Today’s big story remains the loss of our neighbors to Covid-19. Today, our official death count passed the number of those killed in the 9-11 attacks. On that horrific day in 2001, we lost 2977 people to four terrorist attacks. Today, official reports showed 3,140 deaths from Covid-19, the highest single-day toll so far. Hospitals are overwhelmed, our health care workers exhausted.
The Republican Party knows they are spiraling toward irrelevancy in a (small d) democratic world. They know they will not win a fair, open, honest, un-gerrymandered election.
There is no explanation I can see for their utter, in-your-face disregard for American electoral tradition. The pretense is gone.
I keep telling myself these are the death throes of a dying political dynamic that can no longer stand on its own two feet. The historic tradition of the plantation and the company town, ruled over by a handful of white males, morally endorsed by an all powerful, all-seeing sky-god, are the real "family values" of the modern Republican Party.
I believe if they burn down the house on the way out, we'll build another, better one.
The accumulation, the piling on, the numbers, the numbers aren’t just digits, anonymous digits, pieces of fruit or days in the week or votes given or taken away by some nameless hand – they are you sitting there today, slipping into memory tomorrow. 2,000 a day, 2,500 hundred a day, 3,000 lost children a day because we are all some mother’s child, some father’s child brother sister – a life is not a digit, the pain of loss cannot be atomized with math to some place where the hurting stops.
And the counting feels relentless, a numbing rain of numbers washing me away, and the raging, at masks, at the loss of a beer hall some call freedom – rage in the face of numbers, no longer far away New York City numbers or Italy numbers or China numbers, but my next door neighbor numbers, and I need to rage, I have to rage, at my helplessness, because I can’t admit to it all, can’t surrender to it because I’ve built a wall of denial around myself and now I can’t get out. So, I take a pass on reality, block it, block it, block it. And if I die, who gives a damn, it’s my right. And if you die, well, that’s the price of freedom.
Astonishing. Each new day brings some fresh outrageous behavior and I have to wonder if there will ever actually be an end to it even after 45 is forced out of the White House. I cannot understand the moral void among the Republicans nor the blind cultish allegiance of his supporters. It is exhausting, frustrating and discouraging.
FWIW, I asked my dad, who has some relevant experience with running a large government agency, and he thought that the pick was good, because HHS is a multipart organization, demanding management and political skills more than specialized knowledge.
Running the state AG office in a big state like CA is actually pretty good prep there, to say nothing of his many years in congress.
I read about fear and anger, understandably, in our comments here over what the president, his administration, and the Republican Party are doing to the government and, by extension, the country. Mostly, I am sad. Sad that a great number of Americans are so ignorant that they believe and support the nonsense the president and his team of saboteurs put out. Sadder still that a number of them are in my own family. What these people are doing and thinking is pathetic. Too many failures to remember at too many levels over the past four years. That hopelessness weighs heavy on me.
This is a coup. A slow moving and right there in the open coup. And I can’t even begin to say how we fight this when about 40% the country is just fine with this.
Secession? Civil War?? As soon these idiots realise exactly how much of the USA's economy and GDP are centered in blue states, that should shut that down REAL quick. Almost all those renegade states are not exactly the economic engines that drive this country. Then again, like 1861, the Confederacy didn't take into account their lack of industrial might when they stupidly seceded. Southern honor couldn't manufacture weaponry.
I'm literally sick of waking each morning to more news of not only unethical and undemocratic actions by the GOP, but actions that are on the razor's edge of being criminal and seditious. Congress won't act. The American Bar Association won't act. Who will?
For starters, us. This was a startling fact: "The Senate is so lopsided right now that 26 states containing just 17 percent of the U.S. population elect a majority of senators—the smallest that proportion has ever been. That’s the people in the smallest 26 states. The Republican Party’s Senate majority in recent years has rested on its strength in these rural states."
Until or unless this changes we've got a problem. I'm not holding my breath that we'll revisit how Senators are apportioned anytime soon. But we have to find a way to get 1/5 of the country from voting against their own interests. Until then we won't be able to get out of our own way.
Just a quick personal "share" here: my elderly mum and step-dad (91 and 86, respectively) eagerly consume a conservative/right-wing media diet. My mum has begun writing panicky texts expressing wild concerns about "radicals" taking over, etc. etc. In particular, she's focused on California. My brother lives there. Our mum is frantic for him to pack up, take his money from the bank, and go somewhere safe to live. She suggested Texas as one option. It would be comical if not so sad. I am more furious at Trump, Barr, McConnell, Graham, etc. than I can politely state here.
Every day, as I read about the ceaseless efforts of Demagogue Trump and his Pusillanimous Senators, Representatives, Attorneys-General, etc, I am reminded of this quote from the brilliant H.L. Mencken. (I strongly recommend that anyone who does not know about him, Google him and read his quotations)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"Statement from Jim Walden, Attorney for Christopher Krebs, former Director of CISA
New York, NY, December 9, 2020 — Yesterday, Jim Walden of Walden Macht & Haran, attorney for Christopher Krebs, the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump campaign and its agents of fomenting a campaign of violence toward those who uphold the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
Today, Walden states, “We became aware tonight that a shadow group has launched a campaign on a website called ‘enemies of the people’ proposing the assassination of various Republican and Democratic leaders who they falsely claim are complicit in manipulating the 2020 presidential campaign. If anyone needs to be reminded that public calls for violence beget violence, this is the clarion call. If blood is spilled, it is on the hands of the president, his campaign, his lawyers, and the silent Republicans standing in the president’s shadow. We have deployed every conceivable resource to counteract this tangible step toward terrorism — although it may be domestic or foreign actors trying to stoke the violence. Either way, this toxic campaign proves the truth of everything we said in our lawsuit yesterday.”
Heather, when you report on the talk of civil war, one notices that the 17 states are almost contiguous, the mostly land-locked middle states. My thoughts have been going to a different scenario for the lame duck holding onto the Presidency: martial law. All the stories of the intimidation usually with guns in hand of election officials and any one in the way to overturning the election by the base is concerning. If this spreads and becomes violent which is the way it is headed and kills someone or creates riots, then it would be convenient for the lame duck to declare martial law for an indefinite time frame and definitely past January 20, 2021. No more inconvenient democracy, no silly Constitution. Coup by chaos and violence. The coup would be complete.
I'm not sure how healthy it is for me and my blood pressure to read these letters. This morning I am sick....sick of being reminded that so many are dying daily, so many people are mourning as we enter this season. I am sick of the morally repugnant/ethically empty men and women who whimper as they follow the puppet master tRump. I am sick of Twitter and FB exposing us to falsehoods and calls to arms. I am sick of journalists giving the time of day to these morally bankrupt people, and not more forcefully calling them out. And, mostly I am sick because there will be violence soon....and for what?
“There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs. We can’t be in this dire a conflict without something giving somewhere along the way.”
You may think that there won't be a civil war, but if the other side decides to fight, there will be a war. And the Texas lawsuit, joined by 17 other states, was the "first shots at Fort Sumter" of the Second Civil War.
Limbaugh is right. The Evolutionary U-turns have to be Dealt With. Permanently.
The pseudo-conservatives have finally, after 70 years, achieved the goal Hofstadter demonstrated they were pursuing, 65 years ago:
"The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
This isn't about Donald Trump.
The Republican Party knows they are spiraling toward irrelevancy in a (small d) democratic world. They know they will not win a fair, open, honest, un-gerrymandered election.
There is no explanation I can see for their utter, in-your-face disregard for American electoral tradition. The pretense is gone.
I keep telling myself these are the death throes of a dying political dynamic that can no longer stand on its own two feet. The historic tradition of the plantation and the company town, ruled over by a handful of white males, morally endorsed by an all powerful, all-seeing sky-god, are the real "family values" of the modern Republican Party.
I believe if they burn down the house on the way out, we'll build another, better one.
But it's getting harder to be an optimist.
Morning steam of consciousness rant …
The accumulation, the piling on, the numbers, the numbers aren’t just digits, anonymous digits, pieces of fruit or days in the week or votes given or taken away by some nameless hand – they are you sitting there today, slipping into memory tomorrow. 2,000 a day, 2,500 hundred a day, 3,000 lost children a day because we are all some mother’s child, some father’s child brother sister – a life is not a digit, the pain of loss cannot be atomized with math to some place where the hurting stops.
And the counting feels relentless, a numbing rain of numbers washing me away, and the raging, at masks, at the loss of a beer hall some call freedom – rage in the face of numbers, no longer far away New York City numbers or Italy numbers or China numbers, but my next door neighbor numbers, and I need to rage, I have to rage, at my helplessness, because I can’t admit to it all, can’t surrender to it because I’ve built a wall of denial around myself and now I can’t get out. So, I take a pass on reality, block it, block it, block it. And if I die, who gives a damn, it’s my right. And if you die, well, that’s the price of freedom.
Astonishing. Each new day brings some fresh outrageous behavior and I have to wonder if there will ever actually be an end to it even after 45 is forced out of the White House. I cannot understand the moral void among the Republicans nor the blind cultish allegiance of his supporters. It is exhausting, frustrating and discouraging.
On Bacerra:
FWIW, I asked my dad, who has some relevant experience with running a large government agency, and he thought that the pick was good, because HHS is a multipart organization, demanding management and political skills more than specialized knowledge.
Running the state AG office in a big state like CA is actually pretty good prep there, to say nothing of his many years in congress.
I read about fear and anger, understandably, in our comments here over what the president, his administration, and the Republican Party are doing to the government and, by extension, the country. Mostly, I am sad. Sad that a great number of Americans are so ignorant that they believe and support the nonsense the president and his team of saboteurs put out. Sadder still that a number of them are in my own family. What these people are doing and thinking is pathetic. Too many failures to remember at too many levels over the past four years. That hopelessness weighs heavy on me.
This is a coup. A slow moving and right there in the open coup. And I can’t even begin to say how we fight this when about 40% the country is just fine with this.
Secession? Civil War?? As soon these idiots realise exactly how much of the USA's economy and GDP are centered in blue states, that should shut that down REAL quick. Almost all those renegade states are not exactly the economic engines that drive this country. Then again, like 1861, the Confederacy didn't take into account their lack of industrial might when they stupidly seceded. Southern honor couldn't manufacture weaponry.
I'm literally sick of waking each morning to more news of not only unethical and undemocratic actions by the GOP, but actions that are on the razor's edge of being criminal and seditious. Congress won't act. The American Bar Association won't act. Who will?
For starters, us. This was a startling fact: "The Senate is so lopsided right now that 26 states containing just 17 percent of the U.S. population elect a majority of senators—the smallest that proportion has ever been. That’s the people in the smallest 26 states. The Republican Party’s Senate majority in recent years has rested on its strength in these rural states."
Until or unless this changes we've got a problem. I'm not holding my breath that we'll revisit how Senators are apportioned anytime soon. But we have to find a way to get 1/5 of the country from voting against their own interests. Until then we won't be able to get out of our own way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/
Just a quick personal "share" here: my elderly mum and step-dad (91 and 86, respectively) eagerly consume a conservative/right-wing media diet. My mum has begun writing panicky texts expressing wild concerns about "radicals" taking over, etc. etc. In particular, she's focused on California. My brother lives there. Our mum is frantic for him to pack up, take his money from the bank, and go somewhere safe to live. She suggested Texas as one option. It would be comical if not so sad. I am more furious at Trump, Barr, McConnell, Graham, etc. than I can politely state here.
Every day, as I read about the ceaseless efforts of Demagogue Trump and his Pusillanimous Senators, Representatives, Attorneys-General, etc, I am reminded of this quote from the brilliant H.L. Mencken. (I strongly recommend that anyone who does not know about him, Google him and read his quotations)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
It gets worse.
"Statement from Jim Walden, Attorney for Christopher Krebs, former Director of CISA
New York, NY, December 9, 2020 — Yesterday, Jim Walden of Walden Macht & Haran, attorney for Christopher Krebs, the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump campaign and its agents of fomenting a campaign of violence toward those who uphold the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
Today, Walden states, “We became aware tonight that a shadow group has launched a campaign on a website called ‘enemies of the people’ proposing the assassination of various Republican and Democratic leaders who they falsely claim are complicit in manipulating the 2020 presidential campaign. If anyone needs to be reminded that public calls for violence beget violence, this is the clarion call. If blood is spilled, it is on the hands of the president, his campaign, his lawyers, and the silent Republicans standing in the president’s shadow. We have deployed every conceivable resource to counteract this tangible step toward terrorism — although it may be domestic or foreign actors trying to stoke the violence. Either way, this toxic campaign proves the truth of everything we said in our lawsuit yesterday.”
Heather, when you report on the talk of civil war, one notices that the 17 states are almost contiguous, the mostly land-locked middle states. My thoughts have been going to a different scenario for the lame duck holding onto the Presidency: martial law. All the stories of the intimidation usually with guns in hand of election officials and any one in the way to overturning the election by the base is concerning. If this spreads and becomes violent which is the way it is headed and kills someone or creates riots, then it would be convenient for the lame duck to declare martial law for an indefinite time frame and definitely past January 20, 2021. No more inconvenient democracy, no silly Constitution. Coup by chaos and violence. The coup would be complete.
I'm not sure how healthy it is for me and my blood pressure to read these letters. This morning I am sick....sick of being reminded that so many are dying daily, so many people are mourning as we enter this season. I am sick of the morally repugnant/ethically empty men and women who whimper as they follow the puppet master tRump. I am sick of Twitter and FB exposing us to falsehoods and calls to arms. I am sick of journalists giving the time of day to these morally bankrupt people, and not more forcefully calling them out. And, mostly I am sick because there will be violence soon....and for what?
“There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs. We can’t be in this dire a conflict without something giving somewhere along the way.”
You may think that there won't be a civil war, but if the other side decides to fight, there will be a war. And the Texas lawsuit, joined by 17 other states, was the "first shots at Fort Sumter" of the Second Civil War.
Limbaugh is right. The Evolutionary U-turns have to be Dealt With. Permanently.
The pseudo-conservatives have finally, after 70 years, achieved the goal Hofstadter demonstrated they were pursuing, 65 years ago:
"The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
I’m worried. Plain and simple. Perhaps the end of America as a unified entity is what McConnell and co. actually want. It certainly seems that way.
This letter just chills me through.