President Joe Biden launched his reelection campaign today with a speech at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He spoke after a visit to nearby Valley Forge, where General George Washington quartered his troops from December 1777 to June 1778 during the Revolutionary War in which the former colonies sought to establish their independence from Great Britain.
It’s a common tendency to think where we would move in case of an unthinkable Trump victory this year. Canada. Costa Rica. New freaking Zealand (“freaking” only b/c it’s such a long flight!). But when we consider the abject misery Washington’s Army endured wintering over in Valley Forge in the service of fighting tyranny, or what my grandfathers endured in WW2 fighting Nazis… We should not be thinking about going anywhere if he wins. Flawed and often broken, this country is still the essential nation, and we must keep fighting for its better nature now and forever.
I’m camped out here in Philly, voting and hustling, and I’ll be damned if I’m leaving.
Half way across the country, I have reached the same conclusion as you. And also, if the USA falls in 2024, I do not think that there will be many places of refuge left by the decade’s end.
As Joyce Vance says every evening, “We are in this together”.
Yep. That’s why I’m biting my nails here in Germany… When democracy is destroyed in the US, Europe will follow shortly thereafter. I don’t know if all Americans fully realize what’s at stake here, and what an enormous responsibility the American voters have right now…
You are so right! I live in France, and my French friends are more worried about the U.S. political situation than many Americans appear to be. There would be a massive world-wide effect if our democracy does not hold. It is pointless for Americans to think of moving elsewhere because if that man is elected again, he and his international buddies will take the entire world down with them. We MUST vote, and encourage everyone we know to do so. There is much too much at stake including beyond our U.S. borders.
Simple answer…”STUPIDITY”! Look at the amount of “true MAGA followers”! These people have emptied their bank accounts ever month sending Frumpy their hard-earned money to pay his legal fees, his bills. He hadn’t hit a lick a a snake in his lifetime! This 🍓💩🤡🤮 is the biggest con man alive, and living off of everyone else’s dime!
Yes Lesly, and add in the white superiority complex, the south will rise again attitude and couple that with hatred and fear that white’s will be in the population minority in the not too distant future - assuming life as we now know it, last that much longer! Our country’s founding and those who have helped form our system of governance and government(s) as well as those who have helped preserve the the freedoms that we have are literally the best thing since sliced bread ... and sure there are tweaks needed along the way to help our Nation be inclusive to all of it’s citizens and residents but it’s because we are a work in progress, and as RR used to say at a time before he was elected POTUS .. [thanks to GE] “Progress Is our most important product”!
ML, I have an ex-student who is retired from his teaching job and now lives in Paris. He posts lots of pics of what he is doing and he is having the time of his life. His local bistro even made a Thanksgiving dinner with his help. He has been here for the holidays and his one observation was about the price of groceries here. Inflation is down, so why are they still expensive....because food companies have chosen to keep them that way is what I think.
The French are closer to farms and farmers than we with our “made in the grocery store” asparagus. Plus the EU has emphasized the difficulties of climate change to farmers and farming, putting wheat production above cattle raising, asking farmers to thin herds and grow more grains to feed more people!
Probably much of the price inflation we have seen is attributable to gouging (that is, unconstrained capitalism), but to expect prices to go down because inflation is down is an incorrect interpretation of what inflation means. If inflation is zero, prices remain about the same. If it’s, say 2% (“down” in recent history), prices go up a little.
I believe the American people are actually very concerned. The news media is really biased towards tr*** because it generates readers. They couldn't report on President Biden's speech on Friday without adding negative comments about tr***'s reply or other things. The news media is really worthless for the most part these days because their 'reporting' isn't really reporting -- it's all someone's opinions about the news, rather than the (unbiased) news itself.
I also have a few delightful friends in France, they quip the media does drum rolls & cartwheels every Trumpian tale, ‘they’ keep the fear mongering alive -lies delivered step by step in ‘their’ fantasy world bears some respect for the drip, drip, drip..akin to water boarding!
What I DO take in stride is the voting numbers, an abysmal representation for the last whatever ‘with a fairly good showing in ‘20 (kudos 66%! ) and even in ‘22 & 23 -despite the forecasted Red Wave/doom and gloom paintbrush from whiners/Fox/drama Queens. (The circus is still showing its clASS acts).
Complacency is never advisable, but does consistently arrive ...American pants down theology...I’ve heard ‘my vote doesn’t count’ a hundred times if one.
We DO have a lot of work to do.
And, thanks to this example ( again hello!) this playbook scenario, presenting ‘unprecedented’ predicaments . Where have they been? The hx books fill shelves. So, time to pay attention?
The writing on the wall can’t be more bold though, NEVER EVER EVER underestimate, and why the stats of better management/times/record or TRUTH doesn’t stand testimony over the political landscape ad infinitum is a whole course study for far more brilliant minds than mine , it IS somewhat fascinating , I add.
Exception:The fiction books are fiction..NOT based on fact..or....who or what you watch may be a clear indicator ( AGAIN) that those people are gone/in jail/heavily fined for falsifying...and still yet ....get it...? Some still don’t.🤷♀️
Not giving up , this is my country, in all its wonderfulness , mistakes, trials, tribulation
On New Year's Day, I sat next to a woman whose husband is not registered to vote because he insists his vote wouldn't make a difference. She's a voter but can't make any headway with her husband. I suggested she do some research to identify elections where only one or a small handful of votes actually made a difference, then bring them to his attention. Can you imagine the total if all who claim his/her vote won't make a difference were added up?
Was an issue in my own home for years and finally he ‘came around’. Persistence , consistent, ever vigilant..all part of the never ending choices we can make to keep our freedoms. I understand people are tired of the chaos, lies, and subterfuge . Well….ending it means a solid blue wave for many election cycles and being vigilant after getting back house,senate,and keeping the WH with an oath honoring FOR THE PEOPLE leader. America , hear the call !
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
She may need an occasional idiot to highlight the intelligence of the majority of her readers. John Schmeekle's thought process certainly doesn't run very deep.
We all need to report trolls each and every day, each and every posted comment.
Upon occasion, I have made this comment and had some heated responses saying we need to hear the other side, or tout free speech.
I firmly believe in free speech AND in listening to the other side. Many times, this forum has had passionate disagreements but they take the form of civilized discussion, supported by personal professional experiences or with reputable media sources.
Name calling is a characteristic of both Trump and MAGA.
It's like the old definition of pornography: you know it when you see it.
HCR's Letter is becoming VERY well known, and I believe that there are agents of discord at work. While Schmeekle's comments are usually pretty juvenile (esp. considering he calls himself an "intellectual"--read his profile!! LOL) it's when he and the other trolls spread misinformation, or verbally attack others, that we should report him.
BTW: this arrived to me today and is worthy of a read, and of forwarding:
So John - you see the responses right? You are not being taken seriously, at all. Are you really just a troll? In this venue, why don't you make your points in a more civil manner, and invite discussion? No, instead it is "Biden the Vampire". And "zombified". Right.....
He was here months ago then disappeared. I suspect enough reporting to the administrator but a temporary block on him.
Watch his progress: if he does not get blocked, he will copy/paste the same inane comment MULTIPLE times, and over the course of a few weeks, get more and more unhinged, sort of like the Sore Loser is.
James Wheaton feels the need to dishonestly misrepresent what I said.
I said "Vampire Liberal."
Vampire Liberals fund Worthwhile Programs by sucking money out of foreign countries, depending on the imperial power of the Almighty Dollar to add to the Unpayable Debt.
(Vampire Conservatives, on the other hand, suck money to give tax breaks to the rich.)
Zombies don't think. Zombified Vampire Liberals like James Wheaton and Heather Cox Richardson DON'T THINK anout where the money comes from for Biden's Worthwhile Programs.
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
Dutch, quite honestly, Americans may have little say in the matter by the time this is all over.
The Supreme Court is currently about to determine "if" Trump can stay on the ballot in Colorado. Given the clarity of the 14th Amendment, one might think this is an easy call.
However, the Supreme Court's highly probable ruling that Trump CAN stay on the ballot (due to the vast amount of money that will rain on the justices after that decision) will set the stage for when Trump challenges his loss against Biden with the same Supreme Court.
Next time, Trump will do a better job of making sure the "election" is not decided in a public voting.
The Supreme Court will decide and? Well, don't bet against them ruling in favor of Trump.
We don't really have a Democracy here Dutch. We have always counted on the Supreme Court to keep the Oligarchs in power no matter how the voting goes.
The high court has not always kept the robber barons in check. They certainly are not keeping the robber barons in check currently. Indeed, the high court is a BIG part of the problem. Think on this quote I read so long ago I can't even remember who said it. "The law is but man's opinion."
This is a sad commentary on our court system, and possibly true. Roberts if facing a tough moment where his the legitimacy of the court is very much in question. Will he try to resurrect it from the ashes of Thomas’ corruption or will he find a way to restore the confidence of the people? Whatever is the case, there are big questions ahead—there are likely a LOT of behind the scenes activity with unheard pressure on all of the “justices”. If it weren’t my own country’s future at stake (and apparently that of much of Europe) I’d be simply fascinated to watch it play out. As it is, I’m “concerned”. And that’s where I’ll leave it today.
I agree with that, Dan Stipe. Its reputation is in the TOILET! After they decided to crush Roe v. Wade - even with ALL its precedents of being reaffirmed - they lost HALF the country - all the women and many men - and ALL THEY PHYSICIANS! They wreaked horror across the country with that ONE horrific decision.
I'll NEVER forgive them - or respect them - again.
The observable evidence of SC corruption is that legal experts are saying they aren't sure what the SC will decide, if they even will decide to decide, on the simple task of enforcing the Constitution. In lieu is simply enforcing what the constitution plainly contains, they prefer to pass themselves off as linguists, pretending that existing dictionary definitions of the words ' engage' and 'insurrection' will not suffice, were never going to stand up in court. What did those congresspeople mean by those words? Ooh, tough question. On the real world, it seems simple to get at what the intent was and is. Meanwhile, shifting to the other foot, the SC next passes itself off as history experts. Ooh, what in the world did those words mean in 1780, or 1806, on and on. The original intent? Doesn't that intent have something to do with preserving and defending democracy and the Constitution? How about it?
Jon, would you expand on this, please? I think the question of whether the actions the Danger Yam (thank you to my sister for that!) and his minions took from and after the 2020 election, and even before, going back to the "rigged election" claims of the 2016 election, which they continue to engage in to this day, constitutes insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution, or whether some of those actions constitute giving aid and comfort, etc., is a mixed one of fact and law. The facts don't seem to be in dispute, and people who focus solely on the events of Jan 6 to assert tramp and his minions engaged in insurrection are wrong to do so. I think his state of mind is irrelevant in determining whether he "engaged" or not. I also think the three opinions of the Colo courts and Maine's SoS are well-reasoned and compelling. What do you think?
I agree with you. It will be very hard for five justices to argue that the clear language of the 14rh Amendment does not apply, although some of them will probably try. I do fear that a majority of the court might hold that Colorado and Maine were justified in kicking the Mango Mussolini off the ballot, but not go further, thus kicking the can down the road. And what if he is elected in November? Then, in the heat of the post-election uproar, will the court declare that he can't serve--which would presumably mean that the Republican vice-presidential nominee (Kriti Noem?) could become chief executive? Such a possibility should be too much for the justices to stomach, and I hope it will be. I also hope that they will care enough about their institution to do what you and I and the clear language of the 14th Amendment command. Someone on the string referred to FDR's ill-advised court-packing plan of 1936-37, which did at least induce Justice Roberts to make the "switch in time that saved nine." That threat is hanging over the court's head.
J. Margolis, I cannot just accept your say-so that the SC is not as corrupt as I believe. That's because it isn't a belief I have, it is observable evidence. Unless there is no longer any such thing as truth, a large body of evidence makes a clear case that the SC is corrupt, exactly as corrupt as the evidence shows, and that SC Justices can't be simply trusted to self-regulate.
A "good" example is their ongoing decisions regarding environmental concerns, i.e. that the EPA can't protect the environment (thereby allowing environmental damage.)
The Court has not favored Trump specific causes. I won’t be entirely surprised by a 7-2 decision removing him from the ballot.
They could leave him on through the primary but that makes it tough for the Rs to have a chance to choose a real candidate. And saying he can run in the general but not serve seems unthinkable.
Mike S, yes, and one wonders how these SC justices think about the 14th Amendment. Those justices who call themselves "originalist" may not consider the 14th Amendment part of the "originalists" thinking.
Yeah, you're right... The Repubs definitely scored better in the long game by stacking the Supreme Court with their peons, making it an Extreme Court that can effectively undo any regulation...
The 14th Amendment is far from clear and section 3 is vague and poorly written. It provides no guidance of how this section is to be considered and whether or not it applies to the President. Who and how is the proof of insurrection et al, to be conducted. The only thing we do know is that Section 5, states that Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation. But Congress has never acted. Common sense says the Amendment does apply to the President but the question of proof of engagement remains. As it stands now, proof is in the eye of the beholder.
Yes, but were Trump's actions proof of engagement. I don't think there is any doubt about an insurrection, the question is proof of complicity and as I said, that seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
John, highly respected legal scholars with a range of perspectives have discussed the 14S3 in detail and disagree with your take. Though they vary in details, in overall interpretation they are pretty close. I personally have some reservations about actually going through with this approach for political reasons, but "get" the validity of the legal interpretation. The thing is that for it to work, a large # of states would need to act on it. The Supreme Court is in a bind, because a hard ruling either way conflicts with other rulings they have made, plus those of past SCs (not that that has made a difference to them so far).
As for "proof of engagement", that has been proved. Key members of the "jury" were bought or intimidated and failed to do their job. Some of them should be in the box, and may yet be.
Be that as it may, my guess is there are an equal number of legal scholars on the other side of the issue. For me, it remains the vagueness of 14S3. I come from the contracts part of the world where such vagueness tends not to be tolerated. What you are suggesting, is that the meaning and applicability of 14S3 is up to the individual states which to me is fraught with its own problems from State to State. And how does that square with 14S5? If the SC is in a bind, it is of their own making. And of course, Congress never did anything legislatively to enforce 14, although were incidents in the past 150 years that merited some action on their part but that is not surprising.
As to "proof of engagement", the only thing proved was not guilty but that finding was hardly objective. One could argue, Congress chose the impeachment process as the enforcement provision of 14s5. That the 'jury' was rigged is neither here nor there, the Senate is the jury and it is a political body.
To be sure, I am not a legal scholar but simply a citizen who reserves the right to my opinion. The Constitution is a mess, the SC is a mess, and the outcome will be a mess. But the former President wins regardless of the outcome.
Thanks also ...You strike a growing realization Dutch Mike, that the undercurrent is strong, hopefully we will provide , us rag tags ya know😉, to stay, to strengthen these ties that bind. Those ties have built a place many see as safe, a dream to come to, a dream to live. We have been given this through many sacrifices , but a lesson also has come/came to teach -yet again - that value to persevere .
This is really scary. If our democracy falls, it will be a domino affect around the world. Einstein said that he didn’t know what weapons would be used to fight WWIII, but the next war would be fought with stones and sticks.
I know. And so many over here are sleep walking through it.
Now Obama is weighing in to light a fire under the Biden campaign.
It seems to me that Democrats are still playing by the rules, still being nice. Glad we have the Lincoln Project. We need more in your face Trump and all Republicans that are loyal to him are an existential threat.
Rest assured that millions of Americans have no knowledge of how important their responsibility is in this next election. Yet, I do not believe that he will win. He needs to gain votes and I don’t see where he can pick up new voters. At the same time a substantial number of people who voted for Trump, will never do so again, not after January 6, his indictments and his conviction eventually. The DOJ could help by moving faster than they have.
I am fairly confident but I learned in 2016 , when one side is willing to cheat every which way, miracles can happen. Or should I say nightmares? I will be on pins and needles until the Colorado 14th amendment case is decided. He does not deserve to be on any ballot.
Trouble is, that he doesn't have to pick up new voters. He just has to rig the system a little bit more and he wins. The only hope is a really massive voter swing for Biden, so big that it simply cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet.
What Mike S said. And: there is a lot of them thinking: "Oh, abolish democracy for all I care, it doesn't work anyway, let a strong man fix it", not realizing how dangerous this kind of thinking is.
For me it’s simple. We must believe, we must know that freedom will prevail. We must vote. There is no reason not to vote for Joe and Kamala and every reason to repudiate the wannabe be king, tyrant.
Good question. I think, for starters, coercing your local Democratic representatives: they have to use their campaign money to buy ad space wherever and push the message making clear that Rump is completely in it for himself, and sincerely wants to destroy democracy for his own gain - and that there is no way back once he establishes his fascist military dictatorship. After all, that's what the other side has been doing the last decades: buying tv and radio stations to push *their* message...
John Schmeeckle is the guy sitting in his living room while the house is burning down, and instead of calling the Fire Dept, he shouts "THESE ARE NOT THE DRAPES I ORDERED!!! LET THEM BURN!!!"
Most Americans do not appreciate how significant our democracy is in its influence around the world. Foreigners were dismayed when W was reelected and shocked when trump was elected. Most Americans are quite provincial and don't realize how closely what happens here is watched abroad. The likes of Putin know our weaknesses better than we do and have taken advantage by putting his thumb on the scale to help trump.
100%. This is why Putin’s Armies have dug in Ukraine. Building defensive positions, minefields, using criminals/emptying jails, and using ethnic minority conscripts to feign offensive operations with soldiers no one in Moscow or St Petersburg cares about. All a strategy to hold on till our November election.
... as well as - if not better - Roman numeral “XI” - when you consider that Xi spent some time living here in America (Iowa in the 1980’s) ... I’m sure gleaning a bit of a narrow view of what makes America a great country.
Knowing and loving New f'ing Zealand as I do, the only thing wrong with it as a place of refuge is that it's very small. (Ruffles feathers and tilts head).
And it has taken a shocking turn to the right. The ruling party ran on a platform of erasing the Maori culture and language from every level of NZ life. Sickens me as I have never been treated with more kindness than by the Kiwis.
There's a policy change agreed to by all but the national Maori party, to present all government services not specifically involved with Maori issues in English only, I suspect the head of the Maori party may be using overheated rhetoric. I'll keep an eye on the news myself, don't get much from NZ on the national airways... always been that way. Maori, like other indigenous eg Australia, USA, Canada didnt fare well after what was essentially conquest, but in that context, they've done well by comparison. Thanks for the news tip.
I don’t remember sorry. I’ll Google. It was within the past year. Also read that the right has made gains in gov’t. Yep, Google knew. Several references, including The Guardian, from 2018. New York Post also had article. Wonder if Rupert would bypass Australia and head to NZ. Others mentioned Peter Thiel, and Google co-founder. So maybe that’s why Google knows knows.
I too googled it. They're talking about Queenstown specifically, and if you Google that you'll understand why. It all comes from NY Post and CNN, starting in 2000, with spinoffs in rags like the London Daily Mirror. I found an interview with a local real estate agent, who was treating the whole thing with typical Kiwi dry humour. (Now I can't find it, and I do have other things to do with my time). The most recent news (from 2022) is that Peter Thiel's building application was refused. Yes, true that there was a swing to the right in the recent elections, but I really don't think there are any serious links with Orban.
Jeri, like that location will save them when the sh*t hit the fan….they can run , but cannot hide! All their $$$ and influence will buy a bit of time, but that’s all.
Anyone remember the movie Soylent Green? Despite the shocker of an ending as to what "Soylent green" actually consisted of, the wealthy lived in their high-rise towers while dining on steak and champagne while the majority scuffled for space in the gutters and in their derelict cars at the curbs. We should re-issue that movie as a warning of what could be the future.
Yeah, and they are likely, almost certainly, going to need helpers/security/workers to keep their compounds stable/livable…..what will buy their loyalty? I’ve wondered about that since I’d heard some years ago about this being a “real thing” the uber-wealthy are into or looking into. I recently read The Future by Naomi Alderman (2023) & is a fictional example of the hubris of “buying” salvation/safety.
I took a design course in England many years ago. There were 2 Kiwis I met there: one from the North Island, one from the South. They would have playful yet serious arguments about which was better. Listening to them made me yearn for a visit some day (and, given the choice, I'd probably head for the North Island, as that resident told me stories of carefree sleeping on the warm beach.)
Have traveled to New Zealand several times; first trip in 1987 & (like everywhere) a lot has changed, but much is still wonderful -- its people, its scenery; its food is wonderful. On one of those trips, I asked a South Islander if she had traveled abroad; she replied, “I went to the North Island once.” Marvelous people, and (at least historically) they are very fond of Americans; they pay a lot of attention to the U.S., including our politics. (Older New Zealanders credit the U.S. in World War II with saving them from Japanese military forces. New Zealand had, per capita, more casualties than any country in the Commonwealth -- ~one of every 150 Kiwis died in war service.)
About 17 hours. One way. Expensive. Years ago (long before this mess) I was offered a position at a university there that also would have let me finish my doctorate. Reluctantly turned it down because my kids were young, and they were my parents' only grandkids. Couldn't do that to either grands or kids. Still wistful.
Dr. McCormick, PLEASE don't! Last fall I had finally found a doctor-internist who I really got along with, respected - then next visit - "I'm moving to NZ!!! No!!! He was well-loved in Colorado. And I stick with my GOOD doctors!!!
It does make me wonder how the good Doctors and other Healthcare workers, Teachers, Professors, etc will redistribute themselves from red states to more tolerant states or countries (or just find other professions). I seem to find more and more every day, who just quit and found other work where they are less stressed due to interference, staffing levels, or inadequate funding.
Agreed. I talked last night to my adult HS teacher daughter. She visited with two college friends who are also teachers during this break. One is leaving teaching (after 11 years) the other is trying to do so. Teaching they love, dealing with the administrators bowing to parents and school board demands they do not.
She relayed a story of a student that was failing due to missing over 80 school days the prior year (no circumstances that applied, just a chronic truant). The parents did not want him to fail and pressured the administration who pressured the teacher to find ways to make the teen able to pass. In other words, create new, easy assignments to be turned in. This is an extreme but not a joke. Between my two teacher daughters, combined years of teaching over 25 years at 6 different schools, they have encountered this type of behavior.
There are many current/former educators on this forum whom I sure can agree with this.
Yes, that would work! And you can see all the rugby games you want, go sailing, climb some mountains! Just COME BACK!!! <3 Read your profile - Yes! I'm a transplant recipient so I need a good primary physician. I have transplant backup from Cleveland Clinic. Left Denver to get the transplant - statistics and all! The transplant world/community is very interesting.
I actually know someone whose son and d.i.l. went there about 10 years ago--even back then, they did not like the way the country was heading!! As I was told then (and I have no reason to doubt it) I was told they needed to enter with assets of $3M and have jobs. My acquaintance has little money but the son married a trust-fund baby. They love it there.
Yes, there’s always been a high bar re: immigration into New Zealand. Tax rate is very high, in part to support its social services, including health care. There’s concern that, without regulation, the country’s social services could collapse under the needs of older/aging people from elsewhere.
We are NOT going to let "the orange flame" continue , are we?
President Joe Biden and the great team of Americans he and his advisers have gathered have accomplished much and need to remain "on the job".
Our country and the world needs to focus on the battles against the rise of tyrany. Our children in our schools /universities need to be required to study the history of our nation.....ALL OF IT.....we have ugly parts .....we need to be reminded NOT TO GO THERE AGAIN!!!!
We need to be aware of what is pushing people to leave everything they have to come to the United States of America. They come with their dreams, their desire to work, to build a home, to have their children educated.....within a Democracy!
Of course there are Americans within every level of humanity who use this country for their personal benefit....so has it always been.
People coming to the USA are escaping the rule of Dictators.....governments who have taken their property from them.....taken away opportunities to choose by vote the ones they want to govern. They are more desperate to be free than we are. We are "the frogs in the kettle".....our freedoms being gradually taken from us......and WE are allowing this by our own choice of those we vote into office.
I'll never vote for Trump, but Biden is worse. Trump is a loose cannon who makes dirty deals with the Establishment. Biden IS the Establishment, the "Deep State" Senator from tiny postage-stamp Delaware, that corporate suburb of Wall Street.
Hi,John, I will give you some attention. You seem confused here, but to me It's really pretty simple. Trump is a treasonous rapey criminal who wants to turn the US into his own personal piggy bank so he can pay the debts he owes Putin and avoid being tossed out a window. Biden does not owe Putin money, and is not treasonous, rapey, or crimjnal. I like Biden because he is not those things. I do not understand why some people don't like Biden. The only people who support Trump are people who like that Trump is those things and they want to do what Trump does, or those who are so mentally ill or intellectually impaired that they don't understand what is going on around them. Voting for anyone but Biden helps put Trump back in the White House. Not voting for Biden helps put Trump back in the White House. Refusal to vote for Biden is support for Trump. It seems to me the choice is crystal clear. What are you going to do? Vote for the treasonous rapey criminal who wants to take the taxpayers money for his own use or vote for the guy who is none of those things?
Hi, Marj, if you are directing this disrespectful name calling to poor John Schminke, or however his name is spelled, he is a confused real person who occasionally responds to logical arguments and clear statements of others points of view, and so I tell him what I think in the most direct possible way, when I have the energy. If it is me you are calling a robot whack a doodle, I assure you I am a real live woman with my own opinions and understanding of the world, firmly grounded in the experience of my early life growing up half feral on a ranch in the Rocky Mountains. I encountered all the sorts of people you find in that milieu, including mystics and crazy people, hard headed business men, criminals and alcoholics and addicts of all sorts, highly educated women who weren't quite sure how they ended up there in the middle of nowhere, well meaning people who just wanted a place to raise their kids in peace, and the general lost or damaged detritus of humanity who washed up in that far crevasse of civilization, and couldn't put together enough resources to leave. There I learned to trust the instincts of my dogs and my horses, which taught me to tell the difference between good people and bad people. Biden is a good person. He is doing the best he can. In my opinion, we should all help him defend our freedoms and our beautiful land. Trump is a bad person. He lies, cheats, steals, and takes advantage of anyone he can, at every opportunity. He tried to undo an election because he didn't like the outcome, and anywhere else in the world he would be in prison for treason. My early experience is strengthed by graduate studies in psychology and many years working with the mentally ill, addicted and criminally guilty. I myself am not mentally ill, criminally inclined or damaged by PTSD or physical trauma. That is, I think clearly, make good decisions based on the information I have available, and if new information comes to light, I can change my mind. If it is indeed me you called a whack a doodle, please tell me what I said in the previous post that led you to that conclusion? I am still fascinated by observing the human mind at work...
And this is sure the place for that kind of observation. I'm sure Marj was referring to the JS wordsalad above. It's hard to tell what order posts are going to show up in sometimes. Those of us who've been around know to ignore the trolls, but newer folks who haven't come across them before (esp this one) sometimes get caught up in tryng to get through to him. Unfortunately, nothing to get through to. His purpose is to disrupt and redirect.
p.s. I suspect that ongoing coverage of Trump's legal woes is going to make his candidacy increasingly unattractive to swing voters who are nervous about Biden's age and health.
Trump has a flat tire, but you can still roll down the road for a little while with a flat tire.
My assessment is starkly different from yours. I don't think that Joe "cocaine nose" Biden is a good man, and I think that he is worse than Trump. Trump is a loose cannon who makes dirty deals with the Establishment. Biden IS the Establishment, from tiny Delaware, a suburb of Wall Street that specializes in hosting the headquarters of corporations. See https://thehustle.co/why-delaware-is-the-sexiest-place-in-america-to-incorporate-a-company/
The only president who was more "Establishment" than Biden was George H.W. Bush.
Biden and his fellow Vampire Liberals fund Worthwhile Programs by selling Treasury Bonds to suck money out of foreign countries, depending on the imperial power of the Almighty Dollar to add to the Unpayable Debt.
(Vampire Conservatives, on the other hand, suck money to give tax breaks to the rich.)
Biden's “Vampire Liberal” big-spender programs require sucking an endless supply of debt from both foreign countries and the Social Security trust fund.
The Almighty Dollar lets us get away with imposing U.S. government debt on foreign countries, but Biden's support of Ukraine's far-right fascist thug regime is accelerating global de-dollarization, which means that Biden is sabotaging both his Worthwhile Programs and Social Security.
Foreign countries, especially the BRICS countries, have been working toward de-dollarization of the global economy, which means that all those zillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury Bonds that slosh around the world, helping international trade settlements, will be coming home.
I remember, on Biden's inauguration day, Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon chanting "F#ck Biden!" as they marched to the local Democratic headquarters to break all the windows.
I remember how happy and thankful I was that Joe Biden , a seasoned servant of Democracy, WON.
No more did I have to experience the terror of DT and his worship of PUTIN and other leaders who were controlling their populations through the threat of Murder........remember a recent airplane crash in Russia .....someone was challenging Putin......remember the loss of a number of former Republican leaders when DT was voted in as President of the USA....in my opinion , an insult to our nation!!! Do you want to live with threats to your life or to members of your family?
Please wake up and vote for Democracy....NOT for a Dictator!!!!
So why has Biden, for so many years, been supporting the toxic far-right thug regime in Ukraine?
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
Who said they were Antifa? Antifa stands for anti-fascist. I have trouble believing they were ACTUALLY Antifa, were ACTUALLY opposed to Biden and were actually an organized movement—which they are not. They are a current boogeyman, like George Soros
MY father was a proud "anti-fascist" as were my two uncles.
All three fought fascism in Europe in WW2. My Dad came home bodily whole, one uncle came after a head injury untreated while he was in a German POW camp which caused lifelong seizures. The other uncle received a spinal injury which rendered him a paraplegic.
Why do President Biden and the Republican and Democratic Senate leaders continue to support Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime? Ukraine has been enslaved by the rapacious International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of the original loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
Ukraine's oppressive neo-fascist thug regime is not "democratic." In Ukraine, all the opposition parties have been suppressed after Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A few months ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion. We are being lied to.
In August, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
No, they were not Anti Fascists, they were anarchists. They clearly identified themselves as anarchists. The pro Biden demonstrations in Portland were much larger.
Did you call the police and report those criminals in OR? Because no matter the reason nor the members- all US residents are expected to follow our laws AND respect the rights and property of others.
So if you’re concerned with what you saw on videos from OR you should be equally concerned with the crimes that occurred on Jan 6 at the US Capital bldg.
PS. Were you supporting Sanders and planning to vote for him.
I live in Massachusetts There is a Bernie faction but it’s a minority. Biden won fair and square. In2016 you could question Hillary’s superdelegate nomination. Bernie won multiple primaries. These are facts. Even if you don’t like Biden he’s done incredible positive work with razor thin margins in congress. Not voting for him is a negative choice for a reactionary autocracy against women’s and human rights. Against everything moderate and liberal minded people value. Trump 2 or just about any other republican candidate would result in a Hobbesian state(Thomas Hobbes--theory is that state or society cannot be secure unless at the disposal of an absolute sovereign. From this follows the view that no individual can hold rights of property against the sovereign, and that the sovereign may therefore take the goods of its subjects without their consent) we would be at the mercy of a madman monarch. Voters beware.
You are of course entitled to your opinion. I think that Biden's deep support for Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime makes him a criminal against humanity:
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
I can’t wait till the SCOTUS dies away with the administrative state and we are all waiting around for Congress to enact regulations on issues they have no idea about. Tommy Tuberville deciding on whether a drug has passed its clinical trials instead of the FDA? Yeah, you and the deep state..... dream on whatever in your mind the deep state is. Jesus get over Bernie Sanders...
I don't know how much Putin's factories pay you to post such trash, but you really need to reconsider your "profession". This is such a foolish waste of your time.
If I was on anybody's payroll, the IRS would quickly discover my cash flow in and out.
I work long hours as a truck driver and get a paycheck. That's all.
Years ago I was the plaintiff in a lawsuit that indirectly targeted the IRS. I discovered that our tax system, as currently administered, is outside the Constitution, outside the law as written, outside relevant Supreme Court decisions, and outside the applicable regulations.
"They" remember. Don't fight the tax system; it's not worth it. And we need a functioning tax system, even if the one we have is "broken."
Why do President Biden and the Republican and Democratic Senate leaders continue to support Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime? Ukraine has been enslaved by the rapacious International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of the original loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
Ukraine's oppressive neo-fascist thug regime is not "democratic." In Ukraine, all the opposition parties have been suppressed after Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A few months ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion. We are being lied to.
In August, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
Silly......your work is silly. Try to take an honest look at it. Stope wasting your time. You certainly will not waste another second of mine. For what it is worth, I have said my peace. I will not respond to, nor read, another fraught and scatological assertion of yours .....unless, of course, I am bored and need entertainment.
You obviously didn't check any of my listed sources. Zelensky's benefactor, Kolomoysky, also funded the neo-Nazis, who controlled the Interior Ministry and the police stations. Zelensky, after receiving a neo-Ndeath threat, "made peace" with neo-Nazi war-mongers and abandoned his fundamental campaign pledge to make peace with the breakaway Donbass republics.
There are far right persons and far left persons. I believe John is far left. The danger of the far left is that it can weaken more moderate Democrats against the far right. We cannot have that.
You are right. I would be so far left you couldn't find me if I lived in a different world. I don't and I won't do anything to weaken the dems who live in the real world. We all do. They just give help to chump and I will never do that.
I agree, except I think it will end long before the end of the decade. We have to do all we can to save democracy from the insanity of a monster. Not only will we the people not thrive, our economy will be done for and take down economies of much of the rest of the world as well.
I'm right there with you Dr. McCormick. We only have one life and we must make it worth something. My father was a Flying Tiger in WWII. Shot down in flames and traumatized for the rest of his life, but never stopped giving his all, as an elementry school teacher, principal and administrtor taking on the most rabid John Birch Society evangelical crackpots you could imagine. He persevered an ultimately succeeded in transforming a backward community school district into one that valued quality education and truth. He was loved.
I'm sticking it out because this is MY home. and I will share it happily with all who do their best to save it. Thank you for your clarity.
What a brave man, the John Birchers seem to be ruling in many quarters these days, maybe being called tea party, or MAGAts. Your Dad should be called hero.
In unity there is strength. Fight for our rights. PS Canada may elect a reactionary Conservative Party majority in Parliament next election. People are tired of Trudeau. It’s not so rosy. And as a noncitizen one has no rights or benefits. Stay and organize voters for democracy.
Well said, Dr. McCormick! At some point one needs to declare, "Here I stand." Every time I see one of those old Ukrainian grandmothers living in a war zone I'm re-inspired. If they can do that, I have no excuses: I'll not give up what others suffered and died for since the beginning.
And we shouldn't forget - if we fall, there's no one to come rescue us wherever we are.
I’m too damn old to think, or worry about, leaving if this country turns into a dictatorship. Besides, if it does, there won’t be any free country left to go to in this world anyway.
We’re in New Mexico, we’re not going anywhere. We’re organizing for democracy.
It’s clear to us -- and it ought to be clear to all by now -- There’s only one candidate who believes in Democracy, and that’s Ole Joe.
Our Colorado cousins mined the ground we broke first when NM’s District & Supreme Courts booted one of the indicted 45th president’s NM organizers out of his county commissioner’s office: Couy Griffin.
Now, we’re working hard to do the same thing to the rebellious, potentially treasonous 45th president.
Plan A: Demand the U.S. Supreme Court affirm Colorado’s District & Supreme Court decisions. Boot the 45th off Colorado’s ballot, as well as all other state ballots.
If SCOTUS won’t enforce our Constitution’s Sec. 3, Amendment 14, then it’s on to Plan B.
Plan B: GOTV on a scale never seen before in America for Ole Joe Biden and Democracy. Re-elect the 46th President.
United, we have defeated a British king, American colonial tories, Southern enslavers, German nazis, Italian fascists, and Japanese imperialists who bombed Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack.
United, we will re-elect Ole Joe in a landslide for Democracy.
We are in the blue part of the state tho. There is a contingent in the south that yearns to be part of Texas. I sometimes think about swapping that part out for El Paso.
I AGREE! Not because I am too old to move, I am, but I will not let this power hungry son of immigrants take over my country! That should be a focus of the campaign information, he is a child of immigrants, and unappreciative, of rthe value he gained. He is a TAKER, and of the worst kind, squashing the small people who resisted him or the ones who tried to do business with him and he cheated.
And I'm here in Germany, where I can get the medical care I need without having to go into debt, as I would in the USA. My grandson in the US had an emergency ruptured appendix that was mended in a matter of minutes. The hospital bill for the anesthesiologist was $50,000 due to the fact that the anesthesiologist was not part of the surgeon's plan.
I would love to be near to my kids adult kids but would never be able to do so.
Jennifer, it's part of the problem - where the capitalist heart beats. I have friends in the US who are millionaires and who have good healthcare. I'm happy for them. But a retired theologian like me wouldn't have a chance. The issue is a WHOLE issue.
So glad you are where you can get excellent affordable healthcare, Rosalind. So sad that the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, does not take care of its own citizens unless they can afford Cadillac prices for standard care.
I'm with you, Ryan. Hunkering down to the wind swept fire, rubbing my hands in the cold of the Trumpian specter, and fighting it out until the fight is finished
Washington's army consisted of a significant number of Irish and Scottish immigrants.
So, moving back to British occupied Ireland and Scottland, which were terrorized by Great Britain, was not an option for them.
Since Irish and the Scottish knew the cruelty and arbitrary nature of British law, and had suffered under occupation for ages, they were fighting for their very lives with truly nowhere to go.
In the Lewis Powell Memo, Powell accused the liberals of being well organized, single minded on goals and well funded and supported. As I have stated before for conservatives "Every accusation is their confession". When have the liberals ever gathered at places like Davos, Jackson Hole, Aspen to plot and scheme. Liberals have a broad range of goals and concerns, conservatives have just one - power. As you so clearly stated, this control thing is in democracies all over the world. The billionaire trust fund babies now are working for world domination.
I don't buy the "the essential nation" part. American Exceptionalism is part of the problem. There are many other, and better, democracies around the world.
Maybe, but who else has the reputation that we are fast losing. I thought the Statue of Liberty message defined us. And who else has the power. That is what the billionaire cretins want. The power, and not just here.
Some of us may be needed to form the resistance, treat the victims, house the refugees. The tide can always turn again. I was surprised when people were not horrified after all the abuses of the first tRump presidency. I will never abandon the country I love.
Born in Montpelier - raised in Huntington and Newfane - now Colorado is home. As long as I’m in the mountains I’m a happy girl - not going anywhere either.
Ryan, thank you for your “fighting words”. I, too, am staying and fighting. A friend recommended the book “Beyond Contempt” as another arrow in the quiver for this fight for the hearts of the country and I think that she may be right. It’s too easy to resort to contempt and satire when I encounter people who believe differently than I do; instead, I’m going to do my best to try to find our common ground to tell our story of decency and respect for the constitution.
After the 2016 election I went through the process of applying for permanent residency in Canada and was accepted. I thought of all my friends and family I’d leave behind and starting over in a place where I knew not a soul. I decided to stay put and do what I could here in the US. I got involved in campaigns by phone banking. I write postcards and letters to voters. I write and call my representatives so that my voice is heard. We must all do as much as we are able to ensure our democracy is safe in 2024 and beyond.
I believe it would have cost us around $8,000 to buy into the social support systems, healthcare, etc, back in late 2016 (after the election), to enable us to move to Canada. We didn't otherwise consider it seriously, but did start attending rallies and going to Unity Coalition events where we had as many as 47 organizations or candidates representatives meeting.
We dared to hope the 2022 midterm elections could restore House and Senate majorities (against frightening odds and predictions).
While so many cheered how close we came, I was sick to my stomach considering the damage the House, state legislatures, and gubernatorial administrations could do in Republican hands, and the state legislatures even with very thin majorities.
After commenting previously on the documentary, "The US and the Holocaust," I went back and watched the entire 3 episodes again, wondering how much effect it had on the 2022 elections where we did so much better than expected, but still just a few critical seats short in the House and perhaps state offices. I'd redouble my suggestion to take a good look at the documentary (7 years in the making starting in 2015), before the primaries and throughout the rest of the year. Part of what I said previously:
"...Ken Burns started on the US and the Holocaust documentary in 2015, planning on releasing it in 2023 (8 years in production), but moved it up to 2022 (first aired the day after Constitution Day in 2022), since it is more important to stop such holocausts before they start. We have a similar massively consequential test coming up right now with the delay in helping Ukraine that can become so very much harder to recover from if left too long.
They provide a pretty concise description of how Hitler learned from our history and hopefully spark enough interest for people to take the time to thoughtfully watch the whole series and see where we need to do better..."
I also found a fitting story to shed some light on the extreme danger with Mike Johnson's ignoring the catastrophic danger of letting the free world fall further apart.
"...You have a good neighbor. He does a lot for you. He keeps the street clean around your house. He mows your lawn when you are away. He signs for your packages and brings them to you later. Your kids go and play with his kids in the backyard. He has an alarm on his house with a camera, which you don't, and he once ran burglars away from your house. He's done a thing or two for you that you haven't noticed. Like the time he stopped a crew from mistakenly taking down a tree in your front yard. And the time he found your cat outside, on the street, and gave it to your kid.
And now your neighbor's house has caught fire. The flames are just now visible. There's plenty of time to react. In fact, you happen to be standing nearby, at exactly the right place, watering your garden, with a hose in your hand. The flames are in easy reach. Your neighbor runs to you and asks you to just turn the water in the direction of the flame.
You refuse. You turn off the water and walk away. And then you hurry down to your basement and shut off the valve, just to make sure your neighbor can't be helped.
All you had do was flick your wrist, turn the hose in the right direction. But you didn't. It wouldn't have cost you anything. A nickel on your water bill that you wouldn't notice.
And if you had helped, you'd have been a hero. Your neighbor would remember you, as would the press, as would your kids, as would everyone. But you chose not to help. Your neighbor's house burns down.
And then yours does, too..."
This is, currently, our Ukraine policy. We are choosing to let a good neighbor burn. Ukraine does things for us that we need, and often that we neglect to do ourselves, or cannot do ourselves. It does things for us that we do not notice.
That is by Timothy Snyder. But I imagine he is glad it is being shared even without credit to him. His substack is called Thinking About, free to subscribe.
The rsn link takes us to "The Neighbor's House Is on Fire at
Timothy Snyder / Substack" where more than the shorter section I enclosed in quotes can be found.
I appreciate the other link I found to his substack provided by Kathy Clark, but I can't begin to subscribe to all the great sites others point out, I get lost enough in the 203,386 emails I'm still trying to sort out and organize. So far I have two that I most appreciate for the links to history more personal to me and inspiration to look at other areas I've unintentionally left unexplored.
I depend a lot on HCR's followers to point out particularly significant additional focus on topics I appreciate informed connections to.
Thank you, President Biden for delivering one of the most important speeches in the nation’s history. May it long be remembered as pivotal to saving our democracy and preventing dictatorship.
President Biden, and millions of others, know what's going to come down if Drumph becomes Dictator. It's time, passed time, to repeat the vitriol, and vile imaginings of a self stated trump dicktatorship in ads that would show him attacking himself every time he speaks ill of someone else. The Lincoln Project used that to quite stunning effect before the last election. Joe's a good, decent man, and dump is not. Make it work for us.
Craig, "vile imaginings of a self stated trump dicktatorship in ads":
MeidasTouch has a poster picturing Trump and Hitler with alternating similar quotes. If audio recordings of both Trump and Hitler making these statements exist, this poster (with Hitler quotes both in German and translated into English in captions) could be weaponized. That would magnify its visceral punch of moral disgust.
Michael, While Biden’s Friday afternoon’s speech was necessary, it’s not sufficient. Hence, my urgent call not only for Biden but also for Democrats-at-large, drawing upon their long history of building social movements, to build a nationwide pro-democracy movement, rooted both in mutual respect and social accountability and in its fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution. My point is that our side, contrary to MAGA whose leader presents himself as the savior particularly of white people, requires a kind of public awakening that allows us to transcend our egocentric predicaments and connects us to a profound sense of what it is to be a citizen among citizens.
In a word, I envision a nationwide call to action: uniting, inspiring, and energizing people, who know we are under threat, to commit to participating in saving our democracy and also, hopefully, waking up those asleep to the necessity and urgency.
I did an online search for appropriate social movements. None seemed to be focused particularly on the 2024 Election. However, one comes immediately to mind: The Lincoln Project. Democrats, Independents, and anti-MAGA Republicans can all come together here for this life-and-death (for our country) project. Join at https://lincolnproject.us/join/
Don, I already have joined. I would note that a group of us are at the stage of reaching out to “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” I would add we particularly are intent on engaging young people.
I am in TN, where Gloria Johnson is running to replace Marsha Blackburn, a national joke and tfg groupie. Last week I received an email from someone (influential donor) who was told by Gloria’s campaign the DNC has written off WV and is looking to put its $$ in one of three other states, TN being one. The DNC is looking at donor participation: votegloriajohnson.com/
I understand your experience Marj. I feel the local Dems committee are reflective of their community, and must be somewhat centrist in order to have the BEST chance to win elections to the state senate and state house; as well as other non-partisan county and town races
With that said - the local group is THE outlet to help in 2024 with voter ID, turnout, fundraising and organizing. I welcome you to embrace your attitude of the committee, AND get involved. This way, you can become a progressive voice for change exactly WHERE the action is.
My experience is that my wife and I offered to staff the local rental storefront during the 2022 elections, and the two of us became the face of the party and our efforts, two days a week. Now, we are familiar characters with the county party.
Thank you Frederick. Obviously I have tried this or I would not have formed my opinion. I can try again though. I will have to poke around and see the cast of characters involved today.
I love President Biden but it would help if he could stop supporting the Israeli massacre of Palestinians. People have been calling him "Genocide Joe"! Not good!
One phone call. We're not sending any more weapons and ammunition. 22,722 killed, mostly women and children. How is this defensible? Why does Heather Cox Richardson not address it? This is Biden's downfall.
Gayle, Thank you for writing. I would note we must not relent in prevailing not only upon Biden but also upon our respective representatives to insist any further arms to Israel be conditioned upon an immediate and permanent ceasefire and movement towards a diplomatic resolution.
Remember when we all gathered after pos was inaugurated? That did not accomplish much. How can we gather and make change? What is the first step? I'm in.
Marj, Thank you for writing. A small group of us are at the stage of reaching out to “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-Founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” I would note we particularly are intent on engaging young people.
In the event you’re interested in pursuing this project with us, I’m posting an email address I no longer use that still receives messages. I’ll keep it on the site for 24 hours. See corrected email address.
Marj I am so glad you brought this up. Through a couple of other Substack readers, I was direct to Chop Wood, Carry Water, the Substack newsletter of Jessica Craven. It’s free. She’s very positive, and nearly every day puts out news about local efforts to organize around issues like fighting climate, change and abortion rights, both of which are very important to young voters. Even though I’m involved in my local Democratic Party, I have learned about several other wonderful organizations here in North Carolina through Jess, who I believe is in California. can’t post the link here because I’m on my phone, but you can find her easily. Can’t say enough positive things about her and the community around her, who are phone banking, writing letters etc.
The first step, respectfully, is to support those effective and responsible groups which encourage and physically register younger voters 18 to 29 who undoubtedly will deliver victory for American Democracy: after 8 years actively engaged in voter registration across 8 to 10 states, I recommend www.TurnUp.US.
TurnUp is a nonprofit charitable organization (C3) run by brilliant and effective Harvard students who have successfully brought out hundreds of thousands of young voters based on three principles that they overwhelmingly resonate with: 1) legislative support nationwide to protect and preserve abortion rights; 2) enactment of effective gun control and safety legislation; and 3) mobilization of effective efforts to battle Climate Control.
Their key is focusing exclusively on 13 states which have important elections for US Senators and 78 truly Competitive Congressional Districts! So please recommend www.TurnUp.US to your family and friends and please contribute generously ASAP as the battle for Democracy is underway NOW! Thank you!
I love when Democrats bring out the 2016 vintage "We Got This!" sackbut, in celebration of the coming electoral disaster; "...younger voters 18 to 29 who undoubtedly will deliver victory for American Democracy."
Don't look now, but the overwhelming ideology of young voters is Progressive - the anathema of the DNC and "Yesterday's Man" Joe Biden.
Virtually every poll clearly demonstrates Biden standing steadfast in the center-Right landscape of the Status Quo, and young voters SEE HIM THERE. Biden is completely out of touch with what the majority of Americans want from government - under- AND over-30.
Go ahead, walk around wearing your rose-colored blindfolds, and try ONCE AGAIN to shill a lesser-of-two-evils election to the saavy and weary under-30 voters. To quote another famous epitaph: "They stayed away in droves."
Joe has issued the first stage of the call that you appropriately favor! That will intensify as the election draws closer for a great many Americans who are low information voters! Fear not, we are coming! And we will be there when it counts the most! Thank you for your call.
Ira, Thank you for writing. While I am heartened by your reply, I, along with a few fellow LFAA readers, are proactively laying the groundwork for an engaged pro-democracy nationwide movement, aimed, particularly, at engaging young people.
Terrific; I’ve been suggesting a March on Washington much budget than before supplemented by local marches on the same day! I would be glad to help with respect to young people by asking TurnUp to get involved ?
Hi Ira, Like you, our small group of LFAA readers came together last fall to try and launch a nationwide march for democracy on July 4th. The action tentatively was titled “Rise Up For Democracy Before It’s Too Late.” We had envisioned the main event taking place in Washington D.C. on the morning of July 4th from 9:00 to 12:00 ET. Additionally, we had foreseen other marches across the country, largely embedded in existing parades and holiday events.
Once we hit the stage of reaching out to find standout figures to bring recognition to the project, we met with thoroughly justifiable explanations for why the impact and cost of said investment would not merit the effort necessarily taken from other work. Accordingly, as my initial comment shows, we have shifted our focus.
To start, we’ve selected 5 high profile figures whom we’re confident would mobilize young people: “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida U.S. House Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” Because I might have someone who can put me in touch with “The Tennessee Three,” we start there.
If you were able to enlist TurnUp, that would be an enormous contribution. Please note, although I no longer use it, I am posting an email address that still receives messages. I will leave it on the site for 24 hours.
Thanks; I think you need a bi-racial and Bi- Hispanic speaking group plus Obama or Raskin and team up with Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups and and move it to early October? I like the symbolism of Juky4 but I think it needs to be closer to the election-/ I will inquire at TurnUp??? Thanks
Not sure what you're implying here. Are you suggesting that President Biden is a poseur? If you watched the actual speech, you would see that there's not only no teleprompter to be seen, there are no glances at a script on the podium. President Biden spoke directly from memory and his heart.
Yes, he and every other president (and other elected officials) employ speech writers. I would guess that the president presents broad themes to his speech writers, then the president reviews, edits, modifies what has been presented to him.
I didn't mean to imply anything: 1) Biden has NEVER had anywhere near the chops to write that speech or any others (look what happens when he goes 'off script'), and 2) voters should stop swallowing hook, line, and sinker the WORDS said by politicians or reported in the mainstream media.
Teleprompters are frequently seen but rarely recognized; they're those clear glass screens sitting on either side of the podium. They're sitting at a readable angle above a horizontal computer screen. If you don't see them, then the crew has staged them off-camera (usually intentionally).
When Biden (or any other speaker) appears to be turning his head to address the whole room, he's simply switching from one TP to the other.
I suppose if you believe that "President Biden spoke directly from memory and his heart.", you have no problem in swallowing Dubya's claim about Putin, that "I looked into his eyes and saw a soul".
Americans (of either party) must certainly be THE most politically gullible creatures on the planet.
The prevailing perception is displayed by the all too common phrase; "That was a GREAT speech BY the President!" (Exhibit A: Valley Forge, Jan 5, 2024)
I don't have a problem with good speech writers. I have a problem with the Santa Claus notion that ANY of it came out of the politicians talking head. Instead of kudos they should be going for Golden Globe Awards.
Below is the speech he should be giving. Tie the GOP to the billionaires who own the country, and the government. But he won’t, because, unlike FDR, he is unwilling to be honest about the real problem, that being the monied interests pulling the strings; those same interests that fund his, and other Democrats campaigns. Until he forcefully attacks the millionaire/billionaire class, including Wall Street and Silicon Valley, he’s pissing in the wind.
Tom, While some might defend a party’s reluctance to bite the hand that feeds it, I believe, like you, that the benefits of calling out the millionaire/ billionaire class, who, for example, are the biggest drivers of much of the country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and income, would outweigh the costs.
Barbara, I firmly believe it’s the only way to peel away the millions of Trump voters who aren’t KKK racists, misogynistic asses, or QAnon kooks, but are extremely frustrated by government dysfunction and inefficiency in what they rightly perceive as a rigged game. It’s the only way to build a working class coalition broad enough to be able to counter the capitalist class rape and pillage.
If elections are lost because hard truths are spoken, so be it.
Tom, Because the stakes in 24 fundamentally are existential, I wouldn’t take this stance unless I were confident a movement would ensue that would drive home the point that voting Republican, the Party that has been silent on this issue, runs counter to working families’ interests and concerns. In short, we need FDR-like Democratic leadership so focused and disciplined so not to allow Republican deceptions and distortions to go unanswered.
I think the stakes have been existential since ‘80. GOP deceptions and distortions are a given, but must be always countered, and almost never have been, by a class-based critique. Democrats have refused to do so, fearful of being labeled socialists, commies, soft, etc. The response to GOP accusations that one is attempting to use ‘class war’ for political gain is ‘You’re damn right! The wealthy want to do what they want, when they want; and what they want is to rig the game so that you don’t get your fair share of the pie. This is a class war, make no mistake about it, it’s been going on since America was founded, and right now the rich bloodsuckers are winning. Wake up!’
Tom, I’m aware, and while you might not appreciate my response, throughout 2024, I consistently will be creating and recreating a system of prioritization. Indeed, I anticipate encountering values conflicts requiring me to prioritize values based upon my assessment of the consequences of my actions.
Leadership is more than promises and speeches. Biden has much to answer for; Gaza (your tax dollars at work!), Iran Nuclear Deal, Child care, Border crisis, denying Ukraine a path to NATO and slow-rolling weapons to them after the Russian invasion, his focus on supporting economic measures for Business rather than for Citizens (stock market profits vs. wages/prices), etc.
IF Biden wins reelection it won't be because he earned it as some comically fictitious FDR Champion of the People; it will be because a very small majority of Americans answered affirmatively, that Yes - Biden's not as bad as the Other Guy.
Tom, “If elections are lost because hard truths are spoken, so be it.”
Without money to Campaign, elections are lost. Citizens United is the game, play the hand you’re dealt OR just fold now and bask in the purity of a world that does not exist
You’re putting forth a false choice. Sanders showed that grassroots giving can be viable, if one has the right message, party establishment duplicity notwithstanding.
This has nothing to do with purity, it is right vs. wrong. To suggest otherwise is to endorse the Ed Meese mentality of if it’s legal, it’s ethical. It also endorses the concept of corruption, by participating in a corrupt process with a means justify the ends rationalization.
Plenty of examples of insurgent campaigns, both successful and near misses, to think playing a corrupt hand is the only path. That’s lazy, and lacking intestinal fortitude, imo.
A choice is a choice. The path Sanders chose had a result
“ OR just fold now and bask in the purity of a world that does not exist”
Your comments suggest that ethical purity is necessary, and while that’s aspirational, its not the world we live
You are defining corruption not in terms of what the Supreme rules but rather by your own opinion. I’d strike down Citizens United in a heartbeat if I could. I can’t. Condemning rational candidates for following the rule book seems like misplaced idealism
The world you seem to live in is Black and White. Reality is quite different
Black and White is lazy. The hard decisions are made in the context of infinitesimal grey areas, following the most noble path forward within the bounds of imperfect decisions
To suggest that doing anything other than what you would do equates to Ed Meese is just so much hyperbole
I do not think he has it in him, Rickey. His whole political history argues against it. Would like to be wrong. We’ll see. The first thing he needs to do is get Ukraine/Gaza off his plate; the latter is hemorrhaging votes. He might wind up like LBJ, a legacy of foreign policy killing his domestic accomplishment.
"Yesterday's Man" by Branko Marcetic. Our House Cat will never change his spots. He and the DNC spend more time hunting the door mice "Progressives" than the GOP.
He needs to condemn the Supreme Courts issue corporations to be people. Demand that we get money out of politics . That alone will be like taking the claws off a hawk.
Yeah, he could come out and ask American citizens, regardless of their party allegiance, to call their congressional representatives and tell them to support HJR-54, a constitutional amendment that would force the SCOTUS to end the twin concepts of corporate personhood and money as speech. But he won’t.
You might call Trump a Vampire Conservative, sucking money out of the rest of the world (with unpayable Treasury bonds) for a military buildup and tax giveaways for the rich.
This reminds me of the Normandy invasion , the big opening salvo against those who would destroy Western Democracy. We are granted sacred Freedoms and those must be protected.
I would also commend President Biden in reaching out to historians on this past Wednesday including you Heather for the long view. How important that is that your influence reached both us and the highest levels. Thank you for that!
Yes, Christopher -- love it how our Heather was there.
Love it that Biden entertains historians, as Kennedy famously did decades ago, historians and artists.
Those at Valley Forge apparently had superb listening inclinations. One doesn't believe in let along fight for democracy unless one has already learned to trust widely, to enjoy life's complications, contradictions, and what poet Joseph Brodsky called the "loose ends" in life, in people.
Best, when our leaders model the listening openness as Heather saw and gave to first-hand, we all may benefit, by listening for some of these historians online, reading them in their books and periodical essays.
One side in the coming elections has the decency of individuals open this way. The other side -- mindless cult for an angry, vengeful, near-illiterate diaper baby.
Phil B., U.S. Army translator/interpreter of Vietnamese, 2 Sept. 1969 -- 4 Apr. '72.
Phil, you and Christopher have your heads screwed on right. I stay up way too late most nights appreciating so many great comments and responses to comments.
I remember, while learning Vietnamese, seeing who our Viet allies were. The Viet middle class. All expected the U.S. to prop them up in their middle-class privileges -- cars, scooters, refrigerators, western fashions, the same consumerism to which the French Catholics had accustomed them. At the same time, all scorned fellow Vietnamese out in the boonies. Only the Viet Minh cared for them -- our "enemies."
I remember going to North Post, Ft. Myer, and getting from the library there a copy of Paul Mus's memoirs -- a French guy who'd walked afoot in Nam and learned the score even before Dien Bien Phu. We Americans had zero personnel like that -- only elites puffed up by abstractions, as David Halberstam later reported on in "The Best and the Brightest."
Heather is truely amazing. She is clear that she is doing this because she cares. About the history and the context of what is happening, but most importantly, she sinceerly cares about US. She gives us the credit for her continuous work because we are here and are a powerful force as well. Democracy Awakening is about her interaction with us, as she states in that great book. Biden and others recognize that she has the power of the truth to mobilize thousands of us to show up every day and discuss these issues amoung ourselves and develop appreciations and friendships across the world.
I sm impressed with that too. It’s important that we bring in people who understand who we are and what we’re doing : Historians and Teachers everywhere!
They can't tolerate history or many other facts. I'm more concerned with educated conservatives who rationalize a vote for any Republican as push-back against "socialism."
One cannot “agree or disagree” on a FACT! One can have a conversation about the fact. But to disagree says to you that it isn’t FACT. That is what is happening today. So what is fact?
Actually I believe it is rather divide and lead. Similar as they are the common thread is ‘Divide’. From Russia to Fox News to trump they’ve consistently pushed the ‘Divide’. Now there is one (DJT) that wants to lead. Clearly a horrible choice IMO.
I remember, on Biden's inauguration day, Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon chanting "F#ck Biden!" as they marched to the local Democratic headquarters to break all the windows.
The former president has been howling, snarling and snorting, while raking it in; lying, cheating, sexually attacking women, verbally attacking every group imaginable, except for most White supremacists, and claiming to be the victim; destroying institutions and transforming the Party, formally known as The Grand Old Party (GOP, a.k.a. the Republican Party). He’s wildly popular with about a quarter of the American people, and he led his party in busting out of democracy; so imprisoning as in slowing their goal to destroy the state and make their fortunes the easy way. Isn’t that exactly what they have been doing for the last 45 years; yes, and no! Now, they’ve got Putin and Orban, more billionaires than ever, more Americans who welcome a strongman, and an authentic, charismatic, lying, crooked lunatic The Republicans had other good years back in the day, along with Democrats, but that’s another story. There hasn’t been anything like this before, but let’s not forget The Civil War!
The former president's accomplishments were infamous, but that old pol, a relic of the senate called, Biden, beat him for the Presidency in 2020. The presidency had to be stolen back for Trump because he claimed that ‘the election was rigged’. Stealing it back for the former president would be under the aegis of ‘Stop the Steal’. Wasn’t that a clever switcheroo?
It was time for a battle party. The former president planned it for January 6th, 2021 and tweeted his supporters, ‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’.
It was wild, and it was dangerous, and it was deadly.
Now, it is time to call upon the fine former Madame, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who happened to attend the former president’s battle party on January 6th.
'What January 6 Made Clear to Me'
'Our democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage of those entrusted with their care.'
By Nancy Pelosi
THE SIXTH OF JANUARY is the date prescribed in United States law for Congress to count the electoral votes in the presidential election. It is an occasion of high drama with specific requirements: the security of the mahogany boxes containing the states’ Electoral College certificates; the timing of the joint session of Congress, called to order at 1 p.m.; the precise rules that spell out that the debate on objections to the count shall proceed “clearly and concisely.”
On January 6, 2021, my daughter Alexandra brought her two sons to the Capitol to witness this historic occasion of a peaceful transfer of power. My grandsons did witness history that day, just not the history anyone expected.
The former president had long planned for the nullification of the election, sowing doubt about the results even before ballots were cast and challenging the results in the courts. So before the joint session, we prepared for the possibility of objections to the Electoral College votes by Republican members of Congress. It was clear that the results from Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would be the targets. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland strategized with members of Congress from those states about how we would respond to and defeat the objections on the House floor, based on the facts and the laws.
The joint session on January 6 was called to order at 1 o’clock by the vice president. The first Republican objection to a state electoral vote came with Arizona. During that debate, at about 2:15 p.m., my security detail rushed to the speaker’s chair and told me that I had to leave immediately. We left so fast that I didn’t even have time to bring my cellphone with me.
Having failed to overturn the election results in the courts or in Congress, the president had resorted to insurrection in the Capitol. A violent mob—enflamed by the “Stop the Steal” rally held by the former president—had marched to the Capitol, broken through the outer police barrier, and reached multiple entrances to the building. Smashing in windows and breaking down doors, they stormed inside, seeking to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
More than 2,000 rioters made it inside the building. Some in the mob were yelling “Hang Mike Pence”—angry that the vice president refused to follow the former president’s diabolical order to overturn the election results. At the same time, the massive crowd swarmed outside my office chanting “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,” even screaming about wanting to put a bullet in my head. (AtlanticMag.) See gifted link below for Nancy Pelosi’s piece.
I think they’re out there; they just have a harder time making themselves heard. As we’ve seen in the past, women are held to a totally different standard than men. Women are “scolds”, men are “strong”. I’m so very tired of this.
Pelosi is a performative politician who was/is adept at navigating the legislative machinery in the House of Representatives to her, and her own political party establishments ends. The same could be said of Jesse Helms when he ‘served’ in the Senate. Pelosi put electoral viability over doing right by working people, firmly entrenched in the ‘if you can’t win, you can’t govern’ mindset.
That mindset prevented a whole host of policy initiatives that working people supported, from Medicare for All to student debt relief to a $15 minimum wage from ever being introduced for debate, much less a vote. Pelosi is Mitch McConnell with different messaging, a politician playing to a political base, playing a political game in a corrupt, rotten, pay to play system, enriching herself, and legislating for donors at the expense of the working class.
"If you can't win, you can't govern." Exactly why she was so good at the job. Notice conservatives no longer want to govern - finding common ground- they want to rule. Their way or the highway.
No, she wasn’t good at her job, unless you consider the job being all about pleasing party establishment at the expense of the working class. Yes, the GOP is anti-governing, with the exception of wealth consolidation and culture war. The Dems are about preserving neoliberal status quo, with the occasional improvement at the margins, making sure they don’t upset corporate donors in the process. That has also been a version of my way or the highway. Medicare For All, student debt forgiveness, ending the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts, ending endless war, etc etc etc, never get a proper hearing due to corporate donor fealty, by both parties.
'The first female Speaker of the House may have been its best. She was not the longest serving Speaker. Other than Sam Rayburn (D-TX), a handful of others sit ahead of her. She did not preside over the most prolific Congresses like those of the New Deal and Great Society. But she did pass the first American health care bill in several generations, the most comprehensive Wall Street reform bill since the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, the largest economic stabilization bills in U.S. history, and the largest expansion of climate research and investment in U.S. history. She was likely not the most powerful Speaker. That honor probably goes to Joe Cannon (R-IL), though with some caveats. But in virtually every metric one could evaluate a Speaker, Pelosi excelled. She has no contemporary peer to compare to. In fact, she was the only modern Speaker to return to the chair after losing it, the first since Rayburn and Joseph Martin in the mid-20th century. All of her predecessors dating back to the mid-1980s were pushed out of office. Pelosi will be remembered most for being the first woman to hold the office. But she was also a generational leader whose impact on her party and the House can only be compared to the most consequential Speakers in American history.' (Speaker Nancy Pelosi: A Master of the House' by Joshua Huder. From the journal The Forum
I wasn't aware that the Speaker has the power to change the system. Money, multiplied by Citizens United, is meant to distort what representatives choose to represent. And voters elect and re-elect those same representatives every 2 years. I think your issue is with the electorate.
Way to shoot the messenger, Jeri. That’s pretty much much all you’ve got when it’s pointed out that Democrats are bought and paid for, just as Republicans are, in a bought and paid for system. It’s logical fallacy trolling.
You can grit your teeth and fume all you want when Democratic Party hypocrisy towards the working class is pointed out, but that doesn’t change the reality. It just means your tribal disingenuousness is, well, over the top.
Nancy Pelosi writes: "I remember the first time I saw the United States Capitol. I was 6 years old, and my family was traveling to Washington to see Daddy sworn in for his fifth term in Congress. As we approached our destination, my brothers were beaming as they said, 'Nancy, look, look, there’s the Capitol!' And there it was: a magnificent white dome, towering and imposing, shining in the sun."
I am privileged to say that I had felt the same as Nancy Pelosi the many times the taxi I was in would make that left turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue and I would see the Capitol reveal itself, standing ever strong as it conducted the people's business.
Lynell, it is Nancy Pelosi who stirs me. While I loved going to DC as child and seeing the Capitol and having more associations with it, Nancy Pelosi is my touchstone. It mattered a great deal that she be with us tonight, and for me all through this particular period in our county's history.
I am very disturbed that the gifting of the article has not worked for several people. The Atlantic will hear from me later.
Thank you, dear Lynell, for sharing your story. It is beautiful and Nancy Pelosi would treasure your common appreciation for The Capitol, the symbol of our country.
Fern. Re “When I got to Fort McNair, it was clear that no one had deployed the National Guard to the Capitol. As Senator Chuck Schumer and I watched the television coverage of the unfolding insurrection, we began to place urgent calls to the administration.
I contacted Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who could not have been more casual. In response to our pleas to dispatch reinforcements, he said: “Well, I have to report to my boss. That takes time. I don’t know what we can do.” His answer was horrifying.
While the Pentagon dragged its feet, Chuck, Representative Steny Hoyer, and I called the governors of Virginia and Maryland to ask them for help. Virginia law enforcement and National Guard troops began arriving in D.C. around 3:15 p.m., and Maryland was cooperative too.”
What is abundantly clear to me is that parts of the Military Command were ordered (or instructed) that no effort should be made to quell the riot and as we see in our courts, specious reasons for “delay” can bring forth the end result desired
Ryan McCarthy and the entire chain of command that slow walked any help led to one person, the ogre watching TV in the White House anticipating his place in history as the Great Conquerer
There should be an investigation into that dereliction of duty
I am quite sure these parts of our Military Command have been investigated for dereliction of duty, by order of both General Mille and Attorney General Merrick Garland, leaving no traitor unindicted.
It seems to me that the efforts to handcuff the government response to an expected/preplanned riot at the Capitol was compartmentalized by someone like Fylnn, understanding that “orders given” by higher ups must be followed and each level used as many deflection tools as possible. If Ryan McCarthy was actually a patriot he would have moved Heaven and earth to respond, yet he was nonplussed. “Hmm, a riot at the Capitol? Well, I have no authoriztion to respond, good luck finding someone who does. Hint hint, he’s watching on TV and is taking no calls”
The gifting of the article, thank you, works for me and in fact says it is available for 13 days.
I suspect what is happening is - when a message pops up asking readers to sign up- rather than 'xxx'-ing out of the message box and continue reading - people leave the page.
Marj, thank you very much for stopping by and sharing your thoughts., which sound quite logical. There is some responsibility on the part of the Atlantic to make the gifting clearer for recipients. Thanks, again!
On this day in 1649 the English Rump Parliament voted to put King Charles I on trial for treason and other "high crimes". What will it take for Trump to be convicted??
Great comments, Fern! Fiery and succinct. I started reading the Atlantic article and then it cut me off due to the paywall. Any chance they let you gift? I just can imagine the rest of it because I saw Pelosi’s daughter’s film footage of what happened that day. My heart was beating as hard as when I saw it occurring.
Marlene, if you have a library card, many libraries today have digital content of most major periodicals like the Atlantic that you can read online for free, just like in the library. Check it out.
Thank you. This is a stirring account. Interestingly, I spent some time this fall with old friends whom I rarely see. They are all what I would call knee jerk Republicans. I’m not even sure they could have named Joe Biden as our current president, but they sure hate, hate, hate Nancy Pelosi. Fox News? I wouldn’t consider any of them politically active, but the hatred was vitriolic.
Hey, Betsy. I can't help but try mightily to understand the hate that you describe coming from "old friends." So far the only thing I can come up with is because they feel threatened by "others" being given a leg up by our representatives, which takes away what they perceive is their due.
Lynell, I think it’s probably more a case of being in a silo (which in some ways I understand since I tend to live in one, too). When I questioned why they found Nancy Pelosi so horrible, not one of them could give a reason. It was just “because”. I see them so seldom and our friendships are so ancient that it wasn’t worth getting into a losing battle, but maybe, just maybe, something I said led one or more of them to reconsider? I can foolishly hope.
Marlene, I gifted again, but it's exactly the same as the first. Try it again. No one else has stated that problem, and quite a few have read it. I hope that it works for you this time.
Jerri, it was gifted. I cannot explain why a couple of you, that I am aware of, faced a paywall. When one subscriber shared this difficulty, I regifted it, and it was exactly the same as the first. I subscribe to the Atlantic and don't know whether it sells individual pieces. I will complain to the magazine about this, and I am sorry.
If they just check the X in the corner of a pop up request for their email, it will go away and the full article continues. It was a little confusing, but it does work. Thank you again, Fern!
Thank you, Becky. Another subscriber explained the problem to me. I think it is the fault of Atlantic Magazine that some recipients are confused by the process. Thanks, again!
Thank you, Fern, for your gift of the Atlantic article by Nancy Pelosi. We all need inspiration to face this coming election. I am continually astonished that anyone with an ounce of common sense and decency can in any way support Trump and the vileness he represents and spews.
Thomas Ricks explained this in his book First Principles. The founders were clear in the need for our leaders to men of virtue. They did not included women in their time, but coming forward we can say leaders.
The conservative movement is no longer, it has devolved into a fascist movement. They no longer seek to govern - only rule. Sadly, there are a large number of people in our country that seem fine with that.
Fran, upon occasion I click on David Pakman to see what he has to say. Upon occasion, I feel like he is over the top, but this from yesterday was amazing. Trump apparently spent an hour in frenzied posting on his social media platform. This man is seriously unhinged. Just imagine if Biden, or any Democrat did this:
On a side note, my given name is Ellen. (Miselle comes from the shortened nickname a dear friend gave me: "Miss Elle" which she'd combine into one word. She passed of breast ca and lymphoma years ago, and the nickname keeps her close in my heart. She was a godsend to me many. many times.)
Over the years I've frequently been called Helen or Eileen.. Ellen doesn't seem like such an odd name, but being called one of those two names has come up over and over and over,.
Fern like the plant is so appropriate! You give off vibes of hope springing up, just like nature in the springtime!
What's in a name? Miselle, thank you for telling me how you name came about. I have felt deeply appreciative of several friends in the past couple of weeks. They have been godsends to me, so I understand one of the dear ways you keep close to your friend who passed away. If you don't mind, I'd like to know her name.
My grandmothers were not alive when I was born. My parents decided to name me after my father's mother, 'Fanny', and he came up with the name 'Fern' thinking that the name 'Fanny' could give me some trouble. I have a story about 'Fern', which could have led to me being teased. That is another story for another time. In closing, though, my school mates didn't give me any trouble.
Her name was Gwen. I would not have survived an abusive toxic work situation without her. No joke, weekly the manager had someone in tears. She gave me the courage to escape.
Thank you, again, Misselle. This last time for telling me Gwen's name and how she was at you side. You had a strong and beautiful bond between you that endures.
Especially today as I remember the lives lost, the destruction and chaos throughout the day, and the refusal to act that is now “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history", I stand for democracy as envisioned by our founders and against those who would destroy it through the undermining of our institutions and by turning them against others out of vindictiveness and hatred. Every January 6th is now my January 4th. There can be no greater cause than opposing criminalization of the Office of the President. #donaldstinks #donaldsmells #LizCheney #ithappened
President Biden’s speech at Valley Forge was his best. He spoke of Arlington National Cemetery and President Trump’s contempt for those buried there. Biden personalized his campaign for the presidency, he discussed the disgraceful behavior of President Trump. Joe Biden gutted Donald Trump in a personalized manner.
President Biden attacked former President Trump. Biden attacked banality, antisemitism, monarchy, Biden did not mince his words. He attacked. He focused his campaign on democracy. He drew the line between good and bad, democracy and dictatorship. Biden was uncharacteristically blunt. He expressed exasperation and contempt for Trump, for Trump and Trumpism. Biden attacked. Be was emotional. He used the bully pulpit and issued the cry. Who are we? We, the people.. who are we? We see who Trump is and was.
Who are we? He asked. And he answered his own question. Find those words and you will find President Biden.
I see now I must write in code on this feed. I mentioned Gaza in a comment and it has disappeared. Thank you for reminding everyone here that bombing is not a form of democracy I’d like to protect. Israel is not a democracy worth killing for.
Tom & Irene, I fear that as a democracy we are vulnerable to the guilt of many previous misjudgments and political errors and even outright lies as a country. While often grievous errors, as I suspect many would justifiably agree with the Israeli-Palestinian/Hamas conflict, we also must admit and somehow contend with such misjudgments in Iraq ("weapons of mass destruction"?), in Afghanistan and perhaps most grievously in Viet Nam ("inevitable spread of communism"?). While morally repugnant in retrospect, with democracy we retain the capacity to do our best to acknowledge our errors and move forward with whatever we can muster to acknowledge our errors and moral failures and make some form of reparation. When have you ever heard acceptance of moral failure or misjudgment from those places where democracy has been starved, defeated or never tried (think Russia, Iran, North Korea)? Democracy isn't efficient, isn't always accurate in what countries to support or side with but it retains the unique capacity to correct its course,...eventually. “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
John, inside many mistakes or misjudgments are the multitude of details that muck up the decision making processes in the moment. Hindsight and sound bytes are what make up the shallow complaints of the masses, but the reality of Viet Nam, et al are never clear cut and decision makers don’t have the luxury that the Monday Morning Quarterbacks have; shoulda coulda woulda
Delve into the histories of the Cuban missile crisis, WWI and II. Its complex
Dave, I couldn't agree more that it IS complex, especially for those we have elected to be the decision-makers. My concern, however, is as more information filters in to those decision-makers, that they tend to get more entrenched in their positions and sometimes (often?) move from rationalizing the decisions they have made to inventing reasons for those decisions rather than backing off what has become more clearly an error of judgment based on limited and/or biased information at the time. Hence, Churchill's quote. And those considerations don't take into account the ubiquitous flow of money to and from major industries let alone the flow to not only our politicians but even our judges that we are now learning about. How much more time or information do you think those decision-makers needed to recognize that the carpet bombing of Cambodia was not helping our fight against Communism? Or that our original labeling of Ho Chi Minh as a Communist served the political climate in the US more than an accurate recognition of his efforts to save his country from "the imperialists," be they USA, Russia or China. I suspect we get into far more trouble than we need to because of our unwillingness to listen to more nuanced understanding of the culture into which we have barged with our own "national security interests."
In the 50’s Americans were gripped in fear of the Red Scare fueled by McCarthy (god please cancel that name) and the political requirement to crush anything resembling communism. Nixon, the Kennedy’s, the Birchers et al using the fear of nukes as a rallying cry. Dominoes filled the zone. Bad decisions made in fear. The news media fed us daily death counts like football scores and we consumed it. Accurate information then as it is today was tough to come by.
My basic point is that each example of poor outcome contains a complex interaction of conflicting goals and compromises employed in the moment. Omnipotence would be great but we don’t live in that world
People applying black and white decision making have probably never had to make critical decisions in a sea of gray information
I disagree with Churchill. We keep doing the wrong things, and worse, never atone or hold people accountable. Exceptional or Evil? The more I am exposed to our actual history, as opposed to the propagandized one, the more I reluctantly come down thinking it’s the latter.
Tom High, having watched the video you suggested <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER77vxxGVAY> I am even more convinced that it is, or at least was, because of people exactly like Duane Claridge (Head of the Latin American Division of the CIA in the 1980s) who apparently believe that the CIA best understood what is required for our national security and best understands the cultures into which they (we) barge to "fix" what appear to be uncomfortable or unfavorable situations for the USA. Have I misapprehended that you see the video showing the kind of person we have failed to hold responsible for our terrible misadventures in other countries?
The problem isn’t so much with Claridge, and his ilk, imo, as it is those in higher levels of government who are never held accountable for signing off on anti-Democratic regime change operations that result in incredible misery for the targeted nation. Ike in Guatemala, Iran; Kennedy/Johnson in Indonesia, Vietnam; Nixon/Kissinger in Chile, Reagan in El Salvador, Nicaragua; Bush/Cheney in Iraq; Obama/Clinton in Syria etc etc. All should have been, at a minimum, investigated for war crimes.
People lose their minds over Trump inciting a riot, and push mass killings/torture abroad in our name aside like it’s a normal part of being ‘exceptional’. Turns my stomach.
Humans are the same everywhere. There have been and always will be terrible people everywhere (or "evil" if you prefer). The job of the rest of the people is to keep them out of power. And if the rest of the people don't do that job, then you get what you get. I know it's more satisfying to blame "them", but it's "us", the human species. Evolution takes millenia. May we work together to do better.
You’re right. I just have a problem with the analysis of most here that the people who put Trump in office were to blame, and ignore the Democratic voters who voted for neoliberal candidates whose decisions and voting records set the table for Trump to sit in the Oval.
Yes, when all the other options were explored and exhausted, we got it right. Prolific great author, world class speaker and philosopher, a unique Prime Minister, friend of America, the great WInston S. Churchill loved America, the natiok of his warm relative, he loved a good decision, a good cigar, Grand Fin Brandy, fine champagne, a good whiskey, dry fine wine, statecraft, peace, and war-making as needed. Sir Winston saved western civilization and was known as The Lion for good reason. He was also loved by those that professed to dislike him. His actions saved FDR more than once.
So... kindly ask Stanley Cohen Esq., - to call. 📱 973.379.4446 iPhone WhatsApp and SIGNAL or direct.. messages accepted.. by txt, to alert, or email at sblewis@fastmail.fm for starters. So.. Bibi was a house guest, quite by accident. One time. A few hours on a plane, then more at home. Flew quickly from a Baltimore gathering following a funeral, for a Meyerhoff, to MMU. Till retrieved by Mossad from Short Hills to Manhattan at 4:30 AM that night. One visit. One talk, the Ambassador was elegant, polite, friendly, calm. Smart. Protected. Not Abba Eban. More determined. We see now. It’s complex. Always is. UJA, not New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies... with 63% beneficiaries non white. Zionism is quite logical, can be quite deadly, but understandable. Maybe 2% of the population worldwide is the number. Might as less.
This is the situation. The challenge. Tolerance is missing, worldwide. Human beings are tested, Gaza and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and John Foster Dulles and President Dwight David Eisenhower back to some 200 Camps of Nazi Germany, to PM Golda Meyer from Milwaukee to Sen. Joe Biden and Anita Hill, it’s mere ignorance and arrogance, it’s sadly and shameful, it’s not going to end anytime soon. History is repeating. By education and sunshine, by education and tolerance, by education and social justice and democracy... perhaps. Conscience is not a vestigial organ. It’s not missing. Never is. We must activate and inspire the conscience.. The 4th Estate when truly free is one leg of many. Youth is key. Children see and feel it. Get suppressed. Brotherhood of children schooled in a tiny Ramallah school is a start, 50/50.. an example c. 1979. I witnessed. Unique at the time. We funded the school. Never heard a word.
SB, I used to think a two-state solution was viable. I no longer do. I’m wondering as well about the possibility of democratic viability in a corporate/wealth-owned world. Which causes our extinction first; climate, nuclear annihilation, or AI?
If we can’t agree on history, we can’t fix anything. Thank you for funding that school.
Many people aren’t aware of the details of what America did to Japan and Korea under General Curtis LeMay.
Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the deaths of more civilians than any other military officer in American history. No one else comes close—not Ulysses S. Grant, not William T. Sherman, and not George S. Patton. “I’ll tell you what war is about. You’ve got to kill people and when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”
Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo
In an interview with U.S. Air Force historians in 1988, USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, commented on efforts to win the war as a whole, including the strategic bombing campaign, saying, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too...Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure?”
Pyongyang, which saw 75% of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.
By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.
Kristen, Caitlin Johnstone writes often about propaganda; am quoting below from her most recent piece concerning the media and Gaza. America’s lack of knowledge about our actual history is killing our ability to formulate policy, and do the right thing.
“The biggest misconception about propaganda is that it is something that happens to other people, and is done by other countries. Westerners like to think of themselves as free-thinking people whose worldviews are formed by facts and truth, contrasting themselves with nations like North Korea and China where populations are viewed as being subjected to conformity-enforcing propaganda. They believe that if propaganda does occur in the west, it comes here from nations like Russia trying to corrupt our minds and weaken our trust in our institutions, or if the propaganda is domestic in origin it only affects people in other political parties.
In reality the typical western mind has been marinating in domestic propaganda throughout its entire life, and its worldview has been manufactured for it by powerful manipulators who benefit from its intellectual compliance with their interests. The indoctrination into the mainstream western worldview began in school, and it continues throughout adulthood with the help of mainstream media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post.
If we’re ever to have a healthy civilization, we’re going to have to wake up from the propaganda-induced coma we’ve been placed in so we can begin pushing against the cage walls we’ve been indoctrinated our whole lives into ignoring and start using the power of our numbers to force real change in the systems which govern our world. Luckily the atrocities that have been taking place in Gaza have been rapidly waking people up, because it turns out there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.
The more people become aware that our civilization is built on deception and everything we’ve been told about the world is a lie, the closer we get to living in a truth-based society where nothing like the Gaza massacre would ever be permitted to occur.”
Cute. Just curious, is the 57 your age, birth year, or IQ?
Hard to be full of fun when children are having limbs amputated without anesthesia in Gaza. Thousands of them. But hey, at least they’re lucky to be alive, and not buried and decomposing under bombed-out rubble, right? Waaay more fun.
Mr. Stanley Cohen Esq., writes, covers Zionism effectively, among others. So, dear Stanley, if you’re open, anytime. We see what you see. Feel what you feel. Want what you want, are 85/88, we’ve been there.. we know that space, both sides of the sphere, and we may be powerless. We never know. Presidents Biden and Obama are and were trapped and well trained. Anita Hill is a tell. Most all are trained.. On all sides. Many sides. This one is 2,000 years old. Our grandchildren are trapped. Dare we try? Do we have a choice? Is WW III threatening? Will M.A.D. help? Or trigger?
We know. Action in accord with principle is a key to happiness, Aristotle to his son in Ethica.
So... to action. To principles. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Spot on Sandy, it really pissed me off when I saw how the News Hour treated the president’s most excellent speech yesterday, they used a screen grab that made him look deranged and basically skipped over the speech and it’s importance. WTF??? I get it that Fux News might want to ignore it, I ignore them and their advertisers because of it, but PBS?
Tonight on the news, I heard part of an interview with Harry Dunn, one of the police officers at the Capital during the insurrection. Dunn is running for Congress. Four years short of qualifying for his pension, he is moving from one form of public service, in the Capitol police, to pursue another avenue, as a legislator. It's a crowded field in the primary, but he offers a history that the other candidates do not. Check him out at https://harrydunnforcongress.com/.
President Biden was on fire! Loved how he leveraged history. I wonder if a certain extraordinary historian was a resource to Biden and his speech writers...
The people in the meeting were said to have included the Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz, the University of Virginia historian Allida Black, the journalist Anne Applebaum, and the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Speechwriters for Biden, including Vinay Reddy and Jon Meacham, and the White House senior advisor Anita Dunn were also said to have attended.
HCR WAS at the meeting as well. It's likely that Meacham assisted in writing the Biden speech but I don't know that for sure. Other news outlets listed her as attending the meeting.
I had that exact thought! Especially when he mentioned the painting in the rotunda of the Capitol that HCR had talked of in a recent Letter! I loved his speech and I wrote to congratulate him immediately: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ because I strongly believe in telling people when they've done a good job, instead of only writing to complain! Join me in writing, if you are so inclined. It is so easy and someone will read it, they need to know what we think of them.
Tomorrow is the last anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol before the election. Perhaps this a good time to watch or rewatch The Hearings of The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. If you care about America it will be emotional to watch. But we need to remember those feelings. Please pass this idea on, especially if you have stubborn Republican family and friends.
You can find them on PBS and YouTube. If you just don't have that kind of time at least watch Hearing 10 which includes a good summary.
Even though I couldn't find Hearings 9 or 10 on PBS I would suggest watching the first 8 Hearings there. On YouTube you have to speed scroll through the breaks or just wait through them. On PBS you have commentary during the breaks and I found it to be somewhat helpful and professional, as opposed to the boring personal opinions that most networks provide.
PBS
Hearings 1 -8. I had to use the search option to find these.
Hearings 9 & 10 (which is a good summary) are labeled as Business Meetings instead of hearings because 9 includes a supeona for Donald Trump and 10 includes an official call for Indictments for Trump and for lawyer Eastman.
I had watched most of the hearings live in 2022 but still found these to be very moving more than a year later, and after I had read books by Cheney, Kinzinger, and surprise key witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
Addition: I did find Hearing 10 on PBS. It's titlle on YouTube: WATCH LIVE: Jan.6 Committee Hearings - The Final Report. It's also titled: The January 6th Hearings, The Final Report, PBS NEWS HOUR.
Also I should have pointed out that I found most of these using my Roku device on my TV. Hey I'm old now. I swear I was considered tech savvy at one point in time 😉
Correction: The PBS Final Report is evidently the PBS Summary and is quite different from Hearing 10 on YouTube which is evidently the Committee's summation and call for indictments .
Thank you, Gus. I watched every minute of them at the time but it was a huge piece of work that I will revisit. My 9 year old grandson was with me as we watched in horror in real time on Jan 6th, I plan to ask him today what he remembers about that day.
You're very welcome. There are moments that still make me tear up. I watched it in horror in real time as well. I think it's great that you and your grandson can share important moments like that. I have a couple of those too. ♥️
Gus, thank you for suggesting that we rewatch the hearings, especially hearing #10. The information on how extensively Trump broke the Emoluments Clause, not including the payments from Russians, shows just how numb many Americans have gotten about his misdeeds. We can count on his insistence that the election was rigged if he loses.
You're very welcome. I agree with you about Trump. In his very narcissistic mind, he can never admit to losing. He can never admit to being wrong. He certainly is a fan of the theory that if you repeat a lie enough times people will believe you. It's not hard to see how he developed a cult. I had (and probably still have) relatives who are among them. And yes, we have become numb to his lies, and even to his crimes.
Gus, his biggest and most harmful lies utilize projection so that the audience comes to believe that all politicians are as corrupt as he and his associates, including his family, are. He also has spread the lie, like Reagan, that democracy cannot, and will not, help the common man; this is the lie that the social safety net only exists to transfer our hard-earned money to the assumed-lazy poor. This is where Biden’s administration is so smart—they’re creating jobs to uplift the poor and middle class while protecting their dignity.
I don’t know if you saw my recommendation of Erica Etelson’s book “Beyond Contempt “ about how to talk, as a liberal, to conservatives so that a true exchange of ideas takes place instead of an exchange of insults.
This was one of the best speeches I believe President Biden has ever delivered. Just in case you didn’t get a chance to watch it, here is a link to it. I highly recommend watching this video.
I’m afraid that “Pathetic Donald” is much too ‘nice’! “Insurrectionists Idiot”, “Treasonous Dufuss”, “Lying Dictator”, and my favorite, “Pussy Snatching Sicko”!
IMHO I thought the President was awesome today. This is what leadership sounds like and acts like. I am so tired of all the legal gyrations consuming so much time. I am disgusted that we have essentially abandoned the Ukrainians who have shown us for almost 3 years now the true love of democracy and their unbelievable sacrifice to defend and save democracy. I am thankful for you Professor and your dedication to democracy and us in sharing your gift that always sheds light in this tumultuous time.
The criminal Trump is merely symptom of the disease that has become the American political system. It has been overrun by vast amounts of dark money. It is the highly concentrated wealth, the outcome of economic policies dating back to the Reagan administration.
Any meaningful form of democracy requires an educated, informed, and engaged society. The erosion of public education, the consolidation of media (broadcast and social), and toxic political campaigns continue to assault all three vital guardrails against the rise of the incompetent and corrupt.
The intent of the GOP is to continue to concentrate wealth (and thus power) while keeping Americans divided through fear and hatred.
I argue that if you were to assemble small groups of Americans around a kitchen table, and asked "what kind of outcomes would you like to see occur for the future of the United States" far more people would agree on fundamental issues. Consolidated media owned by people like Rupert Murdoch or the Sinclair Broadcasting Group do not want to bridge the divide. Zuckerberg's Facebook and Musk's Twitter rely on division, the spread of propaganda, and disinformation.
Make no mistake. Trump is a symptom of the disease. The influence of concentrated wealth is the root cause of this rapid decay -and the reality is the GOP can run anyone they want for the Presidency -(or Congress, or State/Local government) and it will be a close, money-influenced race. One need not look beyond the divided U.S. Senate, or the slim House majority held by extremists who will happily subvert democracy while talking to their constituents about 'Jewish Space Lasers'.
On connected issue -your help is needed.
In the United States, in 2024, democracy is on the ballot. Recent research states 75% of people consume their news on social platforms. With so much at stake, do you trust Musk and Zuckerberg -or is it time for an ad-free, subscriber-supported civic social network that doesn't sell or share data with marketers, shadowy political operatives, or billionaires.
Another corrosive process over the last 40 - 50 years has been the trend for our congressmen and -women and senators to evade their responsibility to make the tough decisions that we should expect of them.
If Congress wants to exert some real leadership, here is their opportunity. Speculation abounds on the likely fate of the appeal from the Colorado Supreme Court on the application of Section 3 of Amendment XIV.
Shouldn't Congress take the initiative? Section 3 does not specify who gets to decide whether the accused oath violator is an insurrectionist barred from future office. The obvious candidate is Congress! It's a political question if ever there was one.
Instead of enduring futile arguments and speculation about which justices are probably going to give Mr Trump a pass, I would rather see the senators and representatives grasp the nettle. They are supposed to give expression to the policy preferences of their constituents . . . and to use their authority to make decisions for the benefit of the country and the preservation of the Constitution.
Let's go to the source. The last sentence of Section 3 offers Congress a way to affirmatively and firmly stop all of the speculation. Do you suppose two-thirds of the representatives and two-thirds of the senators would be willing to vote for a resolution excusing Mr Trump's actions and derelictions? I don't pretend to know, but the debate should be put on the agenda urgently in both chambers.
No more fooling around. No more ignorant, impassioned schoolyard taunts and scandals. It is time for members of Congress to take their responsibility seriously.
Agreed? Would Civic Works be willing to start a letter-writing campaign to press Congress to act?
Congress is deliberately incompetent, divisive and antagonistic to any positive action. The bully puppeteer from the sidelines is assuring that. Wish a letter-writing campaign would unclog their minds. But have my doubts. Worth a try.
I will try. Wonder if Resistbot still writes. Haven't used them in awhile. Of course, I lucked out with Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. They are useless. Why I don't bother with either anymore.
It's not either/or is it. HCR hails from academia. Debate is part and parcel of the democratic process, and we need an educated electorate more than ever. What we may be losing track of in this age of viewing life though a screen of one sort or another (there is one in front of me) is that a functioning democracy is "hands on", at least in the sense that "self-government" is DIY by definition. We in aggregate are the ultimate authority. If we don't set the agenda and the goals of our "representatives", somebody else will, and in reality they very much do so. Follow the money. We forsake our own collective agency when we sit on our share of governance rather than exercise it.
And voting is key to that, but the vote without sufficient information is like a shot it the dark. One thing that successful social movements provide is information about matters we might otherwise overlook or prefer not to acknowledge. Academia contains a wealth of useful, even vital, information if we know how to use it. And above all democracy depends of conversation, useful, observant and good faith conversation, to become wise.
The Supreme Court Republican abominations of Citizens United (2010), Bellotti (1978) and Buckley (1976) established the "principle" that implicit quid-pro-quo is not bribery. This "principle" is ENTIRELY about trickle-down economics: the premise that if you shovel money into the hands of the rich, they will use it to grow productivity in the economy. It is a mendacious lie. Trickle-down is a cover for the Great Implicit-Quid-Pro-Quo: a payback in massive tax-breaks to American oligarchs for past bribes (campaign contributions made legal by the Supreme Court: "Money is speech.").
When the Democrats have the votes to succeed: (1.) Pass legislation to wipe out these Supreme Court rulings, including a reference to Article III of the Constitution informing the Court that this legislation is created outside their appellate jurisdiction. (2.) Add whatever is possible to this legislation to eliminate the corruption of money from the American democratic process. (3.) Eliminate the Reagan, G.W. Bush, and Trump tax-cuts for the wealthy, other than the sops for the non-wealthy added to make them politically palatable. (4.) Create an independent regulatory agency as a watchdog of ethical behavior among the Justices. (5.) Since they have become irredeemably political, set term-limits on Court membership--perhaps 15 years?
Speaking of debate, I wonder if there will be any that include the former president. In the primaries he has framed it as "I am so far ahead I don't need to participate" but in the real race that should not float. My impression is that he is too unhinged to do well and Biden knows his stuff. We can hope that might help settle the question of who is old and infirm.
That's a good question. I guess we'll find out. Personally, I don't think the old and infirm thing is much of an issue. It's ageist. And I don't think we need another shit show to prove that Trump is unhinged. At this point I think I would advise the president to pull a Trump and bypass any debates.
You are absolutely right sir. I suppose that President Biden knows all of this, but was emphasizing the urgency of his message. Thank you for having this conversation with me, and not dismissing me out of hand.
...which is why our academic institutions are being attacked at every level, from K-12 curriculum, teachers and administrators to University presidents. My alma mater abruptly evicted a truly outstanding and much-loved president of many years, the reason being an alumni event had been scheduled in a facility that had a history of limited inclusion. Knowledgeable citizens foil the far-right agenda. Ignorance feeds their power.
I apologize for the scold. As JL Graham rightfully reminded me, analysis by you and others is an important part of the political awareness and process.
Wow, Go Joe Go. Frame it, don't blame it, Make it strong, and unavoidably clear the choice we have to make this year. And it doesn't hurt that Joe and Kamala's vision for America is actually working. I see a steam-roller a comin down the road!
I am an Episcopalian, and one of the things I really treasure about our tradition is that Christmas is a season, not a day. It goes from Christmas Day, December 25th to the 5th of January. That is the basis for the old 12 days of Christmas carol. It ends on the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany. It makes me very angry that I will never again be able to fully enjoy this tradition without thinking of the insurrection perpetrated on the United States by the former president and the thugs who support him.
Many thanks to the President for finally stating the issue in the election, and to Heather for her excellent article. We all need to take this seriously and do everything we can to preserve our democracy.
With you. When we celebrate the Light shining in the darkness, we need to recall the real-life exhibition of darkness we saw at the insurrection. That event has forever tainted our celebration of the Epiphany. I pray this Epiphany allows more folks to open their eyes to see the Light of love, kindness, decency, truth, honor, integrity, and freedom. In my faith tradition, Jesus, the REAL Jesus (not the evangelical “Christian” version) brings us all that and more. As a nation where all may honor (or not) as their faith traditions call them and as our Constitution stipulates, I pray light and truth win out.
Love that speech! Today I realized that the strongest weapon in war and politics is doubt. If you can sow doubt, you’ll reap discord, and then you win. That is, sadly, why Biden pulls on the shortest straw: he wants to build things up, which is almost infinitely more difficult to do than breaking things down - which is the goal of the Orange Menace.
I watached the CNN coverage of the speech. Biden's words got about 3 minutes, Trump's idiocy got at least twice as much time, including making fun of Biden's stuttering, which was not very obvious during his speech.
Democracy is a cause and the most valid we as a people of our truly great nation have. There are many nations with decent and fair governments, but only one America. Our nation must be saved from both internal and external forces that seek to enrich themselves through our mental and physical enslavement; a harsh term, but the only one that supports a dictator's method.
It’s a common tendency to think where we would move in case of an unthinkable Trump victory this year. Canada. Costa Rica. New freaking Zealand (“freaking” only b/c it’s such a long flight!). But when we consider the abject misery Washington’s Army endured wintering over in Valley Forge in the service of fighting tyranny, or what my grandfathers endured in WW2 fighting Nazis… We should not be thinking about going anywhere if he wins. Flawed and often broken, this country is still the essential nation, and we must keep fighting for its better nature now and forever.
I’m camped out here in Philly, voting and hustling, and I’ll be damned if I’m leaving.
Half way across the country, I have reached the same conclusion as you. And also, if the USA falls in 2024, I do not think that there will be many places of refuge left by the decade’s end.
As Joyce Vance says every evening, “We are in this together”.
Yep. That’s why I’m biting my nails here in Germany… When democracy is destroyed in the US, Europe will follow shortly thereafter. I don’t know if all Americans fully realize what’s at stake here, and what an enormous responsibility the American voters have right now…
You are so right! I live in France, and my French friends are more worried about the U.S. political situation than many Americans appear to be. There would be a massive world-wide effect if our democracy does not hold. It is pointless for Americans to think of moving elsewhere because if that man is elected again, he and his international buddies will take the entire world down with them. We MUST vote, and encourage everyone we know to do so. There is much too much at stake including beyond our U.S. borders.
Why does the world see what could happen and so many Americans not? How did we get so lost? Lack of Education, greed??
Simple answer…”STUPIDITY”! Look at the amount of “true MAGA followers”! These people have emptied their bank accounts ever month sending Frumpy their hard-earned money to pay his legal fees, his bills. He hadn’t hit a lick a a snake in his lifetime! This 🍓💩🤡🤮 is the biggest con man alive, and living off of everyone else’s dime!
Fox and other media outlets!
Yes Lesly, and add in the white superiority complex, the south will rise again attitude and couple that with hatred and fear that white’s will be in the population minority in the not too distant future - assuming life as we now know it, last that much longer! Our country’s founding and those who have helped form our system of governance and government(s) as well as those who have helped preserve the the freedoms that we have are literally the best thing since sliced bread ... and sure there are tweaks needed along the way to help our Nation be inclusive to all of it’s citizens and residents but it’s because we are a work in progress, and as RR used to say at a time before he was elected POTUS .. [thanks to GE] “Progress Is our most important product”!
I have long wanted to live in France. Not because I want to leave the US; I just love 🇫🇷
ML, I have an ex-student who is retired from his teaching job and now lives in Paris. He posts lots of pics of what he is doing and he is having the time of his life. His local bistro even made a Thanksgiving dinner with his help. He has been here for the holidays and his one observation was about the price of groceries here. Inflation is down, so why are they still expensive....because food companies have chosen to keep them that way is what I think.
The French are closer to farms and farmers than we with our “made in the grocery store” asparagus. Plus the EU has emphasized the difficulties of climate change to farmers and farming, putting wheat production above cattle raising, asking farmers to thin herds and grow more grains to feed more people!
Probably much of the price inflation we have seen is attributable to gouging (that is, unconstrained capitalism), but to expect prices to go down because inflation is down is an incorrect interpretation of what inflation means. If inflation is zero, prices remain about the same. If it’s, say 2% (“down” in recent history), prices go up a little.
That is a fact according to Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and co-founder of Inequality Media.
I believe the American people are actually very concerned. The news media is really biased towards tr*** because it generates readers. They couldn't report on President Biden's speech on Friday without adding negative comments about tr***'s reply or other things. The news media is really worthless for the most part these days because their 'reporting' isn't really reporting -- it's all someone's opinions about the news, rather than the (unbiased) news itself.
Agree!
Trust me. I live in the US, and I am very, very worried.
I also have a few delightful friends in France, they quip the media does drum rolls & cartwheels every Trumpian tale, ‘they’ keep the fear mongering alive -lies delivered step by step in ‘their’ fantasy world bears some respect for the drip, drip, drip..akin to water boarding!
What I DO take in stride is the voting numbers, an abysmal representation for the last whatever ‘with a fairly good showing in ‘20 (kudos 66%! ) and even in ‘22 & 23 -despite the forecasted Red Wave/doom and gloom paintbrush from whiners/Fox/drama Queens. (The circus is still showing its clASS acts).
Complacency is never advisable, but does consistently arrive ...American pants down theology...I’ve heard ‘my vote doesn’t count’ a hundred times if one.
We DO have a lot of work to do.
And, thanks to this example ( again hello!) this playbook scenario, presenting ‘unprecedented’ predicaments . Where have they been? The hx books fill shelves. So, time to pay attention?
The writing on the wall can’t be more bold though, NEVER EVER EVER underestimate, and why the stats of better management/times/record or TRUTH doesn’t stand testimony over the political landscape ad infinitum is a whole course study for far more brilliant minds than mine , it IS somewhat fascinating , I add.
Exception:The fiction books are fiction..NOT based on fact..or....who or what you watch may be a clear indicator ( AGAIN) that those people are gone/in jail/heavily fined for falsifying...and still yet ....get it...? Some still don’t.🤷♀️
Not giving up , this is my country, in all its wonderfulness , mistakes, trials, tribulation
💙💙VOTE ALL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
On New Year's Day, I sat next to a woman whose husband is not registered to vote because he insists his vote wouldn't make a difference. She's a voter but can't make any headway with her husband. I suggested she do some research to identify elections where only one or a small handful of votes actually made a difference, then bring them to his attention. Can you imagine the total if all who claim his/her vote won't make a difference were added up?
Was an issue in my own home for years and finally he ‘came around’. Persistence , consistent, ever vigilant..all part of the never ending choices we can make to keep our freedoms. I understand people are tired of the chaos, lies, and subterfuge . Well….ending it means a solid blue wave for many election cycles and being vigilant after getting back house,senate,and keeping the WH with an oath honoring FOR THE PEOPLE leader. America , hear the call !
With Biden the Vampire Liberal, the Establishment zombified the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Oh, the laughing at you man is back.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Don’t engage with it. It loves to be contradicted. Being ignored will be different.
Report him/it.
repetitive and annoying, repetitive and annoying, repetitive and annoying, repetitive and annoying, repetitive and annoying.
REPORTED!
He seems to have some sort of mental/emotional problem. Delusions of grandeur, etc. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd think some form of schizophrenia.
I muted him.
I hope you're not another Nazi-lover.
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
I wonder why Heather doesn’t block you. What an idiot.
She may need an occasional idiot to highlight the intelligence of the majority of her readers. John Schmeekle's thought process certainly doesn't run very deep.
We all need to report trolls each and every day, each and every posted comment.
Upon occasion, I have made this comment and had some heated responses saying we need to hear the other side, or tout free speech.
I firmly believe in free speech AND in listening to the other side. Many times, this forum has had passionate disagreements but they take the form of civilized discussion, supported by personal professional experiences or with reputable media sources.
Name calling is a characteristic of both Trump and MAGA.
It's like the old definition of pornography: you know it when you see it.
HCR's Letter is becoming VERY well known, and I believe that there are agents of discord at work. While Schmeekle's comments are usually pretty juvenile (esp. considering he calls himself an "intellectual"--read his profile!! LOL) it's when he and the other trolls spread misinformation, or verbally attack others, that we should report him.
BTW: this arrived to me today and is worthy of a read, and of forwarding:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=ithz2&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Just report him!
This is a Democracy, and we do have free speech. If one doesn't like what another writes here, then you can just ignore what the person wrote.
She doesn't have the power to, and Substack is aware that I bring up substantive issues that Biden partisans try hard to ignore.
https://rickey125.substack.com/p/trump-was-and-is-a-dictator
Troll
So John - you see the responses right? You are not being taken seriously, at all. Are you really just a troll? In this venue, why don't you make your points in a more civil manner, and invite discussion? No, instead it is "Biden the Vampire". And "zombified". Right.....
He was here months ago then disappeared. I suspect enough reporting to the administrator but a temporary block on him.
Watch his progress: if he does not get blocked, he will copy/paste the same inane comment MULTIPLE times, and over the course of a few weeks, get more and more unhinged, sort of like the Sore Loser is.
James Wheaton feels the need to dishonestly misrepresent what I said.
I said "Vampire Liberal."
Vampire Liberals fund Worthwhile Programs by sucking money out of foreign countries, depending on the imperial power of the Almighty Dollar to add to the Unpayable Debt.
(Vampire Conservatives, on the other hand, suck money to give tax breaks to the rich.)
Zombies don't think. Zombified Vampire Liberals like James Wheaton and Heather Cox Richardson DON'T THINK anout where the money comes from for Biden's Worthwhile Programs.
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
please don’t step in the schmeeckle! report it to the janitor to clean it up.
You'll never get the ring of power, you schmeekle. Go back to your cave.
You mock me without any substance -- the very image of a troll.
Huh???
Progressives harm themselves with the company they keep.
?
Some people will say anything just to be heard.
Report him.
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
🙄
Crawl back in your cave ,you piece of monkey crap.
I hope you're not a Nazi-lover.
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
"all Americans".
Dutch, quite honestly, Americans may have little say in the matter by the time this is all over.
The Supreme Court is currently about to determine "if" Trump can stay on the ballot in Colorado. Given the clarity of the 14th Amendment, one might think this is an easy call.
However, the Supreme Court's highly probable ruling that Trump CAN stay on the ballot (due to the vast amount of money that will rain on the justices after that decision) will set the stage for when Trump challenges his loss against Biden with the same Supreme Court.
Next time, Trump will do a better job of making sure the "election" is not decided in a public voting.
The Supreme Court will decide and? Well, don't bet against them ruling in favor of Trump.
We don't really have a Democracy here Dutch. We have always counted on the Supreme Court to keep the Oligarchs in power no matter how the voting goes.
See "Citizen's United" for more info.
Or, "Dred Scott vs Sandford" in particular.
The high court has not always kept the robber barons in check. They certainly are not keeping the robber barons in check currently. Indeed, the high court is a BIG part of the problem. Think on this quote I read so long ago I can't even remember who said it. "The law is but man's opinion."
But no, common law stems from a concept of precident, many opinions over many years.
Mike S - "We have always counted on the Supreme Court to keep the Oligarchs in power no matter how the voting goes.
See 'Citizen's United' for more info.
Or, 'Dred Scott vs Sandford' in particular."
Or Gore/Bush.
Yep
This is a sad commentary on our court system, and possibly true. Roberts if facing a tough moment where his the legitimacy of the court is very much in question. Will he try to resurrect it from the ashes of Thomas’ corruption or will he find a way to restore the confidence of the people? Whatever is the case, there are big questions ahead—there are likely a LOT of behind the scenes activity with unheard pressure on all of the “justices”. If it weren’t my own country’s future at stake (and apparently that of much of Europe) I’d be simply fascinated to watch it play out. As it is, I’m “concerned”. And that’s where I’ll leave it today.
The legitimacy of the court is not "at stake". It has already proven itself illigitimate and corrupt.
I agree with that, Dan Stipe. Its reputation is in the TOILET! After they decided to crush Roe v. Wade - even with ALL its precedents of being reaffirmed - they lost HALF the country - all the women and many men - and ALL THEY PHYSICIANS! They wreaked horror across the country with that ONE horrific decision.
I'll NEVER forgive them - or respect them - again.
Quite right. Can a phoenix rise from these terrible ashes to achieve something for the people?
The observable evidence of SC corruption is that legal experts are saying they aren't sure what the SC will decide, if they even will decide to decide, on the simple task of enforcing the Constitution. In lieu is simply enforcing what the constitution plainly contains, they prefer to pass themselves off as linguists, pretending that existing dictionary definitions of the words ' engage' and 'insurrection' will not suffice, were never going to stand up in court. What did those congresspeople mean by those words? Ooh, tough question. On the real world, it seems simple to get at what the intent was and is. Meanwhile, shifting to the other foot, the SC next passes itself off as history experts. Ooh, what in the world did those words mean in 1780, or 1806, on and on. The original intent? Doesn't that intent have something to do with preserving and defending democracy and the Constitution? How about it?
Roberts is all-in on minority rule and has been for his entire career, pre-court and post.
The Colorado case is more complicated and difficult than you make it appear, and the court—with one or two exceptions—less corrupt than you believe.
Jon, would you expand on this, please? I think the question of whether the actions the Danger Yam (thank you to my sister for that!) and his minions took from and after the 2020 election, and even before, going back to the "rigged election" claims of the 2016 election, which they continue to engage in to this day, constitutes insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution, or whether some of those actions constitute giving aid and comfort, etc., is a mixed one of fact and law. The facts don't seem to be in dispute, and people who focus solely on the events of Jan 6 to assert tramp and his minions engaged in insurrection are wrong to do so. I think his state of mind is irrelevant in determining whether he "engaged" or not. I also think the three opinions of the Colo courts and Maine's SoS are well-reasoned and compelling. What do you think?
I agree with you. It will be very hard for five justices to argue that the clear language of the 14rh Amendment does not apply, although some of them will probably try. I do fear that a majority of the court might hold that Colorado and Maine were justified in kicking the Mango Mussolini off the ballot, but not go further, thus kicking the can down the road. And what if he is elected in November? Then, in the heat of the post-election uproar, will the court declare that he can't serve--which would presumably mean that the Republican vice-presidential nominee (Kriti Noem?) could become chief executive? Such a possibility should be too much for the justices to stomach, and I hope it will be. I also hope that they will care enough about their institution to do what you and I and the clear language of the 14th Amendment command. Someone on the string referred to FDR's ill-advised court-packing plan of 1936-37, which did at least induce Justice Roberts to make the "switch in time that saved nine." That threat is hanging over the court's head.
J. Margolis, I cannot just accept your say-so that the SC is not as corrupt as I believe. That's because it isn't a belief I have, it is observable evidence. Unless there is no longer any such thing as truth, a large body of evidence makes a clear case that the SC is corrupt, exactly as corrupt as the evidence shows, and that SC Justices can't be simply trusted to self-regulate.
A "good" example is their ongoing decisions regarding environmental concerns, i.e. that the EPA can't protect the environment (thereby allowing environmental damage.)
The Court has not favored Trump specific causes. I won’t be entirely surprised by a 7-2 decision removing him from the ballot.
They could leave him on through the primary but that makes it tough for the Rs to have a chance to choose a real candidate. And saying he can run in the general but not serve seems unthinkable.
Mike S, yes, and one wonders how these SC justices think about the 14th Amendment. Those justices who call themselves "originalist" may not consider the 14th Amendment part of the "originalists" thinking.
Yeah, you're right... The Repubs definitely scored better in the long game by stacking the Supreme Court with their peons, making it an Extreme Court that can effectively undo any regulation...
The 14th Amendment is far from clear and section 3 is vague and poorly written. It provides no guidance of how this section is to be considered and whether or not it applies to the President. Who and how is the proof of insurrection et al, to be conducted. The only thing we do know is that Section 5, states that Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation. But Congress has never acted. Common sense says the Amendment does apply to the President but the question of proof of engagement remains. As it stands now, proof is in the eye of the beholder.
Well. Anyone not blind with a TV could see the violent insurrection led by Trump.
Yes, but were Trump's actions proof of engagement. I don't think there is any doubt about an insurrection, the question is proof of complicity and as I said, that seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
John, highly respected legal scholars with a range of perspectives have discussed the 14S3 in detail and disagree with your take. Though they vary in details, in overall interpretation they are pretty close. I personally have some reservations about actually going through with this approach for political reasons, but "get" the validity of the legal interpretation. The thing is that for it to work, a large # of states would need to act on it. The Supreme Court is in a bind, because a hard ruling either way conflicts with other rulings they have made, plus those of past SCs (not that that has made a difference to them so far).
As for "proof of engagement", that has been proved. Key members of the "jury" were bought or intimidated and failed to do their job. Some of them should be in the box, and may yet be.
Be that as it may, my guess is there are an equal number of legal scholars on the other side of the issue. For me, it remains the vagueness of 14S3. I come from the contracts part of the world where such vagueness tends not to be tolerated. What you are suggesting, is that the meaning and applicability of 14S3 is up to the individual states which to me is fraught with its own problems from State to State. And how does that square with 14S5? If the SC is in a bind, it is of their own making. And of course, Congress never did anything legislatively to enforce 14, although were incidents in the past 150 years that merited some action on their part but that is not surprising.
As to "proof of engagement", the only thing proved was not guilty but that finding was hardly objective. One could argue, Congress chose the impeachment process as the enforcement provision of 14s5. That the 'jury' was rigged is neither here nor there, the Senate is the jury and it is a political body.
To be sure, I am not a legal scholar but simply a citizen who reserves the right to my opinion. The Constitution is a mess, the SC is a mess, and the outcome will be a mess. But the former President wins regardless of the outcome.
You are right to be worried, the evil money will not be happy until they rule the world.
Uh… with mostly negligible exceptions, they already do.
Thanks also ...You strike a growing realization Dutch Mike, that the undercurrent is strong, hopefully we will provide , us rag tags ya know😉, to stay, to strengthen these ties that bind. Those ties have built a place many see as safe, a dream to come to, a dream to live. We have been given this through many sacrifices , but a lesson also has come/came to teach -yet again - that value to persevere .
Thanks, again
I really hope you persevere! As much as Europeans may sometimes scoff at America and its culture, we still need American democracy and each other!
This is really scary. If our democracy falls, it will be a domino affect around the world. Einstein said that he didn’t know what weapons would be used to fight WWIII, but the next war would be fought with stones and sticks.
I agree with Einstein. The small positive point is that after WW III, there will never be a large scale war again...
I know. And so many over here are sleep walking through it.
Now Obama is weighing in to light a fire under the Biden campaign.
It seems to me that Democrats are still playing by the rules, still being nice. Glad we have the Lincoln Project. We need more in your face Trump and all Republicans that are loyal to him are an existential threat.
...and Democrats sticking together instead of bickering amongst themselves in a kind of "holier than thou" manner...
Rest assured that millions of Americans have no knowledge of how important their responsibility is in this next election. Yet, I do not believe that he will win. He needs to gain votes and I don’t see where he can pick up new voters. At the same time a substantial number of people who voted for Trump, will never do so again, not after January 6, his indictments and his conviction eventually. The DOJ could help by moving faster than they have.
I wish I could feel as confident as you are. :/
I am fairly confident but I learned in 2016 , when one side is willing to cheat every which way, miracles can happen. Or should I say nightmares? I will be on pins and needles until the Colorado 14th amendment case is decided. He does not deserve to be on any ballot.
Trouble is, that he doesn't have to pick up new voters. He just has to rig the system a little bit more and he wins. The only hope is a really massive voter swing for Biden, so big that it simply cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet.
President Biden made it abundantly clear about our Democracy. I believe
now, people will realize how important our Democracy is and our freedom.
Fox News reported nothing about Biden’s speech so half of America has not heard that speech.
What Mike S said. And: there is a lot of them thinking: "Oh, abolish democracy for all I care, it doesn't work anyway, let a strong man fix it", not realizing how dangerous this kind of thinking is.
And Biden actually addressed this in his speech yesterday.
Very good! That should be on every TV show from now until November!
Wow, nope, i did not.
For me it’s simple. We must believe, we must know that freedom will prevail. We must vote. There is no reason not to vote for Joe and Kamala and every reason to repudiate the wannabe be king, tyrant.
They do not …how do we get that through their heads?
Good question. I think, for starters, coercing your local Democratic representatives: they have to use their campaign money to buy ad space wherever and push the message making clear that Rump is completely in it for himself, and sincerely wants to destroy democracy for his own gain - and that there is no way back once he establishes his fascist military dictatorship. After all, that's what the other side has been doing the last decades: buying tv and radio stations to push *their* message...
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2024/comment/46721868
Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
Guess you like being laughed at.
John Schmeeckle is the guy sitting in his living room while the house is burning down, and instead of calling the Fire Dept, he shouts "THESE ARE NOT THE DRAPES I ORDERED!!! LET THEM BURN!!!"
What is truly hilarious is that he thinks he will change even one of us with his incessant posts..
I’m always willing to hear the other side of an issue well elucidated. What I don’t tolerate is bomb throwers.
He is simply a pustule on the boil on Trump's a$$.
🤣🤣🤣
Most Americans do not appreciate how significant our democracy is in its influence around the world. Foreigners were dismayed when W was reelected and shocked when trump was elected. Most Americans are quite provincial and don't realize how closely what happens here is watched abroad. The likes of Putin know our weaknesses better than we do and have taken advantage by putting his thumb on the scale to help trump.
100%. This is why Putin’s Armies have dug in Ukraine. Building defensive positions, minefields, using criminals/emptying jails, and using ethnic minority conscripts to feign offensive operations with soldiers no one in Moscow or St Petersburg cares about. All a strategy to hold on till our November election.
Our resolve tends to dissolve over time.
... as well as - if not better - Roman numeral “XI” - when you consider that Xi spent some time living here in America (Iowa in the 1980’s) ... I’m sure gleaning a bit of a narrow view of what makes America a great country.
Amen, Harvey🔨
Knowing and loving New f'ing Zealand as I do, the only thing wrong with it as a place of refuge is that it's very small. (Ruffles feathers and tilts head).
And it has taken a shocking turn to the right. The ruling party ran on a platform of erasing the Maori culture and language from every level of NZ life. Sickens me as I have never been treated with more kindness than by the Kiwis.
There's a policy change agreed to by all but the national Maori party, to present all government services not specifically involved with Maori issues in English only, I suspect the head of the Maori party may be using overheated rhetoric. I'll keep an eye on the news myself, don't get much from NZ on the national airways... always been that way. Maori, like other indigenous eg Australia, USA, Canada didnt fare well after what was essentially conquest, but in that context, they've done well by comparison. Thanks for the news tip.
A compound for billionaires, I read. And they have spoken lately. A bad omen
Where are you reading this, Jeri?
I don’t remember sorry. I’ll Google. It was within the past year. Also read that the right has made gains in gov’t. Yep, Google knew. Several references, including The Guardian, from 2018. New York Post also had article. Wonder if Rupert would bypass Australia and head to NZ. Others mentioned Peter Thiel, and Google co-founder. So maybe that’s why Google knows knows.
I too googled it. They're talking about Queenstown specifically, and if you Google that you'll understand why. It all comes from NY Post and CNN, starting in 2000, with spinoffs in rags like the London Daily Mirror. I found an interview with a local real estate agent, who was treating the whole thing with typical Kiwi dry humour. (Now I can't find it, and I do have other things to do with my time). The most recent news (from 2022) is that Peter Thiel's building application was refused. Yes, true that there was a swing to the right in the recent elections, but I really don't think there are any serious links with Orban.
Jeri, like that location will save them when the sh*t hit the fan….they can run , but cannot hide! All their $$$ and influence will buy a bit of time, but that’s all.
Short term, they can live in Luxury while others suffer. Damn, that’s what the deal is all the time. Long term just not relevant, apparently.
Anyone remember the movie Soylent Green? Despite the shocker of an ending as to what "Soylent green" actually consisted of, the wealthy lived in their high-rise towers while dining on steak and champagne while the majority scuffled for space in the gutters and in their derelict cars at the curbs. We should re-issue that movie as a warning of what could be the future.
Yeah, and they are likely, almost certainly, going to need helpers/security/workers to keep their compounds stable/livable…..what will buy their loyalty? I’ve wondered about that since I’d heard some years ago about this being a “real thing” the uber-wealthy are into or looking into. I recently read The Future by Naomi Alderman (2023) & is a fictional example of the hubris of “buying” salvation/safety.
And, to actually move to most other countries is extremely difficult!
Sometimes, in Alaska, it seems we are in another country.
Texas too, in recent years
I would love to visit/live in New Zealand (the f part is how long the flights are from here to there!)
I took a design course in England many years ago. There were 2 Kiwis I met there: one from the North Island, one from the South. They would have playful yet serious arguments about which was better. Listening to them made me yearn for a visit some day (and, given the choice, I'd probably head for the North Island, as that resident told me stories of carefree sleeping on the warm beach.)
Have traveled to New Zealand several times; first trip in 1987 & (like everywhere) a lot has changed, but much is still wonderful -- its people, its scenery; its food is wonderful. On one of those trips, I asked a South Islander if she had traveled abroad; she replied, “I went to the North Island once.” Marvelous people, and (at least historically) they are very fond of Americans; they pay a lot of attention to the U.S., including our politics. (Older New Zealanders credit the U.S. in World War II with saving them from Japanese military forces. New Zealand had, per capita, more casualties than any country in the Commonwealth -- ~one of every 150 Kiwis died in war service.)
Had no idea, hope they still like us
I shared a tent with two fellas from New Zealand when I was climbing on Denali maybe 8 years ago. Firefighters and gentlemen.
About 17 hours. One way. Expensive. Years ago (long before this mess) I was offered a position at a university there that also would have let me finish my doctorate. Reluctantly turned it down because my kids were young, and they were my parents' only grandkids. Couldn't do that to either grands or kids. Still wistful.
Dr. McCormick, PLEASE don't! Last fall I had finally found a doctor-internist who I really got along with, respected - then next visit - "I'm moving to NZ!!! No!!! He was well-loved in Colorado. And I stick with my GOOD doctors!!!
It does make me wonder how the good Doctors and other Healthcare workers, Teachers, Professors, etc will redistribute themselves from red states to more tolerant states or countries (or just find other professions). I seem to find more and more every day, who just quit and found other work where they are less stressed due to interference, staffing levels, or inadequate funding.
Agreed. I talked last night to my adult HS teacher daughter. She visited with two college friends who are also teachers during this break. One is leaving teaching (after 11 years) the other is trying to do so. Teaching they love, dealing with the administrators bowing to parents and school board demands they do not.
She relayed a story of a student that was failing due to missing over 80 school days the prior year (no circumstances that applied, just a chronic truant). The parents did not want him to fail and pressured the administration who pressured the teacher to find ways to make the teen able to pass. In other words, create new, easy assignments to be turned in. This is an extreme but not a joke. Between my two teacher daughters, combined years of teaching over 25 years at 6 different schools, they have encountered this type of behavior.
There are many current/former educators on this forum whom I sure can agree with this.
Ok, thank you! I’ve been with my dentist for over 35 years! I understand when we find good people we hold onto them for dear life!
Would 6 months in NZ be ok?😉
Yes, that would work! And you can see all the rugby games you want, go sailing, climb some mountains! Just COME BACK!!! <3 Read your profile - Yes! I'm a transplant recipient so I need a good primary physician. I have transplant backup from Cleveland Clinic. Left Denver to get the transplant - statistics and all! The transplant world/community is very interesting.
Exactly. The only thinking holding me back.
I actually know someone whose son and d.i.l. went there about 10 years ago--even back then, they did not like the way the country was heading!! As I was told then (and I have no reason to doubt it) I was told they needed to enter with assets of $3M and have jobs. My acquaintance has little money but the son married a trust-fund baby. They love it there.
Yes, there’s always been a high bar re: immigration into New Zealand. Tax rate is very high, in part to support its social services, including health care. There’s concern that, without regulation, the country’s social services could collapse under the needs of older/aging people from elsewhere.
You are so right, by the time chump gets through, there will be no safe place anywhere.
Jeri,
We are NOT going to let "the orange flame" continue , are we?
President Joe Biden and the great team of Americans he and his advisers have gathered have accomplished much and need to remain "on the job".
Our country and the world needs to focus on the battles against the rise of tyrany. Our children in our schools /universities need to be required to study the history of our nation.....ALL OF IT.....we have ugly parts .....we need to be reminded NOT TO GO THERE AGAIN!!!!
We need to be aware of what is pushing people to leave everything they have to come to the United States of America. They come with their dreams, their desire to work, to build a home, to have their children educated.....within a Democracy!
Of course there are Americans within every level of humanity who use this country for their personal benefit....so has it always been.
People coming to the USA are escaping the rule of Dictators.....governments who have taken their property from them.....taken away opportunities to choose by vote the ones they want to govern. They are more desperate to be free than we are. We are "the frogs in the kettle".....our freedoms being gradually taken from us......and WE are allowing this by our own choice of those we vote into office.
WAKE UP AMERICA WHILE WE CAN!!!!!
Thank you, Emily. We needed to hear your voice about now, before we get ourselves too mired in the mud. Appreciate your quiet voice of wisdom.
I watched, step by step, as neo-fascist "Corporate Joe" Biden stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. The critical moment was the Massachusetts primary, with its eye-popping discrepancies from the exit polls: https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/04/massachusetts-2020-democratic-party-primary/
I'll never vote for Trump, but Biden is worse. Trump is a loose cannon who makes dirty deals with the Establishment. Biden IS the Establishment, the "Deep State" Senator from tiny postage-stamp Delaware, that corporate suburb of Wall Street.
Hi,John, I will give you some attention. You seem confused here, but to me It's really pretty simple. Trump is a treasonous rapey criminal who wants to turn the US into his own personal piggy bank so he can pay the debts he owes Putin and avoid being tossed out a window. Biden does not owe Putin money, and is not treasonous, rapey, or crimjnal. I like Biden because he is not those things. I do not understand why some people don't like Biden. The only people who support Trump are people who like that Trump is those things and they want to do what Trump does, or those who are so mentally ill or intellectually impaired that they don't understand what is going on around them. Voting for anyone but Biden helps put Trump back in the White House. Not voting for Biden helps put Trump back in the White House. Refusal to vote for Biden is support for Trump. It seems to me the choice is crystal clear. What are you going to do? Vote for the treasonous rapey criminal who wants to take the taxpayers money for his own use or vote for the guy who is none of those things?
Hopefully the text is a robot and not a US citizen. We have enough whack a doodles here already.
Hi, Marj, if you are directing this disrespectful name calling to poor John Schminke, or however his name is spelled, he is a confused real person who occasionally responds to logical arguments and clear statements of others points of view, and so I tell him what I think in the most direct possible way, when I have the energy. If it is me you are calling a robot whack a doodle, I assure you I am a real live woman with my own opinions and understanding of the world, firmly grounded in the experience of my early life growing up half feral on a ranch in the Rocky Mountains. I encountered all the sorts of people you find in that milieu, including mystics and crazy people, hard headed business men, criminals and alcoholics and addicts of all sorts, highly educated women who weren't quite sure how they ended up there in the middle of nowhere, well meaning people who just wanted a place to raise their kids in peace, and the general lost or damaged detritus of humanity who washed up in that far crevasse of civilization, and couldn't put together enough resources to leave. There I learned to trust the instincts of my dogs and my horses, which taught me to tell the difference between good people and bad people. Biden is a good person. He is doing the best he can. In my opinion, we should all help him defend our freedoms and our beautiful land. Trump is a bad person. He lies, cheats, steals, and takes advantage of anyone he can, at every opportunity. He tried to undo an election because he didn't like the outcome, and anywhere else in the world he would be in prison for treason. My early experience is strengthed by graduate studies in psychology and many years working with the mentally ill, addicted and criminally guilty. I myself am not mentally ill, criminally inclined or damaged by PTSD or physical trauma. That is, I think clearly, make good decisions based on the information I have available, and if new information comes to light, I can change my mind. If it is indeed me you called a whack a doodle, please tell me what I said in the previous post that led you to that conclusion? I am still fascinated by observing the human mind at work...
And this is sure the place for that kind of observation. I'm sure Marj was referring to the JS wordsalad above. It's hard to tell what order posts are going to show up in sometimes. Those of us who've been around know to ignore the trolls, but newer folks who haven't come across them before (esp this one) sometimes get caught up in tryng to get through to him. Unfortunately, nothing to get through to. His purpose is to disrupt and redirect.
Some attention here also: voters from South Carolina put Biden ahead. Votes count.
p.p.s. What do you make of the Tara Reade story? Can you believe the very last sentence in this article?
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/7/21248713/tara-reade-joe-biden-sexual-assault-accusation
p.s. I suspect that ongoing coverage of Trump's legal woes is going to make his candidacy increasingly unattractive to swing voters who are nervous about Biden's age and health.
Trump has a flat tire, but you can still roll down the road for a little while with a flat tire.
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-immunity-2666908599/
I'd vote for Marianne Williamson or Gavin Newsom, but never Biden.
https://marianne2024.com/
My assessment is starkly different from yours. I don't think that Joe "cocaine nose" Biden is a good man, and I think that he is worse than Trump. Trump is a loose cannon who makes dirty deals with the Establishment. Biden IS the Establishment, from tiny Delaware, a suburb of Wall Street that specializes in hosting the headquarters of corporations. See https://thehustle.co/why-delaware-is-the-sexiest-place-in-america-to-incorporate-a-company/
The only president who was more "Establishment" than Biden was George H.W. Bush.
Biden and his fellow Vampire Liberals fund Worthwhile Programs by selling Treasury Bonds to suck money out of foreign countries, depending on the imperial power of the Almighty Dollar to add to the Unpayable Debt.
(Vampire Conservatives, on the other hand, suck money to give tax breaks to the rich.)
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-national-debt-dilemma#:~:text=Years%20of%20elevated%20budget%20deficits,GDP)%20since%20World%20War%20II.
Biden's “Vampire Liberal” big-spender programs require sucking an endless supply of debt from both foreign countries and the Social Security trust fund.
The Almighty Dollar lets us get away with imposing U.S. government debt on foreign countries, but Biden's support of Ukraine's far-right fascist thug regime is accelerating global de-dollarization, which means that Biden is sabotaging both his Worthwhile Programs and Social Security.
Foreign countries, especially the BRICS countries, have been working toward de-dollarization of the global economy, which means that all those zillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury Bonds that slosh around the world, helping international trade settlements, will be coming home.
A very hard landing is on its way...
Protecting that oh-so-sensitive nostril:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/joe-biden-democratic-primary-results-bernie-sanders-michigan
Put a sock in it John.
I remember, on Biden's inauguration day, Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon chanting "F#ck Biden!" as they marched to the local Democratic headquarters to break all the windows.
John S.
I remember how happy and thankful I was that Joe Biden , a seasoned servant of Democracy, WON.
No more did I have to experience the terror of DT and his worship of PUTIN and other leaders who were controlling their populations through the threat of Murder........remember a recent airplane crash in Russia .....someone was challenging Putin......remember the loss of a number of former Republican leaders when DT was voted in as President of the USA....in my opinion , an insult to our nation!!! Do you want to live with threats to your life or to members of your family?
Please wake up and vote for Democracy....NOT for a Dictator!!!!
So why has Biden, for so many years, been supporting the toxic far-right thug regime in Ukraine?
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Who said they were Antifa? Antifa stands for anti-fascist. I have trouble believing they were ACTUALLY Antifa, were ACTUALLY opposed to Biden and were actually an organized movement—which they are not. They are a current boogeyman, like George Soros
MY father was a proud "anti-fascist" as were my two uncles.
All three fought fascism in Europe in WW2. My Dad came home bodily whole, one uncle came after a head injury untreated while he was in a German POW camp which caused lifelong seizures. The other uncle received a spinal injury which rendered him a paraplegic.
me too, media of billionaires do not the bidding of we the people.
It was in the news. Maybe the news was wrong.
They were anarchists, not anti fascists. There were only a few of them and they clearly identified themselves as anarchists.
I drove thru downtown Portland a few days after the protesters and the media blew it up so much out of context. Antifa??????????ha!ha! NOT
Hahahahahaha
What would your daddy, Putin, say if he saw you now?
A sad son to be sure.
Why do President Biden and the Republican and Democratic Senate leaders continue to support Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime? Ukraine has been enslaved by the rapacious International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of the original loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
Ukraine's oppressive neo-fascist thug regime is not "democratic." In Ukraine, all the opposition parties have been suppressed after Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A few months ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion. We are being lied to.
In August, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
https://mronline.org/2023/08/21/zelensky-holds-court-with-ukraines-most-notorious-neo-nazi/
See also "Ukraine is Brutally Repressing the Left, Criminalizing Socialist Parties, Imprisoning Activists"
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-repressing-left-criminalizing-socialist-parties/
See also "How Zelensky Made Peace with Neo-Nazis"
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/how-zelensky-made-peace-with-neo-nazis/
See also "How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion"
https://greatgameindia.com/hunter-biden-zelensky-neo-nazi/
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
No, they were not Anti Fascists, they were anarchists. They clearly identified themselves as anarchists. The pro Biden demonstrations in Portland were much larger.
You might have an opinion on the discussion of "antifa" on this sub-thread:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2024/comment/46797298
And your point is? You sound just as bad as TOFG
False, John. You do not remember that, because it didn't happen.
Have you come unhinged? It was all over the news:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oregon-s-democratic-party-offices-vandalized-amid-post-inauguration-protests-n1255118
My point was that there is clearly anti-Biden sentiment on the Left.
Did you call the police and report those criminals in OR? Because no matter the reason nor the members- all US residents are expected to follow our laws AND respect the rights and property of others.
So if you’re concerned with what you saw on videos from OR you should be equally concerned with the crimes that occurred on Jan 6 at the US Capital bldg.
PS. Were you supporting Sanders and planning to vote for him.
Why would I report them from out of state when I read it in the news?
I didn't support Bernie; I sent my bits of grass-roots money to Tulsi Gabbard.
One of those.
I live in Massachusetts There is a Bernie faction but it’s a minority. Biden won fair and square. In2016 you could question Hillary’s superdelegate nomination. Bernie won multiple primaries. These are facts. Even if you don’t like Biden he’s done incredible positive work with razor thin margins in congress. Not voting for him is a negative choice for a reactionary autocracy against women’s and human rights. Against everything moderate and liberal minded people value. Trump 2 or just about any other republican candidate would result in a Hobbesian state(Thomas Hobbes--theory is that state or society cannot be secure unless at the disposal of an absolute sovereign. From this follows the view that no individual can hold rights of property against the sovereign, and that the sovereign may therefore take the goods of its subjects without their consent) we would be at the mercy of a madman monarch. Voters beware.
You are of course entitled to your opinion. I think that Biden's deep support for Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime makes him a criminal against humanity:
"There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
I can’t wait till the SCOTUS dies away with the administrative state and we are all waiting around for Congress to enact regulations on issues they have no idea about. Tommy Tuberville deciding on whether a drug has passed its clinical trials instead of the FDA? Yeah, you and the deep state..... dream on whatever in your mind the deep state is. Jesus get over Bernie Sanders...
Nonsense. Both the exit polls and the final results of the Mass. Primary showed Joe Biden at 34% of the vote. For a more complete response to the claims: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/no-huge-red-flag-that-fraud-occurred-in-mass-primary/
Leonard Lubinsky, I dare you to actually quote from that bogus, fake "fact check" article.
Go away with your lies and trump indoctrination
...said the ignorant wannabe dog-piler
I linked to the entire article. What d you mean? "I dare you"
Go ahead and quote a sentence or a paragraph that you think is relevant, and then I'll rebut it.
Nuts!
KD, your echo of McAuliffe (so close to his December 22 answer to the Germans at Bastogne) is brilliantly appropriate. Kudos.
I don't know how much Putin's factories pay you to post such trash, but you really need to reconsider your "profession". This is such a foolish waste of your time.
If I was on anybody's payroll, the IRS would quickly discover my cash flow in and out.
I work long hours as a truck driver and get a paycheck. That's all.
Years ago I was the plaintiff in a lawsuit that indirectly targeted the IRS. I discovered that our tax system, as currently administered, is outside the Constitution, outside the law as written, outside relevant Supreme Court decisions, and outside the applicable regulations.
"They" remember. Don't fight the tax system; it's not worth it. And we need a functioning tax system, even if the one we have is "broken."
Why do President Biden and the Republican and Democratic Senate leaders continue to support Ukraine's toxic far-right thug regime? Ukraine has been enslaved by the rapacious International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of the original loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
Ukraine's oppressive neo-fascist thug regime is not "democratic." In Ukraine, all the opposition parties have been suppressed after Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A few months ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion. We are being lied to.
In August, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
https://mronline.org/2023/08/21/zelensky-holds-court-with-ukraines-most-notorious-neo-nazi/
See also "Ukraine is Brutally Repressing the Left, Criminalizing Socialist Parties, Imprisoning Activists"
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-repressing-left-criminalizing-socialist-parties/
See also "How Zelensky Made Peace with Neo-Nazis"
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/how-zelensky-made-peace-with-neo-nazis/
See also "How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion"
https://greatgameindia.com/hunter-biden-zelensky-neo-nazi/
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Silly......your work is silly. Try to take an honest look at it. Stope wasting your time. You certainly will not waste another second of mine. For what it is worth, I have said my peace. I will not respond to, nor read, another fraught and scatological assertion of yours .....unless, of course, I am bored and need entertainment.
Don't bother feeding him oxygen. He's unusually active this morning. You put in 10 words, he finds 200!
There are neo-nazis everywhere. They are not the majority. And Zelinsky is certainly not one of them!
You obviously didn't check any of my listed sources. Zelensky's benefactor, Kolomoysky, also funded the neo-Nazis, who controlled the Interior Ministry and the police stations. Zelensky, after receiving a neo-Ndeath threat, "made peace" with neo-Nazi war-mongers and abandoned his fundamental campaign pledge to make peace with the breakaway Donbass republics.
Damn, I thought you were on trump’s payroll
There are far right persons and far left persons. I believe John is far left. The danger of the far left is that it can weaken more moderate Democrats against the far right. We cannot have that.
You are right. I would be so far left you couldn't find me if I lived in a different world. I don't and I won't do anything to weaken the dems who live in the real world. We all do. They just give help to chump and I will never do that.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
They are both BAD.
One guy wants to be King the other want wars all over the world and is complicit in genocide.
Call me all the names you want I am saying the truth.
moron.
🙄
Totally disagree
Um ... what?
I agree, except I think it will end long before the end of the decade. We have to do all we can to save democracy from the insanity of a monster. Not only will we the people not thrive, our economy will be done for and take down economies of much of the rest of the world as well.
Yep. I am changing my name to Cassandra. So few believe me when I talk to them about the future I see so clearly.
Yes, we are!! I'm with you all in this fight for democracy continued stand 🌿
I'm right there with you Dr. McCormick. We only have one life and we must make it worth something. My father was a Flying Tiger in WWII. Shot down in flames and traumatized for the rest of his life, but never stopped giving his all, as an elementry school teacher, principal and administrtor taking on the most rabid John Birch Society evangelical crackpots you could imagine. He persevered an ultimately succeeded in transforming a backward community school district into one that valued quality education and truth. He was loved.
I'm sticking it out because this is MY home. and I will share it happily with all who do their best to save it. Thank you for your clarity.
What a brave man, the John Birchers seem to be ruling in many quarters these days, maybe being called tea party, or MAGAts. Your Dad should be called hero.
In unity there is strength. Fight for our rights. PS Canada may elect a reactionary Conservative Party majority in Parliament next election. People are tired of Trudeau. It’s not so rosy. And as a noncitizen one has no rights or benefits. Stay and organize voters for democracy.
This is what the German Jews said. This is my home, i am ok and not leaving. Then they were put on trains and sent to camps.
Victor Klemperer "I Will Bear Witness; A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933 - 1941"
The difference is Americans have at least a billion muskets.
😬😢
Well said, Dr. McCormick! At some point one needs to declare, "Here I stand." Every time I see one of those old Ukrainian grandmothers living in a war zone I'm re-inspired. If they can do that, I have no excuses: I'll not give up what others suffered and died for since the beginning.
And we shouldn't forget - if we fall, there's no one to come rescue us wherever we are.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2024/comment/46721868
Hahahahaha
Perfectly said. 👏
I’m too damn old to think, or worry about, leaving if this country turns into a dictatorship. Besides, if it does, there won’t be any free country left to go to in this world anyway.
That may be true. However, we must continue to be positive and continue to support Biden. Our Democracy is irreplaceable and failure isn't an option.
We’re in New Mexico, we’re not going anywhere. We’re organizing for democracy.
It’s clear to us -- and it ought to be clear to all by now -- There’s only one candidate who believes in Democracy, and that’s Ole Joe.
Our Colorado cousins mined the ground we broke first when NM’s District & Supreme Courts booted one of the indicted 45th president’s NM organizers out of his county commissioner’s office: Couy Griffin.
Now, we’re working hard to do the same thing to the rebellious, potentially treasonous 45th president.
Plan A: Demand the U.S. Supreme Court affirm Colorado’s District & Supreme Court decisions. Boot the 45th off Colorado’s ballot, as well as all other state ballots.
If SCOTUS won’t enforce our Constitution’s Sec. 3, Amendment 14, then it’s on to Plan B.
Plan B: GOTV on a scale never seen before in America for Ole Joe Biden and Democracy. Re-elect the 46th President.
United, we have defeated a British king, American colonial tories, Southern enslavers, German nazis, Italian fascists, and Japanese imperialists who bombed Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack.
United, we will re-elect Ole Joe in a landslide for Democracy.
Adios !
Proud of NM.
https://johnadamsingram.substack.com/p/or-rebellion
We are also in NM and feel blessed to be so.
We are in the blue part of the state tho. There is a contingent in the south that yearns to be part of Texas. I sometimes think about swapping that part out for El Paso.
https://johnadamsingram.substack.com/p/or-rebellion
I AGREE! Not because I am too old to move, I am, but I will not let this power hungry son of immigrants take over my country! That should be a focus of the campaign information, he is a child of immigrants, and unappreciative, of rthe value he gained. He is a TAKER, and of the worst kind, squashing the small people who resisted him or the ones who tried to do business with him and he cheated.
He has married immigrants and four of his five children are the offspring of immigrants. Is he going to deport them too?
And I'm here in Germany, where I can get the medical care I need without having to go into debt, as I would in the USA. My grandson in the US had an emergency ruptured appendix that was mended in a matter of minutes. The hospital bill for the anesthesiologist was $50,000 due to the fact that the anesthesiologist was not part of the surgeon's plan.
I would love to be near to my kids adult kids but would never be able to do so.
I get that Rosalind. Our health care system… another whole issue!
Jennifer, it's part of the problem - where the capitalist heart beats. I have friends in the US who are millionaires and who have good healthcare. I'm happy for them. But a retired theologian like me wouldn't have a chance. The issue is a WHOLE issue.
So glad you are where you can get excellent affordable healthcare, Rosalind. So sad that the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, does not take care of its own citizens unless they can afford Cadillac prices for standard care.
Thanks, MaryPat!
Hugs!
I'm with you, Ryan. Hunkering down to the wind swept fire, rubbing my hands in the cold of the Trumpian specter, and fighting it out until the fight is finished
Washington's army consisted of a significant number of Irish and Scottish immigrants.
So, moving back to British occupied Ireland and Scottland, which were terrorized by Great Britain, was not an option for them.
Since Irish and the Scottish knew the cruelty and arbitrary nature of British law, and had suffered under occupation for ages, they were fighting for their very lives with truly nowhere to go.
They had to win. And? They did.
In the Lewis Powell Memo, Powell accused the liberals of being well organized, single minded on goals and well funded and supported. As I have stated before for conservatives "Every accusation is their confession". When have the liberals ever gathered at places like Davos, Jackson Hole, Aspen to plot and scheme. Liberals have a broad range of goals and concerns, conservatives have just one - power. As you so clearly stated, this control thing is in democracies all over the world. The billionaire trust fund babies now are working for world domination.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny?utm_campaign=email-post&r=5v4jv&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Professor Snyder saw the danger and this helps us recognize it and organize against it.
You can never win a fight by running away. The ones who brought us here didn't and we can't either for the ones yet to come.
I don't buy the "the essential nation" part. American Exceptionalism is part of the problem. There are many other, and better, democracies around the world.
Maybe, but who else has the reputation that we are fast losing. I thought the Statue of Liberty message defined us. And who else has the power. That is what the billionaire cretins want. The power, and not just here.
I totally agree with you, Matt.
Some of us may be needed to form the resistance, treat the victims, house the refugees. The tide can always turn again. I was surprised when people were not horrified after all the abuses of the first tRump presidency. I will never abandon the country I love.
Exactly. The former is all about fear of Mr. Orange and his loonies. We are better than that. From Vermont. Not going anywhere.
Born in Montpelier - raised in Huntington and Newfane - now Colorado is home. As long as I’m in the mountains I’m a happy girl - not going anywhere either.
The US can’t be beat as far as I’m concerned.
Ryan, thank you for your “fighting words”. I, too, am staying and fighting. A friend recommended the book “Beyond Contempt” as another arrow in the quiver for this fight for the hearts of the country and I think that she may be right. It’s too easy to resort to contempt and satire when I encounter people who believe differently than I do; instead, I’m going to do my best to try to find our common ground to tell our story of decency and respect for the constitution.
After the 2016 election I went through the process of applying for permanent residency in Canada and was accepted. I thought of all my friends and family I’d leave behind and starting over in a place where I knew not a soul. I decided to stay put and do what I could here in the US. I got involved in campaigns by phone banking. I write postcards and letters to voters. I write and call my representatives so that my voice is heard. We must all do as much as we are able to ensure our democracy is safe in 2024 and beyond.
I believe it would have cost us around $8,000 to buy into the social support systems, healthcare, etc, back in late 2016 (after the election), to enable us to move to Canada. We didn't otherwise consider it seriously, but did start attending rallies and going to Unity Coalition events where we had as many as 47 organizations or candidates representatives meeting.
We dared to hope the 2022 midterm elections could restore House and Senate majorities (against frightening odds and predictions).
While so many cheered how close we came, I was sick to my stomach considering the damage the House, state legislatures, and gubernatorial administrations could do in Republican hands, and the state legislatures even with very thin majorities.
After commenting previously on the documentary, "The US and the Holocaust," I went back and watched the entire 3 episodes again, wondering how much effect it had on the 2022 elections where we did so much better than expected, but still just a few critical seats short in the House and perhaps state offices. I'd redouble my suggestion to take a good look at the documentary (7 years in the making starting in 2015), before the primaries and throughout the rest of the year. Part of what I said previously:
"...Ken Burns started on the US and the Holocaust documentary in 2015, planning on releasing it in 2023 (8 years in production), but moved it up to 2022 (first aired the day after Constitution Day in 2022), since it is more important to stop such holocausts before they start. We have a similar massively consequential test coming up right now with the delay in helping Ukraine that can become so very much harder to recover from if left too long.
A great introduction is an interview with Margaret Hoover (Herbert Hoover's granddaughter), at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AUO-15Z7I
They provide a pretty concise description of how Hitler learned from our history and hopefully spark enough interest for people to take the time to thoughtfully watch the whole series and see where we need to do better..."
I also found a fitting story to shed some light on the extreme danger with Mike Johnson's ignoring the catastrophic danger of letting the free world fall further apart.
See https://www.rsn.org/001/the-neighbors-house-is-on-fire.html
"...You have a good neighbor. He does a lot for you. He keeps the street clean around your house. He mows your lawn when you are away. He signs for your packages and brings them to you later. Your kids go and play with his kids in the backyard. He has an alarm on his house with a camera, which you don't, and he once ran burglars away from your house. He's done a thing or two for you that you haven't noticed. Like the time he stopped a crew from mistakenly taking down a tree in your front yard. And the time he found your cat outside, on the street, and gave it to your kid.
And now your neighbor's house has caught fire. The flames are just now visible. There's plenty of time to react. In fact, you happen to be standing nearby, at exactly the right place, watering your garden, with a hose in your hand. The flames are in easy reach. Your neighbor runs to you and asks you to just turn the water in the direction of the flame.
You refuse. You turn off the water and walk away. And then you hurry down to your basement and shut off the valve, just to make sure your neighbor can't be helped.
All you had do was flick your wrist, turn the hose in the right direction. But you didn't. It wouldn't have cost you anything. A nickel on your water bill that you wouldn't notice.
And if you had helped, you'd have been a hero. Your neighbor would remember you, as would the press, as would your kids, as would everyone. But you chose not to help. Your neighbor's house burns down.
And then yours does, too..."
This is, currently, our Ukraine policy. We are choosing to let a good neighbor burn. Ukraine does things for us that we need, and often that we neglect to do ourselves, or cannot do ourselves. It does things for us that we do not notice.
That is by Timothy Snyder. But I imagine he is glad it is being shared even without credit to him. His substack is called Thinking About, free to subscribe.
The rsn link takes us to "The Neighbor's House Is on Fire at
Timothy Snyder / Substack" where more than the shorter section I enclosed in quotes can be found.
I appreciate the other link I found to his substack provided by Kathy Clark, but I can't begin to subscribe to all the great sites others point out, I get lost enough in the 203,386 emails I'm still trying to sort out and organize. So far I have two that I most appreciate for the links to history more personal to me and inspiration to look at other areas I've unintentionally left unexplored.
I depend a lot on HCR's followers to point out particularly significant additional focus on topics I appreciate informed connections to.
Thank you, President Biden for delivering one of the most important speeches in the nation’s history. May it long be remembered as pivotal to saving our democracy and preventing dictatorship.
President Biden, and millions of others, know what's going to come down if Drumph becomes Dictator. It's time, passed time, to repeat the vitriol, and vile imaginings of a self stated trump dicktatorship in ads that would show him attacking himself every time he speaks ill of someone else. The Lincoln Project used that to quite stunning effect before the last election. Joe's a good, decent man, and dump is not. Make it work for us.
Craig, "vile imaginings of a self stated trump dicktatorship in ads":
MeidasTouch has a poster picturing Trump and Hitler with alternating similar quotes. If audio recordings of both Trump and Hitler making these statements exist, this poster (with Hitler quotes both in German and translated into English in captions) could be weaponized. That would magnify its visceral punch of moral disgust.
And, it was good to see No Labels unmasked this week.
Michael, While Biden’s Friday afternoon’s speech was necessary, it’s not sufficient. Hence, my urgent call not only for Biden but also for Democrats-at-large, drawing upon their long history of building social movements, to build a nationwide pro-democracy movement, rooted both in mutual respect and social accountability and in its fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution. My point is that our side, contrary to MAGA whose leader presents himself as the savior particularly of white people, requires a kind of public awakening that allows us to transcend our egocentric predicaments and connects us to a profound sense of what it is to be a citizen among citizens.
In a word, I envision a nationwide call to action: uniting, inspiring, and energizing people, who know we are under threat, to commit to participating in saving our democracy and also, hopefully, waking up those asleep to the necessity and urgency.
I did an online search for appropriate social movements. None seemed to be focused particularly on the 2024 Election. However, one comes immediately to mind: The Lincoln Project. Democrats, Independents, and anti-MAGA Republicans can all come together here for this life-and-death (for our country) project. Join at https://lincolnproject.us/join/
Don, I already have joined. I would note that a group of us are at the stage of reaching out to “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” I would add we particularly are intent on engaging young people.
I am in TN, where Gloria Johnson is running to replace Marsha Blackburn, a national joke and tfg groupie. Last week I received an email from someone (influential donor) who was told by Gloria’s campaign the DNC has written off WV and is looking to put its $$ in one of three other states, TN being one. The DNC is looking at donor participation: votegloriajohnson.com/
MLMinET, I would love to be in touch with you. Here is an email address I no longer use that still receives messages.
I will leave it on the site for 24 hours and will understand if you decide not to reply. I recognize we all lead busy lives.
MoveOn.org has a thirty years history of progressive electioneering.
THE place to start, of course, is your county and town Democratic Party.
My town's democratic party plays nicey nicey and will not stoke change.
I understand your experience Marj. I feel the local Dems committee are reflective of their community, and must be somewhat centrist in order to have the BEST chance to win elections to the state senate and state house; as well as other non-partisan county and town races
With that said - the local group is THE outlet to help in 2024 with voter ID, turnout, fundraising and organizing. I welcome you to embrace your attitude of the committee, AND get involved. This way, you can become a progressive voice for change exactly WHERE the action is.
My experience is that my wife and I offered to staff the local rental storefront during the 2022 elections, and the two of us became the face of the party and our efforts, two days a week. Now, we are familiar characters with the county party.
Thank you Frederick. Obviously I have tried this or I would not have formed my opinion. I can try again though. I will have to poke around and see the cast of characters involved today.
I love President Biden but it would help if he could stop supporting the Israeli massacre of Palestinians. People have been calling him "Genocide Joe"! Not good!
One phone call. We're not sending any more weapons and ammunition. 22,722 killed, mostly women and children. How is this defensible? Why does Heather Cox Richardson not address it? This is Biden's downfall.
Joe has been pressuring Netanyahu since Day One to act appropriately!!
Patently ridiculous! How many innocent Palestinian civilians must die before Biden does something more than ask Bibi nicely???
We're passed 30,000... and counting, Joe.
Gayle, Thank you for writing. I would note we must not relent in prevailing not only upon Biden but also upon our respective representatives to insist any further arms to Israel be conditioned upon an immediate and permanent ceasefire and movement towards a diplomatic resolution.
Remember when we all gathered after pos was inaugurated? That did not accomplish much. How can we gather and make change? What is the first step? I'm in.
Marj, Thank you for writing. A small group of us are at the stage of reaching out to “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-Founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” I would note we particularly are intent on engaging young people.
In the event you’re interested in pursuing this project with us, I’m posting an email address I no longer use that still receives messages. I’ll keep it on the site for 24 hours. See corrected email address.
Votegloriajohnson.com. Gloria is one of the TN3. She’s running to replace the useless Marsha Blackburn.
@MLMinET, I’m aware. I appreciate you writing and wonder whether you live in Tennessee.
Yep
Marj, A correction:
Marj, A correction:
Marj I am so glad you brought this up. Through a couple of other Substack readers, I was direct to Chop Wood, Carry Water, the Substack newsletter of Jessica Craven. It’s free. She’s very positive, and nearly every day puts out news about local efforts to organize around issues like fighting climate, change and abortion rights, both of which are very important to young voters. Even though I’m involved in my local Democratic Party, I have learned about several other wonderful organizations here in North Carolina through Jess, who I believe is in California. can’t post the link here because I’m on my phone, but you can find her easily. Can’t say enough positive things about her and the community around her, who are phone banking, writing letters etc.
The first step, respectfully, is to support those effective and responsible groups which encourage and physically register younger voters 18 to 29 who undoubtedly will deliver victory for American Democracy: after 8 years actively engaged in voter registration across 8 to 10 states, I recommend www.TurnUp.US.
TurnUp is a nonprofit charitable organization (C3) run by brilliant and effective Harvard students who have successfully brought out hundreds of thousands of young voters based on three principles that they overwhelmingly resonate with: 1) legislative support nationwide to protect and preserve abortion rights; 2) enactment of effective gun control and safety legislation; and 3) mobilization of effective efforts to battle Climate Control.
Their key is focusing exclusively on 13 states which have important elections for US Senators and 78 truly Competitive Congressional Districts! So please recommend www.TurnUp.US to your family and friends and please contribute generously ASAP as the battle for Democracy is underway NOW! Thank you!
I love when Democrats bring out the 2016 vintage "We Got This!" sackbut, in celebration of the coming electoral disaster; "...younger voters 18 to 29 who undoubtedly will deliver victory for American Democracy."
Don't look now, but the overwhelming ideology of young voters is Progressive - the anathema of the DNC and "Yesterday's Man" Joe Biden.
Virtually every poll clearly demonstrates Biden standing steadfast in the center-Right landscape of the Status Quo, and young voters SEE HIM THERE. Biden is completely out of touch with what the majority of Americans want from government - under- AND over-30.
Go ahead, walk around wearing your rose-colored blindfolds, and try ONCE AGAIN to shill a lesser-of-two-evils election to the saavy and weary under-30 voters. To quote another famous epitaph: "They stayed away in droves."
Joe has issued the first stage of the call that you appropriately favor! That will intensify as the election draws closer for a great many Americans who are low information voters! Fear not, we are coming! And we will be there when it counts the most! Thank you for your call.
Ira, Thank you for writing. While I am heartened by your reply, I, along with a few fellow LFAA readers, are proactively laying the groundwork for an engaged pro-democracy nationwide movement, aimed, particularly, at engaging young people.
Terrific; I’ve been suggesting a March on Washington much budget than before supplemented by local marches on the same day! I would be glad to help with respect to young people by asking TurnUp to get involved ?
Hi Ira, Like you, our small group of LFAA readers came together last fall to try and launch a nationwide march for democracy on July 4th. The action tentatively was titled “Rise Up For Democracy Before It’s Too Late.” We had envisioned the main event taking place in Washington D.C. on the morning of July 4th from 9:00 to 12:00 ET. Additionally, we had foreseen other marches across the country, largely embedded in existing parades and holiday events.
Once we hit the stage of reaching out to find standout figures to bring recognition to the project, we met with thoroughly justifiable explanations for why the impact and cost of said investment would not merit the effort necessarily taken from other work. Accordingly, as my initial comment shows, we have shifted our focus.
To start, we’ve selected 5 high profile figures whom we’re confident would mobilize young people: “The Tennessee Three” plus Florida U.S. House Rep Maxwell Frost, also co-founder with David Hogg of “March For Our Lives.” Because I might have someone who can put me in touch with “The Tennessee Three,” we start there.
If you were able to enlist TurnUp, that would be an enormous contribution. Please note, although I no longer use it, I am posting an email address that still receives messages. I will leave it on the site for 24 hours.
Thanks; I think you need a bi-racial and Bi- Hispanic speaking group plus Obama or Raskin and team up with Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups and and move it to early October? I like the symbolism of Juky4 but I think it needs to be closer to the election-/ I will inquire at TurnUp??? Thanks
I expressed the hope a while ago that Joe Biden would find his inner FDR during this campaign. He delivered in spades last night!
I loved the speech. He can be a storyteller and should use that skill more often, maybe?
Because reading a speech writer's work from a prompter turns a poseur into FDR.
Not sure what you're implying here. Are you suggesting that President Biden is a poseur? If you watched the actual speech, you would see that there's not only no teleprompter to be seen, there are no glances at a script on the podium. President Biden spoke directly from memory and his heart.
Yes, he and every other president (and other elected officials) employ speech writers. I would guess that the president presents broad themes to his speech writers, then the president reviews, edits, modifies what has been presented to him.
I didn't mean to imply anything: 1) Biden has NEVER had anywhere near the chops to write that speech or any others (look what happens when he goes 'off script'), and 2) voters should stop swallowing hook, line, and sinker the WORDS said by politicians or reported in the mainstream media.
Teleprompters are frequently seen but rarely recognized; they're those clear glass screens sitting on either side of the podium. They're sitting at a readable angle above a horizontal computer screen. If you don't see them, then the crew has staged them off-camera (usually intentionally).
When Biden (or any other speaker) appears to be turning his head to address the whole room, he's simply switching from one TP to the other.
I suppose if you believe that "President Biden spoke directly from memory and his heart.", you have no problem in swallowing Dubya's claim about Putin, that "I looked into his eyes and saw a soul".
Americans (of either party) must certainly be THE most politically gullible creatures on the planet.
FDR had speech writers too. The President chooses these people and then modifies their words to suit his or her own purpose.
The prevailing perception is displayed by the all too common phrase; "That was a GREAT speech BY the President!" (Exhibit A: Valley Forge, Jan 5, 2024)
I don't have a problem with good speech writers. I have a problem with the Santa Claus notion that ANY of it came out of the politicians talking head. Instead of kudos they should be going for Golden Globe Awards.
YES INDEED!!!
Below is the speech he should be giving. Tie the GOP to the billionaires who own the country, and the government. But he won’t, because, unlike FDR, he is unwilling to be honest about the real problem, that being the monied interests pulling the strings; those same interests that fund his, and other Democrats campaigns. Until he forcefully attacks the millionaire/billionaire class, including Wall Street and Silicon Valley, he’s pissing in the wind.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/who-controls-the-us-political-system
Tom, While some might defend a party’s reluctance to bite the hand that feeds it, I believe, like you, that the benefits of calling out the millionaire/ billionaire class, who, for example, are the biggest drivers of much of the country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and income, would outweigh the costs.
Barbara, I firmly believe it’s the only way to peel away the millions of Trump voters who aren’t KKK racists, misogynistic asses, or QAnon kooks, but are extremely frustrated by government dysfunction and inefficiency in what they rightly perceive as a rigged game. It’s the only way to build a working class coalition broad enough to be able to counter the capitalist class rape and pillage.
If elections are lost because hard truths are spoken, so be it.
Tom, Because the stakes in 24 fundamentally are existential, I wouldn’t take this stance unless I were confident a movement would ensue that would drive home the point that voting Republican, the Party that has been silent on this issue, runs counter to working families’ interests and concerns. In short, we need FDR-like Democratic leadership so focused and disciplined so not to allow Republican deceptions and distortions to go unanswered.
I think the stakes have been existential since ‘80. GOP deceptions and distortions are a given, but must be always countered, and almost never have been, by a class-based critique. Democrats have refused to do so, fearful of being labeled socialists, commies, soft, etc. The response to GOP accusations that one is attempting to use ‘class war’ for political gain is ‘You’re damn right! The wealthy want to do what they want, when they want; and what they want is to rig the game so that you don’t get your fair share of the pie. This is a class war, make no mistake about it, it’s been going on since America was founded, and right now the rich bloodsuckers are winning. Wake up!’
Tom, I’m aware, and while you might not appreciate my response, throughout 2024, I consistently will be creating and recreating a system of prioritization. Indeed, I anticipate encountering values conflicts requiring me to prioritize values based upon my assessment of the consequences of my actions.
Leadership is more than promises and speeches. Biden has much to answer for; Gaza (your tax dollars at work!), Iran Nuclear Deal, Child care, Border crisis, denying Ukraine a path to NATO and slow-rolling weapons to them after the Russian invasion, his focus on supporting economic measures for Business rather than for Citizens (stock market profits vs. wages/prices), etc.
IF Biden wins reelection it won't be because he earned it as some comically fictitious FDR Champion of the People; it will be because a very small majority of Americans answered affirmatively, that Yes - Biden's not as bad as the Other Guy.
Lou, While I agree with much, though not all, of your critique, my standard response is that the lesser of two evils typically is a lot less evil.
The analogy to your last sentence: if the car that runs the red light kills me while I'm in the ped crosswalk, so be it.
No. But nice try.
Tom, “If elections are lost because hard truths are spoken, so be it.”
Without money to Campaign, elections are lost. Citizens United is the game, play the hand you’re dealt OR just fold now and bask in the purity of a world that does not exist
You’re putting forth a false choice. Sanders showed that grassroots giving can be viable, if one has the right message, party establishment duplicity notwithstanding.
This has nothing to do with purity, it is right vs. wrong. To suggest otherwise is to endorse the Ed Meese mentality of if it’s legal, it’s ethical. It also endorses the concept of corruption, by participating in a corrupt process with a means justify the ends rationalization.
Plenty of examples of insurgent campaigns, both successful and near misses, to think playing a corrupt hand is the only path. That’s lazy, and lacking intestinal fortitude, imo.
A choice is a choice. The path Sanders chose had a result
“ OR just fold now and bask in the purity of a world that does not exist”
Your comments suggest that ethical purity is necessary, and while that’s aspirational, its not the world we live
You are defining corruption not in terms of what the Supreme rules but rather by your own opinion. I’d strike down Citizens United in a heartbeat if I could. I can’t. Condemning rational candidates for following the rule book seems like misplaced idealism
The world you seem to live in is Black and White. Reality is quite different
Black and White is lazy. The hard decisions are made in the context of infinitesimal grey areas, following the most noble path forward within the bounds of imperfect decisions
To suggest that doing anything other than what you would do equates to Ed Meese is just so much hyperbole
Do not discount that he will do that. I think the Harry Truman treatment is coming.
I do not think he has it in him, Rickey. His whole political history argues against it. Would like to be wrong. We’ll see. The first thing he needs to do is get Ukraine/Gaza off his plate; the latter is hemorrhaging votes. He might wind up like LBJ, a legacy of foreign policy killing his domestic accomplishment.
"Yesterday's Man" by Branko Marcetic. Our House Cat will never change his spots. He and the DNC spend more time hunting the door mice "Progressives" than the GOP.
Also Tom,
He needs to condemn the Supreme Courts issue corporations to be people. Demand that we get money out of politics . That alone will be like taking the claws off a hawk.
Yeah, he could come out and ask American citizens, regardless of their party allegiance, to call their congressional representatives and tell them to support HJR-54, a constitutional amendment that would force the SCOTUS to end the twin concepts of corporate personhood and money as speech. But he won’t.
MoveToAmend.org
I'll vote for Newsom, but I'll never vote for Biden.
Then you are missing out on supporting a very successful President.
"Corporate Joe" Biden is just plain evil.
“Corporate Don” Trump is just plan evil.
You might call Trump a Vampire Conservative, sucking money out of the rest of the world (with unpayable Treasury bonds) for a military buildup and tax giveaways for the rich.
Hahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
Here, here , I definitely agree. 👍
This reminds me of the Normandy invasion , the big opening salvo against those who would destroy Western Democracy. We are granted sacred Freedoms and those must be protected.
I would also commend President Biden in reaching out to historians on this past Wednesday including you Heather for the long view. How important that is that your influence reached both us and the highest levels. Thank you for that!
Yes, Christopher -- love it how our Heather was there.
Love it that Biden entertains historians, as Kennedy famously did decades ago, historians and artists.
Those at Valley Forge apparently had superb listening inclinations. One doesn't believe in let along fight for democracy unless one has already learned to trust widely, to enjoy life's complications, contradictions, and what poet Joseph Brodsky called the "loose ends" in life, in people.
Best, when our leaders model the listening openness as Heather saw and gave to first-hand, we all may benefit, by listening for some of these historians online, reading them in their books and periodical essays.
One side in the coming elections has the decency of individuals open this way. The other side -- mindless cult for an angry, vengeful, near-illiterate diaper baby.
Phil B., U.S. Army translator/interpreter of Vietnamese, 2 Sept. 1969 -- 4 Apr. '72.
Phil, you and Christopher have your heads screwed on right. I stay up way too late most nights appreciating so many great comments and responses to comments.
I also stay up way too late most nights. I do appreciate the great comments by the great people here.
You have got that right 👍
Well said!
Thank you for your service........a lot.
We lost, Kathy. Lost big time. All our own fault.
I remember, while learning Vietnamese, seeing who our Viet allies were. The Viet middle class. All expected the U.S. to prop them up in their middle-class privileges -- cars, scooters, refrigerators, western fashions, the same consumerism to which the French Catholics had accustomed them. At the same time, all scorned fellow Vietnamese out in the boonies. Only the Viet Minh cared for them -- our "enemies."
I remember going to North Post, Ft. Myer, and getting from the library there a copy of Paul Mus's memoirs -- a French guy who'd walked afoot in Nam and learned the score even before Dien Bien Phu. We Americans had zero personnel like that -- only elites puffed up by abstractions, as David Halberstam later reported on in "The Best and the Brightest."
Yes. My brother was there.
Heather is truely amazing. She is clear that she is doing this because she cares. About the history and the context of what is happening, but most importantly, she sinceerly cares about US. She gives us the credit for her continuous work because we are here and are a powerful force as well. Democracy Awakening is about her interaction with us, as she states in that great book. Biden and others recognize that she has the power of the truth to mobilize thousands of us to show up every day and discuss these issues amoung ourselves and develop appreciations and friendships across the world.
I sm impressed with that too. It’s important that we bring in people who understand who we are and what we’re doing : Historians and Teachers everywhere!
Historians are denigrated by MAGAts and their ilk. Hopefully their ilk, nationwide, is a smaller group than in Texas
MAGAts do not like facts they do not agree with.
They can't tolerate history or many other facts. I'm more concerned with educated conservatives who rationalize a vote for any Republican as push-back against "socialism."
One cannot “agree or disagree” on a FACT! One can have a conversation about the fact. But to disagree says to you that it isn’t FACT. That is what is happening today. So what is fact?
Am I getting too picky!!😂🤣😁
EDUCATION is denigrated by MAGAs.
I thought I saw some of Heather in his speech.
Yes!
I'll vote for Newsom, but I'll never vote for "Corporate Joe" Biden the Vampire Liberal.
Just stop. That makes no sense.
Divide and conquer.
Divide and TRY to conquer. It’s up to us -each and every one of us- to ensure that such TROLLS are unsuccessful.
I just keep Reporting him!
Me, too.
…but we are glad he paid the $50. to Heather to have the privilege of commenting here!
Actually, it's $5 a month.
Actually I believe it is rather divide and lead. Similar as they are the common thread is ‘Divide’. From Russia to Fox News to trump they’ve consistently pushed the ‘Divide’. Now there is one (DJT) that wants to lead. Clearly a horrible choice IMO.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Confused and does not let lack of knowledge keep you from speaking with authority. Please go play in the street.
Come on John, lie some more. You would not vote for Gavin either. Your posts prove that you are nothing but a "find something wrong John."
...said the wanna-be Biden troll
And how is that helpful to anyone?
A vote for "none of the above" is better than a vote for Trump or Biden:
https://youtu.be/bXEglx-or6k?si=kGAzaHvpPOloYJXc
This is the 4th time you've said this.
Reporting in numbers may help instead of continuing talking about it, IMO!
I remember, on Biden's inauguration day, Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon chanting "F#ck Biden!" as they marched to the local Democratic headquarters to break all the windows.
you were there? Just asking cause it sounds like you were.....
Kind of like someone talking about the cheering crowds in NJ following 9/11
Hahahahahahaha
So what.
The former president has been howling, snarling and snorting, while raking it in; lying, cheating, sexually attacking women, verbally attacking every group imaginable, except for most White supremacists, and claiming to be the victim; destroying institutions and transforming the Party, formally known as The Grand Old Party (GOP, a.k.a. the Republican Party). He’s wildly popular with about a quarter of the American people, and he led his party in busting out of democracy; so imprisoning as in slowing their goal to destroy the state and make their fortunes the easy way. Isn’t that exactly what they have been doing for the last 45 years; yes, and no! Now, they’ve got Putin and Orban, more billionaires than ever, more Americans who welcome a strongman, and an authentic, charismatic, lying, crooked lunatic The Republicans had other good years back in the day, along with Democrats, but that’s another story. There hasn’t been anything like this before, but let’s not forget The Civil War!
The former president's accomplishments were infamous, but that old pol, a relic of the senate called, Biden, beat him for the Presidency in 2020. The presidency had to be stolen back for Trump because he claimed that ‘the election was rigged’. Stealing it back for the former president would be under the aegis of ‘Stop the Steal’. Wasn’t that a clever switcheroo?
It was time for a battle party. The former president planned it for January 6th, 2021 and tweeted his supporters, ‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’.
It was wild, and it was dangerous, and it was deadly.
Now, it is time to call upon the fine former Madame, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who happened to attend the former president’s battle party on January 6th.
'What January 6 Made Clear to Me'
'Our democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage of those entrusted with their care.'
By Nancy Pelosi
THE SIXTH OF JANUARY is the date prescribed in United States law for Congress to count the electoral votes in the presidential election. It is an occasion of high drama with specific requirements: the security of the mahogany boxes containing the states’ Electoral College certificates; the timing of the joint session of Congress, called to order at 1 p.m.; the precise rules that spell out that the debate on objections to the count shall proceed “clearly and concisely.”
On January 6, 2021, my daughter Alexandra brought her two sons to the Capitol to witness this historic occasion of a peaceful transfer of power. My grandsons did witness history that day, just not the history anyone expected.
The former president had long planned for the nullification of the election, sowing doubt about the results even before ballots were cast and challenging the results in the courts. So before the joint session, we prepared for the possibility of objections to the Electoral College votes by Republican members of Congress. It was clear that the results from Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would be the targets. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland strategized with members of Congress from those states about how we would respond to and defeat the objections on the House floor, based on the facts and the laws.
The joint session on January 6 was called to order at 1 o’clock by the vice president. The first Republican objection to a state electoral vote came with Arizona. During that debate, at about 2:15 p.m., my security detail rushed to the speaker’s chair and told me that I had to leave immediately. We left so fast that I didn’t even have time to bring my cellphone with me.
Having failed to overturn the election results in the courts or in Congress, the president had resorted to insurrection in the Capitol. A violent mob—enflamed by the “Stop the Steal” rally held by the former president—had marched to the Capitol, broken through the outer police barrier, and reached multiple entrances to the building. Smashing in windows and breaking down doors, they stormed inside, seeking to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
More than 2,000 rioters made it inside the building. Some in the mob were yelling “Hang Mike Pence”—angry that the vice president refused to follow the former president’s diabolical order to overturn the election results. At the same time, the massive crowd swarmed outside my office chanting “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,” even screaming about wanting to put a bullet in my head. (AtlanticMag.) See gifted link below for Nancy Pelosi’s piece.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/three-years-after-january-6-capitol-insurrection-trump/677024/?gift=HXqjFN-j-dud0TbzU8NbDuRz1IgqvX9gIPIXb7Sueck&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Thanks for that. What a woman! What a great lady!
Yes, what a woman. What we could do with more of such women!!!
I think they’re out there; they just have a harder time making themselves heard. As we’ve seen in the past, women are held to a totally different standard than men. Women are “scolds”, men are “strong”. I’m so very tired of this.
You may note that my picture to the left of this message is of one of my favorite books: "A Common Scold."
And black women are "angry".
This whole "Biden is too old" is just freak out over the possibility that Kamala Harris might become president. They just don't say the second part.
Pelosi is a performative politician who was/is adept at navigating the legislative machinery in the House of Representatives to her, and her own political party establishments ends. The same could be said of Jesse Helms when he ‘served’ in the Senate. Pelosi put electoral viability over doing right by working people, firmly entrenched in the ‘if you can’t win, you can’t govern’ mindset.
That mindset prevented a whole host of policy initiatives that working people supported, from Medicare for All to student debt relief to a $15 minimum wage from ever being introduced for debate, much less a vote. Pelosi is Mitch McConnell with different messaging, a politician playing to a political base, playing a political game in a corrupt, rotten, pay to play system, enriching herself, and legislating for donors at the expense of the working class.
Tribal political mythology is an insidious thing.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/congress-stock-trading-ban
"If you can't win, you can't govern." Exactly why she was so good at the job. Notice conservatives no longer want to govern - finding common ground- they want to rule. Their way or the highway.
The MAGA does not want to REPRESENT their constituents, they want to RULE them.
No, she wasn’t good at her job, unless you consider the job being all about pleasing party establishment at the expense of the working class. Yes, the GOP is anti-governing, with the exception of wealth consolidation and culture war. The Dems are about preserving neoliberal status quo, with the occasional improvement at the margins, making sure they don’t upset corporate donors in the process. That has also been a version of my way or the highway. Medicare For All, student debt forgiveness, ending the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts, ending endless war, etc etc etc, never get a proper hearing due to corporate donor fealty, by both parties.
'The first female Speaker of the House may have been its best. She was not the longest serving Speaker. Other than Sam Rayburn (D-TX), a handful of others sit ahead of her. She did not preside over the most prolific Congresses like those of the New Deal and Great Society. But she did pass the first American health care bill in several generations, the most comprehensive Wall Street reform bill since the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, the largest economic stabilization bills in U.S. history, and the largest expansion of climate research and investment in U.S. history. She was likely not the most powerful Speaker. That honor probably goes to Joe Cannon (R-IL), though with some caveats. But in virtually every metric one could evaluate a Speaker, Pelosi excelled. She has no contemporary peer to compare to. In fact, she was the only modern Speaker to return to the chair after losing it, the first since Rayburn and Joseph Martin in the mid-20th century. All of her predecessors dating back to the mid-1980s were pushed out of office. Pelosi will be remembered most for being the first woman to hold the office. But she was also a generational leader whose impact on her party and the House can only be compared to the most consequential Speakers in American history.' (Speaker Nancy Pelosi: A Master of the House' by Joshua Huder. From the journal The Forum
https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2023-2012; Published Online: 2023-06-08
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston) See link below.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/for-2023-2012/html?lang=en
Perfect post Fern - thank you!
Thanks, Fern! Excellent!
I wasn't aware that the Speaker has the power to change the system. Money, multiplied by Citizens United, is meant to distort what representatives choose to represent. And voters elect and re-elect those same representatives every 2 years. I think your issue is with the electorate.
Common Dreams is over the top much too often. So are you. Trolling nonstop is an insidious thing,
Way to shoot the messenger, Jeri. That’s pretty much much all you’ve got when it’s pointed out that Democrats are bought and paid for, just as Republicans are, in a bought and paid for system. It’s logical fallacy trolling.
You can grit your teeth and fume all you want when Democratic Party hypocrisy towards the working class is pointed out, but that doesn’t change the reality. It just means your tribal disingenuousness is, well, over the top.
Tom, a difference exists between a messenger and a gadfly. One of them is a pest. You can ruminate on that if you choose. Or not
I choose a quick chuckle rather wasting time ruminating on absurd attempts at gotcha commentary. But nice try, Dave.
Nancy Pelosi writes: "I remember the first time I saw the United States Capitol. I was 6 years old, and my family was traveling to Washington to see Daddy sworn in for his fifth term in Congress. As we approached our destination, my brothers were beaming as they said, 'Nancy, look, look, there’s the Capitol!' And there it was: a magnificent white dome, towering and imposing, shining in the sun."
I am privileged to say that I had felt the same as Nancy Pelosi the many times the taxi I was in would make that left turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue and I would see the Capitol reveal itself, standing ever strong as it conducted the people's business.
So, yeah, it's kind of personal for me.
Lynell, it is Nancy Pelosi who stirs me. While I loved going to DC as child and seeing the Capitol and having more associations with it, Nancy Pelosi is my touchstone. It mattered a great deal that she be with us tonight, and for me all through this particular period in our county's history.
I am very disturbed that the gifting of the article has not worked for several people. The Atlantic will hear from me later.
Thank you, dear Lynell, for sharing your story. It is beautiful and Nancy Pelosi would treasure your common appreciation for The Capitol, the symbol of our country.
Fern. Re “When I got to Fort McNair, it was clear that no one had deployed the National Guard to the Capitol. As Senator Chuck Schumer and I watched the television coverage of the unfolding insurrection, we began to place urgent calls to the administration.
I contacted Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who could not have been more casual. In response to our pleas to dispatch reinforcements, he said: “Well, I have to report to my boss. That takes time. I don’t know what we can do.” His answer was horrifying.
While the Pentagon dragged its feet, Chuck, Representative Steny Hoyer, and I called the governors of Virginia and Maryland to ask them for help. Virginia law enforcement and National Guard troops began arriving in D.C. around 3:15 p.m., and Maryland was cooperative too.”
What is abundantly clear to me is that parts of the Military Command were ordered (or instructed) that no effort should be made to quell the riot and as we see in our courts, specious reasons for “delay” can bring forth the end result desired
Ryan McCarthy and the entire chain of command that slow walked any help led to one person, the ogre watching TV in the White House anticipating his place in history as the Great Conquerer
There should be an investigation into that dereliction of duty
I am quite sure these parts of our Military Command have been investigated for dereliction of duty, by order of both General Mille and Attorney General Merrick Garland, leaving no traitor unindicted.
It seems to me that the efforts to handcuff the government response to an expected/preplanned riot at the Capitol was compartmentalized by someone like Fylnn, understanding that “orders given” by higher ups must be followed and each level used as many deflection tools as possible. If Ryan McCarthy was actually a patriot he would have moved Heaven and earth to respond, yet he was nonplussed. “Hmm, a riot at the Capitol? Well, I have no authoriztion to respond, good luck finding someone who does. Hint hint, he’s watching on TV and is taking no calls”
The gifting of the article, thank you, works for me and in fact says it is available for 13 days.
I suspect what is happening is - when a message pops up asking readers to sign up- rather than 'xxx'-ing out of the message box and continue reading - people leave the page.
Marj, thank you very much for stopping by and sharing your thoughts., which sound quite logical. There is some responsibility on the part of the Atlantic to make the gifting clearer for recipients. Thanks, again!
On this day in 1649 the English Rump Parliament voted to put King Charles I on trial for treason and other "high crimes". What will it take for Trump to be convicted??
Great comments, Fern! Fiery and succinct. I started reading the Atlantic article and then it cut me off due to the paywall. Any chance they let you gift? I just can imagine the rest of it because I saw Pelosi’s daughter’s film footage of what happened that day. My heart was beating as hard as when I saw it occurring.
Marlene, if you have a library card, many libraries today have digital content of most major periodicals like the Atlantic that you can read online for free, just like in the library. Check it out.
Thank you for that suggestion! Hadn’t thought of that avenue. 👏🏼
I think Fern has a wild side that is right up there with NP's. I always like her comments.
She and Lynell are my “go-to” pals!
Understood.
Give this a try, Marlene.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/three-years-after-january-6-capitol-insurrection-trump/677024/?gift=aFbN6PR_6hTlYUVlokJksFf1urgIrLVlcJdjAvIgdZA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Thank you. This is a stirring account. Interestingly, I spent some time this fall with old friends whom I rarely see. They are all what I would call knee jerk Republicans. I’m not even sure they could have named Joe Biden as our current president, but they sure hate, hate, hate Nancy Pelosi. Fox News? I wouldn’t consider any of them politically active, but the hatred was vitriolic.
Hey, Betsy. I can't help but try mightily to understand the hate that you describe coming from "old friends." So far the only thing I can come up with is because they feel threatened by "others" being given a leg up by our representatives, which takes away what they perceive is their due.
Lynell, I think it’s probably more a case of being in a silo (which in some ways I understand since I tend to live in one, too). When I questioned why they found Nancy Pelosi so horrible, not one of them could give a reason. It was just “because”. I see them so seldom and our friendships are so ancient that it wasn’t worth getting into a losing battle, but maybe, just maybe, something I said led one or more of them to reconsider? I can foolishly hope.
I hope for their sake that - as you said - maybe something you said did cause one or more of them to reconsider!
Thanks, Lynell, and good morning!
Thank you, Lynell
Marlene, I gifted again, but it's exactly the same as the first. Try it again. No one else has stated that problem, and quite a few have read it. I hope that it works for you this time.
How much does it cost to read the article?
Jerri, it was gifted. I cannot explain why a couple of you, that I am aware of, faced a paywall. When one subscriber shared this difficulty, I regifted it, and it was exactly the same as the first. I subscribe to the Atlantic and don't know whether it sells individual pieces. I will complain to the magazine about this, and I am sorry.
If they just check the X in the corner of a pop up request for their email, it will go away and the full article continues. It was a little confusing, but it does work. Thank you again, Fern!
Thank you, Becky. Another subscriber explained the problem to me. I think it is the fault of Atlantic Magazine that some recipients are confused by the process. Thanks, again!
I’ll try again.
Yay, Fern! I was finally able to read the whole brilliant piece! Thank you! Thank you!
Thanks, Fern, for working so diligently on this!💞
Thank you, Fern, for your gift of the Atlantic article by Nancy Pelosi. We all need inspiration to face this coming election. I am continually astonished that anyone with an ounce of common sense and decency can in any way support Trump and the vileness he represents and spews.
Becky, it's the people WITHOUT an ounce of common sense and decency that support Trump.
He is their standard-bearer for vileness and entitlement.
Sadly, nothing we say here will change their minds.
We can't stop trying, though.
I was able to access this article. Thank you for the gift. These are truly terrifying times. I’m so thankful for HCR and this community!
Thomas Ricks explained this in his book First Principles. The founders were clear in the need for our leaders to men of virtue. They did not included women in their time, but coming forward we can say leaders.
The conservative movement is no longer, it has devolved into a fascist movement. They no longer seek to govern - only rule. Sadly, there are a large number of people in our country that seem fine with that.
Fran, upon occasion I click on David Pakman to see what he has to say. Upon occasion, I feel like he is over the top, but this from yesterday was amazing. Trump apparently spent an hour in frenzied posting on his social media platform. This man is seriously unhinged. Just imagine if Biden, or any Democrat did this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs2BL2SDido
The above clip, folks, is a former POTUS. So much for dignity.
Hi Miselle. Just a note, my name is Fern; think of the plant! 🌿
Yikes. Sorry, Fern, I do know that!! Apologies!
On a side note, my given name is Ellen. (Miselle comes from the shortened nickname a dear friend gave me: "Miss Elle" which she'd combine into one word. She passed of breast ca and lymphoma years ago, and the nickname keeps her close in my heart. She was a godsend to me many. many times.)
Over the years I've frequently been called Helen or Eileen.. Ellen doesn't seem like such an odd name, but being called one of those two names has come up over and over and over,.
Fern like the plant is so appropriate! You give off vibes of hope springing up, just like nature in the springtime!
What's in a name? Miselle, thank you for telling me how you name came about. I have felt deeply appreciative of several friends in the past couple of weeks. They have been godsends to me, so I understand one of the dear ways you keep close to your friend who passed away. If you don't mind, I'd like to know her name.
My grandmothers were not alive when I was born. My parents decided to name me after my father's mother, 'Fanny', and he came up with the name 'Fern' thinking that the name 'Fanny' could give me some trouble. I have a story about 'Fern', which could have led to me being teased. That is another story for another time. In closing, though, my school mates didn't give me any trouble.
Her name was Gwen. I would not have survived an abusive toxic work situation without her. No joke, weekly the manager had someone in tears. She gave me the courage to escape.
Thank you, again, Misselle. This last time for telling me Gwen's name and how she was at you side. You had a strong and beautiful bond between you that endures.
Especially today as I remember the lives lost, the destruction and chaos throughout the day, and the refusal to act that is now “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history", I stand for democracy as envisioned by our founders and against those who would destroy it through the undermining of our institutions and by turning them against others out of vindictiveness and hatred. Every January 6th is now my January 4th. There can be no greater cause than opposing criminalization of the Office of the President. #donaldstinks #donaldsmells #LizCheney #ithappened
That first sentence is a doozy, and the rest a reminder of where we were and what we are dealing with. Should be shared to all outlets.
President Biden’s speech at Valley Forge was his best. He spoke of Arlington National Cemetery and President Trump’s contempt for those buried there. Biden personalized his campaign for the presidency, he discussed the disgraceful behavior of President Trump. Joe Biden gutted Donald Trump in a personalized manner.
President Biden attacked former President Trump. Biden attacked banality, antisemitism, monarchy, Biden did not mince his words. He attacked. He focused his campaign on democracy. He drew the line between good and bad, democracy and dictatorship. Biden was uncharacteristically blunt. He expressed exasperation and contempt for Trump, for Trump and Trumpism. Biden attacked. Be was emotional. He used the bully pulpit and issued the cry. Who are we? We, the people.. who are we? We see who Trump is and was.
Who are we? He asked. And he answered his own question. Find those words and you will find President Biden.
Biden showed his teeth. Biden issued the call.
Biden was a president that meant business.
The campaign began with the idea that mattered.
Who are we? This is who we are:
“1.9 million people displaced … 85 percent of the population;
100,000-plus buildings and residences damaged or completely destroyed;
50,000-plus housing units destroyed;
234,000 homes damaged;
28 of 35 hospitals damaged, destroyed or closed;
More than a thousand children given amputations without anesthesia;….”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/05/guilty-as-charged/
I see now I must write in code on this feed. I mentioned Gaza in a comment and it has disappeared. Thank you for reminding everyone here that bombing is not a form of democracy I’d like to protect. Israel is not a democracy worth killing for.
Tom & Irene, I fear that as a democracy we are vulnerable to the guilt of many previous misjudgments and political errors and even outright lies as a country. While often grievous errors, as I suspect many would justifiably agree with the Israeli-Palestinian/Hamas conflict, we also must admit and somehow contend with such misjudgments in Iraq ("weapons of mass destruction"?), in Afghanistan and perhaps most grievously in Viet Nam ("inevitable spread of communism"?). While morally repugnant in retrospect, with democracy we retain the capacity to do our best to acknowledge our errors and move forward with whatever we can muster to acknowledge our errors and moral failures and make some form of reparation. When have you ever heard acceptance of moral failure or misjudgment from those places where democracy has been starved, defeated or never tried (think Russia, Iran, North Korea)? Democracy isn't efficient, isn't always accurate in what countries to support or side with but it retains the unique capacity to correct its course,...eventually. “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
― Winston Churchill
John, inside many mistakes or misjudgments are the multitude of details that muck up the decision making processes in the moment. Hindsight and sound bytes are what make up the shallow complaints of the masses, but the reality of Viet Nam, et al are never clear cut and decision makers don’t have the luxury that the Monday Morning Quarterbacks have; shoulda coulda woulda
Delve into the histories of the Cuban missile crisis, WWI and II. Its complex
Dave, I couldn't agree more that it IS complex, especially for those we have elected to be the decision-makers. My concern, however, is as more information filters in to those decision-makers, that they tend to get more entrenched in their positions and sometimes (often?) move from rationalizing the decisions they have made to inventing reasons for those decisions rather than backing off what has become more clearly an error of judgment based on limited and/or biased information at the time. Hence, Churchill's quote. And those considerations don't take into account the ubiquitous flow of money to and from major industries let alone the flow to not only our politicians but even our judges that we are now learning about. How much more time or information do you think those decision-makers needed to recognize that the carpet bombing of Cambodia was not helping our fight against Communism? Or that our original labeling of Ho Chi Minh as a Communist served the political climate in the US more than an accurate recognition of his efforts to save his country from "the imperialists," be they USA, Russia or China. I suspect we get into far more trouble than we need to because of our unwillingness to listen to more nuanced understanding of the culture into which we have barged with our own "national security interests."
In the 50’s Americans were gripped in fear of the Red Scare fueled by McCarthy (god please cancel that name) and the political requirement to crush anything resembling communism. Nixon, the Kennedy’s, the Birchers et al using the fear of nukes as a rallying cry. Dominoes filled the zone. Bad decisions made in fear. The news media fed us daily death counts like football scores and we consumed it. Accurate information then as it is today was tough to come by.
My basic point is that each example of poor outcome contains a complex interaction of conflicting goals and compromises employed in the moment. Omnipotence would be great but we don’t live in that world
People applying black and white decision making have probably never had to make critical decisions in a sea of gray information
I disagree with Churchill. We keep doing the wrong things, and worse, never atone or hold people accountable. Exceptional or Evil? The more I am exposed to our actual history, as opposed to the propagandized one, the more I reluctantly come down thinking it’s the latter.
Take the three minutes and watch this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER77vxxGVAY
Tom High, having watched the video you suggested <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER77vxxGVAY> I am even more convinced that it is, or at least was, because of people exactly like Duane Claridge (Head of the Latin American Division of the CIA in the 1980s) who apparently believe that the CIA best understood what is required for our national security and best understands the cultures into which they (we) barge to "fix" what appear to be uncomfortable or unfavorable situations for the USA. Have I misapprehended that you see the video showing the kind of person we have failed to hold responsible for our terrible misadventures in other countries?
The problem isn’t so much with Claridge, and his ilk, imo, as it is those in higher levels of government who are never held accountable for signing off on anti-Democratic regime change operations that result in incredible misery for the targeted nation. Ike in Guatemala, Iran; Kennedy/Johnson in Indonesia, Vietnam; Nixon/Kissinger in Chile, Reagan in El Salvador, Nicaragua; Bush/Cheney in Iraq; Obama/Clinton in Syria etc etc. All should have been, at a minimum, investigated for war crimes.
People lose their minds over Trump inciting a riot, and push mass killings/torture abroad in our name aside like it’s a normal part of being ‘exceptional’. Turns my stomach.
Humans are the same everywhere. There have been and always will be terrible people everywhere (or "evil" if you prefer). The job of the rest of the people is to keep them out of power. And if the rest of the people don't do that job, then you get what you get. I know it's more satisfying to blame "them", but it's "us", the human species. Evolution takes millenia. May we work together to do better.
You’re right. I just have a problem with the analysis of most here that the people who put Trump in office were to blame, and ignore the Democratic voters who voted for neoliberal candidates whose decisions and voting records set the table for Trump to sit in the Oval.
Yes, when all the other options were explored and exhausted, we got it right. Prolific great author, world class speaker and philosopher, a unique Prime Minister, friend of America, the great WInston S. Churchill loved America, the natiok of his warm relative, he loved a good decision, a good cigar, Grand Fin Brandy, fine champagne, a good whiskey, dry fine wine, statecraft, peace, and war-making as needed. Sir Winston saved western civilization and was known as The Lion for good reason. He was also loved by those that professed to dislike him. His actions saved FDR more than once.
So... kindly ask Stanley Cohen Esq., - to call. 📱 973.379.4446 iPhone WhatsApp and SIGNAL or direct.. messages accepted.. by txt, to alert, or email at sblewis@fastmail.fm for starters. So.. Bibi was a house guest, quite by accident. One time. A few hours on a plane, then more at home. Flew quickly from a Baltimore gathering following a funeral, for a Meyerhoff, to MMU. Till retrieved by Mossad from Short Hills to Manhattan at 4:30 AM that night. One visit. One talk, the Ambassador was elegant, polite, friendly, calm. Smart. Protected. Not Abba Eban. More determined. We see now. It’s complex. Always is. UJA, not New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies... with 63% beneficiaries non white. Zionism is quite logical, can be quite deadly, but understandable. Maybe 2% of the population worldwide is the number. Might as less.
This is the situation. The challenge. Tolerance is missing, worldwide. Human beings are tested, Gaza and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and John Foster Dulles and President Dwight David Eisenhower back to some 200 Camps of Nazi Germany, to PM Golda Meyer from Milwaukee to Sen. Joe Biden and Anita Hill, it’s mere ignorance and arrogance, it’s sadly and shameful, it’s not going to end anytime soon. History is repeating. By education and sunshine, by education and tolerance, by education and social justice and democracy... perhaps. Conscience is not a vestigial organ. It’s not missing. Never is. We must activate and inspire the conscience.. The 4th Estate when truly free is one leg of many. Youth is key. Children see and feel it. Get suppressed. Brotherhood of children schooled in a tiny Ramallah school is a start, 50/50.. an example c. 1979. I witnessed. Unique at the time. We funded the school. Never heard a word.
Stanley... anytime. Your devotion is profound.
SB, I used to think a two-state solution was viable. I no longer do. I’m wondering as well about the possibility of democratic viability in a corporate/wealth-owned world. Which causes our extinction first; climate, nuclear annihilation, or AI?
If we can’t agree on history, we can’t fix anything. Thank you for funding that school.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/06/it-was-a-huge-miscalculation-the-truth-about-hamass-origin-with-chris-hedges/
Thank you, SB.
Many people aren’t aware of the details of what America did to Japan and Korea under General Curtis LeMay.
Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the deaths of more civilians than any other military officer in American history. No one else comes close—not Ulysses S. Grant, not William T. Sherman, and not George S. Patton. “I’ll tell you what war is about. You’ve got to kill people and when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”
Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo
In an interview with U.S. Air Force historians in 1988, USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, commented on efforts to win the war as a whole, including the strategic bombing campaign, saying, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too...Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure?”
Pyongyang, which saw 75% of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.
By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.
Bombing of North Korea - Wikipedia -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription:
Japan Buries Memories of Its Last War and Worries About Another:
As survivors of the Tokyo firebombing fade away, Japan reassesses its longstanding pacifism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/international-world/japan-china-bombing-wwii.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Lk0.2SXc.682-zPaF4duS&smid=em-share
Kristen, Caitlin Johnstone writes often about propaganda; am quoting below from her most recent piece concerning the media and Gaza. America’s lack of knowledge about our actual history is killing our ability to formulate policy, and do the right thing.
“The biggest misconception about propaganda is that it is something that happens to other people, and is done by other countries. Westerners like to think of themselves as free-thinking people whose worldviews are formed by facts and truth, contrasting themselves with nations like North Korea and China where populations are viewed as being subjected to conformity-enforcing propaganda. They believe that if propaganda does occur in the west, it comes here from nations like Russia trying to corrupt our minds and weaken our trust in our institutions, or if the propaganda is domestic in origin it only affects people in other political parties.
In reality the typical western mind has been marinating in domestic propaganda throughout its entire life, and its worldview has been manufactured for it by powerful manipulators who benefit from its intellectual compliance with their interests. The indoctrination into the mainstream western worldview began in school, and it continues throughout adulthood with the help of mainstream media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post.
If we’re ever to have a healthy civilization, we’re going to have to wake up from the propaganda-induced coma we’ve been placed in so we can begin pushing against the cage walls we’ve been indoctrinated our whole lives into ignoring and start using the power of our numbers to force real change in the systems which govern our world. Luckily the atrocities that have been taking place in Gaza have been rapidly waking people up, because it turns out there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.
The more people become aware that our civilization is built on deception and everything we’ve been told about the world is a lie, the closer we get to living in a truth-based society where nothing like the Gaza massacre would ever be permitted to occur.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/cnn-and-washington-post-busted-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=140416461&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=eov1&utm_medium=email
You’re not High at all - you’d be waaay more fun if you were!
Cute. Just curious, is the 57 your age, birth year, or IQ?
Hard to be full of fun when children are having limbs amputated without anesthesia in Gaza. Thousands of them. But hey, at least they’re lucky to be alive, and not buried and decomposing under bombed-out rubble, right? Waaay more fun.
Who is the old NYT reporter on the news channel live?
Assuming you are referencing Chris Hedges.
Mr. Stanley Cohen Esq., writes, covers Zionism effectively, among others. So, dear Stanley, if you’re open, anytime. We see what you see. Feel what you feel. Want what you want, are 85/88, we’ve been there.. we know that space, both sides of the sphere, and we may be powerless. We never know. Presidents Biden and Obama are and were trapped and well trained. Anita Hill is a tell. Most all are trained.. On all sides. Many sides. This one is 2,000 years old. Our grandchildren are trapped. Dare we try? Do we have a choice? Is WW III threatening? Will M.A.D. help? Or trigger?
We know. Action in accord with principle is a key to happiness, Aristotle to his son in Ethica.
So... to action. To principles. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Stanley, anytime.
Sandy
Spot on Sandy, it really pissed me off when I saw how the News Hour treated the president’s most excellent speech yesterday, they used a screen grab that made him look deranged and basically skipped over the speech and it’s importance. WTF??? I get it that Fux News might want to ignore it, I ignore them and their advertisers because of it, but PBS?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs2BL2SDido
Want to talk about deranged?
Tonight on the news, I heard part of an interview with Harry Dunn, one of the police officers at the Capital during the insurrection. Dunn is running for Congress. Four years short of qualifying for his pension, he is moving from one form of public service, in the Capitol police, to pursue another avenue, as a legislator. It's a crowded field in the primary, but he offers a history that the other candidates do not. Check him out at https://harrydunnforcongress.com/.
President Biden was on fire! Loved how he leveraged history. I wonder if a certain extraordinary historian was a resource to Biden and his speech writers...
Oh? Who could you mean? Perhaps the one he met, in a lengthy two-person fireside chat a year or two ago?
And Applebaum has so much personal experience/writing in the history of totalitarian governments.
https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-met-historians-warned-threats-to-democracy-civil-war-2022-8?op=1
The people in the meeting were said to have included the Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz, the University of Virginia historian Allida Black, the journalist Anne Applebaum, and the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Speechwriters for Biden, including Vinay Reddy and Jon Meacham, and the White House senior advisor Anita Dunn were also said to have attended.
HCR WAS at the meeting as well. It's likely that Meacham assisted in writing the Biden speech but I don't know that for sure. Other news outlets listed her as attending the meeting.
"We will never again bow to a monarch."
I had that exact thought! Especially when he mentioned the painting in the rotunda of the Capitol that HCR had talked of in a recent Letter! I loved his speech and I wrote to congratulate him immediately: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ because I strongly believe in telling people when they've done a good job, instead of only writing to complain! Join me in writing, if you are so inclined. It is so easy and someone will read it, they need to know what we think of them.
Thank you for the link! I just used it.
Thanks for the link, I just used it 👍
I did also.
I did, also!
Thanks for the link. I just responded to The White House!
Tomorrow is the last anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol before the election. Perhaps this a good time to watch or rewatch The Hearings of The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. If you care about America it will be emotional to watch. But we need to remember those feelings. Please pass this idea on, especially if you have stubborn Republican family and friends.
You can find them on PBS and YouTube. If you just don't have that kind of time at least watch Hearing 10 which includes a good summary.
Even though I couldn't find Hearings 9 or 10 on PBS I would suggest watching the first 8 Hearings there. On YouTube you have to speed scroll through the breaks or just wait through them. On PBS you have commentary during the breaks and I found it to be somewhat helpful and professional, as opposed to the boring personal opinions that most networks provide.
PBS
Hearings 1 -8. I had to use the search option to find these.
YouTube
@January6thCmte
https://youtube.com/@January6thCmte?si=hQPqaoH9YXhP4bYM
Hearings 9 & 10 (which is a good summary) are labeled as Business Meetings instead of hearings because 9 includes a supeona for Donald Trump and 10 includes an official call for Indictments for Trump and for lawyer Eastman.
I had watched most of the hearings live in 2022 but still found these to be very moving more than a year later, and after I had read books by Cheney, Kinzinger, and surprise key witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
Addition: I did find Hearing 10 on PBS. It's titlle on YouTube: WATCH LIVE: Jan.6 Committee Hearings - The Final Report. It's also titled: The January 6th Hearings, The Final Report, PBS NEWS HOUR.
Also I should have pointed out that I found most of these using my Roku device on my TV. Hey I'm old now. I swear I was considered tech savvy at one point in time 😉
Yep, I had a tech savvy period about 20 years ago. Thanks for that reminder…
@Jeri Chilcutt
You're welcome. Yeah, I was a STEM student long long before it was cool 😎😁
Mine came from multiple classes in Continuing Ed. Too old for it in school.
Correction: The PBS Final Report is evidently the PBS Summary and is quite different from Hearing 10 on YouTube which is evidently the Committee's summation and call for indictments .
Much appreciated, Gus.
Thank you, Gus. I watched every minute of them at the time but it was a huge piece of work that I will revisit. My 9 year old grandson was with me as we watched in horror in real time on Jan 6th, I plan to ask him today what he remembers about that day.
@Sally Jenks Roth
You're very welcome. There are moments that still make me tear up. I watched it in horror in real time as well. I think it's great that you and your grandson can share important moments like that. I have a couple of those too. ♥️
Thanks Gus.
Gus, thank you for suggesting that we rewatch the hearings, especially hearing #10. The information on how extensively Trump broke the Emoluments Clause, not including the payments from Russians, shows just how numb many Americans have gotten about his misdeeds. We can count on his insistence that the election was rigged if he loses.
@Mary Hardt
You're very welcome. I agree with you about Trump. In his very narcissistic mind, he can never admit to losing. He can never admit to being wrong. He certainly is a fan of the theory that if you repeat a lie enough times people will believe you. It's not hard to see how he developed a cult. I had (and probably still have) relatives who are among them. And yes, we have become numb to his lies, and even to his crimes.
Gus, his biggest and most harmful lies utilize projection so that the audience comes to believe that all politicians are as corrupt as he and his associates, including his family, are. He also has spread the lie, like Reagan, that democracy cannot, and will not, help the common man; this is the lie that the social safety net only exists to transfer our hard-earned money to the assumed-lazy poor. This is where Biden’s administration is so smart—they’re creating jobs to uplift the poor and middle class while protecting their dignity.
I don’t know if you saw my recommendation of Erica Etelson’s book “Beyond Contempt “ about how to talk, as a liberal, to conservatives so that a true exchange of ideas takes place instead of an exchange of insults.
@Mary Hardt
No I didn't see that but I just put it on my book list. All true. Yes, a good example of his projecting would be "Stop the Steal".
This was one of the best speeches I believe President Biden has ever delivered. Just in case you didn’t get a chance to watch it, here is a link to it. I highly recommend watching this video.
https://www.youtube.com/live/dPx89J1WuV4?si=MLTdqBBW3npoeg8t
Thank you Daniel Cooper for the link. I was working during the speech and planned to find it after my visit here. It was excellent, as usual.
"who WE are" Indeed! May it always be so.
The Orange Horror likes to use adjectives with people's names. How about Fighting Joe vs. Pathetic Donald?
I’m afraid that “Pathetic Donald” is much too ‘nice’! “Insurrectionists Idiot”, “Treasonous Dufuss”, “Lying Dictator”, and my favorite, “Pussy Snatching Sicko”!
IMHO I thought the President was awesome today. This is what leadership sounds like and acts like. I am so tired of all the legal gyrations consuming so much time. I am disgusted that we have essentially abandoned the Ukrainians who have shown us for almost 3 years now the true love of democracy and their unbelievable sacrifice to defend and save democracy. I am thankful for you Professor and your dedication to democracy and us in sharing your gift that always sheds light in this tumultuous time.
Ditto
Thank you Heather.
The criminal Trump is merely symptom of the disease that has become the American political system. It has been overrun by vast amounts of dark money. It is the highly concentrated wealth, the outcome of economic policies dating back to the Reagan administration.
Any meaningful form of democracy requires an educated, informed, and engaged society. The erosion of public education, the consolidation of media (broadcast and social), and toxic political campaigns continue to assault all three vital guardrails against the rise of the incompetent and corrupt.
The intent of the GOP is to continue to concentrate wealth (and thus power) while keeping Americans divided through fear and hatred.
I argue that if you were to assemble small groups of Americans around a kitchen table, and asked "what kind of outcomes would you like to see occur for the future of the United States" far more people would agree on fundamental issues. Consolidated media owned by people like Rupert Murdoch or the Sinclair Broadcasting Group do not want to bridge the divide. Zuckerberg's Facebook and Musk's Twitter rely on division, the spread of propaganda, and disinformation.
Make no mistake. Trump is a symptom of the disease. The influence of concentrated wealth is the root cause of this rapid decay -and the reality is the GOP can run anyone they want for the Presidency -(or Congress, or State/Local government) and it will be a close, money-influenced race. One need not look beyond the divided U.S. Senate, or the slim House majority held by extremists who will happily subvert democracy while talking to their constituents about 'Jewish Space Lasers'.
On connected issue -your help is needed.
In the United States, in 2024, democracy is on the ballot. Recent research states 75% of people consume their news on social platforms. With so much at stake, do you trust Musk and Zuckerberg -or is it time for an ad-free, subscriber-supported civic social network that doesn't sell or share data with marketers, shadowy political operatives, or billionaires.
Help us finish something great together: https://wefunder.com/civic.works.corporation.
We want to make the concept of virtual "Kitchen Table Democracy" real for the 2024 elections.
(Learn more at https://civ.works)
Mr Polisner:
Another corrosive process over the last 40 - 50 years has been the trend for our congressmen and -women and senators to evade their responsibility to make the tough decisions that we should expect of them.
If Congress wants to exert some real leadership, here is their opportunity. Speculation abounds on the likely fate of the appeal from the Colorado Supreme Court on the application of Section 3 of Amendment XIV.
Shouldn't Congress take the initiative? Section 3 does not specify who gets to decide whether the accused oath violator is an insurrectionist barred from future office. The obvious candidate is Congress! It's a political question if ever there was one.
Instead of enduring futile arguments and speculation about which justices are probably going to give Mr Trump a pass, I would rather see the senators and representatives grasp the nettle. They are supposed to give expression to the policy preferences of their constituents . . . and to use their authority to make decisions for the benefit of the country and the preservation of the Constitution.
Let's go to the source. The last sentence of Section 3 offers Congress a way to affirmatively and firmly stop all of the speculation. Do you suppose two-thirds of the representatives and two-thirds of the senators would be willing to vote for a resolution excusing Mr Trump's actions and derelictions? I don't pretend to know, but the debate should be put on the agenda urgently in both chambers.
No more fooling around. No more ignorant, impassioned schoolyard taunts and scandals. It is time for members of Congress to take their responsibility seriously.
Agreed? Would Civic Works be willing to start a letter-writing campaign to press Congress to act?
Congress is deliberately incompetent, divisive and antagonistic to any positive action. The bully puppeteer from the sidelines is assuring that. Wish a letter-writing campaign would unclog their minds. But have my doubts. Worth a try.
Ms Chilcutt:
You are not wrong.
Can you persuade a dozen or so friends to press their senators and representatives to consider my proposal?
I will try. Wonder if Resistbot still writes. Haven't used them in awhile. Of course, I lucked out with Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. They are useless. Why I don't bother with either anymore.
@George A. Polisner
I would remind you of these words in the president's speech. "This is not rhetorical, academic or hypothetical".
I hope the reality of the situation means more to you than academic debate.
It's not either/or is it. HCR hails from academia. Debate is part and parcel of the democratic process, and we need an educated electorate more than ever. What we may be losing track of in this age of viewing life though a screen of one sort or another (there is one in front of me) is that a functioning democracy is "hands on", at least in the sense that "self-government" is DIY by definition. We in aggregate are the ultimate authority. If we don't set the agenda and the goals of our "representatives", somebody else will, and in reality they very much do so. Follow the money. We forsake our own collective agency when we sit on our share of governance rather than exercise it.
And voting is key to that, but the vote without sufficient information is like a shot it the dark. One thing that successful social movements provide is information about matters we might otherwise overlook or prefer not to acknowledge. Academia contains a wealth of useful, even vital, information if we know how to use it. And above all democracy depends of conversation, useful, observant and good faith conversation, to become wise.
J L Graham says: "Follow the money.":
The Supreme Court Republican abominations of Citizens United (2010), Bellotti (1978) and Buckley (1976) established the "principle" that implicit quid-pro-quo is not bribery. This "principle" is ENTIRELY about trickle-down economics: the premise that if you shovel money into the hands of the rich, they will use it to grow productivity in the economy. It is a mendacious lie. Trickle-down is a cover for the Great Implicit-Quid-Pro-Quo: a payback in massive tax-breaks to American oligarchs for past bribes (campaign contributions made legal by the Supreme Court: "Money is speech.").
When the Democrats have the votes to succeed: (1.) Pass legislation to wipe out these Supreme Court rulings, including a reference to Article III of the Constitution informing the Court that this legislation is created outside their appellate jurisdiction. (2.) Add whatever is possible to this legislation to eliminate the corruption of money from the American democratic process. (3.) Eliminate the Reagan, G.W. Bush, and Trump tax-cuts for the wealthy, other than the sops for the non-wealthy added to make them politically palatable. (4.) Create an independent regulatory agency as a watchdog of ethical behavior among the Justices. (5.) Since they have become irredeemably political, set term-limits on Court membership--perhaps 15 years?
Speaking of debate, I wonder if there will be any that include the former president. In the primaries he has framed it as "I am so far ahead I don't need to participate" but in the real race that should not float. My impression is that he is too unhinged to do well and Biden knows his stuff. We can hope that might help settle the question of who is old and infirm.
That's a good question. I guess we'll find out. Personally, I don't think the old and infirm thing is much of an issue. It's ageist. And I don't think we need another shit show to prove that Trump is unhinged. At this point I think I would advise the president to pull a Trump and bypass any debates.
You are absolutely right sir. I suppose that President Biden knows all of this, but was emphasizing the urgency of his message. Thank you for having this conversation with me, and not dismissing me out of hand.
...which is why our academic institutions are being attacked at every level, from K-12 curriculum, teachers and administrators to University presidents. My alma mater abruptly evicted a truly outstanding and much-loved president of many years, the reason being an alumni event had been scheduled in a facility that had a history of limited inclusion. Knowledgeable citizens foil the far-right agenda. Ignorance feeds their power.
@George A. Polisner
I apologize for the scold. As JL Graham rightfully reminded me, analysis by you and others is an important part of the political awareness and process.
Wow, Go Joe Go. Frame it, don't blame it, Make it strong, and unavoidably clear the choice we have to make this year. And it doesn't hurt that Joe and Kamala's vision for America is actually working. I see a steam-roller a comin down the road!
I am an Episcopalian, and one of the things I really treasure about our tradition is that Christmas is a season, not a day. It goes from Christmas Day, December 25th to the 5th of January. That is the basis for the old 12 days of Christmas carol. It ends on the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany. It makes me very angry that I will never again be able to fully enjoy this tradition without thinking of the insurrection perpetrated on the United States by the former president and the thugs who support him.
Many thanks to the President for finally stating the issue in the election, and to Heather for her excellent article. We all need to take this seriously and do everything we can to preserve our democracy.
With you. When we celebrate the Light shining in the darkness, we need to recall the real-life exhibition of darkness we saw at the insurrection. That event has forever tainted our celebration of the Epiphany. I pray this Epiphany allows more folks to open their eyes to see the Light of love, kindness, decency, truth, honor, integrity, and freedom. In my faith tradition, Jesus, the REAL Jesus (not the evangelical “Christian” version) brings us all that and more. As a nation where all may honor (or not) as their faith traditions call them and as our Constitution stipulates, I pray light and truth win out.
Paul, same here. You took the words right out of my keyboard. 👍🏻
Love that speech! Today I realized that the strongest weapon in war and politics is doubt. If you can sow doubt, you’ll reap discord, and then you win. That is, sadly, why Biden pulls on the shortest straw: he wants to build things up, which is almost infinitely more difficult to do than breaking things down - which is the goal of the Orange Menace.
Wish it had plenty of TV coverage, and not just MSNBC
I watached the CNN coverage of the speech. Biden's words got about 3 minutes, Trump's idiocy got at least twice as much time, including making fun of Biden's stuttering, which was not very obvious during his speech.
CNN is disappointing to the point that I don’t watch much anymore. They have followed Rupert’s money pot, it seems.
Democracy is a cause and the most valid we as a people of our truly great nation have. There are many nations with decent and fair governments, but only one America. Our nation must be saved from both internal and external forces that seek to enrich themselves through our mental and physical enslavement; a harsh term, but the only one that supports a dictator's method.