Republicans see their days in power are dwindling as the demographics slip away from their control. They are fighting vigorously, like a drowning person. And democrats must pursue justice with even more diligence -- our Democracy depends on it!
The division of the Dakota territory into two states was new to me, but reveals that political machinations are nothing new.
Meanwhile -- time to call my US Senators Cornyn and Cruz to let them know that this constituent knows they are spouting lies, yet again.
I was a life guard in my younger days. We were trained to get behind the drowning person and try to take control so to brink them to safety. Should their flailing be so powerful as to endanger both your lives you much let them go. They life of our country is at stake from the flailing of the Republicans. They however will not drown but we should get away from them and save our Democracy as soon as possible.
You can contact anyone with the Capitol Hill switch board. Wait for the operator. The offices are mostly set up for voicemail. Mitch mailbox usually full.
I send them petitions and comments as often as they come my way. It is useless, of course, but I do want them to know that I know they are LIARS. Both of them.
cig, thank you for continuing to call Cornyn a d Cruz to give them a piece of your mind, and tell them you know they're lying. We in Blue states can't call them, but their actions affect all of us. I hope Kay and Rob will call and protest to their Republican senators even if it feels futile. Look at all the Republicans retiring at the end of their cutrent terms. How fast can we turn others from desperate lying power-grab machinations to dispirited resignation?
I am not sure that any box gets ticked. I just get thanked for sending the email. My sense is that neither Senator is aware of my letter and that someone in the office sends me the perfunctory response.
Now that I did a bit of looking, I see that CALLING is better than emailing. I think that's where I get the list check-off info from--that the staff have to log the calls & the message conveyed. I have made phone calls too and I think I will focus again on that. The emails obviously are getting auto-replies and probably no one looks at them :( https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html
A group of HCR Substackers has formed to turn our great discussion into action--and share what is most effective. For more info: heathersherd@gmail.com
Good morning everyone! Thank you for this letter, Heather--I hope you are feeling a lot better from the fun aftermath of the second vaccine! I would only say that using the term "gaslighting" as a description of Cruz's gobsmacking statements is far too kind. Cruz stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and lied, lied, lied. Until and unless we actually identify what comes out of their mouths as lies--and until the Dems in power do so--they will be able to continue to "gaslight" with impunity.
There are some other things I want to point out that occurred yesterday. The always-execrable Josh Hawley was the ONLY senator to vote against the bill labeling anti-Asian hate crimes as Hate Crimes, although apparently 6 senators decided to absent themselves from the vote (Cruz? Graham? Blunt? who?--I would like to see the roll call). And the equally-execrable "Justice" Kavanaugh wrote the 6-3 SCOTUS decision claiming that life without parole was an appropriate sentence for teenagers who commit murder. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/22/989822872/supreme-court-rejects-restrictions-on-life-without-parole-for-juveniles
This was in response to a petition for changing the sentence of a 15 year-old who had murdered his abusive grandfather, with whom he was living because of a lifetime of abuse he had suffered at the hands of his own parents and a stepfather. The trauma of this young man and the appalling sentence he received were completely discounted by the so-called "Christians" on the Court. So much for the quality of mercy not being strained. Vanity Fair's take on the decision is nowhere near as measured as Nina Totenberg's. And the dissent from the three REAL justices (in the sense that they think about JUSTICE) was scathing.
And the sheer chutzpah of Bret Kavanaugh, of all people, vigorously arguing that bad things you do as a child should definitively shape the rest of your life, is a thing at which to marvel.
Statistics. Over 200,000 people, or about 1 in 7 prisoners in the United States, were serving life or virtual life sentences in 2019. Over 50,000 are serving life without a chance of parole. The cruelty of the US judicial system is legend. This from The Sentencing Project:
I didn’t like to tap the heart on your comment or janjamm’s as they illuminate such grim realities. If we had another reaction button that conveyed “this is significant,” I would tap that instead.
Great contribution Linda, thank you on all points!
The same despicable group who claim to be "Pro Life" will incarcerate a young person for life.
When we lived in ME in the late 80s, early 90s there was a murder trial - a well known, middle aged women named Jackie shot and killed her husband as he soaked in the bathtub, claiming self defense after years of abuse and was found not guilty. Not many murders in ME so I remember them.
Yes--the "burning bed" defense. But apparently this child had no adequate defense attorney. The whole situation is appalling. As are the levels of incarceration in general. NY State just passed a law forbidding extended solitary confinement, which is very good news for the prisoners living in horrible conditions (NPR interviewed several who had been in solitary for 30 years and more--unfathomable) but is freaking out the prison service. I am glad the prison service is finally seeing at least a sliver of a reckoning.
Yes, Linda, they are LIES. And this trend is getting worse, following the lie-filled time of 1/45 (the fraction further diminishes the roll of "that guy.") Lying has been elevated to an art form with Repubs and it has.to.stop. We have to stop it, but I'm not sure how as an individual. Suggestions welcome. I'm nauseated by the blatant insult to the majority of Americans who DO know that they are lying.
Lying is a prerequisite now in order to be a member of the GQP in Congress. I believe the Heritage Foundation, the Kochs, The Mercers, et al. established that many years years ago. Oh, and let us not forget about the Federalist Society.
I say Bloomberg or the Lincoln Project should fund an ad campaign of every Repuglican with just film of their own contradictory statements. Like McConnell nixing a vote on Garland for SCOTUS because it was too close to the election and then McConnell again, ramming through Barrett’s vote. There is a goldmine of video of these flipfloppers contradicting themselves. Run it constantly.
Excellent, Linda. The SCOTUS decision reminds me of a story I heard on the radio a few weeks ago. The woman told her interviewer that she became convinced in her twenties to join a fundamentalists church and really enjoyed all that they did. After about ten years, she came to church feeling sad that a good friend had died a few days before. When she arrived, several church members asked what was wrong. She told them that a good friend had passed recently and that she was sad for his passing. Several of the others asked her what his religion was. When she told them he was Jewish, the response by the others was "he's going to Hell." This outraged the woman, and she left that congregation for good. I wonder if the so-called Christians of the SCOTUS would want to make the same comment.
To understand what a child would murder their abuser would take knowledge of brain development, the effects of trauma on a child, and empathy. Obviously they hold none of these abilities.
Marshall is the new senator from Kansas. He is allegedly a doctor (I say allegedly because he denies science whenever possible, similar to "You're an optometrist Rand"). And wow re: Cotton. (what a [word I don't like to use here]-head)
I wish someone could appear like Forest Gump right next to Cruz (and any of the other fakers) with a huge poster of Cruz buck-naked and holding his privvies and wearing an emperor’s crown, every time he lies.
And is there a reason the great Lincoln Project videos aren’t running on television? Since the great Lindsay Graham ad in which LG praises Biden as being one of the most genuinely decent and good men he’s ever known, I haven’t seen them on tv. If I were a billionaire or even a millionaire, I would run that film of Cruz calling Trump the biggest liar on earth. “He lies every time he opens his mouth,” Cruz said of tRump, when running against him. Now Cruz does that.
"Now that Democrats are trying to level the playing field, they howl that the Democrats are cheating." The Republican Party, once a respectable political party, with clearly articulated principles for governance and open to discussion, negotiation, and bipartisan compromise has become the party of obstruction, voter suppression, lying, and, wherever possible, cheating. And oh yes, masters of projection.
You did read the part of this post about the admission of six states that didn't actually meet the requirements to qualify for statehood, for Republican advantage, yes? The Republican Party stopped being any of the things you mention by 1876 (at the latest), The only three good Republican presidents were all flukes: Lincoln because they weren't sure they'd win in 1860 but wanted to make a fight; TR - who they had carefully shunted aside into being VP to be rid of him - became president because of the assassination of McKinley and was cordially hated by the Republican establishment which was forced to support him in 1904 because he was so popular he'd have won without them; and Eisenhower, whose personal politics were so obscure that the Democrats considered running him, put in over "Mr. Conservative" Robet Taft because they'd been out of power for20 years and figured they could get all the former GIs to vote for him. Other than those three, every Republican president since Grant has been a POS. Harry Truman called them out for the scum they are 73 years ago.
Nice post, TC. Lincoln is the GOP's only truly great president and TR was a real character who left us the national parks. My father was a big Adlai Stevenson supporter who acknowledged that Ike was not bad for a Republican but never forgave him for choosing Tricky Dicky as his running mate. I remember that when I gave him the news that Ford had pardoned Nixon, he closed his eyes, clutched his chest and sat down abruptly, almost missing the chair.
Some of us have been onto these bastards our entire lives.
Oh yeah. My dad taught me to hate Nixon at an early age, then because of his Masonic anti-Catholic beliefs, he went and voted for him in 1960, thus beginning the 20 year war between he and I, resolved for some reason or event I never understood or questioned with him changing his mind on all those things and telling me I had been right. And he stuck with that the last ten years of his life, when we finally became friends. Like I say, I never asked what had happened, I was just glad it did.
I wish that would happen for a lot of families. For me and my mom, it didn't. I hope but the light isn't very bright. They are consuming poison almost every moment of the day.
I always thought of it as the side of him I had always loved and respected - the "premature anti-fascist" of his youth, the scientist whose whole career was based on operating from observable fact, all that - finally overcame the dark side of having been raised by the people who raised him at the time they did. I've missed him every day since he departed, unlike that woman he was crazy enough to stay married to.
Of the 5 Republican presidents in my lifetime -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, and Trump -- only Bush 1 was elected fairly. All the others gained the office fraudulently.
Not sure about that. Having been involved with politics professionally for the first three, one never heard their elections questioned; interestingly, Nixon had a good case for being "taken" in 1960 when the Dailey Machine delivered Chicago and thus Illinois, to JFK in a move people from both parties publicly expressed doubt about the legality of the outcome. Bush 2 was the first Republican elected through chicanery everyone noticed. Reagan was elected by the margin he got in 1980 because Carter conceded while the polls were still open in the west, which got a lot of Republicans elected to other offices they might not have gotten, because of Democrats there deciding they didn't need to go vote after they got home from work. I have yet to forgive Carter for that gutless move.
When Reagan was running for President, Roger Stone (same conductor of The Brooks Brothers Parade that upset the Florida Gore/ George W. election, and creep for tRump) delivered a suitcase of cash, given to him with instructions by Ray Cohn (of Joe McCarthy commie fame, and later advisor to tRump on mobster dealings), to the Libertarian Party New York headquarters for John Anderson to split the Democratic vote. It worked.
I agree with you TC the elections of Nixon, Reagan and Bush 1 were legit--though you are certainly correct the Dems, for varied reasons, have all too frequently assembled their circular firing squads. But, re: Dailey delivering Chicago, this is true but JFK would still have won without Illinois' electoral votes. Nixon did indeed choose not to make a fuss. But I can't shake my reactions to the fact that, whatever the levels of chicanery by the political ops, the American public voted for Nixon in 1972, and then for Reagan TWICE, and W. TWICE--not to mention TFG. Contemplating the record makes me question my allegiance to democratic government.
You and me both. It must be the "curse of the Doubting Thomases." :-)
JFK's election was the first I really paid serious interest to (even to the point of it being my first time to volunteer in politics as a teenager). I remember staying up till what I remember as around 2am (don't hold me to that, but it sure seemed late) to hear JFK awarded Illinois and Walter Cronkite (I think it was) saying JFK was now going to be president. (Unfortunately, my research on two Vietnam War books involving who did what when, has led to my losing my JFK hero worship - he was the one who went dancing in there after Kruschchev embarrassed him at Vienna)
Oh yes. It was also later for me that I reflected on the seriously hawkish tone of "pay any price, bear any burden." Further study revealed that not only did both candidates in 1960 try to out "missile gap" the other, but that JFK after winning initiated aggressive CIA actions in Africa and Central America as well as exploding cigars and LSD-laced shoes for Castro. And then The Best and The Brightest somehow couldn't see how their theory-driven understandings would inevitably lead to a prolonged pig wrestling match in SE Asia. Later arguing about how to "win" overlooked the old saw about ending up covered in shit either way.
Yes it does. You should read "The Invisible Bridge" too. An excellent portrait of how the "dark side" was always there in the GOP and how it became dominant.
Good points TC. I think my admiration of Lincoln, TR, and Ike (the first president I remembered as a kid) and some respectable members of congress in our part of the country I let me gloss over the disasters you point out. Well that and wishful thinking, since it would be healthy politically to have two constructive and respectable parties.
I’m so glad you talked about the filibuster tonight. I was having a conversation with a friend about the Senate situation earlier today and we were discussing much of the same point that you raise here.
The George Floyd police accountability act and DC statehood are adding significant pressure to the Senate logjam that is the filibuster. There are so many good progressive bills piling up, with so many different special interests really mobilized for their passage. Something has to give. Either the Senate reforms the filibuster or the water and logs behind the jam overflow the banks and start to cause collateral damage.
I think the logjam/filibuster has to break before the Senate recesses for summer.
I’m so curious what disruption frees the deadlock. (To run the logjam analogy to the ground, who will be the people with their hooks and poles that shake the jam loose?). Will more progressive/ old school Senate Republicans decide they want a piece of the action and start working in earnest with Dems? Will the Gaetz scandal blow up the Trump wing of the party, sending Republicans back to the center? Will the loss of corporate dollars start to have an impact? Will Trump be indicted, sending his one-time allies running for cover? Will it be investigations from our brave state and federal AGs? Or will we see another summer of grassroots protests demanding movement on this progressive legislation?
A coalition of the New Left, all pressuring for passage of their separate bills could be a mighty force.
Personally, I don’t think Gaetz going to prison or Trump facing-off against State AGs is going to make a scintilla of difference in the Senate. The Republican are dug in. If the corporate money dries up, then yes, Republicans might waffle for a moment. If the demonstrations for progressive legislation engage new voters, then yes, it might make some difference.
Or, the Progressive Dems will go after the older Dems (for example, the move to unseat Carolyn Maloney in NYC) and fracture the Democratic party with generational turf wars. Or, Manchin will cave to his Right-leaning constituents in West Virginia and exchange his blue lapel pin for a red one. Or, the summer finds us neck-deep in a new wave of Corona infections brought on by Republican governors who claim their freedom is being threatened, spurring protests and counter-protests that exacerbate our already deeply divided polity. Or, people of color will continue to die at the hands of law enforcement resulting in more, and more intense protests and counter-protests that feed racist fever.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said here before: Biden is doing all the right things. His Administration is a case study in how to run a government that cares about its citizens, but the forces aligned against him and all he stands for, are determined, organized, well-financed and unprincipled.
I was living in NYC when it burned, I was living in LA when it burned: I’m not particularly optimistic at the moment. To borrow from the illustrious James Baldwin, the fire next time is the one I’m worried about.
I heard the saddest story on NPR this morning about how long Russians have been trying to break free of the once-communist, now fascist rule over them, only to fail again and again. Nikita Khrushchev tried to enact changes that would have bettered the lives of ordinary Russians, only to have them all overturned. He was eventually removed from office, removed from all history books, watched closely the rest of his life denied a state burial. Now Navalney sits in prison, on a noble yet possibly doomed hunger strike. I always thought we in America were immune to such corruption and oligarchy, but now realize, sadly, we are not.
Jeanne, the situation in Russia has been this way ever since Ivan IV (aka Ivan the Terrible) and I doubt that autocracy will ever be overturned there. I think Navalny knew full well what would happen to him were he to return and he did so deliberately, despite the pleas of most of his supporters to remain in Germany, which was totally willing to give him asylum. He knows what few will acknowledge: Russians find martyrs to be compelling symbols. He also knows that Putin cannot afford a martyr on Russian soil, so the propaganda blitz there has been to deny his significance and his declining health. When Navalny dies, the propaganda will be that he did so of his own volition or of "natural" causes because any suggestion that he is being tortured to death will cause a rising in Russia.
Jeanne, Alexey Navalny ended his hunger strike today after doctors told him that he was close to death. Poisoned in Russia, he returned there on Jan. 17, 2021, after treatment in Germany. His life's work is to undermine Putin's hold over the Russian people. Navalny's battle is enormous, as hard as it gets to displace a dictator. He is a model in the struggle against tyranny. Our own commitments to democracy have become more evident as the Republicans work to shut it down and the murders of Black people by the police are recorded. Many Independents, inactive citizens and some Republicans removed from the lures White Supremacy and anti-government movements are waking up to systemic racism; fossil-fuels assaults the health of human beings and on the planet; widespread hunger as well as the rigging of our economic system and the manipulation of public sentiment by the Donor Class. Navalny will not give up. Shall we be defeatist or continue to support Biden and push him further toward a true democracy?
I have followed this story closely and am in awe of Navalny’s courage and commitment. He is willing to die for freedom -as Timothy Snyder (?is it?) admonished us in his list to consider- or die in unfreedom. It was the Russian historian, a journalist I believe, being interviewed on NPR who went through a list of failed attempts by Russians to change their government, and who was convinced that Navalny’s heroic stand is doomed. That sad story helped me see more clearly the fragility of our American Experiment, as Heather has written about and others here have written as well. I am not despairing as much as I am better informed about our chances for success. It felt grim after hearing that story but I don’t plan on giving up doing what I can do to help.
Jeanne, Navalny knows what he is doing. He can do it. He's completely aware of likely the consequences to himself and, whatever happens, he is in the people's hearts and it their children's. It is crucial to stand up to dictators and false Gods. As you said, we do what we can. It is satisfying to know we work for the good. The less despair, the more to love and to work together. This is an immensely challenging time. I sometimes feel as though I am often colliding into problems. When was finding a balance more important? Be well. Thank you for communicating, Jeanne.
And tragically, Jeanne, we never have been. First the Colonies and later the states were awash in corruption and malevolent actors.
I think it is critical that we face that reality about the connection between our history and our condition today. The only way we can begin to root out the current venality we are seeing is to recognize its roots in our past. Without apology to Norman Rockwell and his iconic imagery, we have to organize and mobilize to attack the rot that has always been with us.
I agree with you. With the voter suppression and their determination to win the next elections by gaslighting and lies has me really worried. Because if these power hungry Repulicans get full power, they will make sure they stay there, no matter what it takes. I think they are working hard to make sure elections will go their way, and because they are using such unethical means, it will be hard to fight them as we have seen recently.
Should we all be writing to Joe Manchin? I mean, really bombard him with snail mail begging, pleading, persuading, admonishing him to see not just his constituents’ desires and his own political future but the future well-being of his grandchildren and his constituents’ grandchildren? I feel
like politicians might reject a letter from outside their legislative authority (after taking any check included), but perhaps I will write to Sen Manchin anyway.
Eddie S 'Glaude, (author of Begin Again) who is distinguished professor and chair of the African American studies department at Princeton University (where he has been teaching a seminar on Baldwin for several years), is also a native of Jackson County, Mississippi, the US state that suffered the highest number of lynchings – 581 between 1882 and 1968. The trauma of that inheritance – “our bodies carry the traumas forward,” Glaude writes – is never far from the page. Nor is the trauma felt across black America in his parents’ generation when in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, crushing hopes for “fundamental change” that had been gathering around the US civil rights movement for the best part of a decade'.
'It was out of despair, Glaude writes, that in 2018, two years after what he calls “the disastrous election of Donald Trump”, he started to write this book, “saying to myself, they have done it again. Millions of white Americans had chosen Trump, and we would have to deal with the consequences of that choice.”
“What we are living through,” Glaude writes of the current context, “even with our cellphone cameras, is not unlike what Baldwin and so many others dealt with as the black freedom movement collapsed with the ascent of the Reagan revolution.” Baldwin’s response demonstrates the resilience that’s needed to be a witness through an era of despair.'
'There is a common reading of his career, dismissed by Glaude as a “stale characterisation”, that he hit the heights of his literary genius in 1963; that, thereafter, “his rage and politics got the best of him” but that he subsequently lost his nuance, lost touch with the love that had distinguished his voice in his prime, abandoned his gift for complexity; that in the aftermath of King’s assassination and with the collapse of the civil rights movement, he’d left himself nowhere to go; that by 1972 he was a writer in decline; that by the time of his death from stomach cancer in 1987, he was, to use a phrase from Darryl Pinckney, “a spent force”.'
'Glaude challenges this convention with conviction. He invites us with him to “read Baldwin to the end” and reveals a writer, not spent, but rather illuminating the path beyond despair – the work of a saint if ever there was such a thing. This witness through the dark times, which Glaude argues are upon us once again, is, he says, the true measure of Baldwin’s greatness: an enduring testament to his love and the belief that the US can and must be something more than it is.' (The Guardian Book Review)
I'm not so sure that the logjam will break. I think that rendering the Senate unworkable is part and parcel of the Republican strategy. If they're out of power, then creating a logjam is in their interest.
You asked all of the questions I have had swimming through my brain. I want answers and am tired of waiting. Tired of the Repubs stronghold. They are an obnoxious evil bunch which I wish the Dems could destroy.
The Rs are just holding out for 2022. Because of gerrymandering they are likely to take back control of the House and the Senate is far from secure. The logjam plays to their strengths.
I agree completely. But I also think he is going to be helped enormously by the presence on the ballot of Stacey Abrams running for governor. And the fact that D voters, especially POC, are royally PISSED at the attempts at voter suppression in Georgia. It could be a very interesting election.
Unfortunately getting rid of the filibuster still doesn't get some crucial bills passed. For example, there are a handful of Democratic Senators who have not yet committed to voting for DC statehood, including Angus King and Mark Kelly, along with the "usual" suspects of Manchin and Sinema....and Shaheen. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/huddle/2021/04/22/dc-statehood-hits-a-snag-in-the-senate-492564
There was talk not long ago about forcing senators to show up and actually speak to filibuster. What happened to that plan? Perhaps the Democrats could filibuster by listing the bully behavior and lies of the previous administration and its brainwashed flock of sheep, including the senators who have lost any sense of decency and humanity. After a few days of putting out facts into the Congressional Record, some Republicans (could there be 12?) might mend their evil ways.
Al Franken came out in support of such a plan recently. Including tag team talking filibuster but on topic debate, not Green Eggs and Ham. Also, make it so the challengers need to keep 41 senators in chambers to win rather than 60 on the other side. Of course the majority leader could call a vote at any time, so they would have to do this perpetually. Even Manchin said he felt the filibuster should involve some effort and pain to those using it.
I’m glad to know Franken is still involved in politics. Where can I read his comments? He and VP Harris were the best committee at witless witness questions.
Let’s invigorate the idea of modifying/ending the filibuster. Capitol Hill switchboard connects you to anyone you want. 202-224-3121
Al is now doing video podcast on YouTube. Not only does he provide interesting perspectives on the Filibuster he does a very entertaining impersonation of Mitch M. https://youtu.be/1MluMGM8nK8
We lost huge talent when Gillibrand and the rest went after Franken, so needlessly. Some people blow with the wind rather than having firm roots and perspective. I'm glad Franken's found a valuable place to contribute.
A great suggestion, Gigi! The Democratic Senators could speak for a long time about the 427 people charged so far in the insurrection at the Capitol. I feel like that story is fading even with the huge number of arrests
The DOJ is still in the investigatory stages. This story will heat up as actual charges are brought and trials begin. Undoubtedly some of the minor players will plea bargain, but there will be some high profile trials, I have no doubt.
Are they, though? Or is it that the media are giving them oxygen? I think Dems are speaking out to a certain extent, but common sense does not make great TV news. So frustrating.
My new favorite word of the day: execrable! I wish media would simply turn off their mics and cameras and walk away when the execrables begin to speak. I have been tweeting MSNBC, both the network and the hosts, letting them know that I turn OFF their shows when they give free publicity to liars like those you mention above.
But they were a start, and the more often it happens the more likely it becomes that others will rediscover their courage or at least their ego and stand up too.
I would love to write a comment today worthy of the erudite and informative forum Dr. Richardson blesses us with. However, when confronted by the quote from Ted Cruz, despite his Ivy League degrees, I am merely left with the haunting thought over and over... Ted Cruz is a moron. Sigh...
Yep. Memory of mine is short, but Cruz seems the new holder of the McConnell mantel. Make an outlandish lie or new rule of mythical proportion and proceed to repeat it until the converse is more useful (e.g., the Supreme Court appointment in an election year) and come up with an actual truth that has no logical or factual connection to the former. And always do it in some momentous setting that provides gravitas. Remember McConnell denouncement of the insurgency right after leading party to acquit the Last Guy.
Cruz has turned himself into a living caricature. What is the flaw in human psyches that charlatans and scammers so easily exploit? Republicans gaslight because it works for them.
Facial hair is popular today! While all pre-Lincoln presidents were clean shaven, Honest Abe's beard was followed by a continuing assortment of moustashes and beards which lasted until Woodrow Wilson (with exception of Andrew Johnson and William McKinley). Although presidents have been clean shaven since then, Cruz is counting on the resurgence of the popularity of facial hair to get him nominated. It won't happen.
Nice assessment of the facial hair lobby! You're undoubtedly right; everything is a calculation with that guy. I also just want to say that Johnson could have used some facial hair help. Looked like a cadaver, that guy.
And you live in Texas, Bruce! I think the same (that Cruz is not very bright), but I live in Massachusetts. Many of us poured our small contributions into Texas campaigns trying to turn it blue, but we failed. How close did we come?
Yup, I poured in contributions as well as volunteering in a number of campaigns, both national and local. But don't regret doing either. We came closer to defeating Ted Cruz than John Cornyn but we will keep working at it. It will eventually happen but only with time and effort.
Lying is telling an untruth. Gaslighting is making the target wonder what the truth is. It is lying on steroids and is often more sinister than a straight up bald faced lie by itself.
I disagree Barry. They are not targeting fence-sitters with their statements, trying to get people to wonder if they are right or not. They are lying to bolster the narrative they've been building for a long time and strengthening the talking points the tRumpers will use at their rallies, riots and church luncheons. These are lies and more and more people are seeing it as that. The question for me is how can *I* help to stop it. The media is slowing getting bolder about using the word, but somehow there needs to be a movement or march to call these Liars what they are: Liars.
I live in Missouri, a red state, and I have seen many people tell me, with absolute conviction, that this election was stolen. These are intelligent and well educated professional and highly competent people. They cannot conceive of a majority of Americans voting against Trump. After all, everyone they know voted for Trump with rare exceptions. Hence, the election was stolen. They live in an alternate reality from people who don't base their world view on Fox News and One America News.
I enjoy seeing the great Ingrid Bergman but I agree that naming a mode of persuasion based on the name of the film Gaslight is less than self explanatory. It is shorter than calling it "Building an alternate reality to maintain control over others" but someone cleverer than I might be able to come up with a more satisfying alternative.
Lying has become a wholly acceptable practice through all layers of our world. And it’s not illegal. Also most people don’t have the time to figure out what are the latest lies. The corruption is deep and malignant. God help us all.
Barry, I agree that there's a difference in meaning between "lying" and "gaslighting". However, Jan has a point. Everyone over the age of three knows what "lying" means regardless of their age, party, or education. I submit that the demographic who know what "gaslighting" means is much more tightly concentrated among Democratic feminist baby boomers (like me) who know and love classic Ingrid Bergman movies.
Jan, I was an English minor. I also love words, and word matter. Therefore, I think that it's best to us either "gaslighting" or 'lying" in our writing. Besides, I'm pretty sure that "gaslighting" is an unfamiliar word for millions of Americans, including some English majors and minors. I think it is important to expand their vocabularies. I'm going to try to find that old movie on TV now. BTW, do you think Boris Johnson knows the word?
Ahhhh, yes. Lyin’ Raphael Cancun Cruz, my worthless senator from Texas. If there is a camera around, he will find it (unless, of course, he is sneaking away to Cancun while millions of his constituents dealt with a major freeze, in which 125 Texans died from the freezing weather).
Franken has started a series of 8-12 minute videos on youtube about the filibuster, disinformation, etc. He presents useful facts and debunking of nonsense, along with various straight-faced zingers. Worth a look.
Raphael (we call him that because we know that he hates it), has been re-elected only once. He is a junior senator. Beto O’Rourke ran a pretty good race last time. However, Texas is a red (turning purple) state. He has a “R” by his name, and Texas is in perpetual gerrymandering mode. Sen. Cruz is well-educated and was a brilliant litigator. He lacks character of any kind but please do not underestimate him. He was second behind TFG In votes for the Republican nomination.
The TFG craves adulation and money. Sen. Cruz craves power. Both of them are dangerous men.
Off topic share: Just came in from watching the Space X Falcon 9-Dragon pre-dawn rocket launch from my front yard. Spectacular sight. 4 humans aboard hurtling into orbit to dock with ISS. Clearly saw stages separate, making swirling white cloud angels in a dark sky. Once in awhile it helps to start a day this way!!
A divided house cannot stand under minority rule. All these decades of Republican shenanigans have come to a head. Good men and women must come to the aid of our country. First D.C. and then on to Puerto Rico! Consider it the equalizer for North and South Dakota.
The government is so stacked that I truly worry for this country. Thanks for this but I am still depressed over the GOP, the Supremes...and our weak "majority" in the Senate thanks to Sinema and Manchin.
Many felt that there was interference in that election by Putin, and we now know that was true. When I think about what could have been, it sickens me. All the chaos, the lies, the deaths that didn’t have to be. The daily stress of wondering what awful thing trump would/could do. The division and hatred that remains after this election. The unfairness of the trump administration to so many. Ugh, I have to stop or I won’t sleep.
We are actually lucky she didn't get elected. The Republicans were salivating over doing "the Clinton Years" on steroids from the afternoon of the inauguration. With the Republicans in control of the Senate, she likely couldn't have gotten any of her cabinet approved, let alone anything else. And now thank god both of them are in the rearview mirror.
Howling like a pack of wolves. That’s what the R’s are on top of being whiners.
Here’s something that is a little off the mark about Kavanaugh's decision he wrote today regarding juveniles remaining incarcerated for the rest of their lives. Of course, he is targeting black and brown kids. Mind you, Amy Coney Barrett went right along with him. So, I would like to point out that Judge Barrett has two children who are black. Someday, they will learn that their skin color mattered to their mom. They will learn that she agreed to let black and brown kids rot in prison. Did she not think they’d never notice?
USSC, steeped in power in an Ivory Tower, comfortable for “eternity”, “tweaking” language to fit their “moral” compass, lacking empathy, understandIng and historic vision, and despite “protestation” to the contrary, creating Policy. I forget the figures, it is too early in my day, but keep in mind that US incarceration rates are I believe the highest in the world, and I wont go into the color coordination of the statistics. (Some kind person will correct me if I’m wrong.) But surely that tells us something very significant about this country. And yet I read about and meet good people every day (well at least pre Covid and I hope post Covid!)
This is not to deny that “evil” and “illegal” does not exist, but surely the mandate of the SC is to sort through the law and its intent, which is to judge without prejudice. I fear prejudice is a built-in to all of us, and it takes work to overcome it. I think I’d better stop here, as I have to deal with the rest of the day.
Given her religious bent (which most likely doesn't actually see that Jesus WASN'T white per se), I doubt she'll understand when/if her children turn against her.
What I do not understand is: Where have the Democrats been for the last three decades? Was no one paying attention to what the Republicans were doing at the State level? Gaining the State houses beyond their actual numbers? How did a minority gain the upper-hand to the degree they have? Were the Democrats asleep at the wheel? What did the Republicans do to gain such advantages?
Gerrymander, gerrymander, gerrymander. The Democrats in Congress have been ringing this alarm bell for decades, but no one seems to want to listen. The other answer is that the Constitution established what at the time was an ugly compromise and has only gotten worse: two Senators per state, regardless of population. As rural states have grown to be more conservative, so too has conservative over-representation in the Senate. It's a discouraging downward spiral.
It's one thing to "ring the alarm bell" (Did they really? My state is a Democratic stronghold and it is gerrymandered to hell and back) and another thing to be obliged to the corporate money that does not encourage upsetting the apple cart. The ONLY reason corporations are now "voicing concerns" is that the country is becoming destabilized, hurting their corporate profits. As long as the Democrats loved the Clintons and "neoliberal" policy, the dems were happy to remain unengaged, to let unions be crushed, "thugs" be imprisoned, the welfare safety net decimated, the infrastructure decline, the banks and Wall St. determining policy while thoroughly protected, the environment to decline, and on and on. They even passed NAFTA! That Obama did not fight to the death over his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, will go down in history as a crucial error of Obama passivity. That's where we have been, ducking and dodging.
It's not "gerrymandering" that has become the problem, although is it now a huge problem. It is the Democratic party's arrogance that allowed this slow slide into political hell. Simply put, the Democrats have been seriously out-maneuvered by Republicans. As usual, the Democrats will call foul. "Darn you. You're such liars!" And the Republicans will continue on their cruel, striking, merry way facing no organized, effective strategy. While the Democrats rely on a pokes but no solid punch.
Yes, true enough, and I would contend that Obama was essentially following the neoliberal playbook as well. And, yes, I agree that at times (most of the time, actually), Obama was far too passive. He was battling the "angry Black man" perception, I think, though in hindsight he should have just ignored that and forged ahead. My guess would be he has deep regrets.
But voting lines are determined after the census at the State Houses..and that is why the Republicans have concentrated on winning government at the State level. The Democrats were not paying attention, or they would have made the plea before the census to make sure that they won the State houses. No?
It's an interesting question that perhaps HCR or another historian could address. I don't see that the Ds conceded any statehouses or legislatures at any point, but they have very little control over what happens in most of those states. It seems to me that the gaslighting of conservative voters, in particular white ones, has been very effective. If you are convinced that whiteness is rightness, that immigrants are coming to take your jobs, that Black and brown people are going to force you to give up "your" country, that government is evil in all its forms except when it directly benefits you (farm subsidies, anyone?), that Democrats believe in open borders and giving away your hard earned dollars to "illegals" and "lazy Blacks", and that if the liberals have their way, newborns will be killed at will, then you will also believe that anything your elected officials can do to stop these things is legitimate, including (perhaps especially) minority rule. They think they are under attack and these means are justified.
Precisely Reid, and I don't think the Dems woke up to this (some still aren't awake) and pushed back as hard as they needed to. They seem to shy away from fighting the good fight. I don't know why. I'd really like to see Dems fight as hard for liberty, truth, and equality as the Reps do for gerrymandering, suppression and corporate greed.
The Dem's form of fighting the good fight seems to take the form of thrice-daily pleas from Nancy Pelosi for donations. Maybe I'm missing other elements by not doing social media, but I'd like to see them take the Lincoln Project playbook and launch massive, clever, attention-grabbing PR campaigns in support of voting rights, DC statehood, et al.
I agree. I have noticed that an apparent media campaign is going on right now touting Biden's agenda. The ads seem to be increasing in frequency. But those clever Lincoln Project ads might possibly add a knock-out punch to accompany the positive PR approach the WH is using. I don't know who is behind them - Psaki?
Horrifying but hardly surprising. What could be more totalitarian than a country run by wealthy, white, male elites? Yet that's precisely what our Constitution established and every deviation from that hierarchy, to this very day, has been bought with blood, sweat, and tears.
By the way for you Florida residents who are on Twitter, consider following Florida Watch (@Floridawatch). They are a good resource for things going on in our state.
Democrats were too busy fretting over national elections and what was happening in DC. Not enough attention was paid to state and local electoral politics. The truth is that state and local elections are extremely important. Does gerrymandering work in Republican's favor now? Yes, of course. But Democrats were not working hard enough in state and local elections to prevent Republicans from gaining so much power, particularly in the suburban areas.
Land does not vote, people do. So the only answer is to register and turn out more Democratic voters. After volunteering in a number of campaigns, I am convinced that the path to more electoral victories is not trying to convince Trump's supporters they are wrong. It is registering and turning out more voters who already hold that opinion. The largest single political party in this country is non-voters. Believe it or not, they outnumber Republicans and Democrats. Also while many profess they are independents, research of voting records, indicates many of them are in fact simply non-voters, particularly in local elections.
Plus libertarians. I know a couple (who actually work in our state legislature) who SIT OUT elections because basically they are completely opposed to all government, regardless of party. I wonder how many of the non-voters are of this persuasion. I do agree with you about registering more voters. Looks like Texas is actively working to make that more difficult. We must have scared them in 2020, not to mention Beto's near success.
Agree. They were quite cowardly when it came to LGBTQ+ issues. They timidly waited for the public to reach a pretty loud consensus before they acted. Remember Biden's faux pas of speaking out in favor of gay marriage before the presidential script was fully written? I'm glad he did that; forced their hand.
This article in The Atlantic paints a scary picture of how Republicans have been quietly planning to be in charge of Circuit Courts by 2040... and the plan is working!
Since 1983, the MI Senate has been controlled by Repubs. Since 1990, the MI House has been controlled by Repubs ~90% of the time. Since 1992, the state has had two Repub Governors and one Dem up till Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Repubs have had two trifectas since 1992. Repnbs in Michigan are holding Federally granted Covid aid hostage in an attempt to force Gov. Whitmer to yield.
In national elections (Senate and Pres.), the state votes Dem since 1992 with the exception of 2016 when the anyone but trump or Clinton vote gave the election to trump. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin made such happen. All three states have a history of voting for Dem Presidential Candidates since 1992 and 1988 for the latter.
Michigan is gerrymandered to deliver a Repub state legislature and congressional representatives. Repubs are fighting an already passed n amendment to the MI Constitution allowing a citizen committee to redraw the district boundaries. They are also fighting acts which have allowed for greater freedom in voting.
I could go on; however, this is too long as it stands. I do love to talk to Republican legislators as the numbers do not support their actions.
Speaking strictly for NC, I have to say, "yes". In 2010 we in the county Democratic Party begged and pleaded for voters to come out in the mid-terms. We tried to impress on them how critical the election was, with the census hanging in the balance. Not enough listened. Then the state GOP took over practically the entire General Assembly, In 2013, Pat McCrory was elected governor by the GOP. We managed to get rid of him, and the veto-proof majority the GOP had has been whittled down (thanks in part to the so-called Bathroom Bill), but they are still wreaking untold havoc.
I'm not sure about the national party, except one change and that was,, they began feeding at the same dark money trough as the GOP, and got entirely too cozy with Wall St. (for my money.)
Hi Silota - Some answers to these questions can be found in Jane Mayer's 2016 book _Dark Money_, which has been mentioned at times by others on this thread. My take is that 2010 was a shocking surprise due to the sudden impact of Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission (2010) on those elections in particular (amplified and reverberating still in 2020).
I find it puzzling how the GOP perceive trying to level the playing field as cheating. To the very least, they are gaslighting their followers to believe the Democrats are bad versus the Republicans being good and pure. The ultimate division of party and country. For them it's working.
I am reminded of the expression, the end justifies the means.
Will so many incredible advances by President Biden just be a footnote in history when reality is the rug is being pulled out from under the majority of the people by the few that wield power?
"Will so many incredible advances by President Biden just be a footnote in history when reality is the rug is being pulled out from under the majority of the people by the few that wield power?" YES, that is quite likely what is going to happen. The Covid relief bill is that last truly meaningful thing this administration will be allowed to do. Joe Manchin has pretty much said as much.
On the other hand, he is just a centrist Dem from a conservative state who has been thrown into the spotlight. If we had a strong majority in the Senate, Manchin would be nothing more than a footnote to a footnote; we wouldn't even know who he was. Still execrable, in my opinion, but a minor player.
My post was more tongue-in-cheek. I thought maybe a staff person might get through a few paragraphs before dumping it and cancelling the subscription. They certainly wouldn't want any real information screwing up the boss's messaging. As it was, my attempts were unsuccessful.
I tried to get an email address from Cruz's office. I got a robo-response referring me to my own senators. I'm going to print today's letter and mail it to Cruz with a note saying I would be happy to underwrite a subscription so Cruz and his staff might stay up to speed on American history.
I love how you’ve weaved these events together to plainly tell the crucial story of the day—which is that we are in a very steep uphill battle for democracy. The mentality of the Supreme Court is unfathomable, the senate is gamey, and we all are worried.
Republicans see their days in power are dwindling as the demographics slip away from their control. They are fighting vigorously, like a drowning person. And democrats must pursue justice with even more diligence -- our Democracy depends on it!
The division of the Dakota territory into two states was new to me, but reveals that political machinations are nothing new.
Meanwhile -- time to call my US Senators Cornyn and Cruz to let them know that this constituent knows they are spouting lies, yet again.
I was a life guard in my younger days. We were trained to get behind the drowning person and try to take control so to brink them to safety. Should their flailing be so powerful as to endanger both your lives you much let them go. They life of our country is at stake from the flailing of the Republicans. They however will not drown but we should get away from them and save our Democracy as soon as possible.
The power to change lies with Senator Manchin. Everyone else is a bit player.
Contact him.
Our West Virginia Substack friends need to contact Manchin in West Virginia and Sinema in Arizona. PLEASE!!!
You can contact anyone with the Capitol Hill switch board. Wait for the operator. The offices are mostly set up for voicemail. Mitch mailbox usually full.
202-224-3121
Troll them on Twitter. I do but in the nicest of ways. :)
I stopped wasting my time calling those two. They lack the courtesy to even have their staff respond.
You are correct. But I persist.
Letters to the editor of your local newspaper is another option.
I send them petitions and comments as often as they come my way. It is useless, of course, but I do want them to know that I know they are LIARS. Both of them.
It would be like me contacting Puto Marco Rubio. I ain't got that kind of money to buy him nor the time to waste.
cig, thank you for continuing to call Cornyn a d Cruz to give them a piece of your mind, and tell them you know they're lying. We in Blue states can't call them, but their actions affect all of us. I hope Kay and Rob will call and protest to their Republican senators even if it feels futile. Look at all the Republicans retiring at the end of their cutrent terms. How fast can we turn others from desperate lying power-grab machinations to dispirited resignation?
Like drowning in their own bathtub.
Gosh, can we arrange that?
I have found that calling those 2 is useless and emailing them gets me a form letter in response.
I get a from letter thanking me from Ron Johnson too. But at least they have to tick a box that says "opposed"
I am not sure that any box gets ticked. I just get thanked for sending the email. My sense is that neither Senator is aware of my letter and that someone in the office sends me the perfunctory response.
Now that I did a bit of looking, I see that CALLING is better than emailing. I think that's where I get the list check-off info from--that the staff have to log the calls & the message conveyed. I have made phone calls too and I think I will focus again on that. The emails obviously are getting auto-replies and probably no one looks at them :( https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html
Is anyone on here from West Virginia or Arizona??? If so, please contact Manchin in West Virginia and Sinema in Arizona. PLEASE!!!
I have done both. Most times when I have called, I have not gotten through.
A group of HCR Substackers has formed to turn our great discussion into action--and share what is most effective. For more info: heathersherd@gmail.com
A group of HCR Substackers has formed to turn our great discussion into action. For more info: heathersherd@gmail.com
Good morning everyone! Thank you for this letter, Heather--I hope you are feeling a lot better from the fun aftermath of the second vaccine! I would only say that using the term "gaslighting" as a description of Cruz's gobsmacking statements is far too kind. Cruz stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and lied, lied, lied. Until and unless we actually identify what comes out of their mouths as lies--and until the Dems in power do so--they will be able to continue to "gaslight" with impunity.
There are some other things I want to point out that occurred yesterday. The always-execrable Josh Hawley was the ONLY senator to vote against the bill labeling anti-Asian hate crimes as Hate Crimes, although apparently 6 senators decided to absent themselves from the vote (Cruz? Graham? Blunt? who?--I would like to see the roll call). And the equally-execrable "Justice" Kavanaugh wrote the 6-3 SCOTUS decision claiming that life without parole was an appropriate sentence for teenagers who commit murder. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/22/989822872/supreme-court-rejects-restrictions-on-life-without-parole-for-juveniles
This was in response to a petition for changing the sentence of a 15 year-old who had murdered his abusive grandfather, with whom he was living because of a lifetime of abuse he had suffered at the hands of his own parents and a stepfather. The trauma of this young man and the appalling sentence he received were completely discounted by the so-called "Christians" on the Court. So much for the quality of mercy not being strained. Vanity Fair's take on the decision is nowhere near as measured as Nina Totenberg's. And the dissent from the three REAL justices (in the sense that they think about JUSTICE) was scathing.
And the sheer chutzpah of Bret Kavanaugh, of all people, vigorously arguing that bad things you do as a child should definitively shape the rest of your life, is a thing at which to marvel.
Except for himself.
Statistics. Over 200,000 people, or about 1 in 7 prisoners in the United States, were serving life or virtual life sentences in 2019. Over 50,000 are serving life without a chance of parole. The cruelty of the US judicial system is legend. This from The Sentencing Project:
https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Facts-of-Life.pdf
And many spend years in solitary confinement.
I didn’t like to tap the heart on your comment or janjamm’s as they illuminate such grim realities. If we had another reaction button that conveyed “this is significant,” I would tap that instead.
Wow, that is chilling.
Thank you for this.
Amy Klobuchar was at the funeral of Daunte Wright. Not sure about the others.
Love Amy.
Great contribution Linda, thank you on all points!
The same despicable group who claim to be "Pro Life" will incarcerate a young person for life.
When we lived in ME in the late 80s, early 90s there was a murder trial - a well known, middle aged women named Jackie shot and killed her husband as he soaked in the bathtub, claiming self defense after years of abuse and was found not guilty. Not many murders in ME so I remember them.
Yes--the "burning bed" defense. But apparently this child had no adequate defense attorney. The whole situation is appalling. As are the levels of incarceration in general. NY State just passed a law forbidding extended solitary confinement, which is very good news for the prisoners living in horrible conditions (NPR interviewed several who had been in solitary for 30 years and more--unfathomable) but is freaking out the prison service. I am glad the prison service is finally seeing at least a sliver of a reckoning.
Yes, Linda, they are LIES. And this trend is getting worse, following the lie-filled time of 1/45 (the fraction further diminishes the roll of "that guy.") Lying has been elevated to an art form with Repubs and it has.to.stop. We have to stop it, but I'm not sure how as an individual. Suggestions welcome. I'm nauseated by the blatant insult to the majority of Americans who DO know that they are lying.
Lying is a prerequisite now in order to be a member of the GQP in Congress. I believe the Heritage Foundation, the Kochs, The Mercers, et al. established that many years years ago. Oh, and let us not forget about the Federalist Society.
I say Bloomberg or the Lincoln Project should fund an ad campaign of every Repuglican with just film of their own contradictory statements. Like McConnell nixing a vote on Garland for SCOTUS because it was too close to the election and then McConnell again, ramming through Barrett’s vote. There is a goldmine of video of these flipfloppers contradicting themselves. Run it constantly.
Excellent, Linda. The SCOTUS decision reminds me of a story I heard on the radio a few weeks ago. The woman told her interviewer that she became convinced in her twenties to join a fundamentalists church and really enjoyed all that they did. After about ten years, she came to church feeling sad that a good friend had died a few days before. When she arrived, several church members asked what was wrong. She told them that a good friend had passed recently and that she was sad for his passing. Several of the others asked her what his religion was. When she told them he was Jewish, the response by the others was "he's going to Hell." This outraged the woman, and she left that congregation for good. I wonder if the so-called Christians of the SCOTUS would want to make the same comment.
To understand what a child would murder their abuser would take knowledge of brain development, the effects of trauma on a child, and empathy. Obviously they hold none of these abilities.
Missing the vote were 3 Rs and 2 Ds
I think I saw my other senator (D), Tina Smith at the Wright funeral as well. So that would be the two Dems missing: Senator Klobuchar and Smith.
Marshall is the new senator from Kansas. He is allegedly a doctor (I say allegedly because he denies science whenever possible, similar to "You're an optometrist Rand"). And wow re: Cotton. (what a [word I don't like to use here]-head)
“richard cranium” is the phrase I believe you’re looking for
but dang it doesn’t feel nearly as good rolling off the tongue!
Actually it was more excrement-cranium! But thanks!!
Hey, Marshall, didn't you learn the first principle of medicine - DO NO HARM?
Liz, are these the people who were absent? Where did you see the video of the w.s. sign?
I wish someone could appear like Forest Gump right next to Cruz (and any of the other fakers) with a huge poster of Cruz buck-naked and holding his privvies and wearing an emperor’s crown, every time he lies.
And is there a reason the great Lincoln Project videos aren’t running on television? Since the great Lindsay Graham ad in which LG praises Biden as being one of the most genuinely decent and good men he’s ever known, I haven’t seen them on tv. If I were a billionaire or even a millionaire, I would run that film of Cruz calling Trump the biggest liar on earth. “He lies every time he opens his mouth,” Cruz said of tRump, when running against him. Now Cruz does that.
"Now that Democrats are trying to level the playing field, they howl that the Democrats are cheating." The Republican Party, once a respectable political party, with clearly articulated principles for governance and open to discussion, negotiation, and bipartisan compromise has become the party of obstruction, voter suppression, lying, and, wherever possible, cheating. And oh yes, masters of projection.
You did read the part of this post about the admission of six states that didn't actually meet the requirements to qualify for statehood, for Republican advantage, yes? The Republican Party stopped being any of the things you mention by 1876 (at the latest), The only three good Republican presidents were all flukes: Lincoln because they weren't sure they'd win in 1860 but wanted to make a fight; TR - who they had carefully shunted aside into being VP to be rid of him - became president because of the assassination of McKinley and was cordially hated by the Republican establishment which was forced to support him in 1904 because he was so popular he'd have won without them; and Eisenhower, whose personal politics were so obscure that the Democrats considered running him, put in over "Mr. Conservative" Robet Taft because they'd been out of power for20 years and figured they could get all the former GIs to vote for him. Other than those three, every Republican president since Grant has been a POS. Harry Truman called them out for the scum they are 73 years ago.
Nice post, TC. Lincoln is the GOP's only truly great president and TR was a real character who left us the national parks. My father was a big Adlai Stevenson supporter who acknowledged that Ike was not bad for a Republican but never forgave him for choosing Tricky Dicky as his running mate. I remember that when I gave him the news that Ford had pardoned Nixon, he closed his eyes, clutched his chest and sat down abruptly, almost missing the chair.
Some of us have been onto these bastards our entire lives.
Oh yeah. My dad taught me to hate Nixon at an early age, then because of his Masonic anti-Catholic beliefs, he went and voted for him in 1960, thus beginning the 20 year war between he and I, resolved for some reason or event I never understood or questioned with him changing his mind on all those things and telling me I had been right. And he stuck with that the last ten years of his life, when we finally became friends. Like I say, I never asked what had happened, I was just glad it did.
I wish that would happen for a lot of families. For me and my mom, it didn't. I hope but the light isn't very bright. They are consuming poison almost every moment of the day.
Nevertheless, Paul, you positively individuated from your mother!
I always thought of it as the side of him I had always loved and respected - the "premature anti-fascist" of his youth, the scientist whose whole career was based on operating from observable fact, all that - finally overcame the dark side of having been raised by the people who raised him at the time they did. I've missed him every day since he departed, unlike that woman he was crazy enough to stay married to.
Of the 5 Republican presidents in my lifetime -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, and Trump -- only Bush 1 was elected fairly. All the others gained the office fraudulently.
Not sure about that. Having been involved with politics professionally for the first three, one never heard their elections questioned; interestingly, Nixon had a good case for being "taken" in 1960 when the Dailey Machine delivered Chicago and thus Illinois, to JFK in a move people from both parties publicly expressed doubt about the legality of the outcome. Bush 2 was the first Republican elected through chicanery everyone noticed. Reagan was elected by the margin he got in 1980 because Carter conceded while the polls were still open in the west, which got a lot of Republicans elected to other offices they might not have gotten, because of Democrats there deciding they didn't need to go vote after they got home from work. I have yet to forgive Carter for that gutless move.
Carter was a terrible president but dang: the best President Emeritus we have ever had. But those four years were excruciating . . .
Bingo! Award that lady the Intertoobz for today!
When Reagan was running for President, Roger Stone (same conductor of The Brooks Brothers Parade that upset the Florida Gore/ George W. election, and creep for tRump) delivered a suitcase of cash, given to him with instructions by Ray Cohn (of Joe McCarthy commie fame, and later advisor to tRump on mobster dealings), to the Libertarian Party New York headquarters for John Anderson to split the Democratic vote. It worked.
It makes me sick that Stone is free. He is slime. But I guess he’s an agent paid by others too. The kingpins have to fall.
I agree with you TC the elections of Nixon, Reagan and Bush 1 were legit--though you are certainly correct the Dems, for varied reasons, have all too frequently assembled their circular firing squads. But, re: Dailey delivering Chicago, this is true but JFK would still have won without Illinois' electoral votes. Nixon did indeed choose not to make a fuss. But I can't shake my reactions to the fact that, whatever the levels of chicanery by the political ops, the American public voted for Nixon in 1972, and then for Reagan TWICE, and W. TWICE--not to mention TFG. Contemplating the record makes me question my allegiance to democratic government.
You and me both. It must be the "curse of the Doubting Thomases." :-)
JFK's election was the first I really paid serious interest to (even to the point of it being my first time to volunteer in politics as a teenager). I remember staying up till what I remember as around 2am (don't hold me to that, but it sure seemed late) to hear JFK awarded Illinois and Walter Cronkite (I think it was) saying JFK was now going to be president. (Unfortunately, my research on two Vietnam War books involving who did what when, has led to my losing my JFK hero worship - he was the one who went dancing in there after Kruschchev embarrassed him at Vienna)
Oh yes. It was also later for me that I reflected on the seriously hawkish tone of "pay any price, bear any burden." Further study revealed that not only did both candidates in 1960 try to out "missile gap" the other, but that JFK after winning initiated aggressive CIA actions in Africa and Central America as well as exploding cigars and LSD-laced shoes for Castro. And then The Best and The Brightest somehow couldn't see how their theory-driven understandings would inevitably lead to a prolonged pig wrestling match in SE Asia. Later arguing about how to "win" overlooked the old saw about ending up covered in shit either way.
Just finished "Reaganland" and it sure makes Carter look like a fucking idiot. A lot.
Yes it does. You should read "The Invisible Bridge" too. An excellent portrait of how the "dark side" was always there in the GOP and how it became dominant.
Good points TC. I think my admiration of Lincoln, TR, and Ike (the first president I remembered as a kid) and some respectable members of congress in our part of the country I let me gloss over the disasters you point out. Well that and wishful thinking, since it would be healthy politically to have two constructive and respectable parties.
Oh yeah, you're entirely right. I'd even be happy with the semi-respectable hypocrites who used to run the GOP.
Very good analysis.
Yes the GOP are the masters of projection!
I’m so glad you talked about the filibuster tonight. I was having a conversation with a friend about the Senate situation earlier today and we were discussing much of the same point that you raise here.
The George Floyd police accountability act and DC statehood are adding significant pressure to the Senate logjam that is the filibuster. There are so many good progressive bills piling up, with so many different special interests really mobilized for their passage. Something has to give. Either the Senate reforms the filibuster or the water and logs behind the jam overflow the banks and start to cause collateral damage.
I think the logjam/filibuster has to break before the Senate recesses for summer.
I’m so curious what disruption frees the deadlock. (To run the logjam analogy to the ground, who will be the people with their hooks and poles that shake the jam loose?). Will more progressive/ old school Senate Republicans decide they want a piece of the action and start working in earnest with Dems? Will the Gaetz scandal blow up the Trump wing of the party, sending Republicans back to the center? Will the loss of corporate dollars start to have an impact? Will Trump be indicted, sending his one-time allies running for cover? Will it be investigations from our brave state and federal AGs? Or will we see another summer of grassroots protests demanding movement on this progressive legislation?
A coalition of the New Left, all pressuring for passage of their separate bills could be a mighty force.
I’ll do my part. What can you do?
Good morning, Leah – I applaud your commitment.
Personally, I don’t think Gaetz going to prison or Trump facing-off against State AGs is going to make a scintilla of difference in the Senate. The Republican are dug in. If the corporate money dries up, then yes, Republicans might waffle for a moment. If the demonstrations for progressive legislation engage new voters, then yes, it might make some difference.
Or, the Progressive Dems will go after the older Dems (for example, the move to unseat Carolyn Maloney in NYC) and fracture the Democratic party with generational turf wars. Or, Manchin will cave to his Right-leaning constituents in West Virginia and exchange his blue lapel pin for a red one. Or, the summer finds us neck-deep in a new wave of Corona infections brought on by Republican governors who claim their freedom is being threatened, spurring protests and counter-protests that exacerbate our already deeply divided polity. Or, people of color will continue to die at the hands of law enforcement resulting in more, and more intense protests and counter-protests that feed racist fever.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said here before: Biden is doing all the right things. His Administration is a case study in how to run a government that cares about its citizens, but the forces aligned against him and all he stands for, are determined, organized, well-financed and unprincipled.
I was living in NYC when it burned, I was living in LA when it burned: I’m not particularly optimistic at the moment. To borrow from the illustrious James Baldwin, the fire next time is the one I’m worried about.
I heard the saddest story on NPR this morning about how long Russians have been trying to break free of the once-communist, now fascist rule over them, only to fail again and again. Nikita Khrushchev tried to enact changes that would have bettered the lives of ordinary Russians, only to have them all overturned. He was eventually removed from office, removed from all history books, watched closely the rest of his life denied a state burial. Now Navalney sits in prison, on a noble yet possibly doomed hunger strike. I always thought we in America were immune to such corruption and oligarchy, but now realize, sadly, we are not.
Jeanne, the situation in Russia has been this way ever since Ivan IV (aka Ivan the Terrible) and I doubt that autocracy will ever be overturned there. I think Navalny knew full well what would happen to him were he to return and he did so deliberately, despite the pleas of most of his supporters to remain in Germany, which was totally willing to give him asylum. He knows what few will acknowledge: Russians find martyrs to be compelling symbols. He also knows that Putin cannot afford a martyr on Russian soil, so the propaganda blitz there has been to deny his significance and his declining health. When Navalny dies, the propaganda will be that he did so of his own volition or of "natural" causes because any suggestion that he is being tortured to death will cause a rising in Russia.
Jeanne, Alexey Navalny ended his hunger strike today after doctors told him that he was close to death. Poisoned in Russia, he returned there on Jan. 17, 2021, after treatment in Germany. His life's work is to undermine Putin's hold over the Russian people. Navalny's battle is enormous, as hard as it gets to displace a dictator. He is a model in the struggle against tyranny. Our own commitments to democracy have become more evident as the Republicans work to shut it down and the murders of Black people by the police are recorded. Many Independents, inactive citizens and some Republicans removed from the lures White Supremacy and anti-government movements are waking up to systemic racism; fossil-fuels assaults the health of human beings and on the planet; widespread hunger as well as the rigging of our economic system and the manipulation of public sentiment by the Donor Class. Navalny will not give up. Shall we be defeatist or continue to support Biden and push him further toward a true democracy?
I have followed this story closely and am in awe of Navalny’s courage and commitment. He is willing to die for freedom -as Timothy Snyder (?is it?) admonished us in his list to consider- or die in unfreedom. It was the Russian historian, a journalist I believe, being interviewed on NPR who went through a list of failed attempts by Russians to change their government, and who was convinced that Navalny’s heroic stand is doomed. That sad story helped me see more clearly the fragility of our American Experiment, as Heather has written about and others here have written as well. I am not despairing as much as I am better informed about our chances for success. It felt grim after hearing that story but I don’t plan on giving up doing what I can do to help.
Jeanne, Navalny knows what he is doing. He can do it. He's completely aware of likely the consequences to himself and, whatever happens, he is in the people's hearts and it their children's. It is crucial to stand up to dictators and false Gods. As you said, we do what we can. It is satisfying to know we work for the good. The less despair, the more to love and to work together. This is an immensely challenging time. I sometimes feel as though I am often colliding into problems. When was finding a balance more important? Be well. Thank you for communicating, Jeanne.
And tragically, Jeanne, we never have been. First the Colonies and later the states were awash in corruption and malevolent actors.
I think it is critical that we face that reality about the connection between our history and our condition today. The only way we can begin to root out the current venality we are seeing is to recognize its roots in our past. Without apology to Norman Rockwell and his iconic imagery, we have to organize and mobilize to attack the rot that has always been with us.
I always appreciate your comments, R. Insightful and well-written.
I agree with you. With the voter suppression and their determination to win the next elections by gaslighting and lies has me really worried. Because if these power hungry Repulicans get full power, they will make sure they stay there, no matter what it takes. I think they are working hard to make sure elections will go their way, and because they are using such unethical means, it will be hard to fight them as we have seen recently.
Should we all be writing to Joe Manchin? I mean, really bombard him with snail mail begging, pleading, persuading, admonishing him to see not just his constituents’ desires and his own political future but the future well-being of his grandchildren and his constituents’ grandchildren? I feel
like politicians might reject a letter from outside their legislative authority (after taking any check included), but perhaps I will write to Sen Manchin anyway.
And those who are young enough to live through this century will bear witness to the end of democracy in America. 😩
and the opportunity before us, long in coming, must be acted upon. Baldwin, unfortunately, is not with us now, so why go backward?
“and the opportunity before us, long in coming, must be acted upon.”
I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.
James Baldwin is a hero of mine, both as a literary figure and a speaker of truth.
I don’t advocate going backward, rather heeding the words of someone whose perspective was informed with a timeless grace.
Eddie S 'Glaude, (author of Begin Again) who is distinguished professor and chair of the African American studies department at Princeton University (where he has been teaching a seminar on Baldwin for several years), is also a native of Jackson County, Mississippi, the US state that suffered the highest number of lynchings – 581 between 1882 and 1968. The trauma of that inheritance – “our bodies carry the traumas forward,” Glaude writes – is never far from the page. Nor is the trauma felt across black America in his parents’ generation when in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, crushing hopes for “fundamental change” that had been gathering around the US civil rights movement for the best part of a decade'.
'It was out of despair, Glaude writes, that in 2018, two years after what he calls “the disastrous election of Donald Trump”, he started to write this book, “saying to myself, they have done it again. Millions of white Americans had chosen Trump, and we would have to deal with the consequences of that choice.”
“What we are living through,” Glaude writes of the current context, “even with our cellphone cameras, is not unlike what Baldwin and so many others dealt with as the black freedom movement collapsed with the ascent of the Reagan revolution.” Baldwin’s response demonstrates the resilience that’s needed to be a witness through an era of despair.'
'There is a common reading of his career, dismissed by Glaude as a “stale characterisation”, that he hit the heights of his literary genius in 1963; that, thereafter, “his rage and politics got the best of him” but that he subsequently lost his nuance, lost touch with the love that had distinguished his voice in his prime, abandoned his gift for complexity; that in the aftermath of King’s assassination and with the collapse of the civil rights movement, he’d left himself nowhere to go; that by 1972 he was a writer in decline; that by the time of his death from stomach cancer in 1987, he was, to use a phrase from Darryl Pinckney, “a spent force”.'
'Glaude challenges this convention with conviction. He invites us with him to “read Baldwin to the end” and reveals a writer, not spent, but rather illuminating the path beyond despair – the work of a saint if ever there was such a thing. This witness through the dark times, which Glaude argues are upon us once again, is, he says, the true measure of Baldwin’s greatness: an enduring testament to his love and the belief that the US can and must be something more than it is.' (The Guardian Book Review)
I am not expressing 'sentiment' or know what James Baldwin would say about our choices today. 'Timeless grace' does not address the matter.
I'm not so sure that the logjam will break. I think that rendering the Senate unworkable is part and parcel of the Republican strategy. If they're out of power, then creating a logjam is in their interest.
You asked all of the questions I have had swimming through my brain. I want answers and am tired of waiting. Tired of the Repubs stronghold. They are an obnoxious evil bunch which I wish the Dems could destroy.
The Rs are just holding out for 2022. Because of gerrymandering they are likely to take back control of the House and the Senate is far from secure. The logjam plays to their strengths.
With Warnock from Georgia being the prime target.
I agree completely. But I also think he is going to be helped enormously by the presence on the ballot of Stacey Abrams running for governor. And the fact that D voters, especially POC, are royally PISSED at the attempts at voter suppression in Georgia. It could be a very interesting election.
Looks like Trump backed Herschel Walker may be the Republican opponent.
Unfortunately getting rid of the filibuster still doesn't get some crucial bills passed. For example, there are a handful of Democratic Senators who have not yet committed to voting for DC statehood, including Angus King and Mark Kelly, along with the "usual" suspects of Manchin and Sinema....and Shaheen. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/huddle/2021/04/22/dc-statehood-hits-a-snag-in-the-senate-492564
There was talk not long ago about forcing senators to show up and actually speak to filibuster. What happened to that plan? Perhaps the Democrats could filibuster by listing the bully behavior and lies of the previous administration and its brainwashed flock of sheep, including the senators who have lost any sense of decency and humanity. After a few days of putting out facts into the Congressional Record, some Republicans (could there be 12?) might mend their evil ways.
Al Franken came out in support of such a plan recently. Including tag team talking filibuster but on topic debate, not Green Eggs and Ham. Also, make it so the challengers need to keep 41 senators in chambers to win rather than 60 on the other side. Of course the majority leader could call a vote at any time, so they would have to do this perpetually. Even Manchin said he felt the filibuster should involve some effort and pain to those using it.
I’m glad to know Franken is still involved in politics. Where can I read his comments? He and VP Harris were the best committee at witless witness questions.
Let’s invigorate the idea of modifying/ending the filibuster. Capitol Hill switchboard connects you to anyone you want. 202-224-3121
Al is now doing video podcast on YouTube. Not only does he provide interesting perspectives on the Filibuster he does a very entertaining impersonation of Mitch M. https://youtu.be/1MluMGM8nK8
Wow, I just watched all 3. Thanks. His McConnell impersonation is brilliant.
Totally agree!
We lost huge talent when Gillibrand and the rest went after Franken, so needlessly. Some people blow with the wind rather than having firm roots and perspective. I'm glad Franken's found a valuable place to contribute.
A great suggestion, Gigi! The Democratic Senators could speak for a long time about the 427 people charged so far in the insurrection at the Capitol. I feel like that story is fading even with the huge number of arrests
The DOJ is still in the investigatory stages. This story will heat up as actual charges are brought and trials begin. Undoubtedly some of the minor players will plea bargain, but there will be some high profile trials, I have no doubt.
Love this idea Gigi--especially since, as usual, the Dems are ceding the soapbox to execrables like Cruz, Hawley, and Graham.
Are they, though? Or is it that the media are giving them oxygen? I think Dems are speaking out to a certain extent, but common sense does not make great TV news. So frustrating.
My new favorite word of the day: execrable! I wish media would simply turn off their mics and cameras and walk away when the execrables begin to speak. I have been tweeting MSNBC, both the network and the hosts, letting them know that I turn OFF their shows when they give free publicity to liars like those you mention above.
What a novel and possibly effective strategy! Way to go, Gigi
The GOP Senators are fighting for existence.They will do the talking.
You’ve got heart, Gigi! But Dems already tried this during the impeachment hearings. Unfortunately, the seven GOP Senators weren’t enough.
But they were a start, and the more often it happens the more likely it becomes that others will rediscover their courage or at least their ego and stand up too.
I would love to write a comment today worthy of the erudite and informative forum Dr. Richardson blesses us with. However, when confronted by the quote from Ted Cruz, despite his Ivy League degrees, I am merely left with the haunting thought over and over... Ted Cruz is a moron. Sigh...
Not a moron. Try Evil.
Yep. Memory of mine is short, but Cruz seems the new holder of the McConnell mantel. Make an outlandish lie or new rule of mythical proportion and proceed to repeat it until the converse is more useful (e.g., the Supreme Court appointment in an election year) and come up with an actual truth that has no logical or factual connection to the former. And always do it in some momentous setting that provides gravitas. Remember McConnell denouncement of the insurgency right after leading party to acquit the Last Guy.
Evil moron.
Crazy like a fox, though. Playing to the base. Everything he does is aimed at running for president. Except the beard. I don't get the beard.
Cruz has turned himself into a living caricature. What is the flaw in human psyches that charlatans and scammers so easily exploit? Republicans gaslight because it works for them.
Yes he has, yet how do you stop him? The media continues to let it happen!
Tying himself to the Trump Empire.
A lot of these GOP congresspersons are desperately seeking the Trump voters’s backing. As if someone can’t see it.
Facial hair is popular today! While all pre-Lincoln presidents were clean shaven, Honest Abe's beard was followed by a continuing assortment of moustashes and beards which lasted until Woodrow Wilson (with exception of Andrew Johnson and William McKinley). Although presidents have been clean shaven since then, Cruz is counting on the resurgence of the popularity of facial hair to get him nominated. It won't happen.
That man will be president over my dead body!
That's part of the plan of some of those on the extreme right. That's why they just love the SCOTUS' gross misinterpretation of the Second Amendment!
Nice assessment of the facial hair lobby! You're undoubtedly right; everything is a calculation with that guy. I also just want to say that Johnson could have used some facial hair help. Looked like a cadaver, that guy.
Anything that obscures his ugly face. Of course, the beard actually makes him uglier.
I know, right? Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse....
Maybe trying to look less like Grandpa Munster, whom he has been caricatured as repeatedly.
And you live in Texas, Bruce! I think the same (that Cruz is not very bright), but I live in Massachusetts. Many of us poured our small contributions into Texas campaigns trying to turn it blue, but we failed. How close did we come?
Yup, I poured in contributions as well as volunteering in a number of campaigns, both national and local. But don't regret doing either. We came closer to defeating Ted Cruz than John Cornyn but we will keep working at it. It will eventually happen but only with time and effort.
I will keep pouring my contributions to GA, TX, and those other states that have evil obnoxious state legislators.
😪
Sandra Campbell said that she was left shaking. I am, too. Will this unholy mess ever be contained?
As an English major I love words and words matter. I vote all media should now replace “gaslighting” with “lying”.
Lying is telling an untruth. Gaslighting is making the target wonder what the truth is. It is lying on steroids and is often more sinister than a straight up bald faced lie by itself.
I disagree Barry. They are not targeting fence-sitters with their statements, trying to get people to wonder if they are right or not. They are lying to bolster the narrative they've been building for a long time and strengthening the talking points the tRumpers will use at their rallies, riots and church luncheons. These are lies and more and more people are seeing it as that. The question for me is how can *I* help to stop it. The media is slowing getting bolder about using the word, but somehow there needs to be a movement or march to call these Liars what they are: Liars.
I live in Missouri, a red state, and I have seen many people tell me, with absolute conviction, that this election was stolen. These are intelligent and well educated professional and highly competent people. They cannot conceive of a majority of Americans voting against Trump. After all, everyone they know voted for Trump with rare exceptions. Hence, the election was stolen. They live in an alternate reality from people who don't base their world view on Fox News and One America News.
I enjoy seeing the great Ingrid Bergman but I agree that naming a mode of persuasion based on the name of the film Gaslight is less than self explanatory. It is shorter than calling it "Building an alternate reality to maintain control over others" but someone cleverer than I might be able to come up with a more satisfying alternative.
Lying has become a wholly acceptable practice through all layers of our world. And it’s not illegal. Also most people don’t have the time to figure out what are the latest lies. The corruption is deep and malignant. God help us all.
Barry, I agree that there's a difference in meaning between "lying" and "gaslighting". However, Jan has a point. Everyone over the age of three knows what "lying" means regardless of their age, party, or education. I submit that the demographic who know what "gaslighting" means is much more tightly concentrated among Democratic feminist baby boomers (like me) who know and love classic Ingrid Bergman movies.
I am a Boomer and progressive but I hope there are a few conservatives who also enjoy the work of the Great George Cukor.
The only time the Repubs were respected was when Eisenhower was President.
Ever since Nixon's southern strategy they have been sliding downhill IMHO as well.
Jan, I was an English minor. I also love words, and word matter. Therefore, I think that it's best to us either "gaslighting" or 'lying" in our writing. Besides, I'm pretty sure that "gaslighting" is an unfamiliar word for millions of Americans, including some English majors and minors. I think it is important to expand their vocabularies. I'm going to try to find that old movie on TV now. BTW, do you think Boris Johnson knows the word?
Ahhhh, yes. Lyin’ Raphael Cancun Cruz, my worthless senator from Texas. If there is a camera around, he will find it (unless, of course, he is sneaking away to Cancun while millions of his constituents dealt with a major freeze, in which 125 Texans died from the freezing weather).
"There are two kinds of people in the Senate: Ted Cruz, and those who hate Ted Cruz."
Shout out to Al Franken for that, right?
Yes, that was Al. Thanks - I couldn't remember.
He also said he liked Cruz more than everyone else in the senate—and he HATED Ted Cruz.
Here's a video about that quote. I love Franken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyvVX2PU6hg
Thank you! I had missed this interview. I shared it just now on FB!
You are welcome.
Franken has started a series of 8-12 minute videos on youtube about the filibuster, disinformation, etc. He presents useful facts and debunking of nonsense, along with various straight-faced zingers. Worth a look.
Then why do Texans keep putting him back in office
Raphael (we call him that because we know that he hates it), has been re-elected only once. He is a junior senator. Beto O’Rourke ran a pretty good race last time. However, Texas is a red (turning purple) state. He has a “R” by his name, and Texas is in perpetual gerrymandering mode. Sen. Cruz is well-educated and was a brilliant litigator. He lacks character of any kind but please do not underestimate him. He was second behind TFG In votes for the Republican nomination.
The TFG craves adulation and money. Sen. Cruz craves power. Both of them are dangerous men.
! ! ! ! !
Off topic share: Just came in from watching the Space X Falcon 9-Dragon pre-dawn rocket launch from my front yard. Spectacular sight. 4 humans aboard hurtling into orbit to dock with ISS. Clearly saw stages separate, making swirling white cloud angels in a dark sky. Once in awhile it helps to start a day this way!!
That would be something to see! Glad you were able to do that.
Wow, how amazing. I've see some of the photos and they are stunning!
A divided house cannot stand under minority rule. All these decades of Republican shenanigans have come to a head. Good men and women must come to the aid of our country. First D.C. and then on to Puerto Rico! Consider it the equalizer for North and South Dakota.
The government is so stacked that I truly worry for this country. Thanks for this but I am still depressed over the GOP, the Supremes...and our weak "majority" in the Senate thanks to Sinema and Manchin.
Same here, and I’m still troubled over the 2016 election and that email lady.
Can you expand on your thoughts Evelyn? I’m not following.
Many felt that there was interference in that election by Putin, and we now know that was true. When I think about what could have been, it sickens me. All the chaos, the lies, the deaths that didn’t have to be. The daily stress of wondering what awful thing trump would/could do. The division and hatred that remains after this election. The unfairness of the trump administration to so many. Ugh, I have to stop or I won’t sleep.
We are actually lucky she didn't get elected. The Republicans were salivating over doing "the Clinton Years" on steroids from the afternoon of the inauguration. With the Republicans in control of the Senate, she likely couldn't have gotten any of her cabinet approved, let alone anything else. And now thank god both of them are in the rearview mirror.
Thank you and I’m sorry. It really is so upsetting and I hope you were able to rest.
Howling like a pack of wolves. That’s what the R’s are on top of being whiners.
Here’s something that is a little off the mark about Kavanaugh's decision he wrote today regarding juveniles remaining incarcerated for the rest of their lives. Of course, he is targeting black and brown kids. Mind you, Amy Coney Barrett went right along with him. So, I would like to point out that Judge Barrett has two children who are black. Someday, they will learn that their skin color mattered to their mom. They will learn that she agreed to let black and brown kids rot in prison. Did she not think they’d never notice?
USSC, steeped in power in an Ivory Tower, comfortable for “eternity”, “tweaking” language to fit their “moral” compass, lacking empathy, understandIng and historic vision, and despite “protestation” to the contrary, creating Policy. I forget the figures, it is too early in my day, but keep in mind that US incarceration rates are I believe the highest in the world, and I wont go into the color coordination of the statistics. (Some kind person will correct me if I’m wrong.) But surely that tells us something very significant about this country. And yet I read about and meet good people every day (well at least pre Covid and I hope post Covid!)
This is not to deny that “evil” and “illegal” does not exist, but surely the mandate of the SC is to sort through the law and its intent, which is to judge without prejudice. I fear prejudice is a built-in to all of us, and it takes work to overcome it. I think I’d better stop here, as I have to deal with the rest of the day.
Given her religious bent (which most likely doesn't actually see that Jesus WASN'T white per se), I doubt she'll understand when/if her children turn against her.
What I do not understand is: Where have the Democrats been for the last three decades? Was no one paying attention to what the Republicans were doing at the State level? Gaining the State houses beyond their actual numbers? How did a minority gain the upper-hand to the degree they have? Were the Democrats asleep at the wheel? What did the Republicans do to gain such advantages?
Gerrymander, gerrymander, gerrymander. The Democrats in Congress have been ringing this alarm bell for decades, but no one seems to want to listen. The other answer is that the Constitution established what at the time was an ugly compromise and has only gotten worse: two Senators per state, regardless of population. As rural states have grown to be more conservative, so too has conservative over-representation in the Senate. It's a discouraging downward spiral.
It's one thing to "ring the alarm bell" (Did they really? My state is a Democratic stronghold and it is gerrymandered to hell and back) and another thing to be obliged to the corporate money that does not encourage upsetting the apple cart. The ONLY reason corporations are now "voicing concerns" is that the country is becoming destabilized, hurting their corporate profits. As long as the Democrats loved the Clintons and "neoliberal" policy, the dems were happy to remain unengaged, to let unions be crushed, "thugs" be imprisoned, the welfare safety net decimated, the infrastructure decline, the banks and Wall St. determining policy while thoroughly protected, the environment to decline, and on and on. They even passed NAFTA! That Obama did not fight to the death over his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, will go down in history as a crucial error of Obama passivity. That's where we have been, ducking and dodging.
It's not "gerrymandering" that has become the problem, although is it now a huge problem. It is the Democratic party's arrogance that allowed this slow slide into political hell. Simply put, the Democrats have been seriously out-maneuvered by Republicans. As usual, the Democrats will call foul. "Darn you. You're such liars!" And the Republicans will continue on their cruel, striking, merry way facing no organized, effective strategy. While the Democrats rely on a pokes but no solid punch.
Yes, true enough, and I would contend that Obama was essentially following the neoliberal playbook as well. And, yes, I agree that at times (most of the time, actually), Obama was far too passive. He was battling the "angry Black man" perception, I think, though in hindsight he should have just ignored that and forged ahead. My guess would be he has deep regrets.
But voting lines are determined after the census at the State Houses..and that is why the Republicans have concentrated on winning government at the State level. The Democrats were not paying attention, or they would have made the plea before the census to make sure that they won the State houses. No?
It's an interesting question that perhaps HCR or another historian could address. I don't see that the Ds conceded any statehouses or legislatures at any point, but they have very little control over what happens in most of those states. It seems to me that the gaslighting of conservative voters, in particular white ones, has been very effective. If you are convinced that whiteness is rightness, that immigrants are coming to take your jobs, that Black and brown people are going to force you to give up "your" country, that government is evil in all its forms except when it directly benefits you (farm subsidies, anyone?), that Democrats believe in open borders and giving away your hard earned dollars to "illegals" and "lazy Blacks", and that if the liberals have their way, newborns will be killed at will, then you will also believe that anything your elected officials can do to stop these things is legitimate, including (perhaps especially) minority rule. They think they are under attack and these means are justified.
Precisely Reid, and I don't think the Dems woke up to this (some still aren't awake) and pushed back as hard as they needed to. They seem to shy away from fighting the good fight. I don't know why. I'd really like to see Dems fight as hard for liberty, truth, and equality as the Reps do for gerrymandering, suppression and corporate greed.
The Dem's form of fighting the good fight seems to take the form of thrice-daily pleas from Nancy Pelosi for donations. Maybe I'm missing other elements by not doing social media, but I'd like to see them take the Lincoln Project playbook and launch massive, clever, attention-grabbing PR campaigns in support of voting rights, DC statehood, et al.
I agree. I have noticed that an apparent media campaign is going on right now touting Biden's agenda. The ads seem to be increasing in frequency. But those clever Lincoln Project ads might possibly add a knock-out punch to accompany the positive PR approach the WH is using. I don't know who is behind them - Psaki?
Exactly. You nailed it. And let us not forget another biggie: the Dems will come and take away your guns.
How could I have forgotten guns! Yes, indeed.
And this is the result of gerrymandering in Florida. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-annette-taddeo-florida-republicans-venezuela-cuba-20210422-ifyvlgagkng5pmdzoo7n6t4vl4-story.html
Horrifying but hardly surprising. What could be more totalitarian than a country run by wealthy, white, male elites? Yet that's precisely what our Constitution established and every deviation from that hierarchy, to this very day, has been bought with blood, sweat, and tears.
By the way for you Florida residents who are on Twitter, consider following Florida Watch (@Floridawatch). They are a good resource for things going on in our state.
Democrats were too busy fretting over national elections and what was happening in DC. Not enough attention was paid to state and local electoral politics. The truth is that state and local elections are extremely important. Does gerrymandering work in Republican's favor now? Yes, of course. But Democrats were not working hard enough in state and local elections to prevent Republicans from gaining so much power, particularly in the suburban areas.
Land does not vote, people do. So the only answer is to register and turn out more Democratic voters. After volunteering in a number of campaigns, I am convinced that the path to more electoral victories is not trying to convince Trump's supporters they are wrong. It is registering and turning out more voters who already hold that opinion. The largest single political party in this country is non-voters. Believe it or not, they outnumber Republicans and Democrats. Also while many profess they are independents, research of voting records, indicates many of them are in fact simply non-voters, particularly in local elections.
Plus libertarians. I know a couple (who actually work in our state legislature) who SIT OUT elections because basically they are completely opposed to all government, regardless of party. I wonder how many of the non-voters are of this persuasion. I do agree with you about registering more voters. Looks like Texas is actively working to make that more difficult. We must have scared them in 2020, not to mention Beto's near success.
100%, Bruce.
Democrats have been evolving. Always afraid to move forward in a Big Bold Way. Example Support for the LGBTQ community was incremental.
Agree. They were quite cowardly when it came to LGBTQ+ issues. They timidly waited for the public to reach a pretty loud consensus before they acted. Remember Biden's faux pas of speaking out in favor of gay marriage before the presidential script was fully written? I'm glad he did that; forced their hand.
This article in The Atlantic paints a scary picture of how Republicans have been quietly planning to be in charge of Circuit Courts by 2040... and the plan is working!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/trump-circuit-court-judges/618533/
Silota:
I can only answer for one state, Michigan.
Since 1983, the MI Senate has been controlled by Repubs. Since 1990, the MI House has been controlled by Repubs ~90% of the time. Since 1992, the state has had two Repub Governors and one Dem up till Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Repubs have had two trifectas since 1992. Repnbs in Michigan are holding Federally granted Covid aid hostage in an attempt to force Gov. Whitmer to yield.
In national elections (Senate and Pres.), the state votes Dem since 1992 with the exception of 2016 when the anyone but trump or Clinton vote gave the election to trump. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin made such happen. All three states have a history of voting for Dem Presidential Candidates since 1992 and 1988 for the latter.
Michigan is gerrymandered to deliver a Repub state legislature and congressional representatives. Repubs are fighting an already passed n amendment to the MI Constitution allowing a citizen committee to redraw the district boundaries. They are also fighting acts which have allowed for greater freedom in voting.
I could go on; however, this is too long as it stands. I do love to talk to Republican legislators as the numbers do not support their actions.
Here's another state: Georgia 2020-21 and ten years of effort by Stacy Abrams.
Speaking strictly for NC, I have to say, "yes". In 2010 we in the county Democratic Party begged and pleaded for voters to come out in the mid-terms. We tried to impress on them how critical the election was, with the census hanging in the balance. Not enough listened. Then the state GOP took over practically the entire General Assembly, In 2013, Pat McCrory was elected governor by the GOP. We managed to get rid of him, and the veto-proof majority the GOP had has been whittled down (thanks in part to the so-called Bathroom Bill), but they are still wreaking untold havoc.
I'm not sure about the national party, except one change and that was,, they began feeding at the same dark money trough as the GOP, and got entirely too cozy with Wall St. (for my money.)
Hi Silota - Some answers to these questions can be found in Jane Mayer's 2016 book _Dark Money_, which has been mentioned at times by others on this thread. My take is that 2010 was a shocking surprise due to the sudden impact of Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission (2010) on those elections in particular (amplified and reverberating still in 2020).
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
Thank you Heather.
I find it puzzling how the GOP perceive trying to level the playing field as cheating. To the very least, they are gaslighting their followers to believe the Democrats are bad versus the Republicans being good and pure. The ultimate division of party and country. For them it's working.
I am reminded of the expression, the end justifies the means.
Will so many incredible advances by President Biden just be a footnote in history when reality is the rug is being pulled out from under the majority of the people by the few that wield power?
Be safe, be well.
"Will so many incredible advances by President Biden just be a footnote in history when reality is the rug is being pulled out from under the majority of the people by the few that wield power?" YES, that is quite likely what is going to happen. The Covid relief bill is that last truly meaningful thing this administration will be allowed to do. Joe Manchin has pretty much said as much.
Reid, yes. Pretty disgusting, isn't it. Manchin is the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party in decades.
On the other hand, he is just a centrist Dem from a conservative state who has been thrown into the spotlight. If we had a strong majority in the Senate, Manchin would be nothing more than a footnote to a footnote; we wouldn't even know who he was. Still execrable, in my opinion, but a minor player.
Reid, agreed. The unfortunate timing of his tenure while we hold any majority by a thread is problematic at best.
Cruz, Graham, et al are speaking to their base, who will take as truth whatever myth/history they are fed by the likes of Cruz, Graham, et al.
Sadly, these Republican leaders are likely just as ignorant of their party's history.
I'm going to see if I can gift Ted Cruz a "Letters from an American" subscrption so HCR can lead the poor, benighted Mr. Cruz out of the darkness.
Great idea. While we are in a gifting state of mind, I would send S.V. Date’s The Useful Idiot to every Republican plus Manchin and Sinema.
You are assuming he would read it.
My post was more tongue-in-cheek. I thought maybe a staff person might get through a few paragraphs before dumping it and cancelling the subscription. They certainly wouldn't want any real information screwing up the boss's messaging. As it was, my attempts were unsuccessful.
Alas.
Do it anyway. You never, ever know without trying. :-)
I tried to get an email address from Cruz's office. I got a robo-response referring me to my own senators. I'm going to print today's letter and mail it to Cruz with a note saying I would be happy to underwrite a subscription so Cruz and his staff might stay up to speed on American history.
There's a way in via his website and his "Voice Your Opinion" form. https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=form&id=16
I went that route and got the robo-reply.
Assuming he could even read.
Oh, don't underestimate that man. He is intelligent and literate, just evil.
Touche!
I love how you’ve weaved these events together to plainly tell the crucial story of the day—which is that we are in a very steep uphill battle for democracy. The mentality of the Supreme Court is unfathomable, the senate is gamey, and we all are worried.
Thank you for providing a sound and sane view.
Glad you feel better.