to be destroyed, there will such chaos throughout the world as Russia continues its aggressive & destabilizing strategies. We need to be stopping that now, before it happens, not watching Mike Johnson & our House of Representatives continue to delay providing essential support for Ukraine.
I also listened to Zelensky and thought, he's going about this the wrong way, he needs to stress that Israel is not the only place where Jews were attacked, he is also a Jew and Russia, in it's attempt to devour Ukraine, is killing fellow Jews. In the thousands of children taken to Russia for reprogramming, how many are Jewish?
Good point that adds to this terrible tragedy unfolding!! 😢
Thanks, Sunni
We are a growing voice ,paying attention , and speaking up more and more. HALELUJAH !
Linda, “Seven Mountain Madness” sounds like a dystopian (un)amusement park.
Errr ‘all men are created equal’…that’s part of the debate and left for us, sisters…also on 11/5/2024.!
Patricia, a dream of mine is to see the ERA ratified & adopted in my lifetime (time’s a-wasting!!).
I’m with ya! Love your posts🫶
Sad for us
It's not sad It's a very serious situation for Ukraine and our Country. There is alot at stake!
I would go out on a limb and say he has gotten away with more stuff, more crimes than any other private US citizen has managed to get away without repercussions.
Trump claims the Dems are trying to take him out politically. He claims they're after him. That's paranoia. His paranoia does not mean he did not commit crimes.
He is also teaching young people how to get away with murder. Deny, sue, lie, deny sue.
Not to mention Jared Kushner.
Especially Jared Kushner (now at $4 Billion?).
Why IS there no call for and investigation of that deal and some legislation such as “The Son in law Post WH Corruption Prevention Act”?
Jared failed to meet the criteria to receive a security clearance and so daddy-in-law had to grant him the clearance. I hope you are right about Jared being investigated once the election is over and the Democrats take back the House.
Where is Jared in all of this? In China? In Saudi Arabia? Looking after trump's interest in the new real estate deal in the mid east (Oman?) He's not making statements like the rantings of Don Jr, no videos, no press......sounds of silence. probably eating Ivanka's home made latkes or a Seder dinner. Wait! those are Jewish things, and doesn't trump not like Jewish people?
Perhaps keeping a low profile is one’s best hope of making sure the whole unsightly mess fades in that distant trash pile chock full of the forgotten debris of short attention spans.
If tRUMP had to deal with one more indictment ie violating the Logan Act, he wouldn't have time for his naps in court. And if you're going to add more crimes, how about tacking on the fact he never stopped making money off all his businesses while he was prz. The Emoluments (even spel-chek didn't help me out with this one but you know what I mean) clause. That's uncounted millions of profit.
What a dumpy little multi-tasker! I never even dreamed of dozing off in trafic court, but I did breastfeed my infant there.
Don Snoreleone will likely fall asleep many times in court over the next 8 weeks.
Gwen, given TFFG’s apparent health/mental health issues, particularly increasing dementia-related observations, it is not surprising that he may nod off & be disruptive when he is supposed to sit still and comport himself appropriately.
Why are so many Trump condos and properties sold to Russians and/or dark LLC’s? Why are almost all the Trump licensee deals in counties within the Russian sphere of influence? Yes, emoluments clause is appropriate here.
Pecuniary emoluments should be curtailed for all elected in positions of trust.
"emoluments" is the correct spelling. Not that this dyslexic sees that word as "emlouments" every time...
The biggest contributors were the Chinese. I would guess the US might be second with all of the golf games he had.
And the Democrats, especially Biden, are bending over backward to avoid fanning the flames of dt’s incessant incendiary claims that his criminal issues are merely partisan uses of the judiciary… but when is the point when the gloves come off, when some fire extinguishing equipment will be used and will that happen ? Would it help?
Hard telling. I would get great satisfaction from that though.
This is why we have to pursue his current trials and why voting is so important. Those few years Trump had in power gave him the power to install what we are now calling loyalists, I call them traitors. He needs more lawsuits? He needs to focused upon for the crimes for which we have indictments and get him removed from society. And yes, he should. Perhaps from prison.
If it is a rule, law, or tradition-none applies to him.
SPW, I have been wondering about this too. It is simply outrageous. In history many times there were shadow governments and now we have one too.
Steve, I was pondering this very issue today whilst running errands…my thoughts kept going to the shenanigans TFFG is doing & his meddling….to the point of him mentioning that he has an “envoy” (forget the guy’s name), receiving foreign dignitaries at Mara Lago (didn’t he call it the “southern White House” when he was in office?) & that Congress members meet/speak with him regularly & seem to follow his direction (shame on them!!!). I tried to remember if any former prez has done anything similar, but could only recall situations when former presidents, sometimes more than one, would work together in coordination with the administration-in-office for humanitarian causes. My jaw has hit the floor so many times in response to what he does that I’ll probably need reconstructive surgery!!!!
Better get that surgery soon if trump takes the presidency my guess is that All health care will go out the window, except for "true believers"!
That picture of him in court. He looks as though he is 100% healthy as his doctor proclaims. Looks VERY old, and the republicans claim Biden is old.
I don't think so. Trump and his cronies will get the best health care--not so much for the rest of us.
Have you seen the statement by Chris Sununu explaining??? why he will be voting for the dumpster (or endorsing - not sure which - maybe both). Because according to him 51% of people will vote for tffg. This is the "honest, upfront, vocal" conservative Sununu up to this point!! (Sorry the exclamation points get away from me these days)
Maggie, A couldn’t believe that a governor of a northern state said that.
Yes, NH has been known as bent Republican for a long time, but that statement? Another little t sycophant. Like Barbara Keating my jaw has dropped so many times I too may also need plastic surgery.
Samm, to me ANYONE in Congress or Fed/state elected office that endorses/chooses to vote for TFFG is pretty much on board with the ideas/plans (long ago hatched) in the “mandate” Project 2025, irrespective of who might be the next “R” POTUS.
I don't believe it. I've been hearing the 50/50 scenario between the Democrats and the Republicans for a long time, but not so much about the Independents which outnumber both! My guess is the majority of those Independents will heavily lean toward retaining Democracy over voting for an autocratic criminal madman!
It may come to a rational decision by those foreign governments once Iran has nuclear weapons ( thanks to Mango Unchained). Israel is not the only country in Iran’s nuclear crosshairs.
Mango Unchained 😂
Mango Unchained!!!! Brilliant! Just brilliant!
🤣👍 Mango Unchained….perfect!
Great question!
We all agree. And the answer?
Me too. Republicans have been doing it since Reagan with great success and no consequences.
Since Nixon worked put a deal with Vietnam to undermine President Lyndon B. Johnson to hold off on a plan to end the Vietnam war until after the election.
Yes his “secret plan” otherwise known as steal the election.
AMEN! …tell ‘em like it is Dotty!🫶
Yes! I sent a letter to the White House 2 weeks ago about this very thing. Why do we sit back and let this man take over?
Just a thought, maybe Biden can assign TFFG as ambassador to, um, Siberia? Antarctica? Namibian desert? Cape Horn?
Do they have golf courses in these far away places?LOL
I’ve wondered that too and despite many attempts to find out I’ve never found out…surprise, surprise!
That is a great question. I remember Heather mentioning about the Logan Act in one of her newsletters.
Thanks. I don’t remember Heather mentioning it. Hope she does again sometime soon!
Yes she did. I remember reading about it in her newsletter.
My guess on that is that although this law goes back to 1799, only 2 people were ever charged, both in mid 1800’s and both not convicted. In today’s courts of delay,delay delay, appeal, appeal, appeal, my guess is too little too late. It must be vote Blue in all ballots local to federal until this ship can be righted and return to real governing by the people, for the people.
Some people are above the law, Haven't you noticed?
Someone should have explained that to Jimmy Carter, who in his post-presidential years was not shy about conducting a personal foreign policy.
I'm SO with you!! This has been horrifying me, that they are able to do this! It's like they're now completely trying to ignore that the elected government exists and just bully on past!
You mean the same way the Clinton rolled around the world selling influence and collecting envelopes? The world was a hell of a lot safer when Trump was President. Dictatorships stayed in their lane because they were afraid of Trump.
The Logan Act is essentially incomplete. It states what is not allowed but provides no implementaional text. It's one more situation where we expected our legislators to deal in good faith and with good intentions toward the nation's best interests.
Mending the gaps in the Act is the job of the same corrupt do-nothing Repub Congresscritters abusing it, but since they're currently benefitting from those weaknesses they are utterly non-motivated to do so!
VOTE BLUE in 2024
Thanks!
Yet one more item to "fix" when all 3 branches are Democrats!
I can't wait!
Good luck with fixing SCOTUS. Hopefully a Alito and Thomas will retire when Biden wins reelection -- one way or another.
Just like our Constitution apparently.
Thank you for pointing out the lack of implementation language in the Logan Act. Yes… this defect needs to be corrected!
Good point, Gary.
Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realize what is happening to them by just looking around their own world? .... Author, Remote Viewer. Former Spec. Assist. to the CNO
Stephan A. Schwartz
Biden's goodness and Trump's evilness do not matter as much as "hate the libs". Hate the libs is of paramount importance over their own welfare and the welfare of their sisters, brothers, mothers, father's. I know, I have hate the libs relatives.
Wendyl, I’m sorry that you have hating relatives. I think that it’s more than “hate the libs”; I think that it’s “hate people different from me (the others) and anyone who supports them “.
Yeah, I agree that one of the reasons they hate the libs is because we tend to embrace "other" and find community with multi-colored, multi-gendered, multi-cultural "others." Biden's goodness is wanting to support all the "others". God forbid!
Divide and conquer.
They hate it that you don't share their stupidity.
Thankfully, no relatives, but a boatload of friends.
". . . by just looking around their own world," yes, Sam?
Might you be suggesting that some schools in America might use humanities as to how to look at our "own world"?
The novels, films, songs, photographs, memoirs, and other arts are there. Good ones. Great ones. Wonderful ones. Might students learn from their better teachers how to use them to see the detailed complexities of people as individuals in complex situations?
There is a lot of nuance in most of these "detailed complexities" for sure. Simplistic answers which become political slogans usually just rev up polarization. The border "crisis" is one great example.
Phil, if you wish to you can look at my Substack post for yesterday the 16th on the subject...
Thank you, Robin.
Went to your site, to which I've appended this:
Yes, Robin, the bad qualities you mention grow like weeds all the more with humanities absent.
And another Yes, to how the imposition of standardized testing (in the U.S. and allied countries as well) both further helped kill humanities and further put on steroids all the numbers-gaming, commodification, and other packaging vulgarities of the billionaire classes.
Another commenter on Heather's site, Jude Ellen, told me of a book on this by a Canadian, Max Wyman. I couldn't get a copy anywhere in Japan, where I live, but my son in Big Sur got one for me, and just sent it. I'll try to report on it after it arrives and I've had a chance to peruse.
Phil, how I wish that education provided greater opportunities for students to learn from exposure to the humanities. Much of my reading of late has been on the subject of consciousness itself, how we receive and process information, and how or whether we act on what we are exposed to. I’m inclined to think that it’s actually possible for some to be incapable of evaluating, let alone analyzing material or of foreseeing consequences. . The MAGA mind set. Lest anyone think I am claiming that there is a superior kind of individual who can engage in analysis etc. ,I’m not. I think only that it is likely that evolution has left us in this predicament.
Standardized tests seem to leave their victims without the necessary skill sets to evaluate material, even if they have the capability of doing so. The whole experiment has been such a waste. Let us hope we learn from it.
It's been a huge economic boon to the billionaire classes, Jean.
They invested early in the commodifying, numbering, packaging of all life -- and the killing of humanities that did otherwise.
It started in the U.S., then spread to the world. Almost everywhere now teachers teach to the test -- which are machine gradable, so there's zero human about any of it.
Worse, tests have devolved to neuter anything local, regional, or otherwise human in language. See Diane Ravitch, "The Language Police" (2003) and Minae Mizumura "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English edition Columbia University Press, 2016).
But the profit-taking from the standardized testing death industry has been just as great as that from the billionaires spreading hate and divisiveness -- around the world -- from social media algorithms.
Sorry to communicate in this round about way. My comments get returned. I have the feeling you and I are somehow talking past each other. Don’t know how to respond to your last.
No need to respond, Jean -- except to anticipate next opportunity.
Good for Heather that she keeps these opportunities rife for all of us.
Don't forget the anti-vax movement and of course what all this has had on covid mortality. On rural American mortality, don't forget suicide, this tops the list among that demographic. Incidentally, far more than mass shootings.
I’m going to hop on my Covid bandwagon for a minute.
The world wants to think that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. Last week was the first week in many many months that the US suffered fewer than 1,000 Covid deaths. Per week. And that’s with little testing, and without attribution of deaths from the sequelae of Covid. Excess mortality is the only metric we still have that might accurately reflect the continuing impact of the pandemic. Vaccine uptake remains abysmal, particularly in the demographic you are referencing.
I, too, wish that Covid were over. I’d love to be back to “normal” but I’m immunocompromised from cancer treatment, so I’m not. While I’m not worried about acute Covid since I’m well vaccinated, I am very concerned about Long Covid. We don’t know, we *can’t* know, what the long term effects of having this virus might be. My own cancer was caused by a virus I likely caught 40 or so years ago, without even knowing I had it. What will populations look like 40 years from now?
We are failing our children. In the four years of this pandemic, we have not done the things that we know how to do to protect people from airborne illness. Proper Covid mitigation needs to be layered, and it needs especially to include ventilation and filtration in schools, which remain a driver of infections in our communities. But also in other public spaces. Mitigation still needs to include filtration and ventilation indoors, vaccination, testing and isolation when sick, and masking when community levels are high. We are doing none of those things, and now we are threatened anew by measles and avian flu outbreaks. We need to do better.
Ok, off my bandwagon now.
I hear you, KR. I lost my "novid" status 6 weeks age after a trip to the coast that included eating in a very crowded restaurant one evening. For me, it was nothing worse than a bad cold (which I thought I had picked up from our housemate) and only tested myself because I wanted to go to band rehearsal...
My wife (no surprise) also caught it, and her symptoms were both very different and more severe (albeit still quite mild compared to earlier cases in friends of ours).
I’m sorry you got it, Ally, but damn well done for avoiding it so long. I’ve had it twice, both times brought home by my husband. I adore him, but he’s just not careful. The third time he got it I made him go to a B&B, because he won’t stay isolated in the house. That worked. I get that it’s awful to wear a mask all day, especially when you’re a professor and lecturing. It’s much easier for me, since I only need to wear one intermittently as I don’t have a job. The two times we both had it, I was sick for far longer than he was. He cleared the infection in less than a week, while I continued to test positive for almost three weeks. That’s the effect of my compromised immune system, and it makes me worried about what all that virus is doing in me for so long. Is it damaging organs? Is it mutating? Who knows.
There are things I think are worth risking Covid for, but going to the grocery store isn’t one of them! So I wear my high quality N95 and ignore the looks. We’ve traveled to Italy twice, and diligent masking while traveling has worked for that. No clue what my husband does when he’s traveling without me. He doesn’t like to be the only one masking. I couldn’t care less myself. I make him test serially after he travels, since it seems the only way to stay safe myself. And in fact, that worked for his third infection, at least to keep it away from me. He’s coming home this evening from a conference, and will be met at the door by masked me offering him a test 😅
You cannot be too careful. I still mask at the grocery store, hardware store, and I won't eat at a "dine in" restaurant unless I can sit outside. I will put a mask on when I go through a drive through (usually coffee) when the cashier is wearing a mask.
That’s basically what I do too. With our long winters, it’s a lot of months without going out! My husband does go out, especially to a bar weekly for his jazz jam sessions. That makes me so nervous. But it’s his joy, and I just try to keep my anxiety at a simmer. Not worth losing my happy marriage over it.
I wonder how we would feel-react if a couple 747’s flew into the Rocky Mountains every week, covid ie the plague has been doing that for years now, while the insipid bastard didn’t start the plague, he with his unique worldview did almost nothing to stop it.
That’s a vivid analogy!
Beyond doing nothing to stop it, he weaponized the mitigations we do have. It’s his fault that masking was rejected here. It’s his fault that the CDC is a shadow of its former glory.
He is so foolish. If he had done even a halfway adequate job on Covid, I’m fairly sure he would have won reelection.
KR, your “bandwagon” needs a national, or make that an international, tour!!! Keep bangin’ that drum!!!! Mitigation efforts need to be strengthened & improved not only for today, but also for what else might be coming down the pike.
Thank you for saying that, Barbara. It can be a lonely place to be sometimes, and having support really helps.
Thanks 🙏 this is absolutely horrendous news and yet it’s difficult, isn’t it, to find the charitable fibre to help those who don’t want any. Can you venture an informed guess about what is that rate ? -> « dying (!!!!) at a much higher rate…. »
BMJ is a global "healthcare knowledge provider". This is an interesting read.
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/study-finds-widening-gap-in-death-rates-between-us-areas-that-vote-for-democratic-rather-than-republican-party/
SIXFOLD !!!!
Thanks for the link🙏 wow
« … The results show that the gap in overall death rates between Democratic and Republican counties increased more than sixfold from 2001 to 2019, especially for white populations, and was driven mainly by deaths due to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, unintentional injuries, and suicide. »…
That was interesting! I imagine the effects are even greater now, what with Covid vaccine rejection in red areas.
Wow, how sad.
Thanks for the link, Ally!!
They don’t know what is happening in Blue states. They aren’t aware of what they are being denied. The propaganda they receive has been 100% effective. The few that try to bring the message have their voices eliminated.
Again, I have to wonder why the members of the House are earning a salary on the dole as it seems, since they are not working for it. To close down for recess repeatedly should be a big story in the press, but it is not. How about schools having this many "recesses"? It is crazy that they are not getting anything done and still get to earn a salary. That needs to be addressed, perhaps in ballot initiatives. How many days should the members of the house have to work to get paid their full salary? How many recesses should be paid? What if they do not get anything done while in session. Their job is to legislate. Are they doing this in reverse by not passing bills to get things done? If so, they legislate in the negative. I feel desperate to get Ukraine aid, and think of Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantruming-Trump legislating too, even though he is not an elected official, he cannot let go of trying to govern the USA all for his own selfish purposes, and the idiots in the House that are his Handmaidens go along with whatever he wants. The press for its part does almost nothing to call any of this out. With them, I can stop paying for their services, since they are not providing them. We should not have a system where our mainstream press is privately owned. In Germany the television and radio are paid for by the people having to pay a fee.
https://youtu.be/jphacgBLrc0?si=7XpuklXh7paGQUr1
Otherwise, I rely on Substacks like this and independent news, and foreign news to be informed.
Can someone please explain to me why enough Rep's don't sign Discharge Petition #9 and bring the aid for Ukraine bill to the floor for a vote? If there are enough votes for the bill, then why haven't enough people signed the discharge petition? TY.
I think that with more than one discharge petition circulating it is dividing up the support for each one, so none has enough support. I am wanting Biden to do a workaround. He must have some powers as president that he can exercise. It is like he and MAGA Mike are waiting each other out to see who will push through Ukrainian aid first. It will have political repercussions for each of them. I just want to know what Biden could do to work-around Congress if need be.
Everything is broken, right now.
Are the Republicans in the House on OUR side?
No. They are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin’s Russia.
Obviously, depending on method of payment. Humor in the face of death is a sign of courage.
And, SPW, they appear so blatantly proud of it!! Sometimes I think I’ll wake up and find that this has all been but a bad dream, no, a nightmare!
Not at all. Actually, so many reasons to be afraid to stand up to Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantraming-Trump! Heather herself talked about the donor concerns that wealthy donors will not fund them if they do, and then there is the mafia affect. Hitlers perfect combination fear and reward, more simply known as the carrot and the stick. If you cannot afford to protect your family then you cannot afford to stand up to him. However, voting is private. Let us see where these threats lead come voting day.
Voting may be private but my substack posts would put me on an enemies list on any day,
And keep each and every one of us off a certain jury!
How I would love to be one to help put they wouldn't have me.
Likewise.
Oh, me too.
Yup.
Shhhh..., Jeri
I've been screeching about him since the escalator. Way too late
Not loud enough! Try again!
every hour of every day
Me too. My friend & I 'kid' about sharing the same cell, though since both of us are older, my guess is we could share the same mass graves!
In there with ya, what a swan song????
Mine would keep me off of Treacherous-treasonous-tantruming-traitor-Trump's jury!
He suggested that a supporter or two try to get on the jury so they could screw up the works. Maybe I could too, but I've been much to vocal. You would be too, no doubt
To be sure.
Being silent is not an option
I thought it fascinating that they went back years on that juror’s Facebook history to eliminate her because she filmed people celebrating against trump. I’d be arrested right off the bat if “investigated.” Proudly.
What ever happened to humor?
Depends, Ransom, on what the U.S. billionaire classes, and evangelicals instruct them to do.
Did you miss my point?
Short answer, no. They are on their own side, whatever that might be.
Hell NO
Bunch of crooks. Johnson didn't recognise a poisoned chalice when he picked it up.
He was/is probably too intoxicated by his religious beliefs!?!
(Laughter)
Yeah....even I laughed when Mikey compared himself to Moses. (I then thought to myself: Bro, you're def gonna be wandering in the desert for 40 years!)
🤣👍
If Trump had not pulled the US out of our agreement with Iran in 2018, would any of what has recently happened in the Middle East have occurred?
Maybe, maybe not.
Vladimir Putin is certainly glad to have world focus focused elsewhere from Ukraine.
Chump is the nexus of our woes
Bet on it, Ralph!
What will desperate politicians do to stay out of jail? Use this interactive infographic to compare Netanyahu and Trump on corruption cases, attacking the courts, stoking violence and religious extremism. Swipe right for Netanyahu. Left for Trump. Birds of a feather...
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/04/05/netanyahu-trump-desperate-politicians-stoke-violence-to-stay-out-of-jail/
“Birds of a feather flock together” … two somewhat like kind - narcissistic - individuals who should never have been elected to positions of trust!!!
Never trust a serial liar.
'The desperate alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea' as reported by Adam Taylor for Today's WorldView in The Washington Post:
'It is increasingly common in Washington to view the various conflicts around the world as part of one big narrative. That is hardly without reason. As The Washington Post reported this week, U.S. officials say Iran has bolstered its defenses against a potential retaliatory strike by Israel with the purchase of Russian weapons, part of a strategic alliance forged by Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the extensive use of Iranian-manufactured drones there.'
'Moscow hasn’t just been looking to Tehran for a mutually beneficial relationship. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to North Korea to meet with that nation’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Un, and cement a deal that gave Russian troops much-needed ammunition and other war materials in exchange for more advanced technology coveted by Pyongyang.'
'But the most significant partner by far in this convergence is China, which provided a trade lifeline for Russia amid Western sanctions. U.S. officials told the Associated Press last week that much of this support goes beyond regular business, however, with China surging exports of technology that Russia can use to produce missiles, tanks and planes — making up for both battlefield losses and export controls by the United States and its allies.'
'Iran, Russia, North Korea and China are part of a far broader group of nations and movements — among their ranks include the relatively small but influential groups like Hamas and the Houthis — that seem to be opposed to the West. Some Western officials, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have repeatedly suggested these countries mark a new “axis of evil” — a reference to a phrase infamously used by President George W. Bush at the start of the war on terror.'
'The man who coined that phrase apparently sees this new alliance as even broader. “The world faces a global alignment of dictators, thugs and aggressors, from Tehran to Moscow to Beijing to Palm Beach,” David Frum, the former White House speechwriter, said on X this week after Iran’s failed attack on Israel — the last item on his list, a reference to Florida man and former president Donald Trump.'
'It’s flawed to view this as simply an “axis of evil 2.0,” however. That’s partly because the original idea was a stretch at best. Two of the three countries in the original “axis,” Iran and Iraq, were helmed by diametrically opposed ideologies at that point — the former led by a Shiite theocracy, the other a Pan-Arab nationalism led by Sunnis — who had not long before fought a bloody, brutal war. The final nation, the totalitarian socialist state North Korea, was literally and figuratively half a world away.'
'The new alignment is similarly misaligned. Russia’s state capitalist society may ally itself with domestic religious forces like the powerful Russian Orthodox Church, but it has little overlap with the Islamic doctrine espoused by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or its sectarian Shiite allies. While China and North Korea both espouse socialist forms of government, the official rhetoric and practical implementation of these ideologies in the two nations is significantly different. Even in recent history, they have found themselves at points of tension.'
'This means that unlike the Cold War, where ideology at least nominally bound the Communist bloc against the West, what we have now is better understood as a “marriage of convenience” between a number of disparate nations.'
'That doesn’t mean it will end in divorce, however. What’s driving these agreements is not just convenience, but also desperation. Sanctions and export controls have pushed Russia — which once enjoyed booming trade with Europe and the United States despite tensions — to turn to China, even if the trade relationship is clearly unfavorable. While none of the nations can stand up to America’s military might, they all have individual strengths that the others hope to learn from.'
'To put it another way: If Putin wants to keep fighting his war in Ukraine and survive punishing economic isolation from the Western-led global economic order, he has little option but to turn east to China. If China views the future of the global order as a great power battle between itself and the United States, it needs all of the help it can muster — and Russia’s rich natural resources and some of its military technology will be of big aid here.'
'Desperation can drive dangerous situations. Two of the four in this alignment are undeniably powerful nations, while the two smaller nations — Iran and North Korea — have considerable capabilities of their own, most notably including Tehran’s network of aligned movements in the Middle East.'
'Three of the four are nuclear-armed; Iran is not far off. As permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia both played constructive roles in setting norms before, including on arms control measures for both Iran and North Korea. Without them, those efforts are foundering.' (WAPO) Copied in full.
***
Thanks for the additional details Fern. So again, it comes down to Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei. Said yet another way by Churchill, "..... "if Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
Thank you, D4N, for your fancy words!
'Fact-Checking Spock: Was the “Enemy of My Enemy” Guy Really Killed by His “Friend”?' (Slate)
'In the West, the proverb eventually found a more recognizable form in Latin. Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei (“my friend, the enemy of my enemy”) was a common saying by the early 18th century, when it appeared in books otherwise written in Italian (by 1711), written in German (by 1721), and translated into Spanish (by 1723).'
'From there, the axiom may have entered English through French. As Garson O’Toole, the self-styled Quote Investigator, pointed out to me, the expression “every enemy’s enemy is a friend” was described as a “popular” line of reasoning in an 1825 English translation of a French book, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans. The adage took on the more familiar English phrasing, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” by the late 19th century. The first recorded instance for this phrasing comes from Gabriel Manigault, who in his 1884 Political Creed described the sense that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” as a' “natural feeling.”
(Slate) See link below.
https://slate.com/culture/2013/05/star-trek-into-darkness-fact-checked-was-the-enemy-of-my-enemy-guy-really-killed-by-his-friend.html
Are they 'really' friends ?
I started to edit ↑, but changed my mind - 'nuff said. My use of a Latin translator does in fact 'sound' fancier, implying some larger depth, insight.... whatever by the user, except 'this one.' I'm as flummoxed as anyone here, and come to learn. I'm grateful that I get to do that here; To learn from the teacher and my fellow students. Gratitude to all herein. Even those of differing opinions, fact based or not still teach me something valuable, patience and tolerance when I think about it in hindsight.
Love this quote
Thanks Fern. I can't help but draw some parallels with the amalgam of conservative ideologies that make up the Right in the US. Rampant Capitalists, Evangelicals, Un-churched Culture Warriors, Nihilists seeking only power, and to a lesser extent, Remnant Republicans (as evidenced by my stupid governor, Chris Sununu), are all in an uneasy bed together united only by their hatred of "the Libs". I believe this is where the real divisions and dangers in American politics lie, not in liberal vs conservative. That dynamic has existed for decades, and we still managed to function as a nation. With this new(ish) dynamic, I'm not so sure.
Fern, thank you for sharing this; I know that it was a lot of work. We need to remember (as with Liz Cheney) that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.
Bravo, Fern for position reasons for us to examine why the members of this current axis of evil are misaligned in so many ways. However I do wonder if they agree that on the common goal of being disruptors, each in its own way, the power with which the West has dominated the globe at least since the end of WWII. Iran is determined disrupt countries that aren’t theocracies, Russia is determined to disrupt the tenets of democracy held by Ukraine and other countries on its borders, North Korea has chosen to disrupt the West by its continual nuclear threats as well as providing munitions to Russia and China, Victor Orban though still in the EU is unflinchingly developing a theocratic democracy and openly promoting his tactics to other Western countries, and Xi’s China with it’s determination to disrupt the West economically as well as partner with Russia and covertly supply Russia in its disruptive attempt to subvert the political paradigms of the West. I probably could’ve mentioned more but even though their tactics look very different I can see their commonality in their goal of being disruptors. Am I way of track here?
Margaret, thank you for the probative comment. Now, there are coalitions of nation states, overt & covert, 'disruptors' to use your term working together. Geopolitical warfare has developed complexities as some countries like YEMEN have separate factions controlling separate controlled zones.
Heather's reference to the former CENTOM Commander is relevant here as he was an experienced YEMEN counter-military actor.
If you will tolerate another song reference to Bobby Zimmerman from Minnesota, the song for which he got an Oscar: 🎶A lot of stuff has gone under the Bridge, a lot of other stuff too🎶.... 🎶I feel like my heads'n a Noose & any moment now things are going to Break loose 🎶 ... 🎶 But, things have Changed 🎶
Margaret, I appreciated your sense of these countries' goals and connections, but cannot vouch for their short to long time plans or their firm connections ...'The Times They Are A-Changin'
Song by Bob Dylan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WD_ats6eE&pp=ygUmYm9iIGR5bGFuIHRoZSB0aW1lcyB0aGV5IGFyZSBhIGNoYW5naW4%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ywYohqoM60
I totally get your point and know “these times they are a changin” that’s why I was trying to convey that they are all in the process of changing Independently, at least on the surface, but all are committed to disrupt the West’s architecture of the global order in their own unique ways.
Sorry, didn’t proof read well should be positing versus position
Fern, thanks, as always, for finding these gems.
What does it say about my junior high brain that I love "...Florida man, D***** T****"? I mean, when the bizarre news articles all seem to say "Florida man does unbelievably stupid thing and gets hurt" (my favorite being the guy who used a live .22 long rifle cartridge to replace a fuse. Said replacement attained enough of the requirements involved for the cartridge to discharge, and hit the driver "right between the legs" damaging is scrotal sac and contents therein.)
We lived in KC, MO for a couple of years before moving to Indy.
"Florida Man" has nothing on "Missouri Man" as far as Darwin proving actions go.
My in-laws lived on a small acreage south of Nixa, MO in the late 1980's. While we were visiting them a neighbor shot and killed his long time helping hand who supposedly had been smashing pumpkins in the bosses pumpkin patch. The PPO (pumpkin patch owner) threw the dead man into the back of his pick-up and brought him to the sheriff's office and confessed. No charges were ever filed against the PPO. No reason why was ever given. My guess- justifiable homicide?
I still shake my head at how backward and ignorant so many of these Missouri yahoos are. The nightly local news in KC and Springfield, MO was likely the most entertaining of anywhere we've lived, in a macabre sort of way.
Wow!!!
Thanks, Fern..!
Double thanks, Jeff!!
“(David Sanger of the New York Times reminded readers yesterday that in 2015, in a deal with seven countries after two years of negotiations, Iran agreed to surrender 97% of its uranium, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and Iran returned to developing weapons-grade uranium.) “
Wake up magnuts! 😱🫣🤯🤬
So much of chump’s actions against America are forgotten amidst the “nostalgia” I read about. We need more reminders, although I’m sure most of us don’t need them. Apparently some soft brain types do.
Like some of the folks chosen for the jury? 🙄
I worry, all it takes is one I think
Gigi, I think it is not only up to the MAGAs but all Americans to understand the nuclear possibilities these days. Thank you pointing to David Sanger's article. It follows:
'With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught'
'The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.'
'By David E. Sanger'
'David E. Sanger has covered the Middle East and superpower conflict for several decades and reported from Washington.'
'April 15, 2024'
'When Iran agreed to a deal in 2015 that would require it to surrender 97 percent of the uranium it could use to make nuclear bombs, Russia and China worked alongside the United States and Europe to get the pact done.'
'The Russians even took Iran’s nuclear fuel, for a hefty fee, prompting celebratory declarations that President Vladimir V. Putin could cooperate with the West on critical security issues and help constrain a disruptive regime in a volatile region.'
'A lot has changed in the subsequent nine years. China and Russia are now more aligned with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to an American-led order, along with the likes of North Korea. When President Biden gathered the leaders of six nations for a video call from the White House on Sunday to plot a common strategy for de-escalating the crisis between Israel and Iran, there was no chance of getting anyone from Beijing or Moscow on the screen.'
'The disappearance of that unified front is one of the many factors that make this moment seem “particularly dangerous,” 'said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,' “maybe the most dangerous in decades.”
'But it is hardly the only one.' (NYTimes) See gifted link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/us/politics/iran-israel-nuclear-deal-biden.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lE0.JANc.7aTKzEJuSo-X&smid=url-share
Thank you for sharing it all. It’s a serious situation the tffg can only make worse, whether or not he’s prez. Glenn Kirschner said he needs to be jailed for violating the gag order 3x. 🙏🏼
While Johnson is "working" on getting some version of the supplemental bill for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the discharge petition is still in play, but stalled. We can help by calling those reps to sign on.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTaMB3k5Z37OAM8HEMhDtwbLGzwn1wDXSNcoTmXEJbpfbacfp-m0fJGyb36lcNOhgqGO5-bArbibS5a/pubhtml?gid=614612044&single=true
P.S. I'm in it mostly for Ukraine.
At some point we may choose to elect adults to Congress. That would be at least refreshing and, perhaps, constructive. The pain required to reform our election system to permit that will test us to the limit. Our current approach is: problem solvers, do not apply. Our grandchildren are counting on us.
A big part of that problem is gerrymandering!
Thank you Heather.
We worry of a second civil war here in the US - and now of a potential third world war.
It’s one thing to name the selfish tyrants responsible for these circumstances.
It’s quite another hold them to account.
But while there’s time, we must.
We have the capacity to sweep the elections. How? Register more Democrats to save democracy. FT6 is trying to register as many as 13 million people who trend heavily Democratic. Attend an informational Zoom.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/
Need to deport Rupert first.
We have a plan. Rupert be damned.
In Texas?
Even in Tejas. Look at the demographics. Probably at least a million unregistered women, who trend Democratic. Rafael Cruz is as much a liability as the orange antichrist. How can any Catholic support blasphemy? The base can be expanded. FT6!
The MAGATs can't handle the visceral attack. Trump hates dogs. Stole from kids with cancer.
Running for the school board. "My opponent supports people who hates dogs and stole from kids with cancer!"
10 million Ray Wiley Hubbard fans can't be wrong -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygTsN_sr4k8
Maybe we should sic Major (the German Shepard) on TFFG….um, no…never mind, that would be too cruel to Major.
Abbott is popular, he loves chump. People need to dis all repubs in Texas. Not a decent one. Yet I read such glowing reviews of Abbott. The evil who wants to be VP.
I detect in Heather's today some hope by her for some unity by some Arab states.
Several, she recounts here, helped Israel fend off the Iranian drones and missiles.
But will it, can it, add up?
Key is Palestine on the West Bank -- that Israel will agree to hold off its settlers from continuing to steal its land, continuing to provoke murders and harassments of Palestinians by those far-right settlers.
If Israel does respect Palestinians enough to grant them enough West Bank territory for a legitimate state, those Arab neighbors -- seeing Israel as finally legit about peace -- could put up the funds and security aid that Thomas Friedman has long been prophesizing.
Peace could reign there. Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah would all have their fire quenched by a real Palestinian state on the West Bank. Could be.
Can Republicans in Congress back funds for those stranded in Gaza insanity? Can their far-right Israeli settler colleagues defer to the Palestinian state -- and peace -- which Arab neighbors appear to back?
And schools in the region? Don't let me get started on that again.
Republicans in Congress - are you kidding … are there any left?
Very good, JL.
Very good.
Do you really believe that the parents and families of 14,000 slaughtered children say - "oh well, they're dead - we won't hold it against the Israelis, we'll go on suffering as long as the US and Israel are rich and happy"?
And what's that "grant them enough West Bank territory"? are you completely insane?
Tell me nobody can be that stunningly, amazingly, over the top stupid - I had smarter farts.
No family forgets, why revenge works so well
Jeri, I hope that the Israeli people remember that majority-Muslim countries came to their defense against Iran. Maybe they will consider a true two-state solution with firm rules against creeping settlements by Israelis.
Bibi started creeping settlements long ago. I have been waiting for the pushback. No surprise, but neither is the effort to destroy Israel. Wish for a tad of humanity;.
This was posted yesterday in the WAPO. I think Don Snoreleone would be terrible for the economy. Don't you?
Catherine Rampell
This might be Trump’s most inflationary, economically destructive idea yet
Remind me again why Americans think Donald Trump would be so much better on inflation and the economy?
Trump’s policy team is reportedly scheming to devalue the U.S. dollar. This might well be Trump’s most inflationary and economically destructive idea yet. That’s quite an achievement, considering everything else he and his advisers have cooked up (universal tariff hikes, deficit-financed tax cuts, huge reductions in the labor force, etc.).
Trump’s objective, Politico reports, is to boost U.S. exports and reduce imports. Basically, if a dollar buys, say, fewer euros or Japanese yen than it currently does, that makes U.S.-made products look a little cheaper and potentially more attractive to European and Japanese customers (among others). So, hey, maybe this could help some U.S. companies trying to sell products abroad.
That is, until you consider everything else that might happen if we deliberately tried to weaken our currency, which would open a Pandora’s shipping container of disastrous consequences.
It’s true the dollar is unusually strong right now, although probably not for reasons Trump is happy about. Exchange rates typically reflect a country’s macroeconomic conditions (among other factors, such as interest rates). Thanks to a variety of factors — including our relatively limited exposure to the war in Ukraine — we’re doing better than most of our peer countries. In the words of Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist, “The U.S. economy has been on a tear.”
The relative strength of the dollar does make U.S.-made goods less attractive, though with so many other countries in or edging toward recession, our potential global customers might not be feeling terribly flush anyway. I suppose if Trump tanked the U.S. economy, whether on purpose or otherwise, that might achieve his objective of swiftly weakening the dollar and shrinking trade deficits.
If not via recession, how would Team Trump weaken our currency? That’s not totally clear. He might try to force the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. This is something Trump already wants to do for other reasons. (For instance, he owes a lot of debt, so lower rates would help his own finances.) Or maybe he would bully lots of other countries into raising their interest rates, which seems unlikely to happen. But if it did, it might result in a global recession.
Or perhaps he would tax foreign financial flows into the United States, as some senators have proposed. This, too, would likely tank the economy, according to Peterson Institute for International Economics fellow Maurice Obstfeld.
(Noticing any themes here?)
Whatever the mechanism, a weaker dollar would likely lead to higher prices for American consumers — and not just during their summer vacations to Italy. Americans buy a lot of imported goods, from fruit to toys to cars to home furnishings. Those would all get more expensive as the purchasing power of the dollar fell.
So much for Trump’s pledge to vanquish inflation. And that’s not the only problem with his plan.
Perhaps some U.S. exports would get more competitive, as Trump hopes. Ironically, though, some U.S. industries that stand to benefit most from a weaker dollar are not exactly Republican darlings. They include Big Tech, Hollywood and higher education, sectors that enjoy some combination of being quite competitive at exporting things and/or having large offshore profits, which would become more valuable.
There’s also a risk that other countries won’t want to go along with Trump’s scheme. Our trading partners might engage in a series of countermeasures to keep their currencies from appreciating against the dollar, which we might meet with counter-countermeasures, and so on. In other words, we might see a sequel to the trade wars Trump previously initiate.
Global trade or currency wars would, again, likely be bad for pretty much everyone, including U.S. businesses and consumers.
Deliberately weakening the dollar, or even attempting to, also threatens its role as the world’s “reserve currency.” We have a stable government that has reliably paid its bills and doesn’t do dodgy things to deliberately manipulate the value of its fiat currency. As a result, the dollar is widely used in international trade and dollar-denominated U.S. government debt is in high demand.
The fact that U.S. dollars are considered a virtually risk-free store of value gives the United States some huge privileges. It enables us to keep spending more than we collect in taxes, because it’s cheap and easy for our government to borrow to finance ever-growing deficits. Eroding the dollar’s global use might make it more expensive for the U.S. government to keep borrowing so much (which means taxes might need to rise, or spending decline, to cover budget shortfalls).
We might also weaken our ability to impose sanctions upon countries, businesses or individuals whose actions we disapprove of because dollars are used so often in international transactions and we have some ability to restrict those transactions.
Then again, maybe we should give Trump some credit. Reducing our global influence, and specifically our ability to punish certain global villains, might be exactly what he wants.
Yes, absolutely, Gary.
He'd be terrible for the economy in the same proportion he'd benefit the billionaire classes.
Same proportion he'd benefit the Clarence court's medievalists, Handmaid's-Tale-rendering, and haters of democracy and its former rule of law (that Clarence court now mostly all bribed, perjured, corrupted).
Same proportion he'd benefit the dictators, evangelicals, and social media and nationalist spreaders of hate worldwide.
Same proportion he'd benefit the U.S.'s AR-15 and other mass murder industry.
Same proportion he'd benefit the standardized testers now worldwide expanded to killing humanities in schools.
Same proportion he'd float all the fossil fuel royal and corporate murderers.
That about sums it up, Phil.
Gary, your last sentence is accurate, 100% what he wants. The other thing that he wants is to be a dictator, pure and simple. His followers have no <insert colorful metaphor of your choice> clue that they are not included in the batch that will benefit from said dictator, only that they can hate the others and own the libs.
The Palestinian project has always been about stealing the land back from the Jews who have thwarted their supposed national aspirations. After the most successful terrorist raid in their history, Palestinians are rewarded with land? And we think that's going to inspire them to make peace? Seems very naive.
There is nothing "supposed" about Palestinian national aspirations. They were there long before the Ashkenazis from Europe-- influenced by Herzl, Jabotinsky and others-- commenced their migration to Palestine before WWII. "Stealing" the land back is thus a non-sequiter as it was theirs in the first place. And the ghastly terrorism on October 7th by Hamas cannot be assigned to all Palestinians as your statement seems to imply. Finally, when one of the most powerful militaries in the world has already killed over 30,000 of your people, it would seem that the Nation doing the killing, not those being killed, need to be inspired to make peace.
THE PALESTINE QUESTION
A BRIEF HISTORY
'Prepared for, and under the guidance of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable
Rights of the Palestinian People'
'UNITED NATIONS'
'New York, 1980'
'I. PALESTINE IN HISTORY'
'The “Palestine problem” of today had its origin in policies introduced while Palestine was a responsibility of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. A report issued in 1930 by a commission* appointed with the approval of the League of Nations contains what might be the closest to an objective survey of the early history of Palestine. The following summary is taken from that report.'
'In early times, Palestine was inhabited by Semitic peoples, the earliest being the Canaanites. According to tradition, Abraham, the common ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs, came from Ur to Canaan.'
'When the tribes of Israel came to Palestine after their captivity in Egypt, they were united into one kingdom by King David in 1000 B.C. This kingdom reached its greatest heights under King David’s son, Solomon, who built the first Temple of Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. However, after Solomon’s death, the history of the people of Israel – or rather of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah – is a record of civil wars and struggles with alien tribes.'
' About 720 B.C., the Assyrians destroyed the kingdom of Israel and carried its inhabitants away as captives. About 600 B.C., the Babylonian King Nebuchadenezzar attacked the kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple in 567 B.C. Most of the inhabitants were carried into captivity. Fifty years later, when the Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon, the Jews were able to return to Palestine. By about 515 B.C. they had rebuilt Solomon’s temple.'
'In 332 B.C., the Jews came under the domination of the Macedonians, who treated them harshly. In about 170 B.C., a Jewish revolt was quelled, and the second Temple was destroyed. Following the Macedonian rule was a period of independence to a certain extent. This lasted until the Roman conquest by Pompey, who entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. In 70 A.D., Titus destroyed the city. All that remained of the second Temple was the Western Wall which became known as the Wailing Wall.' (UN) See link below.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-206581/
Fern, I believe my wife found that document on our last longish road trip, and read that to me. I remember that the source from the document she read (although I couldn't find it in this link) cited is the Bible and other religious texts.
Ally, I don't know more about the early history than what I posted from the UN.
Us either....
Yes, it's clear that the Arabs in Palestine have been extremely consistent in their rejection of the Jewish national home. They have also been consistent in making the main thrust of their politics the reversal of that situation. The fact that they have clearly failed does not seem to have impacted their political goals. They seem to believe that if the Palestinians make things unpleasant enough, the Israelis will pack up and go home. And in fact they're getting the opposite of that effect.
The October 7th attacks are 100% consistent with the overall arc of Palestinian operations, just more effective than they have been in the past. It is disingenuous to suggest it is some aberration, in fact the Oct 7 attack is among the most popular things that Hamas has done for their public opinion for years! And let's also not forget that a huge number of those 30,000 killed are enemy combatants.
The "Jewish National Home" you speak of is Palestine. As the Palestinians were not allowed a choice by the British Mandate nor the UN when their land was proclaimed the State of Israel, thirty some odd years after their betrayal by Balfour, perhaps "rejection " is understandable.
As for your blithely waving away the unpleasant fact that an ongoing genocide of an impoverished and helpless People continues at the hands of the Likud led "sole democracy in the Middle East" by dehumanizing the victims of that genocide with the false slur of "enemy combatants ", need we say more?
"The "Jewish National Home" you speak of is Palestine. As the Palestinians were not allowed a choice by the British Mandate nor the UN when their land was proclaimed the State of Israel, thirty some odd years after their betrayal by Balfour, perhaps "rejection " is understandable."
So what's the solution? The Israelis are there, they're not going anywhere. At what poin can the Palestinians swallow their pride and take a deal? Even if you wholly believe the Palestinain origin story, which is highly questionable, the Israeli story is not going away.
"As for your blithely waving away the unpleasant fact that an ongoing genocide of an impoverished and helpless People continues at the hands of the Likud led "sole democracy in the Middle East" by dehumanizing the victims of that genocide with the false slur of "enemy combatants "
Oh please, what a ridiculous statement. You believe the Hamasniks have vanished in thin air and the IDF has managed to kill not a one? Totally laughable.
"Swallow their pride and take a deal"?!?
Did I just read that?!? How many deals have they already taken, from UN Resolutions to Camp David to Madrid, to Oslo, and otherwise both public and private, ALL having been unfulfilled or repudiated by various (mostly Likud) Israeli governments, while the fanatical Hassidim continue to build their settlements on Palestinian occupied territory??!?
No sir, it's not my statement that seeks to shine the light on the humanity of the Palestinian people, it's your fallacious and inhumanely dismissive one that is laughable, as well as dangerous.
Go and sin no more!
Let's not torch all Palestinians, Seneca, with what Hamas fronting for ayatollahs did.
You don't think the PLO would have gladly done what Hamas just did, had they had the capabilities?
Your Q, Seneca, indicates you think that way.
Israel is a country build on not much more but victimhood and entitlement. And now they managed to have about 80% of the worlds population standing against it.
The judgement if the state of Israel or the state of Palestine exist at the end of this century is still out. I hope for the Palestinians.
Those West Bank settlements are the monkey wrench in the whole machine. While I posit that Israel won the territory in a defensive war and can do with it what it wants, I am also convinced that doing anything but dismantling those settlements and leaving the West Bank to a future Palestinian state is in the best interest of Israel. I don't see Israel agreeing to it though, at least not in the foreseeable future. Biden's tenuous coalition of zarab countries to support Israel in defending against Iran's attack might be a first step in getting Israel to trust the land for peace option again. It worked very well with Egypt. Will it have another chance to work in our lifetime?
Thank you, Jerry.
Next in my list of hopeless wishes -- that schools in the region unite in programs of English classes teaching essay writing skills to "others" as individuals in the various linguistic and sectarian communities.
I just read from Robert Hubble’s Substack the following statement: “The Senate will not convict Mayorkas, but delivery of the articles of impeachment triggers a complicated process that requires the Senate to begin trial proceedings on Wednesday, April 17. The Senate is required to conduct trial six days a week until a verdict is reached.”. So, in other words, MAGA in the House just tied the Senate up with the sham impeachment trial at a time when we need the Senate to deal with whatever changes to the aid bills the House passes. Looks like MTG and her goon squad have figured out the rules enough to allow them to be effective political terrorists.
Oh, good grief!
Let’s not miss in the first sentence that Iran fired missiles from Iraq. IRAQ!!
Have we forgotten our false war in Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (none), punish perpetrators of 911 (not involved), protect oil fields (didn’t), stop terrorism (didn’t), and protect the Iraqi people (didn’t)?
And now Iran controls Iraq such that they launch missiles at Israel.
What did W achieve with that war? Nothing! Massive loss of innocent lives 10x that of Gaza, $2 trillion, loss of global respect, and the big one, we handed over control or Iraq to Iran!!
OMG, only Donald Trump could make us forget what a catastrophe W Bush was and how W brought America to its knees and pushed us over a cliff.
I have not forgotten, but damn, the traitors are piling up…
Thank you Professor Richardson for your excellent summary, I learned a few things from it. There has been a whirlwind of events since Oct. 7. The most concerning situation for me is the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Many thousands of children have been killed there and I resent the fact that my tax dollars are partly responsible for the slaughter of innocents. There must be a permanent cease fire now. If Joe Biden does not use all his powers to bring about a cease fire immediately, it may cost him votes in November, and that would add to this tragedy. Action must be taken now, to save the lives of children and civilians in Gaza.
Yes I agree the death, destruction and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza is too horrible already, it can't keep going on like this. Approximately 13,000 innocent children and babies have been killed out of the total of nearly 34,000 people killed in Gaza. Supposedly Republicans care about unborn babies and innocent children but somehow they don't seem too concerned when they are Palestinian babies or children that are being killed or blown to bits. There must be a permanent cease fire!
I am concerned that it is going to have an effect on the election too.
Yesterday there were coordinated Pro-Palestinian protests across the nation and apparently around the world.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Golden Gate Bridge was completely shut down for about 5 hours during the morning commute as well as 880 near downtown Oakland shut down for almost 7-8 hours. During the late afternoon and evening protests were held at the Tesla plant near Fremont off of 880. Other protests in Seattle, Chicago, Eugene, Oregon, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC and more cities and airports.
It was very disruptive and created chaos and anxiety, not really helping matters from my perspective but not even close to what people in Gaza or Ukraine are having to endure or suffer through.
Here is what the protests were intending to accomplish:
"Pro-Palestinian demonstrators carried out a coordinated, coast-to-coast protest Monday, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation’s busiest airports and bridges as protesters called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
The group behind the large-scale protests is called A15, a movement that called for a coordinated economic blockade on April 15 in an effort to free Palestine.
“There is a need to shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy,” the group wrote online."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/world/middleeast/ceasefire-palestine-gaza-protest.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/accident-reported-protest-block-northbound-lanes-of-i-880-in-oakland/
https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/war-in-israel/us-ceasefire-protests-gaza-a15/#:~:text=(NewsNation)%20—%20Pro%2DPalestinian,permanent%20cease%2Dfire%20in%20Gaza.
horhai, this was our local protest:
https://www.registerguard.com/story/news/local/2024/04/15/palestine-supporters-rally-eugene-oregon/73330883007/
I only heard about it via a Facebook community chat from the town where I was the daytime deputy for the last 5 years I worked. Most of those comments were disgusting, to say the least.
Yeah I was surprised to see Eugene, Oregon on there, would have thought Portland would have more impact or attention. Guess they were just trying to shut down I-5.
Eugene is a very protest-oriented community...
May be Trump inspired.