When asked at a town hall on Wednesday to identify the cause of the United States Civil War, presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley answered that the cause “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do…. I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are…. And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Nikki Haley just retained the confederate flag on the South Carolina Statehouse. I hear people questioning Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. She has accomplished exponentially more good for this country than Nikki Haley and much more qualified for the executive office. Again Nikki Haley as well as Trump and many others are giving the Democrats great talking points for 2024.
Just a sad thought. Is Fox condemning the contemptible Haley? Or supporting her revisionist history? And applIauding another nail in Critical Race Theory. Saying, finally, white racists should not be criticized for its history. ... And even NY Times headlines say 'Democrats find DJT unqualified" vs Democrats cite extensive evidence demonstrating DJT legally precluded from..." Bad faith and sloppy language abounds.
Sadly The Times has lost its shine and is not the paper of record anymore. It’s not all the news fit to print. Despite TFG attacking the media, they are contributing to his death grip on us. Their stories are just about always watered down with what I call “yeah but” comments. The economy is doing great, yeah but.... Inflation is way down, yeah but...
How about a clear, and undeniable story about republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill yet are claiming credit for projects in their districts as a result of the Act. Maybe they should take what Dr. Richardson has written here and turn it into a full blown indictment of the maga party.
In the harried lives of most Americans, no one takes the time to read a full article. Just like soundbites, headlines are scanned, read, and imprinted on the brains of readers. A long list of headlines from the past eight years would pretty much sum up the thoughts and opinions of the reader who doesn't take the time to inform him/herself. Whataboutisms abound. Truth be told, newspapers have failed us. Failed us badly.
If I may, I would like to expand your thesis even further - virtually all of today’s media in the US was hijacked by the attention economy when social media platforms added “news” plus the “like” function to their platforms. With the ubiquitous use of smartphones coupled with the presentation of the news (headlines) DESIGNED to attract the attention of the viewer, traditional print media decided they had to redesign their articles to attract viewership. Hence, the model we had been used to of in-depth articles and investigative reporting had to change to attract the attention of all who are glued to the phones.
A marketing model based on attention-frequency was insidiously coupled with this attention model, providing a revenue stream for the social media platforms and eventually the print media as they had to depend on this revenue stream to support their businesses. So now the role of the “free press” no longer provides a check on governments but has been captured by the attention-marketing-economy which is designed to hook us with emotion-laden headlines and/or pithy OPINION based versus FACT-based short statements and governments world-wide have struggled because of this shift. Some governments have recently begun to try to come to terms with this major shift in how we all get our “news”. For example, the European Union is actively engaged in developing guidelines designed to standardize some broad based guidelines to return its legacy news outlets to fact based reporting. We, in the US, will need to closely monitor what they are doing to see if our government has the political will to adopt such practices.
I learned somewhere that the average news article online is meant to be skimmed and/or read in 5 minutes. This makes it so easy to create misinformed voters who fail to become interested in politics. It's all dumbed down because of the silly mantra saying everyone is so busy, busy, busy when in fact, they're not.
Like the house of reps that didn’t get much done this year and take an extended break when so much needed to be done. No other employer would put up with employees pulling that crap. Why do we have to put up with senators who are NOT doing their jobs?
It's become a cliche. Parents frantically driving their kids around to play dates, working insane hours, no time for dinner so pick up some fast food every night, listening to TV news sound bites. It sells. I know many people who use it as an excuse not to live like mature adults managing their time and money.
We're busy doin' nothin', nothin' the whole day through, tryin' to find lots'a things not to do. (From the musical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.)
I must offer some rebuttal here. I think that if people could separate themselves from their fears, they would see that the NYT offers balanced reporting, an extraordinary difficult task as the paper of record in the United States and to some extent a leading paper in the world.
The problem is that we all want the Times to say ONLY what we want to hear, and I include myself in that. I find it disconcerting and sometimes a little upsetting when a viewpoint is expressed which, say, expresses reservations about something the Democratic Party has done that has gone awry.
A good example occurred at the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I was delighted with Biden’s action. It was decisive, bold, and long overdue.
Then it went sideways in a hurry and the Times was not slow to point it out. The chaos at the airport, the lack of good intelligence to recognize how ready the Taliban was to leap back into power, and the failure to liberate Afghans who had acted as translators and eyes and ears for the American military were all reported quite without fear or favor.
At first I was angry. Withdrawal was necessarily going to be difficult and problematic. Good intelligence was hard to come by. The mistakes were secondary to the bigger fact that America was finally out of its never-ending war. . . Could the media not stop nattering about these so-called “failures” in the operation. I never considered cancelling my subscription as it’s not the kind of impulse act I’m inclined to. But I burned at the time.
By the end of the summer I had cooled somewhat and recognized that if the withdrawal had been improperly devised in many ways and these errors hurt a number of people seriously, then it was the role of the NYT and frankly all media of conscience to report it in a clear-eyed way. I learned a lesson and it has stuck.
The NYT does not indulge in the sort of grossly unequal ‘what-aboutism’ that has become a terrible hallmark of these days. It has not failed to report economic progress under Biden. Nor has it failed to spend time, effort, and money to demonstrate that the message of better economic times is either not getting through to people, or I suspect being ignored by millions whose mind is made up and want no contradictory evidence that might slow down Trump’s re-ascendancy to the Presidency. Its polls showing Trump’s terrible momentum have been shocks to the system in recent weeks. But I fully trust they were carried out fairly. I also feel that while they have delivered a terrible shock to the system it is good for us to know as much about the battleground as possible, and even polling, which is fast becoming a pseudo-science, tells us clearly the nature of the struggle ahead.
Then there is the division which must be made between news and opinion. News tells us both pleasant and hard truths and the Times spends a fortune in producing it in as eye-catching a way as possible.
The opinion section is, for the most part, informed, far-seeing and offers good for thought. I know of no regular columnist who supports Trump. I find the views of Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens difficult to take at times, but they are a necessary corrective to my deep bent to the left. Thomas Friedman is sometimes pedantic and puts himself far out enough in his generalizations that one must think hard before accepting it at face value. Yet he is enormously well-informed, deeply patriotic and often singularly wise. Is there any doubt where Maureen Dowd stands? Paul Krugman’s mastery of the economy is breathtaking. I could go on but have an undisputed knack for being tedious so will leave the op-ed alone, hoping I haven’t left out a voice who without question should have been included. Ah I did. . . Jamalle Boue is brilliant.
We all recognize that the Times is a corporation and it exists to make money. Therefore it needs the broadest subscription model possible in order to give value to its advertisers. This means inevitably that it must report freely and fairly on the entire spectrum and risk losing the “fly off the handle” types.
I, for one, do not envy them the dilemmas they face. Nor am I surprised when they write articles that would give succour to today’s voters on the American right. I read (some of) these and do not find them wildly unbalanced.
I strongly disagree that the NYT is not the “paper of record” anymore as has been asserted today and other days. The fact that the Right hates it pretty much generally en masse (but long for its approbation) should tell us that leaders of conscience at the Times are appalled by the malice, impropriety, criminality and general lack of seriousness of today’s Republican Party.
We need the Times. We must point out its errors in judgment when they occur, but we need it as a starting point for our understanding of truth. We cannot read it as we do Letters from an American. As I’ve mentioned Professor Cox Richardson leans heavily on failures of the right and successes of the left, using her vast knowledge of history to buttress the few conclusions she allows herself. She is fighting for democracy to survive and thus inevitably writes what we want to hear. At some times this could be called cheerleading. In these most dangerous it is a most necessary arousal of Americans to fight the waves crashing on the shore.
I am terrified of 2024. I don’t think any of us can imagine the utter chaos this year will bring. Already the battle over Trump’s right to be on the ballot is stating to rage and we still have a couple of days to rest up before the most consequential year of our political live kicks off. Things will become real immediately the calendar turns and that which is irrational, spiteful, conniving, fraudulent, and possibly violent will take over. The daily news may be unable to keep up.
I hope and believe that the Times is ready for a quantum leap into the unknown. We ain’t seen nothing, bad as the last eight years have been, and more than ever we need the paper of record.
Who knows? Perhaps Wordle will help to save democracy.
I tend to agree with Eric’s analysis, with a caveot or two. Robert Hubbel has made a point of encouraging folks to stay subscribed, but to comment back to the editors/writers when they are way off base, and suggests that this “movement” has seen a bit of success with a slight shift in editorial policy away from “what-about-ism”, raising the alarm against authoritarianism, and giving Biden’s successes appropriate due. We shall see whether this holds up as this most dangerous and precarious year moves forward.
Thank you. I do not know Robert Hubbell, but his idea is sensible.
Can anybody give a precise example where the Times has been dangerously off the truth in the last year? Perhaps I am overly gullible and need my eyes opened.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's rebuttals last week to their poorly-sourced article about how sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine have actually lined Putin's (and his cronies') pockets. Check out his articles in Fortune and Foreign Policy. Maybe not "dangerously" inaccurate, but definitely not helpful when the fate of Europe/NATO is on the line.
I'm not fully convinced. What I expect from a news venue is accurate reporting.
I see very little wherever I look. Back during the 2016 election our "paper of record" failed us. They chose to misrepresent a lot of the news, and bias was very evident. They intentionally mis-used "the power of the Recording Secretary" to decide which news should be featured more or less prominently and in some cases, opinion was presented as news.
Villains abound, and what drove this shift away from objectivity remains uncertain, however my confidence in the NYT will never be fully restored. I still read their stuff but from now on I'll use my critical eye to look for the moment a story pivots. Same as with most other news sources I catch that moment all too easily and all too frequently.
That’s an interesting idea Gary. You. have a talent for aggregation from different sources that I must lack. I read articles assiduously and give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless I read/hear something contradictory within a short while, the story holds firm in my mind. That is of course for sources that enjoy a reputation for probity, like the Times, Guardian, Globe and Mail, New Yorker, Atlantic et al.
Of course I realize that no story is ever fully accurate. Reporters inevitably carry their own perspectives with them and of course there is a limit to their sources. I assume you and I could be tasked with covering the same event and our stories might vary with some degree of significance.
I must say though, given the above, that I don’t expect malfeasance from the papers I read - a la Fox News for instance. I expect a general level of accuracy, innovative reporting styles and coherence.
Op-Ed’s are different. My assumption with them is that they will be intelligently written, supported with a thesis and indicate some recognition that there are two sides.
Maybe I am simply naive, but the sources I mention have been reliable. I don’t read in a “gotcha” vein. Perhaps I should be more rigorous.
I’m completely in the dark with your phrase “the power of the Recording Secretary”.
And finally I wish I could be pointed to a substantive pattern of behavior that would reflect dishonest journalism. I still hold to my idea that many people become piqued with the Times for not giving them the news that they *want* to hear so as to bolster their worldview.
I expect to be told the facts and then make my own determinations. If I demanded only one-sided "news" I'd be deluding myself. Since 'news' is mostly information someone else doesn't wish for you to know, corruption is never far away. Don't let yourself be misled simply because something is presented neatly.
Marvin Gaye said it best: "believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
The term "the power of the Recording Secretary" is one I devised from experience. Whoever takes the meeting minutes controls the institutional memory. If the secretary decides not to record what you say in a meeting, often that's too bad for you and whatever point you wanted to make: It's been unilaterally dismissed. That's a lesson to be learned from the Mad Men days - wise bureaucrats know to NEVER piss off the secretarial staff.
I also agree with some of this but I am seeing things in the NYT that are very wishy-washy and do not seem very well documented. I always do my best to figure out where the info comes from as I am reading. Sometimes it is blatantly false but sometimes not clear at all.
To your point I’m wondering if a vast letter writing campaign to the editorial board of the NYT might push them a bit more into the sunlight? Mike, what you said would be a great letter to the editor. Anyway just my opinion. Thanks for your thought and I see your point.
In my area if you write a letter to the editor and the editor doesn't like it....it isn't printed! Our daily newspaper is now delivered twice a week and is mainly high school sports and advertising! It is hard for a Democrat to get elected. Believe me....I know!
I canceled my subscription a few months ago. They are like Nikki: which way is the wind blowing? What shall we say that won't offend our advertisers? "Both-erism" to an art. I'm DONE!
I am not renewing mine for some of the same reasons. I found that I was opening fewer and fewer of their articles also. I have the games subscription still for a bit but will not renew that as well .
And they have NO idea of the meaning of the word! I was called a douche bag by a christian self proclaimed preacher for saying Jesus preached socialism
School (60 years ago)taught me that socialism was a collective FOR THE PEOPLE, and that communism used it ( power/money) for the hierarchy . Somewhere along that line it appears people want to confuse masses about the principle. If the whole is not used for the betterment of the whole then the whole is used for the benefit of only a few. Is that not the principle of the matter?
Is there any ‘union’ whose people benefit in totality from the latter objective? Nations gone from Democracy to Imperialism that did well...’top heavy’...
Very few ‘ rich’ have an egalitarian outlook am I correct that our government is supposed to! Were it so -more representation of the underdog, the oversight people, the rules would focus on this...what seems to be the case is that far too many gaining that power do it to get rich and wield ( or yield?) to the hierarchy ...the little guy and women in general bear the lack thereof. Capitalization vs Socialism ...not compatible? A fine line?
I think WE CAN DO BETTER.
And it’s going through these harsh stark difficult times that reveal the tweaking necessary.
NOT throwing out the principle ( baby) with the bath water.
To my mind this current ...what ? ...5-6 year tumult is perfect example border line screaming 🗣️’get your papers in order’ as Schultz would say. Getting our principles in order...if you want to say slavery vs freedom let’s look at whom that directly speaks to ie ‘free white and 21’? ...as another saying goes...second class citizens? Indebtedness?
I won’t even pretend to comprehend the complexity of situations but the principe of matters...ethical ...compassionate...protective...nurturing...I get that.
"What is he saying? Moore spoke to All Things Considered's Scott Detrow about what he thinks the path forward is for evangelicalism in America.
On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:
It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."
"Who is he? Russell Moore was one of the top officials in the Southern Baptist Convention. "
Yes! A total corruption of the misguided notion of “fair and balanced' coverage. They've taken morality out of the equation and treat 'good' and 'evil' as two teams competing for the same trophy, and may the one with the higher score (whatever that is based on) win. I'm at a loss to guess how to get to publishers about this.
Can the courts take the company away from Murdoch, nationalize it, cannibalize it, dissolve it, put the funds from the sale of it's assets into NPR? It sounds rather autocratic. Who can tell us?
The advertisers can take force Fox News to change or rather the lack of advertisers. Since Fox went on the air, many boycotts have been leveled against their advertisers. When this happens either the advertisers pull their ads to win back their customers/viewers or Fox backtracks on the issue. Why did Fox fire Bill O'Reiley and Tucker Carlson? Because their advertisers couldn't weather the backlash from allowing sexual predators to be on the air.
The Dominion defamation settlement against Fox has only focused their hateful rhetoric on specific Democrat politicians. And their next defamation case, if the settlement is for $2.1 billion will be a big blow to Fox. But as long as companies are willing to advertise on Fox they will continue to be a propaganda arm for the Republicans Party.
I believe that Fox gets most of its revenues from cable subscriptions, not ads. So the best way to choke it is to make it a for-fee optional part of the cable package, like Disney.
Whenever people mention this, though, the MAGAts cry "free speech!" By which they mean "subsidized propaganda." Which is exactly what they claim NPR is. Which, if you look at the issue holistically, makes not a twit of sense. But then, consistent thought isn't a MAGAt attribute.
We have a $24 "broadcast surcharge" on our cable bill now. That's a monthly change for funneling the over-the-air programming into their product. So we are all paying the premium for Fox anyway, even though it's not a premium channel.
Authoritarian governments do that kind of thing all the time. Democracy is not an easy responsibility. We are between a rock and a hard place at the moment but we have more power than we realize.
I'm afraid that most people have no real idea of what an authoritarian government is capable of doing. Had I not spent years researching the history of the Occupation of France and the work of the French Resistance, for a novel on Jean Moulin, I could be as blasé as so many (on both sides of the political fence) about the fact that history repeats itself and when a country is in the hands of someone like Trump and his cronies, the outcome cannot be good. That said, I believe that Haley is the lesser of all the Republican evils. She may loose some of the mysoginist male votes and hopefully this will be good for Biden.
And what MAGAnuts don’t realize is their businesses can be taken by tfg, the dictator, for pennies on the dollar (or just taken). I guess they think their support of him will protect them. Till it doesn’t anymore.
No. Because of the First Amendment. Really, do you want a government that dissolves media companies because of their content? Frankly, that sounds like one of Trump's campaign promises.
I'm hoping Smartmatic will begin their multi-billion dollar suit against fox this summer; just in time to dominate the news in the fall. That ought to get the attention of the headline writers and editors. They know exactly how in-depth their average reader has patience for and how much their headlines and ledes influence them. Let's see how they behave this fall too.
“Lincoln and his fellow Republicans argued, the government should clear the way for those at the bottom of the economy, making sure they had access to resources, education, and the internal improvements that would enable them to reach markets.”
Even as he was managing the Civil War, Lincoln made sure the transcontinental railroad was finished and established the land grant colleges. He walked the walk.
The current Greedy Old Plutocrat Party remains armed and dangerous, but Haley, among others, pointedly underlines it's complete reversal from the values it was formed to defend.
Sad that nobody defends what it was formed to defend. vote Dem. The Democrats should say they are grateful to the early repubs for showing them the way. Now the Dem way is the right way. Lincoln would agree, no doubt.
I think it's safe to say he would not want any connection to today's "Republican" Party. He would certainly have a thing or two to say about the Civil War, and to those who now seem to suggest that those who fought the obscenity of slavery had died in vain.
Absolutely. Now, we'll see what the 'old guard' will do as they find themselves without an organized national 'party' to promote their policies. A new party? A remake of the old?
It's going to be a blood bath.
The good news is that, as in nature, the old must be destroyed before the new can grow out of the ashes.
"thoughts and prayers"..hahahahahhaa..hahahaaahaha.. GAG ME WITH A SPOON! Whewww.., ugh...
The maga-tts are really in a dumpster. Too bad we can't just call Waste Management (the 'trash' hauler) and have that load of shit hauled over to Vic Orban's driveway and dumped.
So many republicans I know really care only about money and deregulation. They’ll vote for anyone who will promise to put a few more dollars in their pockets in the form of a tax cut, regardless of the rights they take away or the damage they do to the environment.
I'm not sure if you identify as a Democrat, but I assume from your words you are. Can you help spread the facts? Can you please talk -- and listen -- to your family, friends and neighbors to make sure we do not elect this cruel group of autocrats
It is not "Democrats" responsibility to take the MAGA Republican talking points and "use" them. It is incumbent upon all Americans who care about our democracy to get to work now to expose the motivations behind the MAGA Republicans authoritarian plan: to protect a system that benefits their wealthy, white, male cronies.
People sometimes think that they’re powerless to really do very much to change anything since the force required to put new initiatives into motion is often so great.
This is because there are so many moving parts involved in the present system. Nonetheless, big changes happen.
We are on the brink of technological developments that will make the internet look small time. That is startling isn’t it? AI, Fusion Power, grid scale distributed energy storage, CRISPR based medical advances... are several big ones that will make life longer, better, faster and easier. These changes are already underway and racing forward. Democratic government systems are best equipped to integrate these amazing advances because they function at the behest of the majority of the people not the minority who think they know better.
Our position, as American citizens, is at the top of the inverted pyramid. Voting for smart, experienced individuals whose primary purpose for wanting to get elected is to serve the People... not themselves...is what can make our already good democratic government that much better; it’s been that way since he beginning. The economic performance of democracies is always far superior to that of autocracies over the longer run. People in democracies have a great chance to live better, longer and happier lives.
We must stay strong and vote for qualified and experienced governmental representatives who will do a good job in their positions be it in our school districts, municipal and state governments and nationally. The Republican Party and its philosophy is broken...they need to stop going in the wrong direction... but the majority of them lack the courage, flexibility and ability to do that. Eventually, they’ll come to their senses but not at the present time.
Our truly great opportunity is to make sure we all do our duty now and vote for the candidates best prepared and capable to represent what “We the Majority of the People” want and need. We can do this... make no mistake.
Please identify the smart Americans outside this group. I know there are some, but it’s shocking to talk to random people waiting for an oil change, or in line at the store. You hear insanity.
They’re mostly frightened…a trump conviction or two will help a solid Democratic victory will help much more. These people who are afraid are our neighbors and friends who’d help in an instant. Your kindness is what matters the most as you won’t convince them with arguments.
The conversations with friends, family, neighbors that I'm talking about should not involve any arguing whatsoever. These conversations are about connecting--not arguing. Using active listening techniques helps you find out where they're at, e.g. once you've started a conversation, try asking your friend, family member or neighbor about how they feel about what's happening in our country. When they answer, try asking, "Please tell me more" a few times as they talk. Listen. You'll likely hear about what's important to them. It's also possible to pivot the conversation to ask them to think about solutions to the problem, e.g. "What would you do if you were President?" "Please tell me more about that..." Then if it's going well, you could ask them if you could share some info on the topic you were discussing. It could just be, "I think you'd be interested in reading this newsletter I follow by an amazing history professor, Heather Cox Richardson, who helps me put what's happening now into context with American history."
So not sure how many members of this community have visited Columbia, SC but I have and I did an interesting tour of the statehouse during one of those visits. It's not just that ALL the most prominent statuary in the building and on the grounds is dedicated to glorifying the Confederacy--there is a sculpture group way off to the side near a little-used entrance that represents the enslaved people who (ahem) BUILT the statehouse--it is that the Articles of Secession ARE CARVED INTO THE WALLS OF THE BUILDING'S INTERIOR and the SC governor and legislators look at it EVERY DAY. If you want to know the true meaning of Christofascism, spend an hour at the statehouse in Columbia. And I actually like Columbia: it's an interesting city with good food and a diverse population. But those guys are never going to give up their dedication to the Confederacy and what it stood for no matter how many people bleat about it. And it's a true irony of both the Patriarchal and Post-colonialist Bargains (See Kandyoti and Sa'ar among others for an unpacking of those terms) that the mouthpiece for everything awful in SC is a woman of color of South Asian heritage whose home country was exploited almost to obliteration by the tiny white Christian nationalist imperialist country of Great Britain.
Confirmed: MAGA is KKK. The proof is right in front of us. Any doubt, consult "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election and Why?" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0896920517740615 along with Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's. MAGA and KKK are virtually identical - white Protestant supremacy.
Sadly our nation was founded on the invention of white supremacy to justify enslaving human beings with darker skin, committing genocide against them, spreading propaganda about them and then passing laws to oppress them.
We missed an opportunity during Reconstruction to “build back better. We allowed those who need racism to accumulate wealth and power to reign. Racism defines us. It’s woven throughout our systems and lives.
Without racism based on skin color we’d be a very different nation. This is our last gasp for liberty and justice.
Nikki Haley knows better but won’t do better. Having her in the White House will be disastrous. She’s already committed to pardoning Trump. The puppeteers will have a field day with her.
I guess we’ll soon see where America stands in 2024…
Curiously, the last big Protestant Evangelical effort, mainly from rural America, was Prohibition. Alcohol remains both a pleasure and a social scourge to this very day.
You're right. Following the horrific Mother Emmanuel massacre in June, 2015 -- the slaughter of nine members of the congregation following their Bible study, but a young white male supremacist -- demands were made by Black citizens (and white, as well, of which I was one) to remove the damn Confederate flag to the SC Statehouse. Nikki wasn't sure what to do. Which way was the wind blowing? How would her decision affect her politically??! Finally, after a young Black woman had had enough and climbed the flagpole to cut it down, Nikki said that the flag would come down -- HOWEVER: it would be put in a "place of honor" on the grounds of the Capitol.
Your last sentence was right on point!! The Democrats have to start NOW doing heavy promotion of all the good that the Biden Administration has done. And to show the hypocrisy of the republican party and its candidates. Consistently promote Biden and bash republicans--from now until November--in all media outlets, not just MSNBC and the like. But on ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, TNT, movie channels, etc., in Super Bowl ads, And in swing states!! Advertising on MSNBC and maybe CNN and in states like MA, is preaching to the choir. Just like the republican thinking is repeat lies often and people will believe them. Well, maybe if the Democrats tell the truth about Biden's accomplishments often, maybe people will realize how good his presidency has been and not accept the lies.
Well, for starters, she is more than willing to sacrifice the public policy aspirations of working people for that of political expediency as a means of enhancing her political career. See her advocacy for Medicare for All during the early stages of her 2020 campaign: strong endorsement, then tepid support, finally opposition based on the gutless rationalization of pragmatic incrementalism and ‘realism’. Think Hillary Clinton 2.0.
One more time. The political parties of our duopoly are not the same, except when they are. And when they are, for instance, in terms of corporate fealty, pandering to their respective bases, ignoring democratic principles (have you been keeping up with Democratic Party efforts to keep third party candidates off the ballot?), and acquiescing to the political constraints of an utterly corrupted political system, they are both, yes, despicable.
Tom, as a favor to me, and perhaps others, could you list the reasons you will be voting for Trump. Thank you. Your answer will help me to better understand your thinking.
For what it's worth, I will tell you why I will vote for the Democratic candidate. I subscribe to the theory of government enunciated by Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor responsible for the New Deal programs:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
Good grief. Why is it that liberals are so quick to respond to Democratic Party critique by assuming that the critic will be voting for Trump? It’s as absurd as responding to critique of the U.S. role in the proxy war in Ukraine by assuming the critic is a supporter of Putin.
One more time. I despise Trump, and did long before he ever entered the political arena. I would never vote for him, just like I’ve never voted for any other GOP candidate. As to why people would vote for him, I can completely understand that. He has tapped in to two populist threads, and despite not caring about either, he has used them to augment the racist, Christian (fascist) Nationalist majority of his base. The first issue is the continuing war on the middle class and working people by the political establishments of both parties. The second is the power wielded by intelligence agencies and America’s continuing proclivity of involvement in endless war.
Admire Frances Perkins. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has abandoned the tenets of her theory, since Reagan, in favor of fealty to monied interest donors, the people be damned. It sat on the laurels of association with the New Deal, and instead of aggressively pursuing FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, adopted a strategic defensive posture to increasing GOP advances by courting Wall Street and Silicon Valley to win elections, and again, the people be damned.
I will be voting for a third party candidate for POTUS, as neither party in our current duopoly is worthy of my vote, imo. Both place donor interests ahead of working people, neither support a single-payer health care system, both support endless war, and both, currently, are complicit in the most horrific genocide of my lifetime.
Your last paragraph is totally true, Tom, but voting for a third party candidate gives you a sense of honor and defiance. You are also wasting a vote and a vote in the next election is a precious thing. Please reconsider and choose the lesser of your 2 evils.
A third party candidate in 2016 gave the election to the despicable. That was Jill Stein, and she's on her ego-trip again to try to ruin this country. (I don't disagree with many f her positions. But she should not be a third party candidate.) Also, and I know there were other elections as well in the past, the 2000 election went to Bush because of Nader's third party candidacy. So, if you must, hold your nose, but vote for democracy and the Democratic candidate. Do you really want to see this country fall under a narcissistic autocrat who doesn't care about the Constitution and will ruin everything our founding fathers (and most of the readers here) wanted? Look at the reality of the situation. For better or worse, as of now, we're a two-party country. One of the two candidates will win. A third party has no chance of winning--only subverting the process. So, keep voicing your opinions on issues that are important to you, but vote sensibly. Help save our country!
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
Parties have flaws but the Republicans emphasis on making the country great by saving white supremacy, ignoring climate change, controlling women and in general oppressing people who they deem different means there are not “fine people on both sides”.
No argument the GOP is worse. But that’s a mighty low bar.
Race - The Democratic Party refuses to support a commission to even study reparations much less support the concept itself. It reneged on a promise to retire student debt for HBCU grads.
Climate - The Dems refuse to support the ‘leave it in the ground’ strategy, coupled with the renewables moon shot agenda necessary to seriously address the issue.
Women - Which party was it in ‘08-10 that controlled Congress and the White House and refused to legislatively codify Roe when it had the chance?
If the advocates of the Democratic Party would put half the energy they use demonizing the GOP and its supporters into pressuring their own elected officials to do the right thing for working people and the poor instead of bending over to corporate donors, we might put an end to the election ratchet effect that ensures governmental dysfunction.
Sorry but the racism and violence that Republicans proudly promote trump (pun intended) the Democrats' reticence to deal with racism. Racism goes way beyond student debt and reparations. It's an everyday existential threat to people of color-especially Black folks who've had to endure the impact of America's choice to practice racism for centuries.
Once again, imho there are not fine people on both sides.
I do agree with a lot of what you say and have been holding my nose for over decades and vote blue but ...................... I still will. I voted for Nader in 2000 and even held an event to promote him. I don't regret my vote for him out here in Oregon as the repugs were bound and determined to get GWB in there with the help of Florida politicians and brotherly corruption.
They are both American women who are of Indian descent. Also, both are intelligent and accomplished and ambitious and politically shrewd and have very good smiles. It's been decades since I was referred to as an Irishman.
I don't want to speculate. Kamala's mother is of Indian descent and her father is Jamaican. Both of her parents are highly educated her father being a professor of economics at Stanford.
Both of Nikki's parents are Indian.
With that in mind, I was just wondering what you were implying with your comment? I have worked for and with over 300 Indians since 1995. One of my best friends when I lived in CA was from India and he was an electrical engineer who worked for Intel. The Indians I worked with in the 1990's had good technical skills, but most of them were hard to understand and weren't very familiar with American customs, culture and even holidays. That has certainly changed over the years. It's rare that I have trouble understanding any of the Indians I work with, even if they have never been to the US. The Indian consulting firms make a point of having their consultants only speak English which is a really good thing since my attempts at Hindi, well, they suck.
One of the young Indian consultants attempted to teach me some Hindi phrases. I was so bad at it that he and the other Indians laughed uncontrollably.
Christine, you are so right. HCR delivers the most compelling and logical indictment of the GOP I’ve read. I pictured Haley unwittingly driving a stake through the diseased heart of what’s become a monster. Let it come to pass.
Haley was the governor of South Carolina the first state to "dissolve" its relation with the Union.
South Carolina's 1860 Succession Proclamation is appaling actually referring to itself as a "nation". The anti- human rebel yell was quickly followed by the succession of 11 slave holding states seeking to expand their "property" to new Territories.
Haley's effort to pitch the Civil War as some sort of dispute over federalism is dogma to the "unreconstructed" racist mind heralding the final death throws of the R party now a scarlet letter.
The gentleman who asked Haley the question replied to Haley, "I got my answer." Indeed.
Watch her body language during the incident. Haley immediately turned vaesy from the question why she formulated a response. Haley was well aware the she dodged the question .
A letter who's words contain and are driven by the force and power of the truth.
Todays LFAA needs to shared with as many people as possible. At the very least we need to share it with every person that each and every one of us knows.
Why is anyone surprised by Haley's answer? Aside from her own history of ambiguous answers and stealth support for the Confederacy, she's now a token figurehead of a party based on lies, bigotry, deference to major funders and foreign powers, and embrace of authoritarianism. No way was she going to jeopardize her current prominence. As if MAGA people would actually vote for a smart woman with dark skin! Ha!
LaurieOregon, don’t forget that she opposed removing the confederate flag from the statehouse until after a white supremacist massacred Black worshipers at a Charleston church.
It seems quite simple. The southern states of the civil war era have become the republicans of today. As far as Haley it was simply a 'DUH' moment which she can spend the rest of her life trying to live down.
My sister and brother-in-law moved to SC some years ago. My guess is that although they won’t vote for Trump, as long as it’s racism clothed in Christianity, they’ll be ok with any Republicans.
It is not odd that so many Protestant Christian's are now so poorly read in the key teachings of Christ that they are willing to support a guy (Trump) who was arrested for beating his wife in the early 1990's, a guy who raped a woman in a department store, a guy who has been divorced (many) times, a guy who openly makes fun of charity, forgiveness, kindness, valuing difference, and who openly only thinks and talks about himself.
I spent age 11 to age 18 in a Protestant Baptist Church (the SBC version) in East Texas and I can tell you that the hints of Trump were there back then.
THE most common event in a Baptist Church is:
1. The guy that some all male group of members who run the church selected as the "Preacher" gets caught with one of the all male member's wives, usually naked and in bed.
2. The guy whose wife was caught leaves the church and start another Baptist Church with his money. About half the church follows him.
3. One half of the church starts to hate on the members who left and that continues until everyone is dead.
4. Both churches continue to demonize anyone different from them from the pulpit on Sunday morning and preach a gospel of hypocrisy.
5. People like me, who, by age 16 had actually quietly read all of the gospels carefully and, sometimes sadly, internalized those "radical" messages of forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance........ LEAVE the Baptist Church.
6. The Baptist Church labels people like me as Christian "Deconstructionists". It is not that I have read the scriptures and understand that Baptists are WAY OUT IN WEEDS of Christianity and that many preachers have never read the New Testament or the Old Testament. Nope. It is that I am "astray" and "lost".
7. Preachers give looong, boring talks on the people like me who are astray and how we are "LOST" from the "FLOCK" of those who know that selfish white men should be in charge of (everything) and guys like me, well, we are a goin' t' HALE.
So, in such a mess of a culture it is easy to see how Trump, who is not much different than many SBC preachers, has been fully embraced by a bunch of white people who care more about their status, their money and their "Positiion" than they care about a "Democracy" the enables HEATHEN like me to have the same rights they do.
Because, God knows I do NOT deserve any rights at all that they don't grant me.
Damn, you’ve been there. My Baptist friend could verify all your points. I went with her as a teen and the big question was which group to support and which to hate. Sorry, but Baptist has always seemed like a dirty word to me.
Me too, such self-righteous blather, opposite of Jesus if you ask me. Methodists were better before Karl Rove made all churches arms of the Repub party in 2004.
Yes! I was in Ohio for Christmas and it made my skin crawl, being a northeast liberal, I couldn’t get out fast enough. My sister lives there..(long story no need to get into)....ugh, and I’ve spent enough time in the south to know that’s not for me either.
I lived in the south from 1934-1997 and find Chicago the most racist place I have ever lived. Learned real “colorblindness” from my father and at UNC-CH.
LaurieOregon, it's not about surprise. The fast condemnation of Haley's reprehensible statement was crucial. Can you imagine where we'd be if people did't call her out so massively and quickly that she was forced to "clarify"?
In NH, we have a political tradition called "bird dogging", in which very knowledgeable voters purposely ask candidates difficult questions (I did the same thing myself to a gubernatorial candidate in the late 70s - and got kicked out of the event). Haley was not being singled out, we do this to everyone. It's part of running for office here :)
Haley has always been a shape shifting lizard. For her, it's always about ambition and strategy. Now her naked ambition has been revealed for what it is. And it is not pretty.
Oy. My hope was that she might grab the GQP nomination and Trump would run as an independent or "MAGA" party candidate - splitting the vote. But she may have just crushed my dream/fantasy. Now she is competing to be the most horrible - a competition she can't win.
"....She rejected the long and once grand history of the Republican Party and announced its death to the world. " this gave me chills. And i will go to sleep tonight praying it to be true. wow....just wow.
Its just typical REPUBLICAN'TS logic. They say Joe is too old to be president but DJT is too old to go to jail. They won't vote for any of Joe's popular accomplishments but want to take credit for all the bills they voted against. The Republican party of old is dead.
An 84-year-old nun was handed a 35-month jail term on Tuesday for breaking into a US nuclear weapons plant and daubing it with biblical references and human blood. Sister Megan Rice was sentenced alongside two co-defendants, Greg Boertje-Obed, 58, and Michael Walli, 64, who both received 62-month terms.
(...)
All three defendants were convicted of sabotage after the 2012 break-in, on charges that carried a maximum sentence of up to 30 years. The government had asked for the trio to be given prison sentences of between five and nine years.
(...)
On 28 July 2012, the three activists cut through three fences before reaching a $548m storage bunker. They hung banners, strung up crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of the fortress-like storage facility for uranium material, inside the most secure part of complex. They painted messages such as "The fruit of justice is peace" and splashed small bottles of human blood on the bunker wall.
Although the protesters set off alarms, they were able to spend more than two hours inside the restricted area before they were caught. When security finally arrived, guards found the three activists singing and offering to break bread with them. The protesters reportedly also offered to share a Bible, candles and white roses with the guards.
My quiet, mild-mannered uncle, David Corcoran, now 89 and a former Catholic priest, was a committed peace activist throughout most of his life. He and his wife Barbara (often with their 3 adopted children) participated in numerous protests in the US against government and corporate policies that supported violence. Dave also traveled to Central America and to Palestine to help and act as an observor of human rights abuses. Twice in the late 1990's, he breached the boundaries of Fort Benning, GA, where the infamous School of the America's was training future Central American soldiers and dictators. He served two six-month prison terms when he was near 70. Recently I reassured him that there are thousands of people today continuing the efforts of his generation's activists to bring peace and justice and equality to ALL people.
Yep, that story sounded familiar so I looked at the article—it happened in Oak Ridge, TN, next door to me. The OR facility isn’t a nuclear plant in the generating-electricity sense; rather it used to produce warheads and is where Russian nuclear stuff was taken at the end of the (original) Cold War. I remember the incident, especially the two hours spent inside the facility. Some protection, huh?
Acts of civil disobedience invite a penalty, but the penalty must recognize intent and actual harm. That's only just. The aim of justice must always be to minimize harm to ALL people, or it isn't justice. A genuinely free and just society is going to be very cautious about penalizing protest. Obviously you can't have people trespassing restricted facilities willy nilly, but in most cases minimal harm is done. An important difference between protest and bad guys is that protesters make an effort to be noticed.
The circumstances of protest in the Guardian article are such that the Government was shown to be negligent. If these protestors were terrorists with backpacks full of high explosives it could have been real trouble. I think that embarrassment is part of while they were so inflamed. The use of the entrusted powers of governance to shift blame or cover up incompetence is classic corruption.
And yes, the protestors messed up too. I don't see the point in symbolically damaging the building, but weapons of war are murder weapons that kill many more than "the bad guys" and while I am yet to be convinced we can get away without them entirely, a just society is honest with itself about what any war entails.
Yet where are the people of the Lincoln Project? Haven’t seen Steve Schmidt in months. We need to have them with us, then reforming in every sense, the Republican Party minus the money is all part.
Steve Schmidt thinks Biden is too old & has convinced Dean Phillips to run against Biden. He’s lost a bunch of Substack subscribers over his stance on deriding Biden.
The Lincoln Project had a re-organization but is still putting out videos about TFG.
I have Virginia; he writes a substack column (if it's the same guy) called "The Warning". Have a look and let me know if that's they guy you reference. He last wrote on 12/29.
MSNBC cycles through most of their guests I noticed. I miss Phil Rucker and Ashley Parker. Phil is now the national editor for WAPO, but I'm not sure where Ashley's been. There are many others that you don't see any more.
I think I’ve seen both fairly recently on MSNBC. As an “addict” I watch that channel daily. It’s simply the best for someone who wants the details and is highly critical since 2015 when I started really watching TV news post Walter Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley, etc.
The Lincoln Project was timely, led by George Conway, who has joined with former federal court of appeals judge Luttig to bring conservative lawyers together as a counterweight to the Republic-destabilizing efforts of the financially super-endowed Federalist Society. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/21/anti-trump-conservative-lawyers
We haven’t seen him because he’s, IMHO, gone off the rails.
Sorry to say because he had been a righteous indignant against tfg--now he’s delusional supporting someone like Dean Phillips against Joe Biden.
I’ve been seeing other Lincoln Project members in his place on MSNBC: I spend way too much time watching it--mostly on with the captions on and the sound muted until I see something important (not the rehashed crap on tfg--nauseating 🤬).
Virginia, the LP is very active and working hard to preserve democracy. Schmidt broke with them after the scandal of the sexual abuser in their midst broke. Schmidt is now advising Dean Phillips, who is running against Biden.
I am horrified at anyone who hopes to preserve American democracy by running against the most experienced democrat and Democrat we have, namely President Biden.
And tell me one Bill or speech he has made while in Congress. Leader of the free world? Many of us in Minnesota thought he was a shallow, pampered, arrogant man-child
I receives their emails almost daily. I give them a small donation a couple of times a year and the emails never stop.
Thanks goodness for their anti-Trump efforts in 2020. Steve Schmidt claims their goal is to turn 3% of the voters for a candidate and that's enough to win.
Haley effectively squashed her chances of winning anything in the government and I am here for that. The questioner was accused by the R Party of being a Democratic plant. That’s hilarious because the question posed to Haley was an honest one and if you saw her paused reply, you will have noticed her pure panic. She was not happy. I was, however, laughing at her. You know, the funny thing is that she fails at admitting she is a woman of color. She could’ve saved herself but she blew it. I am so glad.
I heard one reporter note the question is on the naturalization / citizenship exam.
Sure would love to make every person in Congress (and the Supreme Court) take the citizenship test. (Tuberville might only earn credit for being able to sign his name. He is grievously uninformed.)
Thanks, Beverly ! #74 While it also lists economic/states’ rights as possible answers, slavery is #1.
I was an ESL tutor for many years and helped several pass the citizenship test.Yes, Tuberville would have flunked with the flying colors of the Confederate flag.
Yes, but most don’t have the screaming bull horn that the moral midgets have. I used to think that Dems should steer clear of Fox (due to the joke of fair and balanced with Hannity and Colmes), but a real opposition view would have been nice. Colmes blew it, which was Rupert’s plan I would venture. Put Raskin or Schiff there and give balanced half a chance.
Marlene, you have made an essential point, '...she fails at admitting she is a woman of color.' Or -- fails to admit it to herself? What about another contender, Vivek Ramaswamy? I don't listen to all the candidates’ blather, but where has he placed himself on the tug of war concerning equal rights?
DENIAL!
What Republican candidate wants to be a person of color in the United States of America? Who isn't aware that it is dangerous to be a person of color, a homosexual, transgender, autistic, mentally ill, physically handicapped, a woman, Muslim, Asian, Hispanic, Jew… At the very least, you’ll be discriminated against one way or another if you are living in the USA.
It really does make me wonder how any of these non* RepubliKans think they fit. The "Gay RepubliKans" are the ones that really boggle my mind, but then, that's the row I sit in.
Dear Kim, I am as grateful and appreciative as I can be at seeing you now. It is a time of tenderness and concern. Thank you for being a friend and beautiful soul. To a healthy year of discovery, sisterhood and fellowship, with love.
I have already made a comment in this vein. NH has a political tradition called "bird dogging", in which well informed voters purposely ask difficult questions of candidates. It's been going on as long as I can remember. This is what happened to Haley. That she wasn't prepared for it says almost as much about her and her team as her revisionist-history-laden answer.
That seems like a very wise tradition considering the gravity of choosing to trust both the competence and character of politicians, traditionally not necessarily the most trustworthy bunch. The only half intelligent thing I can recall Reagan saying was "Trust, but verify". That's what science professionals do when they talk about degrees of confidence; evidence-backed of course. And the higher the rank the more it merits the hardest of questions. Truman declared that those who don't like the heat should stay out of the kitchen. Perhaps we need a national "Bird-dogging" day, or even a "Bird-dogging Century."
I am reading “Differ, We Must” and I had not previously heard Nikki Haley’s comments. I cannot imagine how aggrieved Lincoln would feel were he to hear his political progeny speaking like Nikki Haley. Thank you for, as always, the clarity with which you put events in context.
Nikki Haley is NOT Lincoln's political progeny. The Republicans of today are just southern Democrats of the past. Remember the parties totally flipped, courtesy of the Southern strategy.
Thanks also to focused social protest and the increasing choice of conscience over convenience for non-Dixie democrats. Democrats coughed up the marriage-of-convenience devil's bargain, and the former "Party of Lincoln" swallowed it whole. And from the deepest sub-basement of "Hell" still comes the all-consuming "love" of money and power, that always, to some degree, affects all politcal parties around the world, and renders life hell on earth for so many.
"Everything trump touches dies" is as true as ever. The question now is whether our nation can survive the taint of his touch during his time in office. Much as I would love to see the entire nation follow the lead of Colorado and Maine, I believe the answer to that question lies in the results of the 2024 election. We either crush the MAGA movement at the polls or we cease to exist as a free and democratic nation.
Except sadly there may still be enough of the uninformed as well as “old money” Repubs who think their money is safer with a TFG than with a “socialist” Dem to put him back in the White House. (& don’t forget Repub efforts at purging voter rolls, focusing on Electoral College votes, & corporate media preferences for a Repub in any guise.)
Biden will win the popular vote, but will he win the EC?
It has morphed into the party of death of everything that any decent person holds dear. I hadn't thought about Haley's reticence on slavery as the cause of the Civil War as announcing the death of the R party, but it underlines how far the party has fallen and so make complete sense.
This faction has been there all along. It was smaller then, under cover, not so direct. Back when shame, ridicule, logic worked. The good days when Sarah Palin was the butt of every joke that had the whole country laughing, and genuinely hard.
TC, as I have posted here in the past, I think of our democracy/politics as a spinning top…..it spins, mostly centered, but wobbles a bit to the right & left. If it wobbles TOO far in one direction or the other it will topple. I guess what I am saying is that it appears that leaning too far left or right leaves out the majority…tho the ideas of the “edges” should be considered and pursued if beneficial to the overall “central wobble” landscape. Sometimes change and progress is hard fought & necessitates us working together (maybe, now, an old school idea…sigh).
Any active system that is sustainable involves balance. Really life, the universe and everything is dynamic but the time scales can be too slow to notice (unless you are scientific and obsessed). The Big Bang may trend toward a fizzle, but in the mean time a whole lot of interesting stuff is going on. We kind of live on a wobbling top in more ways than one, and Climate is calling for balance as never before in our history. We have been called the "Goldilocks" Planet because so, so much here is Jusssssst right (or we simply would not be).
The Oracle at Delphi advised "Know Thyself" and "Nothing in Excess", which seems wise enough advice to this day. I don't take that to mean "keep it bland", nor always to sit on the fence, but to consistently put out as much as it takes, with an eye to extended outcomes. We do based on what we "think", but nature doesn't give a damn what we think, and will always do what it does anyway. What we do can matter, and that's something to think about.
Really listening to ourselves, to each other, and to what Nature "tells" us about our circumstances, and reporting and acting in the best faith we can manage, seems to me like the best long term policy.
Yeah, JL, the process of creation and entropy on scales (almost…maybe mostly) beyond our ken. Our species is fascinating…intelligent, inquisitive, adventurous, creative and imaginative…..and greedy, cruel and destructive, and we’ve managed to do quite a bit to despoil this “pale blue dot”. Somehow I doubt those who have been in space and viewed our home in its place in our solar system come back and exclaim “drill baby drill!”. We have come to comprehend some of the mysteries of the cosmos, looking outward into deep space (the images/info from the James Webb scope are amazing) and down to the micro level of genes and particles. And yet….sigh…. We think about how we might communicate with “aliens” and yet don’t seem to give the same effort to our fellow species, some which are quite intelligent. Recently I read something about the brain size of dolphins/porpoises & the size of their prefrontal cortex & it made me think that the way they look at us—following along with boats and surfacing, perhaps in an effort to communicate (?), kinda twinkly-eyed and grins….that they know something about living and just “being” in this world & they are laughing at our foolishness & wasted potential. And that we humans, a lot of us anyway, have forgotten the concept of “enough” and of “the commons”, something we all (or most) benefit from and (should) contribute to. I have written here several time that the only reason I’d want to live forever is to know how it all turns out. There is supposed to be another 5 billion years to evolve new species/ecosystems before our sun does the red giant thing & earth is basically toast….so seems we are about 1/2 way our time before we are recycled into, er, something else.
Girlfriend I love your analogy...we could be best friends. I just don't get those who think they are the adults in the room and remain silent. Thanks for your thoughts.
I was in Denmark the day before their legislative elections in 2022. At that time they had 14 different political parties. I won't even try to explain how the parties come and go (partly because I don't remember), but if a party doesn't get enough candidates elected they are decertified.
Is two the right number or is 14? I have no idea, except that the Republicans are all over the spectrum from moderate to far-right. Unfortunately, too many of them are Fascists and lean far to the right.
Gary, I would like to see our party system & electoral process updated. Something like ranked choice voting could allow for expanding the number of parties; some states apparently have had success with it, especially (as I understand it) in their primaries. Both the Dems and the Repubs have within them a conservative-moderate-radical spectrum…almost parties within parties. What I don’t like, at all, is how a candidate can win the popular vote by millions and still not secure the win…seems basically unfair. Oh, and while I’m at it, gerrymandering should not be allowed by any party….another basically unfair process.
So much fuss about "voter fraud". Well yes, real voter fraud, not just some lady voting mistakenly voting when she could not (and being told she could) but a provable, deliberate attempt to steal or deprive votes is a serious crime involving, as far as I'm concerned, a human right. Gerrymandering is every inch exactly such a crime and should never be tolerated. No doubt even a statistically perfect map would raise controversy, but the math's not so convoluted that that there is no way to prove a map is way out of whack. How can you possibly have liberty and justice for all without fair and free elections?
On that score, the "Electoral College" has proved itself a big bug in the system. The president/VP is the one elected office for which all voters are constituents. It's nut's to let some votes be "more equal" than others.
Ironically, TC, Florida has one of the highest density of breeding Bald Eagles in the lower 48 ( only Alaska and Minn have more)...thanks in great part to two Federal laws - Bald Eagle Protection Act, 1940 and June 1972, EPA Ban on use of DDT.
Oh, oh, Ron!! Federal interference!!.
Cannot have that. Get those birds " Florida Free"-- spread that DDT, if a few fledglings get shot, too bad, at least they won't be exposed to all the nasty books and our guys with guns don't have to worry about being politically correct!
I heard that it preyed on them as well. A bald eagle killed some osprey chicks that were in a nest that Versant Power set up that had a 24/7 camera here in Hancock County, ME.
Our county is not a very safe place for Osprey with all of the bald eagles around.
To me "conservative" is a misnomer. In most uses the word "conservative" would mean hedged, balanced, middle of the road, as in a "conservative estimate. Resource conservation is conservative. Laying and rehearsing contingency plans, such as for a major pandemic, is conservative. Measures to moderate greenhouse gasses would be conservative. Really nothing about modern political "Conservatives" seems conservative, except that they seem to peddle an imagined past as somehow more perfect than our present; and yet, they are highly selective and inconsistent about it; they are not even consistent in what they themselves claim to be legitimate. They pretty much reflexively lie to justify whatever it is they desire to do.
I think we can learn a great deal from the past, both in terms of which patterns of behavior ordinarily do and don't work, and why. Yet we only live in this moment, and what is useful to memory is only useful to the extent we recognize, accurately, learned patterns emerging in the past applied to now, and project them accurately into the future. We the living, are those who get to and must decide.
And the future is always evolving, always one step further down the road from whose bourn no traveler returns; immune from either piety or wit. We can often affect and anticipate the future, but never exert more than local and then only partial control of it; and I trust that it will continue to pack surprises. We have the opportunity to make our best-guessed decisions now.
When you say "imagined past", it reminds me of someone telling a story. The listeners visualize the stories. When Trump speaks he speaks cruelty and hate and his stories often suggest violence to others. He isn't specific about how they should respond. It seems like a few of them make threats to the subjects of his stories and once in a while actually commit violence like in January 6th.
You, and every other Clinton/Biden voter, should have voted for Bernie.
He was no messiah, but he, at least, understood there is no politics but class politics. Until Democratic voters start thinking like that, they will continue to lose to extremist, authoritarian Republicans in elections they…. have…. no…. business…. losing.
People lose their lunch as soon as you mention ‘Socialist’ because gutless Democrats run away from the word with their tails between their legs, instead of providing, and touting, examples of socialistic policy (schools, parks, libraries, transportation infrastructure, police/fire, food safety, etc.) that benefit all of us.
God how I wish Democratic voters could have had the courage to give Bernie the nomination in ‘16, and we could have actually, finally, had a contest to decide between the FDR and Reagan visions of America, to put neoliberalism on trial. But no.
Maybe the white faux-Christian Fascist party? Christ would roll over in his tomb or wherever he went after he rose from the dead to see us call these people Christians.
There are some strong R out there who could lead the charge. R like Romney if true to his LDS beliefs, how can he support the current "other" posturing? Mormon Women for ethical government have a very strong voice & well written pieces. ( I am not LDS).
We don't talk enough about how to heal. We have to run to put out fires but also move to reduce hazards and arson. Even if enough "Republicans" are purged from public office, we still have the massive culture war they promoted to deal with. We have a cult of lies to unravel, including big lies left over from the Civil War we are now discussing. Lies serve no one, except tyrants and crooks. Honesty serves love.
A house divided against itself, cannot stand. We can differ and expect to quarrel, but without some "good enough" agreement on what is an "unalienable right" and what is negotiable that is universally applied, we risk slipping into tyranny, a tyranny of the majority if nothing else. I believe a lot the anger that comes of the suffering of many Trump supporters is justified, but massively and very deliberately misdirected.
I think that you err, Heather, in attributing the death of the Republican party to Nikki Haley. I think that the Republican party of people like Liz Cheney, most of whose policies and positions I disagree with, but whose loyalty to our Constitution and our democracy I share and admire, has been dead for quite a while since it transformed itself from a political party, a group of people brought together by a set of shared ideas and values, into a cult, a group of people brought together by a shared reverence for a charismatic leader. The unwillingness or inability for three of the so-called Republican aspirants to the presidency to criticize the leading candidate did not start with Nikki Haley's omission of slavery as the cause of the Civil War. It has been building for much longer than that. Let's not give her credit that she doesn't deserve.
HRC is not giving Haley credit for killing the Republican Party. She's simply saying that the imbecilically stupid Nikki Haley has sounded its death knell. The GOP is killing itself, as you said. May HRC be correct in her assessment. I fear that the demise of the incredibly powerful Republican Party, and its think tank bosses at the Federalist Society, is premature. That said, HRC's letter today is a masterpiece. But consider this: nearly all of the high school and college students in this country are unaware of the contents of Heather's letter. The same can be said of at least half of the electorate. I am not as hopeful as our dear professor.
First thing I thought after reading HRC's post is to forward it to all my nieces and nephews, all who are 43 or younger. Knowing how my siblings and their spouses think and feel, my best strategy is to share with those who are open to hearing/reading this letter, as many of them are conservatively aligned and have taken to heart Fox News. Ugh!! So trying my best to reach out to those who will listen.
Funny, a friend posted this today. I’m not sure that the majority of today’s younger generation would have the depths of knowledge to appreciate the satire. The Smothers Brothers final (unaired) show.
The think tank bosses are people like Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, etc. The billionaires set up the "think tanks" to give credibility to their greedy, selfish ideas. Let's not forget people like Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who works overtime trying to destroy the country that allowed him to have opportunities.
Somehow, I don’t think Liz Cheney would have addressed the question asked of Haley in the same way. This why her Republican colleagues declared her persona non grata.
I'm not so sure of that. Liz exhibited her total ignorance of the institutionalized racism well documented by "The 1619 Project," which I read a year or two ago. The ONLY good thing about Liz Cheney is her respect for the Constitution. Her politics are in the dark ages.
Nikki Haley made the mistake of saying the quiet part about today’s Republican party out loud. “And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the WHITE people.” She was supposed to just hint at the white supremacy, not blurt it out.
Mary, not sure if you are serious. I of course inserted “white” to make the point that Haley refused to say that the government fought the Civil War to free the slaves, because Republicans think the government is only supposed to work for white people.
John, you made the point, after inserting the word WHITE, that she’d said the quiet part out loud. I think that you’d have objected if anyone on this forum had inserted words in a quote from, say, Biden to make a point. One of the things that I admire is that, here, most of the posters follow HCR’s lead in not only posting exact quotes, but posting links so that readers can decide for themselves how trustworthy the source is. Based on legitimate quotes from Haley, chances are that what you wrote is what she believes.
I was using poetic license to make a point about Haley’s closeted Confederate sympathies. I take your point about accuracy and citing sources. I hoped folks would accept my satirical liberties.
That's my take as well John; she's just so used to dog whistling along with cohorts within their self-affirming echo chamber, it just tumbled out of her mouth. Her ego's a little inflated I'm thinking from pats on the back from Koch's. But whatever, it was delightful watching the stumble.
Indeed Rhonda. Like me, you seem 'attuned' to those nuances; I find that to be a mixed curse / blessing that I have to wrestle with on a too regular basis, so I have to 'test' those signals against logic and facts in evidence - ever aware as I can, that most folks (me included) just love to believe their own bs. I do hope that you and those of good will herein and without, are able to find something uplifting to cherish over the reflective holiday around you and within you. Cheers friend !
Say Jenn; I have to thank you for all your shares. It occurred to me last night to mention it but I was just too exhausted to read and write anymore. Your comments are such a font of knowledge, experience, etc. I learn something here every time I log on here; a thing I personally cherish. Thanks for going to the bother of sharing; I truly appreciate it; from you and so many others herein. I do so hope they 'know' I feel that way. I happen to be one of those sick bastards that reads e_v_e_r_y single solitary comment and try very hard to respond in one way or another when I'm commented to, and honestly, for more than one reason - but none of them 'dark' in any way or intent. Cheers friend !
Four of the enslaving states that seceding from the United States (South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi) wrote formal documents describing the “immediate causes” for their secession. They are horrifying, yet important to read. All four make absolutely clear that secession was chosen to protect their “rights” and “freedoms” to enslave Blacks forever.
Here are the very first sentences from Mississippi’s “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
Beau of the Fifth Column had an excellent video he and his team published a day ago on his second channel that discussed this as well - there is so very much that was left out of my history education and to hear Beau read those awful passages that I had never been aware of was sobering to yet again witness the evidence of efforts to demean and subjugate an entire race of people.
There’s extensive documentation about slavery-intentions, impact and debates. It’s fascinating to read the newspapers, congressional speeches and governmental documents from that time.
Reading about the abolitionists’ efforts gives hope…
Tom, these are such chilling and appalling words and sentiments and yet, as primary sources, so directly in the spirit of HCR! They jolt us into awareness of so much which was left out of our education.
Now we see why the oligarchs want to expunge slavery from the history books. They are still enslaving workers and think they can pull the wool over our eyes by saying 'don't worry, good things will trickle down'. The soul of corrruption is lies. And lies are all the Republicans have to offer. Chief Justice John Roberts has declared that racial discrimintion is dead in the United States. I guess that's why so many districts are gerrymandered.
This amazing letter needs to be plastered all over every major newspaper in this country!!!!! Again and again, regularly, until we've all voted blue and put Democracy back into office!!! As always, thank you so very much, Heather!!!
James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, was a national organizer for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition. (Poets,org)
*
When the Orders Came
Fatimah Asghar
"[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
‘Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. She is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (One World/ Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015).’
‘A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Asghar is the Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in January 2021 and is the writer and cocreator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. She lives in Los Angeles.’ (poets.org)
Tamera, I am grateful to you. So often it is the people who tell it best -- what they are experiencing and tell it from their hearts souls. It is listening to one another that is a great teacher. You listen, Tamera.
Thank you, Frederick. It is the souls of people that you listen to. Biden has said that he is fighting for the 'soul' of America. That is what we are looking for and can hear from one another. Salud!
We are in a quandary. I, for one, am enveloping myself in my dad's WWII uniform jacket and going into combat to save our democracy with hand written notes and cards...embellished with original art. I don't have guns, but I have passion and love for this country.
On Valentine’s Day, 1859, Oregon voted to join the United States. In order to do so, they had to accept a number of racist conditions imposed by southern states. It wasn’t difficult, many of the settlers on the first two wagon trains, who received part of the Willamette Valley, some of the richest, most fertile farmland in the world, were from racist areas to the east, or had southern sympathies. In fact, Oregon came within one vote of joining the South during the Civil War. And, for 40 years after the end of the Civil War, black people could legally be whipped out of the state, and were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as white folks. That racism still exists today, in an area NW Oregon, and a city, Portland, Oregon, viewed as bastions of liberalism. Nowadays, it is much more subtle to use gentrification as a quiet tool of racism, rather than fighting the poverty inherent in racism, that so often leads to despair, crime, and addiction. During WWII, many black workers llved in a low lying area near the Columbia River named Vanport, and built Liberty ships. A great many lost their homes to the Great Vanport Flood. The community mainly occupied an area ironically named Albina, after that, and it has been systematically gentrified since then, raising property values and driving many out. The KKK was very active in SW Oregon, post WWII, and decades after, but i have not heard much about that since before 2000. I grew up in NE Oregon, 5th generation, now live in the Willamette Valley Yamhill County, where it lingers quietly. I never met anyone not white until i had graduated from high school, in a graduating class of 12. Thst summer, a contractor was in town, doing masonry work, and a young black man was doing a lot of that work. Although my friends and i all lived 8-13 miles from town, 4 of us were hanging out in the city park, where we and he met each other. It was very exciting for me to meet someone of a different race, and realize we are all the same. My father had told us all that he had a black friend in college, he talked him into going into bsr, and the owner threw him out. My father was so embarrassed and humiliated for convincing his friend to enter into such a horrid situation, that it bothered him for his whole life. He made sure we all knew about it, and I have never forgotten it. Today, our family and friends encompass people of many nationalities, races, and religions. All of us together constantly learn from one another. Stop learning and you begin dying. Today i work in the Oregon Wine industry, where i meet many Southerners, often white and black friends traveling together.
I appreciate reading your short bio, Patrick. Your story of coming to your values, might I say. My family had Black friends in the 1950s-60s while we had no neighbors of color in our suburban life ... I resonate with your experience and try to see "the other as myself," by recognizing the lack of duality in my sensory experiences. So my identification of "Black, Indian, Asian, etc" is my egoistic construct. I feel pain as my mind judges as "different" until I relax into the wisdom of "me-object" as a false construct. IOW, there is no distance between object and my senses, until my mind intervenes. Actually, how distant is that early morning bird call? That person I see? Or the smell of the salmon baking ... In this early morning shroud of darkness is a wonderful time to practice the "silence of a candle" (Paul Winter Consort)
Greetings James, and thank you. My wife practices Jungian counseling, and she teaches on occasions. But the source of my understanding is from the Heart Sutra, and I would encourage one to look to the transcript used by the San Francisco Zen Center
(sfzc.org), from Kaz Tanahashi. It is one page long.
In essence, "emptiness" simply means "empty of self existance" or as the late Thich Nhat Hanh preferred, "interdependence." EVERYTHING is an interdependent gift, and we as a human create dualities ... Our minds and other sense organs create existence (Relative Truth), while truly there is NOTHING independent in the realm of the Universal Truth ... all is created for us, our breath and oxygen, seasons and sensory sensations, ground and gravity, etc and so on.
As the Buddhist monk said when asked, "Who are you?" and he replied, "I don't know." WHAT words point to this life, this moment in its vast entirety?
Then you are familiar with Jung's "coincidentia oppositorum", and what I call Rilke's "intersubjectivity", his need to be his objects in order to know them and be known by them, thus addressing the old debate concerning "das ding an sich". Ah well, back to politics and the awful things afoot. I wish you a safe and happy New Year.
You've pointed to other philosopher's broach to the human condition and while I'm unfamiliar w these specific terms, I 'm intimate with this milieu. Then, a Buddhist may say, in this Universal Truth, I am NOT familiar, as the "I" does not exist. As I type this thought, exactly HOW am I able to actually perform all of these human functions as there is no possible answer, because they are just words, pointing to a vast and indescribable universe of causes and conditions. Until "I" arrive with my delusional thinking, in my own Relative Truth appearance with nothing but objectification, to live each breath with peace and compassion and treat perhaps everything I sense as an intimate ally in this breath. Allies abound, all gorgeous flowers with the ground as far too brown, what have you found?
Howdy, neighbor (Willamette Valley, south here). I grew up in Medford, which was (and remains) a horribly racist community. In my 12 years in the Medford School system (1964-1976) I had one Black classmate, for half a school year, in 1975. In Eugene, until about 2005, a street off of W11th was named "Sam R" street, rather than "Sam Reynolds" street. Sam Reynolds, one of the first Black men to live in west Eugene (after being evicted from the north side of the Willamette River when the Ferry Street Bridge was built, kinda like Vanport). Their reason for not naming it "Sam Reynolds" was that it would be too confusing because there was already a "Reynolds" St. This from a city that has multiple double names... sheesh.
Hello, to you. It is interesting about the street name. In the Carolinas, i have no idea of any of the names are of black people, but they often name streets with the person’s first and last names. I really like the Southern Oregon wineries, for 28 years i ran a shop where they were heavily represented. It was all Oregon wines, over a hundred wineries. Now, i work for Sineann winery, right across from Champoeg (sham poo ee) Park, where the statehood vote took place. The area is called French Prairie, as the original settlers were Metis, white, mainly French trappers and farmers with Indian wives, including Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau and his wife, Sacagawea, of the Lewis and Clark expedition
Nikki Haley just retained the confederate flag on the South Carolina Statehouse. I hear people questioning Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. She has accomplished exponentially more good for this country than Nikki Haley and much more qualified for the executive office. Again Nikki Haley as well as Trump and many others are giving the Democrats great talking points for 2024.
Now Dammit Democrats, use them!!!!’
Just a sad thought. Is Fox condemning the contemptible Haley? Or supporting her revisionist history? And applIauding another nail in Critical Race Theory. Saying, finally, white racists should not be criticized for its history. ... And even NY Times headlines say 'Democrats find DJT unqualified" vs Democrats cite extensive evidence demonstrating DJT legally precluded from..." Bad faith and sloppy language abounds.
Sadly The Times has lost its shine and is not the paper of record anymore. It’s not all the news fit to print. Despite TFG attacking the media, they are contributing to his death grip on us. Their stories are just about always watered down with what I call “yeah but” comments. The economy is doing great, yeah but.... Inflation is way down, yeah but...
How about a clear, and undeniable story about republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill yet are claiming credit for projects in their districts as a result of the Act. Maybe they should take what Dr. Richardson has written here and turn it into a full blown indictment of the maga party.
In the harried lives of most Americans, no one takes the time to read a full article. Just like soundbites, headlines are scanned, read, and imprinted on the brains of readers. A long list of headlines from the past eight years would pretty much sum up the thoughts and opinions of the reader who doesn't take the time to inform him/herself. Whataboutisms abound. Truth be told, newspapers have failed us. Failed us badly.
If I may, I would like to expand your thesis even further - virtually all of today’s media in the US was hijacked by the attention economy when social media platforms added “news” plus the “like” function to their platforms. With the ubiquitous use of smartphones coupled with the presentation of the news (headlines) DESIGNED to attract the attention of the viewer, traditional print media decided they had to redesign their articles to attract viewership. Hence, the model we had been used to of in-depth articles and investigative reporting had to change to attract the attention of all who are glued to the phones.
A marketing model based on attention-frequency was insidiously coupled with this attention model, providing a revenue stream for the social media platforms and eventually the print media as they had to depend on this revenue stream to support their businesses. So now the role of the “free press” no longer provides a check on governments but has been captured by the attention-marketing-economy which is designed to hook us with emotion-laden headlines and/or pithy OPINION based versus FACT-based short statements and governments world-wide have struggled because of this shift. Some governments have recently begun to try to come to terms with this major shift in how we all get our “news”. For example, the European Union is actively engaged in developing guidelines designed to standardize some broad based guidelines to return its legacy news outlets to fact based reporting. We, in the US, will need to closely monitor what they are doing to see if our government has the political will to adopt such practices.
Thank you for this thoughtful and edifying response.
I very much doubt the govt will act to change anything.
I learned somewhere that the average news article online is meant to be skimmed and/or read in 5 minutes. This makes it so easy to create misinformed voters who fail to become interested in politics. It's all dumbed down because of the silly mantra saying everyone is so busy, busy, busy when in fact, they're not.
My mother used to use the busy word a lot. But she would say , 'busy doing nothing'. I think that about sums it up with people these days.
Like the house of reps that didn’t get much done this year and take an extended break when so much needed to be done. No other employer would put up with employees pulling that crap. Why do we have to put up with senators who are NOT doing their jobs?
It's become a cliche. Parents frantically driving their kids around to play dates, working insane hours, no time for dinner so pick up some fast food every night, listening to TV news sound bites. It sells. I know many people who use it as an excuse not to live like mature adults managing their time and money.
We're busy doin' nothin', nothin' the whole day through, tryin' to find lots'a things not to do. (From the musical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.)
I must offer some rebuttal here. I think that if people could separate themselves from their fears, they would see that the NYT offers balanced reporting, an extraordinary difficult task as the paper of record in the United States and to some extent a leading paper in the world.
The problem is that we all want the Times to say ONLY what we want to hear, and I include myself in that. I find it disconcerting and sometimes a little upsetting when a viewpoint is expressed which, say, expresses reservations about something the Democratic Party has done that has gone awry.
A good example occurred at the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I was delighted with Biden’s action. It was decisive, bold, and long overdue.
Then it went sideways in a hurry and the Times was not slow to point it out. The chaos at the airport, the lack of good intelligence to recognize how ready the Taliban was to leap back into power, and the failure to liberate Afghans who had acted as translators and eyes and ears for the American military were all reported quite without fear or favor.
At first I was angry. Withdrawal was necessarily going to be difficult and problematic. Good intelligence was hard to come by. The mistakes were secondary to the bigger fact that America was finally out of its never-ending war. . . Could the media not stop nattering about these so-called “failures” in the operation. I never considered cancelling my subscription as it’s not the kind of impulse act I’m inclined to. But I burned at the time.
By the end of the summer I had cooled somewhat and recognized that if the withdrawal had been improperly devised in many ways and these errors hurt a number of people seriously, then it was the role of the NYT and frankly all media of conscience to report it in a clear-eyed way. I learned a lesson and it has stuck.
The NYT does not indulge in the sort of grossly unequal ‘what-aboutism’ that has become a terrible hallmark of these days. It has not failed to report economic progress under Biden. Nor has it failed to spend time, effort, and money to demonstrate that the message of better economic times is either not getting through to people, or I suspect being ignored by millions whose mind is made up and want no contradictory evidence that might slow down Trump’s re-ascendancy to the Presidency. Its polls showing Trump’s terrible momentum have been shocks to the system in recent weeks. But I fully trust they were carried out fairly. I also feel that while they have delivered a terrible shock to the system it is good for us to know as much about the battleground as possible, and even polling, which is fast becoming a pseudo-science, tells us clearly the nature of the struggle ahead.
Then there is the division which must be made between news and opinion. News tells us both pleasant and hard truths and the Times spends a fortune in producing it in as eye-catching a way as possible.
The opinion section is, for the most part, informed, far-seeing and offers good for thought. I know of no regular columnist who supports Trump. I find the views of Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens difficult to take at times, but they are a necessary corrective to my deep bent to the left. Thomas Friedman is sometimes pedantic and puts himself far out enough in his generalizations that one must think hard before accepting it at face value. Yet he is enormously well-informed, deeply patriotic and often singularly wise. Is there any doubt where Maureen Dowd stands? Paul Krugman’s mastery of the economy is breathtaking. I could go on but have an undisputed knack for being tedious so will leave the op-ed alone, hoping I haven’t left out a voice who without question should have been included. Ah I did. . . Jamalle Boue is brilliant.
We all recognize that the Times is a corporation and it exists to make money. Therefore it needs the broadest subscription model possible in order to give value to its advertisers. This means inevitably that it must report freely and fairly on the entire spectrum and risk losing the “fly off the handle” types.
I, for one, do not envy them the dilemmas they face. Nor am I surprised when they write articles that would give succour to today’s voters on the American right. I read (some of) these and do not find them wildly unbalanced.
I strongly disagree that the NYT is not the “paper of record” anymore as has been asserted today and other days. The fact that the Right hates it pretty much generally en masse (but long for its approbation) should tell us that leaders of conscience at the Times are appalled by the malice, impropriety, criminality and general lack of seriousness of today’s Republican Party.
We need the Times. We must point out its errors in judgment when they occur, but we need it as a starting point for our understanding of truth. We cannot read it as we do Letters from an American. As I’ve mentioned Professor Cox Richardson leans heavily on failures of the right and successes of the left, using her vast knowledge of history to buttress the few conclusions she allows herself. She is fighting for democracy to survive and thus inevitably writes what we want to hear. At some times this could be called cheerleading. In these most dangerous it is a most necessary arousal of Americans to fight the waves crashing on the shore.
I am terrified of 2024. I don’t think any of us can imagine the utter chaos this year will bring. Already the battle over Trump’s right to be on the ballot is stating to rage and we still have a couple of days to rest up before the most consequential year of our political live kicks off. Things will become real immediately the calendar turns and that which is irrational, spiteful, conniving, fraudulent, and possibly violent will take over. The daily news may be unable to keep up.
I hope and believe that the Times is ready for a quantum leap into the unknown. We ain’t seen nothing, bad as the last eight years have been, and more than ever we need the paper of record.
Who knows? Perhaps Wordle will help to save democracy.
I tend to agree with Eric’s analysis, with a caveot or two. Robert Hubbel has made a point of encouraging folks to stay subscribed, but to comment back to the editors/writers when they are way off base, and suggests that this “movement” has seen a bit of success with a slight shift in editorial policy away from “what-about-ism”, raising the alarm against authoritarianism, and giving Biden’s successes appropriate due. We shall see whether this holds up as this most dangerous and precarious year moves forward.
Thank you. I do not know Robert Hubbell, but his idea is sensible.
Can anybody give a precise example where the Times has been dangerously off the truth in the last year? Perhaps I am overly gullible and need my eyes opened.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's rebuttals last week to their poorly-sourced article about how sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine have actually lined Putin's (and his cronies') pockets. Check out his articles in Fortune and Foreign Policy. Maybe not "dangerously" inaccurate, but definitely not helpful when the fate of Europe/NATO is on the line.
Here's Robert Hubbell on the NY Times, the media, and what we can do:
https://open.substack.com/pub/roberthubbell/p/help-shape-the-narrative?r=6pp8t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/roberthubbell/p/continuing-the-conversation-about?r=6pp8t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I'm not fully convinced. What I expect from a news venue is accurate reporting.
I see very little wherever I look. Back during the 2016 election our "paper of record" failed us. They chose to misrepresent a lot of the news, and bias was very evident. They intentionally mis-used "the power of the Recording Secretary" to decide which news should be featured more or less prominently and in some cases, opinion was presented as news.
Villains abound, and what drove this shift away from objectivity remains uncertain, however my confidence in the NYT will never be fully restored. I still read their stuff but from now on I'll use my critical eye to look for the moment a story pivots. Same as with most other news sources I catch that moment all too easily and all too frequently.
That’s an interesting idea Gary. You. have a talent for aggregation from different sources that I must lack. I read articles assiduously and give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless I read/hear something contradictory within a short while, the story holds firm in my mind. That is of course for sources that enjoy a reputation for probity, like the Times, Guardian, Globe and Mail, New Yorker, Atlantic et al.
Of course I realize that no story is ever fully accurate. Reporters inevitably carry their own perspectives with them and of course there is a limit to their sources. I assume you and I could be tasked with covering the same event and our stories might vary with some degree of significance.
I must say though, given the above, that I don’t expect malfeasance from the papers I read - a la Fox News for instance. I expect a general level of accuracy, innovative reporting styles and coherence.
Op-Ed’s are different. My assumption with them is that they will be intelligently written, supported with a thesis and indicate some recognition that there are two sides.
Maybe I am simply naive, but the sources I mention have been reliable. I don’t read in a “gotcha” vein. Perhaps I should be more rigorous.
I’m completely in the dark with your phrase “the power of the Recording Secretary”.
And finally I wish I could be pointed to a substantive pattern of behavior that would reflect dishonest journalism. I still hold to my idea that many people become piqued with the Times for not giving them the news that they *want* to hear so as to bolster their worldview.
I expect to be told the facts and then make my own determinations. If I demanded only one-sided "news" I'd be deluding myself. Since 'news' is mostly information someone else doesn't wish for you to know, corruption is never far away. Don't let yourself be misled simply because something is presented neatly.
Marvin Gaye said it best: "believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
The term "the power of the Recording Secretary" is one I devised from experience. Whoever takes the meeting minutes controls the institutional memory. If the secretary decides not to record what you say in a meeting, often that's too bad for you and whatever point you wanted to make: It's been unilaterally dismissed. That's a lesson to be learned from the Mad Men days - wise bureaucrats know to NEVER piss off the secretarial staff.
Well said.
I also agree with some of this but I am seeing things in the NYT that are very wishy-washy and do not seem very well documented. I always do my best to figure out where the info comes from as I am reading. Sometimes it is blatantly false but sometimes not clear at all.
To your point I’m wondering if a vast letter writing campaign to the editorial board of the NYT might push them a bit more into the sunlight? Mike, what you said would be a great letter to the editor. Anyway just my opinion. Thanks for your thought and I see your point.
In my area if you write a letter to the editor and the editor doesn't like it....it isn't printed! Our daily newspaper is now delivered twice a week and is mainly high school sports and advertising! It is hard for a Democrat to get elected. Believe me....I know!
I canceled my subscription a few months ago. They are like Nikki: which way is the wind blowing? What shall we say that won't offend our advertisers? "Both-erism" to an art. I'm DONE!
I'd like to see this HCR edition as a full page op-ed in major newspapers.
I agree. Few people in the US know all of that party history. It is important to read this to understand what is happening today.
I cancelled my subscription about 6 months ago. Still with WAPO for now.
I am not renewing mine for some of the same reasons. I found that I was opening fewer and fewer of their articles also. I have the games subscription still for a bit but will not renew that as well .
The word pathetic comes to mind...shocking!
The papers are too often inclined make everything a contest; report the score rather than explain what's at stake.
And many only read the banner & Maga use the banner as facts
Carole, so right. They wave, they wear but basically do not comprehend exactly what’s really going to happen if it comes to pass.
Good bye social security, by by Medicare. Small business? Oh oh.
😬
That is 'not connecting the dots'. It requires very, very little cognition.
Sound byte society! During the 2020 election campaign is a a massive banner hanging from a barn in the outskirts of Raleigh, NC “SOCIALISM”!
That was one of the red meat words of the magas!
But don’t mess with their Social Security!! (Irony was lost.)
Tea Party demonstrator's hand made sign: "Keep your government hands off my Medicare"
And they have NO idea of the meaning of the word! I was called a douche bag by a christian self proclaimed preacher for saying Jesus preached socialism
A “preacher” called you a “douche bag”? And he thinks he’s a man of God? How petty and crass. I hope you told him off.
School (60 years ago)taught me that socialism was a collective FOR THE PEOPLE, and that communism used it ( power/money) for the hierarchy . Somewhere along that line it appears people want to confuse masses about the principle. If the whole is not used for the betterment of the whole then the whole is used for the benefit of only a few. Is that not the principle of the matter?
Is there any ‘union’ whose people benefit in totality from the latter objective? Nations gone from Democracy to Imperialism that did well...’top heavy’...
Very few ‘ rich’ have an egalitarian outlook am I correct that our government is supposed to! Were it so -more representation of the underdog, the oversight people, the rules would focus on this...what seems to be the case is that far too many gaining that power do it to get rich and wield ( or yield?) to the hierarchy ...the little guy and women in general bear the lack thereof. Capitalization vs Socialism ...not compatible? A fine line?
I think WE CAN DO BETTER.
And it’s going through these harsh stark difficult times that reveal the tweaking necessary.
NOT throwing out the principle ( baby) with the bath water.
To my mind this current ...what ? ...5-6 year tumult is perfect example border line screaming 🗣️’get your papers in order’ as Schultz would say. Getting our principles in order...if you want to say slavery vs freedom let’s look at whom that directly speaks to ie ‘free white and 21’? ...as another saying goes...second class citizens? Indebtedness?
I won’t even pretend to comprehend the complexity of situations but the principe of matters...ethical ...compassionate...protective...nurturing...I get that.
Yup...I’ll be voting 💙
💙💙VOTE ALL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
And don't even suggest that Jesus was not a white man. Duh! He was from the Middle East.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192663920/southern-baptist-convention-donald-trump-christianity
"What is he saying? Moore spoke to All Things Considered's Scott Detrow about what he thinks the path forward is for evangelicalism in America.
On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:
It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."
"Who is he? Russell Moore was one of the top officials in the Southern Baptist Convention. "
Yes! A total corruption of the misguided notion of “fair and balanced' coverage. They've taken morality out of the equation and treat 'good' and 'evil' as two teams competing for the same trophy, and may the one with the higher score (whatever that is based on) win. I'm at a loss to guess how to get to publishers about this.
So true!!
Can the courts take the company away from Murdoch, nationalize it, cannibalize it, dissolve it, put the funds from the sale of it's assets into NPR? It sounds rather autocratic. Who can tell us?
The advertisers can take force Fox News to change or rather the lack of advertisers. Since Fox went on the air, many boycotts have been leveled against their advertisers. When this happens either the advertisers pull their ads to win back their customers/viewers or Fox backtracks on the issue. Why did Fox fire Bill O'Reiley and Tucker Carlson? Because their advertisers couldn't weather the backlash from allowing sexual predators to be on the air.
The Dominion defamation settlement against Fox has only focused their hateful rhetoric on specific Democrat politicians. And their next defamation case, if the settlement is for $2.1 billion will be a big blow to Fox. But as long as companies are willing to advertise on Fox they will continue to be a propaganda arm for the Republicans Party.
Rupert knows how to ditch his liabilities and replace them with unknowns until he makes them clones. Has worked for decades
I believe that Fox gets most of its revenues from cable subscriptions, not ads. So the best way to choke it is to make it a for-fee optional part of the cable package, like Disney.
Whenever people mention this, though, the MAGAts cry "free speech!" By which they mean "subsidized propaganda." Which is exactly what they claim NPR is. Which, if you look at the issue holistically, makes not a twit of sense. But then, consistent thought isn't a MAGAt attribute.
We have a $24 "broadcast surcharge" on our cable bill now. That's a monthly change for funneling the over-the-air programming into their product. So we are all paying the premium for Fox anyway, even though it's not a premium channel.
That is another good reason to cancel cable, Dish, Direct Tv. I now stream and it is by far less expensive and you download only what you want. NO FOX
I recently read Hoax! Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter. Highly readable and eye-opening.
Authoritarian governments do that kind of thing all the time. Democracy is not an easy responsibility. We are between a rock and a hard place at the moment but we have more power than we realize.
I'm afraid that most people have no real idea of what an authoritarian government is capable of doing. Had I not spent years researching the history of the Occupation of France and the work of the French Resistance, for a novel on Jean Moulin, I could be as blasé as so many (on both sides of the political fence) about the fact that history repeats itself and when a country is in the hands of someone like Trump and his cronies, the outcome cannot be good. That said, I believe that Haley is the lesser of all the Republican evils. She may loose some of the mysoginist male votes and hopefully this will be good for Biden.
And what MAGAnuts don’t realize is their businesses can be taken by tfg, the dictator, for pennies on the dollar (or just taken). I guess they think their support of him will protect them. Till it doesn’t anymore.
Rupert has the power, a little perk of big money. Reagan knew that.
No. Because of the First Amendment. Really, do you want a government that dissolves media companies because of their content? Frankly, that sounds like one of Trump's campaign promises.
No
I'm hoping Smartmatic will begin their multi-billion dollar suit against fox this summer; just in time to dominate the news in the fall. That ought to get the attention of the headline writers and editors. They know exactly how in-depth their average reader has patience for and how much their headlines and ledes influence them. Let's see how they behave this fall too.
Rupert runs rings around our MSM.
It's now Lachlan.
Rupert hasn’t gone anywhere, and he taught his children well, sadly.
Yes, appealing to low information citizens.
And some who buy into the pecking order. Just hate some who are less powerful
When Dr. Cox Richardson says, “It was the death knell of the Republican Party,” that’s “Houston, we have a problem,” for the GOP.
In the video, the moment Nicki Haley was asked the question ‘why-the-Civil-War,’ you can actually *see* her run away in panic.
Such a pity. The GOP wasn’t all bad(?).So lets all wish the GOP, “Thoughts and Prayers!!”🥲
“Lincoln and his fellow Republicans argued, the government should clear the way for those at the bottom of the economy, making sure they had access to resources, education, and the internal improvements that would enable them to reach markets.”
WAIT A MINUTE! That’s EXACTLY what
Joe Biden😎 is doing!
Well, La-dee-Dah!!☺️
Even as he was managing the Civil War, Lincoln made sure the transcontinental railroad was finished and established the land grant colleges. He walked the walk.
Do you mean to say, Lincoln didn’t have to announce every week that next week would be infrastructure week?
The current Greedy Old Plutocrat Party remains armed and dangerous, but Haley, among others, pointedly underlines it's complete reversal from the values it was formed to defend.
Sad that nobody defends what it was formed to defend. vote Dem. The Democrats should say they are grateful to the early repubs for showing them the way. Now the Dem way is the right way. Lincoln would agree, no doubt.
I think it's safe to say he would not want any connection to today's "Republican" Party. He would certainly have a thing or two to say about the Civil War, and to those who now seem to suggest that those who fought the obscenity of slavery had died in vain.
Absolutely. Now, we'll see what the 'old guard' will do as they find themselves without an organized national 'party' to promote their policies. A new party? A remake of the old?
It's going to be a blood bath.
The good news is that, as in nature, the old must be destroyed before the new can grow out of the ashes.
A blood bath you say? As Republicans undergo autophagy? Self-immolation? I’m good! I’ve got goggles… and popcorn aplenty. Thoughts & prayers!!😎
Yep, T and P are the solution to…nothing.
"thoughts and prayers"..hahahahahhaa..hahahaaahaha.. GAG ME WITH A SPOON! Whewww.., ugh...
The maga-tts are really in a dumpster. Too bad we can't just call Waste Management (the 'trash' hauler) and have that load of shit hauled over to Vic Orban's driveway and dumped.
Yeah... I saw her with my own eyes physically walk backwards as she did her best to spin an answer. ugh.
It is now.
They're all the Confederate White People's Treason and Sedition Party, masquerading as what used to be the Republican Party.
So many republicans I know really care only about money and deregulation. They’ll vote for anyone who will promise to put a few more dollars in their pockets in the form of a tax cut, regardless of the rights they take away or the damage they do to the environment.
Too many republicans still think that it’s still the GOP. After Ike, it’s been nothing but the CWPTSP (see above).
Added to that is a knee-jerk response to the word Democrat, without knowing what the party actually represents.
Thanks to Rush and his libtard bull Schitt. My b-I-l really loved that.
I think his type is legion, esp here in the south.
So sad. But true!
I'm not sure if you identify as a Democrat, but I assume from your words you are. Can you help spread the facts? Can you please talk -- and listen -- to your family, friends and neighbors to make sure we do not elect this cruel group of autocrats
It is not "Democrats" responsibility to take the MAGA Republican talking points and "use" them. It is incumbent upon all Americans who care about our democracy to get to work now to expose the motivations behind the MAGA Republicans authoritarian plan: to protect a system that benefits their wealthy, white, male cronies.
People sometimes think that they’re powerless to really do very much to change anything since the force required to put new initiatives into motion is often so great.
This is because there are so many moving parts involved in the present system. Nonetheless, big changes happen.
We are on the brink of technological developments that will make the internet look small time. That is startling isn’t it? AI, Fusion Power, grid scale distributed energy storage, CRISPR based medical advances... are several big ones that will make life longer, better, faster and easier. These changes are already underway and racing forward. Democratic government systems are best equipped to integrate these amazing advances because they function at the behest of the majority of the people not the minority who think they know better.
Our position, as American citizens, is at the top of the inverted pyramid. Voting for smart, experienced individuals whose primary purpose for wanting to get elected is to serve the People... not themselves...is what can make our already good democratic government that much better; it’s been that way since he beginning. The economic performance of democracies is always far superior to that of autocracies over the longer run. People in democracies have a great chance to live better, longer and happier lives.
We must stay strong and vote for qualified and experienced governmental representatives who will do a good job in their positions be it in our school districts, municipal and state governments and nationally. The Republican Party and its philosophy is broken...they need to stop going in the wrong direction... but the majority of them lack the courage, flexibility and ability to do that. Eventually, they’ll come to their senses but not at the present time.
Our truly great opportunity is to make sure we all do our duty now and vote for the candidates best prepared and capable to represent what “We the Majority of the People” want and need. We can do this... make no mistake.
Good essay here
Please identify the smart Americans outside this group. I know there are some, but it’s shocking to talk to random people waiting for an oil change, or in line at the store. You hear insanity.
They’re mostly frightened…a trump conviction or two will help a solid Democratic victory will help much more. These people who are afraid are our neighbors and friends who’d help in an instant. Your kindness is what matters the most as you won’t convince them with arguments.
The conversations with friends, family, neighbors that I'm talking about should not involve any arguing whatsoever. These conversations are about connecting--not arguing. Using active listening techniques helps you find out where they're at, e.g. once you've started a conversation, try asking your friend, family member or neighbor about how they feel about what's happening in our country. When they answer, try asking, "Please tell me more" a few times as they talk. Listen. You'll likely hear about what's important to them. It's also possible to pivot the conversation to ask them to think about solutions to the problem, e.g. "What would you do if you were President?" "Please tell me more about that..." Then if it's going well, you could ask them if you could share some info on the topic you were discussing. It could just be, "I think you'd be interested in reading this newsletter I follow by an amazing history professor, Heather Cox Richardson, who helps me put what's happening now into context with American history."
A very sound approach
So not sure how many members of this community have visited Columbia, SC but I have and I did an interesting tour of the statehouse during one of those visits. It's not just that ALL the most prominent statuary in the building and on the grounds is dedicated to glorifying the Confederacy--there is a sculpture group way off to the side near a little-used entrance that represents the enslaved people who (ahem) BUILT the statehouse--it is that the Articles of Secession ARE CARVED INTO THE WALLS OF THE BUILDING'S INTERIOR and the SC governor and legislators look at it EVERY DAY. If you want to know the true meaning of Christofascism, spend an hour at the statehouse in Columbia. And I actually like Columbia: it's an interesting city with good food and a diverse population. But those guys are never going to give up their dedication to the Confederacy and what it stood for no matter how many people bleat about it. And it's a true irony of both the Patriarchal and Post-colonialist Bargains (See Kandyoti and Sa'ar among others for an unpacking of those terms) that the mouthpiece for everything awful in SC is a woman of color of South Asian heritage whose home country was exploited almost to obliteration by the tiny white Christian nationalist imperialist country of Great Britain.
Thanks for this report, Linda.
Confirmed: MAGA is KKK. The proof is right in front of us. Any doubt, consult "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election and Why?" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0896920517740615 along with Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's. MAGA and KKK are virtually identical - white Protestant supremacy.
Sadly our nation was founded on the invention of white supremacy to justify enslaving human beings with darker skin, committing genocide against them, spreading propaganda about them and then passing laws to oppress them.
We missed an opportunity during Reconstruction to “build back better. We allowed those who need racism to accumulate wealth and power to reign. Racism defines us. It’s woven throughout our systems and lives.
Without racism based on skin color we’d be a very different nation. This is our last gasp for liberty and justice.
Nikki Haley knows better but won’t do better. Having her in the White House will be disastrous. She’s already committed to pardoning Trump. The puppeteers will have a field day with her.
I guess we’ll soon see where America stands in 2024…
Curiously, the last big Protestant Evangelical effort, mainly from rural America, was Prohibition. Alcohol remains both a pleasure and a social scourge to this very day.
Abraham Lincoln would turn in his grave if he knew what they’ve done to his party.
Now I’m imagining Abe’s spirit returning inside a contemporary orator, to talk directly to the MAGA voters.
You're right. Following the horrific Mother Emmanuel massacre in June, 2015 -- the slaughter of nine members of the congregation following their Bible study, but a young white male supremacist -- demands were made by Black citizens (and white, as well, of which I was one) to remove the damn Confederate flag to the SC Statehouse. Nikki wasn't sure what to do. Which way was the wind blowing? How would her decision affect her politically??! Finally, after a young Black woman had had enough and climbed the flagpole to cut it down, Nikki said that the flag would come down -- HOWEVER: it would be put in a "place of honor" on the grounds of the Capitol.
Your last sentence was right on point!! The Democrats have to start NOW doing heavy promotion of all the good that the Biden Administration has done. And to show the hypocrisy of the republican party and its candidates. Consistently promote Biden and bash republicans--from now until November--in all media outlets, not just MSNBC and the like. But on ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, TNT, movie channels, etc., in Super Bowl ads, And in swing states!! Advertising on MSNBC and maybe CNN and in states like MA, is preaching to the choir. Just like the republican thinking is repeat lies often and people will believe them. Well, maybe if the Democrats tell the truth about Biden's accomplishments often, maybe people will realize how good his presidency has been and not accept the lies.
Unfortunately, Kamala is as despicable as Haley and just as ambitious.
O rly?
Do tell the rest of the class what makes VP Harris so despicable. Be prepared to show your work.
Well, for starters, she is more than willing to sacrifice the public policy aspirations of working people for that of political expediency as a means of enhancing her political career. See her advocacy for Medicare for All during the early stages of her 2020 campaign: strong endorsement, then tepid support, finally opposition based on the gutless rationalization of pragmatic incrementalism and ‘realism’. Think Hillary Clinton 2.0.
One more time. The political parties of our duopoly are not the same, except when they are. And when they are, for instance, in terms of corporate fealty, pandering to their respective bases, ignoring democratic principles (have you been keeping up with Democratic Party efforts to keep third party candidates off the ballot?), and acquiescing to the political constraints of an utterly corrupted political system, they are both, yes, despicable.
Tom, as a favor to me, and perhaps others, could you list the reasons you will be voting for Trump. Thank you. Your answer will help me to better understand your thinking.
For what it's worth, I will tell you why I will vote for the Democratic candidate. I subscribe to the theory of government enunciated by Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor responsible for the New Deal programs:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
Good grief. Why is it that liberals are so quick to respond to Democratic Party critique by assuming that the critic will be voting for Trump? It’s as absurd as responding to critique of the U.S. role in the proxy war in Ukraine by assuming the critic is a supporter of Putin.
One more time. I despise Trump, and did long before he ever entered the political arena. I would never vote for him, just like I’ve never voted for any other GOP candidate. As to why people would vote for him, I can completely understand that. He has tapped in to two populist threads, and despite not caring about either, he has used them to augment the racist, Christian (fascist) Nationalist majority of his base. The first issue is the continuing war on the middle class and working people by the political establishments of both parties. The second is the power wielded by intelligence agencies and America’s continuing proclivity of involvement in endless war.
Admire Frances Perkins. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has abandoned the tenets of her theory, since Reagan, in favor of fealty to monied interest donors, the people be damned. It sat on the laurels of association with the New Deal, and instead of aggressively pursuing FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, adopted a strategic defensive posture to increasing GOP advances by courting Wall Street and Silicon Valley to win elections, and again, the people be damned.
I will be voting for a third party candidate for POTUS, as neither party in our current duopoly is worthy of my vote, imo. Both place donor interests ahead of working people, neither support a single-payer health care system, both support endless war, and both, currently, are complicit in the most horrific genocide of my lifetime.
Your last paragraph is totally true, Tom, but voting for a third party candidate gives you a sense of honor and defiance. You are also wasting a vote and a vote in the next election is a precious thing. Please reconsider and choose the lesser of your 2 evils.
…perfection is the enemy of the good…
A third party candidate in 2016 gave the election to the despicable. That was Jill Stein, and she's on her ego-trip again to try to ruin this country. (I don't disagree with many f her positions. But she should not be a third party candidate.) Also, and I know there were other elections as well in the past, the 2000 election went to Bush because of Nader's third party candidacy. So, if you must, hold your nose, but vote for democracy and the Democratic candidate. Do you really want to see this country fall under a narcissistic autocrat who doesn't care about the Constitution and will ruin everything our founding fathers (and most of the readers here) wanted? Look at the reality of the situation. For better or worse, as of now, we're a two-party country. One of the two candidates will win. A third party has no chance of winning--only subverting the process. So, keep voicing your opinions on issues that are important to you, but vote sensibly. Help save our country!
Well said.
Neither party deserves to win in my opinion. Two parties owned by money! This is Democracy?
Bears repeating! Amen for mentioning Richard.
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
I agree our political
Parties have flaws but the Republicans emphasis on making the country great by saving white supremacy, ignoring climate change, controlling women and in general oppressing people who they deem different means there are not “fine people on both sides”.
No argument the GOP is worse. But that’s a mighty low bar.
Race - The Democratic Party refuses to support a commission to even study reparations much less support the concept itself. It reneged on a promise to retire student debt for HBCU grads.
Climate - The Dems refuse to support the ‘leave it in the ground’ strategy, coupled with the renewables moon shot agenda necessary to seriously address the issue.
Women - Which party was it in ‘08-10 that controlled Congress and the White House and refused to legislatively codify Roe when it had the chance?
If the advocates of the Democratic Party would put half the energy they use demonizing the GOP and its supporters into pressuring their own elected officials to do the right thing for working people and the poor instead of bending over to corporate donors, we might put an end to the election ratchet effect that ensures governmental dysfunction.
Sorry but the racism and violence that Republicans proudly promote trump (pun intended) the Democrats' reticence to deal with racism. Racism goes way beyond student debt and reparations. It's an everyday existential threat to people of color-especially Black folks who've had to endure the impact of America's choice to practice racism for centuries.
Once again, imho there are not fine people on both sides.
I do agree with a lot of what you say and have been holding my nose for over decades and vote blue but ...................... I still will. I voted for Nader in 2000 and even held an event to promote him. I don't regret my vote for him out here in Oregon as the repugs were bound and determined to get GWB in there with the help of Florida politicians and brotherly corruption.
Brava!
I take it “ambitious” is a slur when applied to women. Your misogyny is glaring.
Lordy, is there another Kamala around. I haven’t met her? But misogynists abound
You evidently don't like Indian women.
Huh? You do realize they Kamala and Nikki are both "Indian" women.
Were you not aware?
They are both American women who are of Indian descent. Also, both are intelligent and accomplished and ambitious and politically shrewd and have very good smiles. It's been decades since I was referred to as an Irishman.
Why do you think I made that remark? N.B. Please don't answer, unless you want to have a sensible non-aggressive discussion.
I don't want to speculate. Kamala's mother is of Indian descent and her father is Jamaican. Both of her parents are highly educated her father being a professor of economics at Stanford.
Both of Nikki's parents are Indian.
With that in mind, I was just wondering what you were implying with your comment? I have worked for and with over 300 Indians since 1995. One of my best friends when I lived in CA was from India and he was an electrical engineer who worked for Intel. The Indians I worked with in the 1990's had good technical skills, but most of them were hard to understand and weren't very familiar with American customs, culture and even holidays. That has certainly changed over the years. It's rare that I have trouble understanding any of the Indians I work with, even if they have never been to the US. The Indian consulting firms make a point of having their consultants only speak English which is a really good thing since my attempts at Hindi, well, they suck.
One of the young Indian consultants attempted to teach me some Hindi phrases. I was so bad at it that he and the other Indians laughed uncontrollably.
Anyway, so why did you make your remark?
Agree 100%. Democrats have been soft on rebuttal and counter offensives since '16. Pisses me off intensively, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
F**kin’ A to “Now Dammit Democrats, use them!!!!”
HCR - Now, that's a letter!!!
Christine, you are so right. HCR delivers the most compelling and logical indictment of the GOP I’ve read. I pictured Haley unwittingly driving a stake through the diseased heart of what’s become a monster. Let it come to pass.
Haley was the governor of South Carolina the first state to "dissolve" its relation with the Union.
South Carolina's 1860 Succession Proclamation is appaling actually referring to itself as a "nation". The anti- human rebel yell was quickly followed by the succession of 11 slave holding states seeking to expand their "property" to new Territories.
Haley's effort to pitch the Civil War as some sort of dispute over federalism is dogma to the "unreconstructed" racist mind heralding the final death throws of the R party now a scarlet letter.
The gentleman who asked Haley the question replied to Haley, "I got my answer." Indeed.
Haley, who is not a white male, is just as endangered in a “Christian nationalist” administration as other POCs.
She’s not that dense, she’s a coward...He got his answer alright..
Watch her body language during the incident. Haley immediately turned vaesy from the question why she formulated a response. Haley was well aware the she dodged the question .
Sort of a slalom around the Rocky Mountains. A "snow" job.
Clever comment!
Her words indicate that yes, she is that dense. She's got good teeth.
For lying though?
Through, in, eating hamberders, yeh. Tfg uses his the same way, all the time. When he's not using the Churchillian scowl.
Putin and MBS probably sent her PACS big checks after.
And Heather is merely reporting the historical facts, not engaging in fiery rhetoric to make her point.
A letter who's words contain and are driven by the force and power of the truth.
Todays LFAA needs to shared with as many people as possible. At the very least we need to share it with every person that each and every one of us knows.
It was very well written.
I agree with you, Christine—what a letter!!!
HCR, this is one of your best-ever letters.
Maybe it is time for you to make the rounds on the Sunday political "shows."
It is also time for this view of history to be seen on the editorial pages of The NY Times, LAT, WaPo and in state newspapers from around the country.
ABSOLUTELY! WOW!!!
Why is anyone surprised by Haley's answer? Aside from her own history of ambiguous answers and stealth support for the Confederacy, she's now a token figurehead of a party based on lies, bigotry, deference to major funders and foreign powers, and embrace of authoritarianism. No way was she going to jeopardize her current prominence. As if MAGA people would actually vote for a smart woman with dark skin! Ha!
LaurieOregon, don’t forget that she opposed removing the confederate flag from the statehouse until after a white supremacist massacred Black worshipers at a Charleston church.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/nikki-haley-myth-undercut-confederacy.html
It seems quite simple. The southern states of the civil war era have become the republicans of today. As far as Haley it was simply a 'DUH' moment which she can spend the rest of her life trying to live down.
My sister and brother-in-law moved to SC some years ago. My guess is that although they won’t vote for Trump, as long as it’s racism clothed in Christianity, they’ll be ok with any Republicans.
Virginia,
It is not odd that so many Protestant Christian's are now so poorly read in the key teachings of Christ that they are willing to support a guy (Trump) who was arrested for beating his wife in the early 1990's, a guy who raped a woman in a department store, a guy who has been divorced (many) times, a guy who openly makes fun of charity, forgiveness, kindness, valuing difference, and who openly only thinks and talks about himself.
I spent age 11 to age 18 in a Protestant Baptist Church (the SBC version) in East Texas and I can tell you that the hints of Trump were there back then.
THE most common event in a Baptist Church is:
1. The guy that some all male group of members who run the church selected as the "Preacher" gets caught with one of the all male member's wives, usually naked and in bed.
2. The guy whose wife was caught leaves the church and start another Baptist Church with his money. About half the church follows him.
3. One half of the church starts to hate on the members who left and that continues until everyone is dead.
4. Both churches continue to demonize anyone different from them from the pulpit on Sunday morning and preach a gospel of hypocrisy.
5. People like me, who, by age 16 had actually quietly read all of the gospels carefully and, sometimes sadly, internalized those "radical" messages of forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance........ LEAVE the Baptist Church.
6. The Baptist Church labels people like me as Christian "Deconstructionists". It is not that I have read the scriptures and understand that Baptists are WAY OUT IN WEEDS of Christianity and that many preachers have never read the New Testament or the Old Testament. Nope. It is that I am "astray" and "lost".
7. Preachers give looong, boring talks on the people like me who are astray and how we are "LOST" from the "FLOCK" of those who know that selfish white men should be in charge of (everything) and guys like me, well, we are a goin' t' HALE.
So, in such a mess of a culture it is easy to see how Trump, who is not much different than many SBC preachers, has been fully embraced by a bunch of white people who care more about their status, their money and their "Positiion" than they care about a "Democracy" the enables HEATHEN like me to have the same rights they do.
Because, God knows I do NOT deserve any rights at all that they don't grant me.
Damn, you’ve been there. My Baptist friend could verify all your points. I went with her as a teen and the big question was which group to support and which to hate. Sorry, but Baptist has always seemed like a dirty word to me.
I know! I know I shouldn't, but I shut down at the mention of Baptist.
Me too, such self-righteous blather, opposite of Jesus if you ask me. Methodists were better before Karl Rove made all churches arms of the Repub party in 2004.
Well put. In the words of Emma Watson, "F*** the patriarchy."
And "F" the white faux-Christian nationalists.
Yes! I was in Ohio for Christmas and it made my skin crawl, being a northeast liberal, I couldn’t get out fast enough. My sister lives there..(long story no need to get into)....ugh, and I’ve spent enough time in the south to know that’s not for me either.
I lived in the south from 1934-1997 and find Chicago the most racist place I have ever lived. Learned real “colorblindness” from my father and at UNC-CH.
LaurieOregon, it's not about surprise. The fast condemnation of Haley's reprehensible statement was crucial. Can you imagine where we'd be if people did't call her out so massively and quickly that she was forced to "clarify"?
In NH, we have a political tradition called "bird dogging", in which very knowledgeable voters purposely ask candidates difficult questions (I did the same thing myself to a gubernatorial candidate in the late 70s - and got kicked out of the event). Haley was not being singled out, we do this to everyone. It's part of running for office here :)
Yay for New Hampshire!
Why can't MSM do these call outs everyday!
$$$$$$s perhaps.
The worst failure of MSM is calling out the lies, misinformation, etc., when they interview people in a live setting.
Will Rupert note the condemnation, now that would be a surprise
Agreed. Haley got caught impersonating a cable company customer service rep. Sophistry and bullshit are the tools of her trade.
Haley has always been a shape shifting lizard. For her, it's always about ambition and strategy. Now her naked ambition has been revealed for what it is. And it is not pretty.
Another one bites the dust. ..
Was it yesterday she said that she would pardon Donald Trump? And a few weeks ago she said she would sign a 6 week abortion ban if it passed Congress.
Why would anyone vote for her?
Oy. My hope was that she might grab the GQP nomination and Trump would run as an independent or "MAGA" party candidate - splitting the vote. But she may have just crushed my dream/fantasy. Now she is competing to be the most horrible - a competition she can't win.
I don’t think anyone is surprised!
Yep, she is a little delusional on that
"....She rejected the long and once grand history of the Republican Party and announced its death to the world. " this gave me chills. And i will go to sleep tonight praying it to be true. wow....just wow.
She doesn't want an 80 yr old insurrectionist sitting in jail." Where does it say age is a defense to treason?
Its just typical REPUBLICAN'TS logic. They say Joe is too old to be president but DJT is too old to go to jail. They won't vote for any of Joe's popular accomplishments but want to take credit for all the bills they voted against. The Republican party of old is dead.
And I say Good Riddance. Ike was the last with character. Every one since then has been an insult to the Constitution, and an impediment to progress.
Well, being a Republican maybe?
An 84-year-old nun was handed a 35-month jail term on Tuesday for breaking into a US nuclear weapons plant and daubing it with biblical references and human blood. Sister Megan Rice was sentenced alongside two co-defendants, Greg Boertje-Obed, 58, and Michael Walli, 64, who both received 62-month terms.
(...)
All three defendants were convicted of sabotage after the 2012 break-in, on charges that carried a maximum sentence of up to 30 years. The government had asked for the trio to be given prison sentences of between five and nine years.
(...)
On 28 July 2012, the three activists cut through three fences before reaching a $548m storage bunker. They hung banners, strung up crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of the fortress-like storage facility for uranium material, inside the most secure part of complex. They painted messages such as "The fruit of justice is peace" and splashed small bottles of human blood on the bunker wall.
Although the protesters set off alarms, they were able to spend more than two hours inside the restricted area before they were caught. When security finally arrived, guards found the three activists singing and offering to break bread with them. The protesters reportedly also offered to share a Bible, candles and white roses with the guards.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/19/nun-jailed-break-in-nuclear-plant
My quiet, mild-mannered uncle, David Corcoran, now 89 and a former Catholic priest, was a committed peace activist throughout most of his life. He and his wife Barbara (often with their 3 adopted children) participated in numerous protests in the US against government and corporate policies that supported violence. Dave also traveled to Central America and to Palestine to help and act as an observor of human rights abuses. Twice in the late 1990's, he breached the boundaries of Fort Benning, GA, where the infamous School of the America's was training future Central American soldiers and dictators. He served two six-month prison terms when he was near 70. Recently I reassured him that there are thousands of people today continuing the efforts of his generation's activists to bring peace and justice and equality to ALL people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation
Yep, that story sounded familiar so I looked at the article—it happened in Oak Ridge, TN, next door to me. The OR facility isn’t a nuclear plant in the generating-electricity sense; rather it used to produce warheads and is where Russian nuclear stuff was taken at the end of the (original) Cold War. I remember the incident, especially the two hours spent inside the facility. Some protection, huh?
Acts of civil disobedience invite a penalty, but the penalty must recognize intent and actual harm. That's only just. The aim of justice must always be to minimize harm to ALL people, or it isn't justice. A genuinely free and just society is going to be very cautious about penalizing protest. Obviously you can't have people trespassing restricted facilities willy nilly, but in most cases minimal harm is done. An important difference between protest and bad guys is that protesters make an effort to be noticed.
The circumstances of protest in the Guardian article are such that the Government was shown to be negligent. If these protestors were terrorists with backpacks full of high explosives it could have been real trouble. I think that embarrassment is part of while they were so inflamed. The use of the entrusted powers of governance to shift blame or cover up incompetence is classic corruption.
And yes, the protestors messed up too. I don't see the point in symbolically damaging the building, but weapons of war are murder weapons that kill many more than "the bad guys" and while I am yet to be convinced we can get away without them entirely, a just society is honest with itself about what any war entails.
Yet where are the people of the Lincoln Project? Haven’t seen Steve Schmidt in months. We need to have them with us, then reforming in every sense, the Republican Party minus the money is all part.
Steve Schmidt thinks Biden is too old & has convinced Dean Phillips to run against Biden. He’s lost a bunch of Substack subscribers over his stance on deriding Biden.
The Lincoln Project had a re-organization but is still putting out videos about TFG.
Rick Wilson has a Substack and a podcast.
I see Lincoln Project ads all the time on Threads. I dumped Schmidt's substack over his Biden stance (he's also no longer with the Lincoln Project)
I was never a paying subscriber, but dumped him anyway. I knew he was no longer at LP.
Great piece in Daily Beast by Matt Lewis (a Repub with whom I almost never agree):
https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-schmidt-was-always-a-hack
Rick Wilson agreed that Matt is 100% right about Steve Schmidt!
All about the grift. Lot of money to be had for the never Trump GOP crowd.
All about maintaining a facade of being ‘reasonable’.
He had some great NW native art tho
Reed Galen has a podcast too; it’s very good.
I see Rick Wilson fairly regularly on MSNBC. Sorry about Steve Schmidt’s lack of judgment. He should be reminded of Konrad Adenauer, “Der Alte.”
I have Virginia; he writes a substack column (if it's the same guy) called "The Warning". Have a look and let me know if that's they guy you reference. He last wrote on 12/29.
https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/the-buck-stops-here
Thank you. I will check that out. Undoubtedly it’s the same guy and you’re all explaining why he hadn’t been on MSNBC lately.
MSNBC cycles through most of their guests I noticed. I miss Phil Rucker and Ashley Parker. Phil is now the national editor for WAPO, but I'm not sure where Ashley's been. There are many others that you don't see any more.
I think I’ve seen both fairly recently on MSNBC. As an “addict” I watch that channel daily. It’s simply the best for someone who wants the details and is highly critical since 2015 when I started really watching TV news post Walter Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley, etc.
He signed on to third party cretin. Lost his mind
Rick Wilson/Lincoln Project
“ The miracles in politics are the ones we make. They come from work planning, preparation, organization, and focus.” ⬇️
https://therickwilson.substack.com/p/ten-rules-for-2024
He also explains LP’s newest “ stinky” Trump ad. ⬇️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-4M85B3HNg
The Lincoln Project was timely, led by George Conway, who has joined with former federal court of appeals judge Luttig to bring conservative lawyers together as a counterweight to the Republic-destabilizing efforts of the financially super-endowed Federalist Society. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/21/anti-trump-conservative-lawyers
Here’s where he is now:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/steve-schmidt-advising-dean-phillips-1234864257/amp/
We haven’t seen him because he’s, IMHO, gone off the rails.
Sorry to say because he had been a righteous indignant against tfg--now he’s delusional supporting someone like Dean Phillips against Joe Biden.
I’ve been seeing other Lincoln Project members in his place on MSNBC: I spend way too much time watching it--mostly on with the captions on and the sound muted until I see something important (not the rehashed crap on tfg--nauseating 🤬).
Virginia, the LP is very active and working hard to preserve democracy. Schmidt broke with them after the scandal of the sexual abuser in their midst broke. Schmidt is now advising Dean Phillips, who is running against Biden.
I am horrified at anyone who hopes to preserve American democracy by running against the most experienced democrat and Democrat we have, namely President Biden.
And tell me one Bill or speech he has made while in Congress. Leader of the free world? Many of us in Minnesota thought he was a shallow, pampered, arrogant man-child
Steve Schmidt is active on SubStack, to which I subscribe, and posts strong stuff several times a week on youtube. He is strongly engaged.
I receives their emails almost daily. I give them a small donation a couple of times a year and the emails never stop.
Thanks goodness for their anti-Trump efforts in 2020. Steve Schmidt claims their goal is to turn 3% of the voters for a candidate and that's enough to win.
I believe it was Rick Wilson not Steve Schmidt.
Haley effectively squashed her chances of winning anything in the government and I am here for that. The questioner was accused by the R Party of being a Democratic plant. That’s hilarious because the question posed to Haley was an honest one and if you saw her paused reply, you will have noticed her pure panic. She was not happy. I was, however, laughing at her. You know, the funny thing is that she fails at admitting she is a woman of color. She could’ve saved herself but she blew it. I am so glad.
I heard one reporter note the question is on the naturalization / citizenship exam.
Sure would love to make every person in Congress (and the Supreme Court) take the citizenship test. (Tuberville might only earn credit for being able to sign his name. He is grievously uninformed.)
If I remember correctly, Tuberville could not even name the 3 branches of government.
Or was that Rick Perry?
Thanks, Beverly ! #74 While it also lists economic/states’ rights as possible answers, slavery is #1.
I was an ESL tutor for many years and helped several pass the citizenship test.Yes, Tuberville would have flunked with the flying colors of the Confederate flag.
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions-and-answers/100q.pdf
Her failure to have a moral center makes her unfit for office or any leadership role.
Moral center, is there one anywhere anymore?
I think there are many in Congress and the executive with moral centers. Unfortunately not many are Republicans.
Yes, but most don’t have the screaming bull horn that the moral midgets have. I used to think that Dems should steer clear of Fox (due to the joke of fair and balanced with Hannity and Colmes), but a real opposition view would have been nice. Colmes blew it, which was Rupert’s plan I would venture. Put Raskin or Schiff there and give balanced half a chance.
Marlene, you have made an essential point, '...she fails at admitting she is a woman of color.' Or -- fails to admit it to herself? What about another contender, Vivek Ramaswamy? I don't listen to all the candidates’ blather, but where has he placed himself on the tug of war concerning equal rights?
DENIAL!
What Republican candidate wants to be a person of color in the United States of America? Who isn't aware that it is dangerous to be a person of color, a homosexual, transgender, autistic, mentally ill, physically handicapped, a woman, Muslim, Asian, Hispanic, Jew… At the very least, you’ll be discriminated against one way or another if you are living in the USA.
A denial of your very essence, a requirement for Repub acceptance.
You might as well add ‘old’ to that list.
You just did. Thank you, C Martin.
It really does make me wonder how any of these non* RepubliKans think they fit. The "Gay RepubliKans" are the ones that really boggle my mind, but then, that's the row I sit in.
And also people of color. Color me boggled on both counts.
I love you, Fern
Dear Kim, I am as grateful and appreciative as I can be at seeing you now. It is a time of tenderness and concern. Thank you for being a friend and beautiful soul. To a healthy year of discovery, sisterhood and fellowship, with love.
I have already made a comment in this vein. NH has a political tradition called "bird dogging", in which well informed voters purposely ask difficult questions of candidates. It's been going on as long as I can remember. This is what happened to Haley. That she wasn't prepared for it says almost as much about her and her team as her revisionist-history-laden answer.
That seems like a very wise tradition considering the gravity of choosing to trust both the competence and character of politicians, traditionally not necessarily the most trustworthy bunch. The only half intelligent thing I can recall Reagan saying was "Trust, but verify". That's what science professionals do when they talk about degrees of confidence; evidence-backed of course. And the higher the rank the more it merits the hardest of questions. Truman declared that those who don't like the heat should stay out of the kitchen. Perhaps we need a national "Bird-dogging" day, or even a "Bird-dogging Century."
And let's be honest. Screw all the innuendo.
"Question everything." - Euripides:
I am reading “Differ, We Must” and I had not previously heard Nikki Haley’s comments. I cannot imagine how aggrieved Lincoln would feel were he to hear his political progeny speaking like Nikki Haley. Thank you for, as always, the clarity with which you put events in context.
Nikki Haley is NOT Lincoln's political progeny. The Republicans of today are just southern Democrats of the past. Remember the parties totally flipped, courtesy of the Southern strategy.
Thanks also to focused social protest and the increasing choice of conscience over convenience for non-Dixie democrats. Democrats coughed up the marriage-of-convenience devil's bargain, and the former "Party of Lincoln" swallowed it whole. And from the deepest sub-basement of "Hell" still comes the all-consuming "love" of money and power, that always, to some degree, affects all politcal parties around the world, and renders life hell on earth for so many.
Great read.
"Everything trump touches dies" is as true as ever. The question now is whether our nation can survive the taint of his touch during his time in office. Much as I would love to see the entire nation follow the lead of Colorado and Maine, I believe the answer to that question lies in the results of the 2024 election. We either crush the MAGA movement at the polls or we cease to exist as a free and democratic nation.
He was rejected in 2020, people forget that.
How true that is Cathy; that quote about everything he touches dies. Peculiar twist to that is that all those things he touches, dies alone.
Except sadly there may still be enough of the uninformed as well as “old money” Repubs who think their money is safer with a TFG than with a “socialist” Dem to put him back in the White House. (& don’t forget Repub efforts at purging voter rolls, focusing on Electoral College votes, & corporate media preferences for a Repub in any guise.)
Biden will win the popular vote, but will he win the EC?
The cheating has been monumental, the deck is stacked. Will anybody care
Lots of us care! Are the people in a position to DO something willing & able? As you say, the deck is stacked.
Action plus caring still needed. More than ever…
Excellent summary. The rise and now demise of the Republican Party. What will replace it? That’s the essential question.
It has morphed into the party of death of everything that any decent person holds dear. I hadn't thought about Haley's reticence on slavery as the cause of the Civil War as announcing the death of the R party, but it underlines how far the party has fallen and so make complete sense.
This faction has been there all along. It was smaller then, under cover, not so direct. Back when shame, ridicule, logic worked. The good days when Sarah Palin was the butt of every joke that had the whole country laughing, and genuinely hard.
Maybe, maybe the Republic Party will be replaced by the Conservative Democrats vs the Liberal Democrats'? Or am I just dreaming......?
The eagle cannot fly with just one wing. The eagle needs two - a left wing and a right wing, to fly.
TC, as I have posted here in the past, I think of our democracy/politics as a spinning top…..it spins, mostly centered, but wobbles a bit to the right & left. If it wobbles TOO far in one direction or the other it will topple. I guess what I am saying is that it appears that leaning too far left or right leaves out the majority…tho the ideas of the “edges” should be considered and pursued if beneficial to the overall “central wobble” landscape. Sometimes change and progress is hard fought & necessitates us working together (maybe, now, an old school idea…sigh).
A very good analysis, Barbara.
Any active system that is sustainable involves balance. Really life, the universe and everything is dynamic but the time scales can be too slow to notice (unless you are scientific and obsessed). The Big Bang may trend toward a fizzle, but in the mean time a whole lot of interesting stuff is going on. We kind of live on a wobbling top in more ways than one, and Climate is calling for balance as never before in our history. We have been called the "Goldilocks" Planet because so, so much here is Jusssssst right (or we simply would not be).
The Oracle at Delphi advised "Know Thyself" and "Nothing in Excess", which seems wise enough advice to this day. I don't take that to mean "keep it bland", nor always to sit on the fence, but to consistently put out as much as it takes, with an eye to extended outcomes. We do based on what we "think", but nature doesn't give a damn what we think, and will always do what it does anyway. What we do can matter, and that's something to think about.
Really listening to ourselves, to each other, and to what Nature "tells" us about our circumstances, and reporting and acting in the best faith we can manage, seems to me like the best long term policy.
Yeah, JL, the process of creation and entropy on scales (almost…maybe mostly) beyond our ken. Our species is fascinating…intelligent, inquisitive, adventurous, creative and imaginative…..and greedy, cruel and destructive, and we’ve managed to do quite a bit to despoil this “pale blue dot”. Somehow I doubt those who have been in space and viewed our home in its place in our solar system come back and exclaim “drill baby drill!”. We have come to comprehend some of the mysteries of the cosmos, looking outward into deep space (the images/info from the James Webb scope are amazing) and down to the micro level of genes and particles. And yet….sigh…. We think about how we might communicate with “aliens” and yet don’t seem to give the same effort to our fellow species, some which are quite intelligent. Recently I read something about the brain size of dolphins/porpoises & the size of their prefrontal cortex & it made me think that the way they look at us—following along with boats and surfacing, perhaps in an effort to communicate (?), kinda twinkly-eyed and grins….that they know something about living and just “being” in this world & they are laughing at our foolishness & wasted potential. And that we humans, a lot of us anyway, have forgotten the concept of “enough” and of “the commons”, something we all (or most) benefit from and (should) contribute to. I have written here several time that the only reason I’d want to live forever is to know how it all turns out. There is supposed to be another 5 billion years to evolve new species/ecosystems before our sun does the red giant thing & earth is basically toast….so seems we are about 1/2 way our time before we are recycled into, er, something else.
"I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
'a great and common tenderness,'
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it. "
From "Testimony" - Rebecca Baggett
Girlfriend I love your analogy...we could be best friends. I just don't get those who think they are the adults in the room and remain silent. Thanks for your thoughts.
I was in Denmark the day before their legislative elections in 2022. At that time they had 14 different political parties. I won't even try to explain how the parties come and go (partly because I don't remember), but if a party doesn't get enough candidates elected they are decertified.
Is two the right number or is 14? I have no idea, except that the Republicans are all over the spectrum from moderate to far-right. Unfortunately, too many of them are Fascists and lean far to the right.
Gary, I would like to see our party system & electoral process updated. Something like ranked choice voting could allow for expanding the number of parties; some states apparently have had success with it, especially (as I understand it) in their primaries. Both the Dems and the Repubs have within them a conservative-moderate-radical spectrum…almost parties within parties. What I don’t like, at all, is how a candidate can win the popular vote by millions and still not secure the win…seems basically unfair. Oh, and while I’m at it, gerrymandering should not be allowed by any party….another basically unfair process.
So much fuss about "voter fraud". Well yes, real voter fraud, not just some lady voting mistakenly voting when she could not (and being told she could) but a provable, deliberate attempt to steal or deprive votes is a serious crime involving, as far as I'm concerned, a human right. Gerrymandering is every inch exactly such a crime and should never be tolerated. No doubt even a statistically perfect map would raise controversy, but the math's not so convoluted that that there is no way to prove a map is way out of whack. How can you possibly have liberty and justice for all without fair and free elections?
On that score, the "Electoral College" has proved itself a big bug in the system. The president/VP is the one elected office for which all voters are constituents. It's nut's to let some votes be "more equal" than others.
nope....it's still two wings. One is Liberal and the other is Conservative.
That's what I said. I mean "left" and "right" wing as the appendages extending from the shoulders.
Ironically, TC, Florida has one of the highest density of breeding Bald Eagles in the lower 48 ( only Alaska and Minn have more)...thanks in great part to two Federal laws - Bald Eagle Protection Act, 1940 and June 1972, EPA Ban on use of DDT.
Oh, oh, Ron!! Federal interference!!.
Cannot have that. Get those birds " Florida Free"-- spread that DDT, if a few fledglings get shot, too bad, at least they won't be exposed to all the nasty books and our guys with guns don't have to worry about being politically correct!
I lived close to the intercostal in FL. The bald eagles would land on the fairways where I golfed. I wouldn't go near them. They are huge.
Last winter we had a Russian eagle stay for a while around Acadia National Park. It dwarfed the Bald Eagles. https://maineaudubon.org/news/rba-stse-2023/
I heard that it preyed on them as well. A bald eagle killed some osprey chicks that were in a nest that Versant Power set up that had a 24/7 camera here in Hancock County, ME.
Our county is not a very safe place for Osprey with all of the bald eagles around.
But are they really conservative? Are hate and cruelty and being devoid of any ideology conservative? I wonder.
To me "conservative" is a misnomer. In most uses the word "conservative" would mean hedged, balanced, middle of the road, as in a "conservative estimate. Resource conservation is conservative. Laying and rehearsing contingency plans, such as for a major pandemic, is conservative. Measures to moderate greenhouse gasses would be conservative. Really nothing about modern political "Conservatives" seems conservative, except that they seem to peddle an imagined past as somehow more perfect than our present; and yet, they are highly selective and inconsistent about it; they are not even consistent in what they themselves claim to be legitimate. They pretty much reflexively lie to justify whatever it is they desire to do.
I think we can learn a great deal from the past, both in terms of which patterns of behavior ordinarily do and don't work, and why. Yet we only live in this moment, and what is useful to memory is only useful to the extent we recognize, accurately, learned patterns emerging in the past applied to now, and project them accurately into the future. We the living, are those who get to and must decide.
And the future is always evolving, always one step further down the road from whose bourn no traveler returns; immune from either piety or wit. We can often affect and anticipate the future, but never exert more than local and then only partial control of it; and I trust that it will continue to pack surprises. We have the opportunity to make our best-guessed decisions now.
Thank you J L. Well put.
When you say "imagined past", it reminds me of someone telling a story. The listeners visualize the stories. When Trump speaks he speaks cruelty and hate and his stories often suggest violence to others. He isn't specific about how they should respond. It seems like a few of them make threats to the subjects of his stories and once in a while actually commit violence like in January 6th.
That would be a real improvement, IMO.
Let’s dream big, as long as we’re dreaming. How about let’s have the Capitalist Party vs. the Socialist Party?
People lose their lunch as soon as you mention 'Socialist'. Not that I voted for Bernie, but I think he had some really good ideas.
You, and every other Clinton/Biden voter, should have voted for Bernie.
He was no messiah, but he, at least, understood there is no politics but class politics. Until Democratic voters start thinking like that, they will continue to lose to extremist, authoritarian Republicans in elections they…. have…. no…. business…. losing.
People lose their lunch as soon as you mention ‘Socialist’ because gutless Democrats run away from the word with their tails between their legs, instead of providing, and touting, examples of socialistic policy (schools, parks, libraries, transportation infrastructure, police/fire, food safety, etc.) that benefit all of us.
God how I wish Democratic voters could have had the courage to give Bernie the nomination in ‘16, and we could have actually, finally, had a contest to decide between the FDR and Reagan visions of America, to put neoliberalism on trial. But no.
How’d that playing it safe work out?
Fascism
The White Christo-Fascist Party?
Maybe the white faux-Christian Fascist party? Christ would roll over in his tomb or wherever he went after he rose from the dead to see us call these people Christians.
how about the reformed Republican Party? RRP
Damn, that would be some reformation
There are some strong R out there who could lead the charge. R like Romney if true to his LDS beliefs, how can he support the current "other" posturing? Mormon Women for ethical government have a very strong voice & well written pieces. ( I am not LDS).
I will not hold my breath waiting for Mitt to stand up strong. He caves when it counts, sad to say
Maybe the RINOs could herd up & stampede the MAGAs
If not him, there are others & perhaps together they will have the sand
Dems would appeal to Lincoln, definitely as opposed to any Repub in our midst. Dems today revere him and his message. Repubs have gone 180…
We don't talk enough about how to heal. We have to run to put out fires but also move to reduce hazards and arson. Even if enough "Republicans" are purged from public office, we still have the massive culture war they promoted to deal with. We have a cult of lies to unravel, including big lies left over from the Civil War we are now discussing. Lies serve no one, except tyrants and crooks. Honesty serves love.
A house divided against itself, cannot stand. We can differ and expect to quarrel, but without some "good enough" agreement on what is an "unalienable right" and what is negotiable that is universally applied, we risk slipping into tyranny, a tyranny of the majority if nothing else. I believe a lot the anger that comes of the suffering of many Trump supporters is justified, but massively and very deliberately misdirected.
Follow the money.
I think that you err, Heather, in attributing the death of the Republican party to Nikki Haley. I think that the Republican party of people like Liz Cheney, most of whose policies and positions I disagree with, but whose loyalty to our Constitution and our democracy I share and admire, has been dead for quite a while since it transformed itself from a political party, a group of people brought together by a set of shared ideas and values, into a cult, a group of people brought together by a shared reverence for a charismatic leader. The unwillingness or inability for three of the so-called Republican aspirants to the presidency to criticize the leading candidate did not start with Nikki Haley's omission of slavery as the cause of the Civil War. It has been building for much longer than that. Let's not give her credit that she doesn't deserve.
HRC is not giving Haley credit for killing the Republican Party. She's simply saying that the imbecilically stupid Nikki Haley has sounded its death knell. The GOP is killing itself, as you said. May HRC be correct in her assessment. I fear that the demise of the incredibly powerful Republican Party, and its think tank bosses at the Federalist Society, is premature. That said, HRC's letter today is a masterpiece. But consider this: nearly all of the high school and college students in this country are unaware of the contents of Heather's letter. The same can be said of at least half of the electorate. I am not as hopeful as our dear professor.
First thing I thought after reading HRC's post is to forward it to all my nieces and nephews, all who are 43 or younger. Knowing how my siblings and their spouses think and feel, my best strategy is to share with those who are open to hearing/reading this letter, as many of them are conservatively aligned and have taken to heart Fox News. Ugh!! So trying my best to reach out to those who will listen.
I did send it on, even to the true believers. It is a history lesson if they can't get any more than that.
True! Good thought Lynn. Thx.
Same here. And some like to think of themselves as Republicans whether they know what that meant or not.
Funny, a friend posted this today. I’m not sure that the majority of today’s younger generation would have the depths of knowledge to appreciate the satire. The Smothers Brothers final (unaired) show.
https://youtu.be/VbdAVIKtiHY?feature=shared
The think tank bosses are people like Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, etc. The billionaires set up the "think tanks" to give credibility to their greedy, selfish ideas. Let's not forget people like Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who works overtime trying to destroy the country that allowed him to have opportunities.
Exactly.
She is, however, the cherry on top!!
Somehow, I don’t think Liz Cheney would have addressed the question asked of Haley in the same way. This why her Republican colleagues declared her persona non grata.
I'm not so sure of that. Liz exhibited her total ignorance of the institutionalized racism well documented by "The 1619 Project," which I read a year or two ago. The ONLY good thing about Liz Cheney is her respect for the Constitution. Her politics are in the dark ages.
I'm inclined to agree even if I disagree with everything else she stands for.
Nikki Haley made the mistake of saying the quiet part about today’s Republican party out loud. “And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the WHITE people.” She was supposed to just hint at the white supremacy, not blurt it out.
John Ranta, can you give us a link to your source? Every source that I’ve found says “the people”, not “the WHITE people”.
Mary, not sure if you are serious. I of course inserted “white” to make the point that Haley refused to say that the government fought the Civil War to free the slaves, because Republicans think the government is only supposed to work for white people.
John, you made the point, after inserting the word WHITE, that she’d said the quiet part out loud. I think that you’d have objected if anyone on this forum had inserted words in a quote from, say, Biden to make a point. One of the things that I admire is that, here, most of the posters follow HCR’s lead in not only posting exact quotes, but posting links so that readers can decide for themselves how trustworthy the source is. Based on legitimate quotes from Haley, chances are that what you wrote is what she believes.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nikki-haleys-civil-war-comments-no-accident-1234937374/amp/
I was using poetic license to make a point about Haley’s closeted Confederate sympathies. I take your point about accuracy and citing sources. I hoped folks would accept my satirical liberties.
John, I find that putting the satire inside of < > works well.
Not as powerful to use the /s s/. Or necessary, in my opinion. I won’t post here anymore, so as not to run afoul of your sensibilities.
That's my take as well John; she's just so used to dog whistling along with cohorts within their self-affirming echo chamber, it just tumbled out of her mouth. Her ego's a little inflated I'm thinking from pats on the back from Koch's. But whatever, it was delightful watching the stumble.
Her body language was very “loud”.
Indeed Rhonda. Like me, you seem 'attuned' to those nuances; I find that to be a mixed curse / blessing that I have to wrestle with on a too regular basis, so I have to 'test' those signals against logic and facts in evidence - ever aware as I can, that most folks (me included) just love to believe their own bs. I do hope that you and those of good will herein and without, are able to find something uplifting to cherish over the reflective holiday around you and within you. Cheers friend !
Any person or idea supported by the Koch network is VERY BAD for America.
Say Jenn; I have to thank you for all your shares. It occurred to me last night to mention it but I was just too exhausted to read and write anymore. Your comments are such a font of knowledge, experience, etc. I learn something here every time I log on here; a thing I personally cherish. Thanks for going to the bother of sharing; I truly appreciate it; from you and so many others herein. I do so hope they 'know' I feel that way. I happen to be one of those sick bastards that reads e_v_e_r_y single solitary comment and try very hard to respond in one way or another when I'm commented to, and honestly, for more than one reason - but none of them 'dark' in any way or intent. Cheers friend !
Four of the enslaving states that seceding from the United States (South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi) wrote formal documents describing the “immediate causes” for their secession. They are horrifying, yet important to read. All four make absolutely clear that secession was chosen to protect their “rights” and “freedoms” to enslave Blacks forever.
Here are the very first sentences from Mississippi’s “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
Beau of the Fifth Column had an excellent video he and his team published a day ago on his second channel that discussed this as well - there is so very much that was left out of my history education and to hear Beau read those awful passages that I had never been aware of was sobering to yet again witness the evidence of efforts to demean and subjugate an entire race of people.
https://youtu.be/pKc4s2-Ai1Q?si=HKSZevsiu5UH-zF1
I posted that also before I saw your comment.
Beau is EXCELLENT. What is encouraging is that people on the Right watch him as well--at least a few of them.
Thanks for that link.
Feel like I was gut-punched.
Chilling cruelty.
Astounding
There’s extensive documentation about slavery-intentions, impact and debates. It’s fascinating to read the newspapers, congressional speeches and governmental documents from that time.
Reading about the abolitionists’ efforts gives hope…
Tom, these are such chilling and appalling words and sentiments and yet, as primary sources, so directly in the spirit of HCR! They jolt us into awareness of so much which was left out of our education.
Now we see why the oligarchs want to expunge slavery from the history books. They are still enslaving workers and think they can pull the wool over our eyes by saying 'don't worry, good things will trickle down'. The soul of corrruption is lies. And lies are all the Republicans have to offer. Chief Justice John Roberts has declared that racial discrimintion is dead in the United States. I guess that's why so many districts are gerrymandered.
Chilling
Thank you Tom!
This amazing letter needs to be plastered all over every major newspaper in this country!!!!! Again and again, regularly, until we've all voted blue and put Democracy back into office!!! As always, thank you so very much, Heather!!!
To America
James Weldon Johnson 1871 –1938
How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?
This poem is in the public domain.
James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, was a national organizer for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition. (Poets,org)
*
When the Orders Came
Fatimah Asghar
"[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
—Trump’s administrative team, December 7, 2015
they shipped us to the sanctuary camps
& we forgot our other countries.
like good schoolchildren we sung
the anthem loud, so loud
until we could hear nothing else.
not the birds delighting
over their young, or the dogs’ snarl
at our feet, or him on the news
hourly, growling. this is the cost
of looking the other way
when they come for us:
I build safety inside you
& wake in cuffs.
I’m all mouth. every morning
I whisper my country my country my country
& my hands stay empty.
what is land but land? a camp
but a camp? sanctuary
but another grave? I am an architect.
I permission everything
into something new.
I build & build
& someone takes it away.
From If They Come For Us: Poems (One World/ Random House, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Fatimah Asghar. Used with the permission of the poet.
‘Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. She is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (One World/ Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015).’
‘A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Asghar is the Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in January 2021 and is the writer and cocreator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. She lives in Los Angeles.’ (poets.org)
Dear Fern, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you once again. I don't know how you do it but I am ever grateful for THIS!
Tamera, I am grateful to you. So often it is the people who tell it best -- what they are experiencing and tell it from their hearts souls. It is listening to one another that is a great teacher. You listen, Tamera.
Thank you Fern; I have saved your post and will share it, that its soul may find home in others
Thank you, Frederick. It is the souls of people that you listen to. Biden has said that he is fighting for the 'soul' of America. That is what we are looking for and can hear from one another. Salud!
🙏
You've addressed the CORE of our times. Biden is fighting for the soul of America! The soul of our society, and each life. Brava, Sister Fern!
We are in a quandary. I, for one, am enveloping myself in my dad's WWII uniform jacket and going into combat to save our democracy with hand written notes and cards...embellished with original art. I don't have guns, but I have passion and love for this country.
On Valentine’s Day, 1859, Oregon voted to join the United States. In order to do so, they had to accept a number of racist conditions imposed by southern states. It wasn’t difficult, many of the settlers on the first two wagon trains, who received part of the Willamette Valley, some of the richest, most fertile farmland in the world, were from racist areas to the east, or had southern sympathies. In fact, Oregon came within one vote of joining the South during the Civil War. And, for 40 years after the end of the Civil War, black people could legally be whipped out of the state, and were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as white folks. That racism still exists today, in an area NW Oregon, and a city, Portland, Oregon, viewed as bastions of liberalism. Nowadays, it is much more subtle to use gentrification as a quiet tool of racism, rather than fighting the poverty inherent in racism, that so often leads to despair, crime, and addiction. During WWII, many black workers llved in a low lying area near the Columbia River named Vanport, and built Liberty ships. A great many lost their homes to the Great Vanport Flood. The community mainly occupied an area ironically named Albina, after that, and it has been systematically gentrified since then, raising property values and driving many out. The KKK was very active in SW Oregon, post WWII, and decades after, but i have not heard much about that since before 2000. I grew up in NE Oregon, 5th generation, now live in the Willamette Valley Yamhill County, where it lingers quietly. I never met anyone not white until i had graduated from high school, in a graduating class of 12. Thst summer, a contractor was in town, doing masonry work, and a young black man was doing a lot of that work. Although my friends and i all lived 8-13 miles from town, 4 of us were hanging out in the city park, where we and he met each other. It was very exciting for me to meet someone of a different race, and realize we are all the same. My father had told us all that he had a black friend in college, he talked him into going into bsr, and the owner threw him out. My father was so embarrassed and humiliated for convincing his friend to enter into such a horrid situation, that it bothered him for his whole life. He made sure we all knew about it, and I have never forgotten it. Today, our family and friends encompass people of many nationalities, races, and religions. All of us together constantly learn from one another. Stop learning and you begin dying. Today i work in the Oregon Wine industry, where i meet many Southerners, often white and black friends traveling together.
I appreciate reading your short bio, Patrick. Your story of coming to your values, might I say. My family had Black friends in the 1950s-60s while we had no neighbors of color in our suburban life ... I resonate with your experience and try to see "the other as myself," by recognizing the lack of duality in my sensory experiences. So my identification of "Black, Indian, Asian, etc" is my egoistic construct. I feel pain as my mind judges as "different" until I relax into the wisdom of "me-object" as a false construct. IOW, there is no distance between object and my senses, until my mind intervenes. Actually, how distant is that early morning bird call? That person I see? Or the smell of the salmon baking ... In this early morning shroud of darkness is a wonderful time to practice the "silence of a candle" (Paul Winter Consort)
Quite unlike anything I've read on social media, Federick. Resonates with Jung and Rilke, wouldn't you say?
Greetings James, and thank you. My wife practices Jungian counseling, and she teaches on occasions. But the source of my understanding is from the Heart Sutra, and I would encourage one to look to the transcript used by the San Francisco Zen Center
(sfzc.org), from Kaz Tanahashi. It is one page long.
In essence, "emptiness" simply means "empty of self existance" or as the late Thich Nhat Hanh preferred, "interdependence." EVERYTHING is an interdependent gift, and we as a human create dualities ... Our minds and other sense organs create existence (Relative Truth), while truly there is NOTHING independent in the realm of the Universal Truth ... all is created for us, our breath and oxygen, seasons and sensory sensations, ground and gravity, etc and so on.
As the Buddhist monk said when asked, "Who are you?" and he replied, "I don't know." WHAT words point to this life, this moment in its vast entirety?
Then you are familiar with Jung's "coincidentia oppositorum", and what I call Rilke's "intersubjectivity", his need to be his objects in order to know them and be known by them, thus addressing the old debate concerning "das ding an sich". Ah well, back to politics and the awful things afoot. I wish you a safe and happy New Year.
You've pointed to other philosopher's broach to the human condition and while I'm unfamiliar w these specific terms, I 'm intimate with this milieu. Then, a Buddhist may say, in this Universal Truth, I am NOT familiar, as the "I" does not exist. As I type this thought, exactly HOW am I able to actually perform all of these human functions as there is no possible answer, because they are just words, pointing to a vast and indescribable universe of causes and conditions. Until "I" arrive with my delusional thinking, in my own Relative Truth appearance with nothing but objectification, to live each breath with peace and compassion and treat perhaps everything I sense as an intimate ally in this breath. Allies abound, all gorgeous flowers with the ground as far too brown, what have you found?
And with that, "Yes, Happy New Year, James!"
Howdy, neighbor (Willamette Valley, south here). I grew up in Medford, which was (and remains) a horribly racist community. In my 12 years in the Medford School system (1964-1976) I had one Black classmate, for half a school year, in 1975. In Eugene, until about 2005, a street off of W11th was named "Sam R" street, rather than "Sam Reynolds" street. Sam Reynolds, one of the first Black men to live in west Eugene (after being evicted from the north side of the Willamette River when the Ferry Street Bridge was built, kinda like Vanport). Their reason for not naming it "Sam Reynolds" was that it would be too confusing because there was already a "Reynolds" St. This from a city that has multiple double names... sheesh.
Hello, to you. It is interesting about the street name. In the Carolinas, i have no idea of any of the names are of black people, but they often name streets with the person’s first and last names. I really like the Southern Oregon wineries, for 28 years i ran a shop where they were heavily represented. It was all Oregon wines, over a hundred wineries. Now, i work for Sineann winery, right across from Champoeg (sham poo ee) Park, where the statehood vote took place. The area is called French Prairie, as the original settlers were Metis, white, mainly French trappers and farmers with Indian wives, including Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau and his wife, Sacagawea, of the Lewis and Clark expedition