Totally unrelated to today's letter. I was speaking to a Trump supporting neighbor. He told me he likes Tucker Carlson, but has turned off media for the past few weeks. I asked him if he liked Sesame Street. He stated that he loved it. I then showed him the video. Blew him away. Then we got to talking about the history of the Republican party. Guess who is now watching HCR's videos. He is in his mid-40's, and like most people had no clue. I am now conversing with a much more humble man.
I'm trying to learn my way around this technology. What Sesame Street video? Is that on here or did I miss something? And I'm not a troll/bot, just a confused senior who used to be more tech savvy than she is now. (I'm also behind on the videos)
I went there. Takes me to HCR’s videos on YouTube. I have watched them all live on FB. But I don’t get the Sesame Street reference. Can you explain, please?
Carlson just did a diatribe about Sesame Street and how discussions of racism on it are "propaganda." He's getting skewered for it. The episode featured Elmo, and It said people should be treated fairly.
I agree that "it appears that the president plans to run his campaign by stoking cultural, racial, and gender resentment." And I think this stoking is more than a re-election bid. I'm afraid he is trying to tear our country apart, to bring our democracy, our union, fragile and imperfect as it is, down. I really believe we, the citizens of the United States have a long, deep and strong understanding of the value and preciousness of our democracy, and that we will emerge from this series of attack on our country, by our president, using and abusing his considerable powers.
Oh, I'm not buying into that at all. He's just a man and with every passing day, with every absurd step he takes, he's imploding. More people are engaged because of this reprobate and more people see the lives of others as they never have before. Yeah, he needs to be gone, preferably incarcerated. But he's don't more for the advancement of so-called 'progressive' values than sanders or warren could have done in a hundred years, because fast action on substantial change is what it will take to save us all from the utter devastation he hath wrought. He's made it clear what's at stake and that it is in our hands now.
I agree, he is imploding. He is also mentally unstable. Undiagnosed legally because of the Goldwater Rule. But you are correct. Everything is moving at a quick pace.
Surprisingly, neither had I. God bless google. So here's the Leslie rule: best way to identify a troll, a bot or a schmuck online is when you reference well sourced public info or data online and someone demands that you 'explain yourself' instead of doing the research themselves. Anyone who can't use google to quickly enlighten themselves shouldn't be in the conversation, but they will do it to try to get people involved in a illogical spiral to hell.
Stephen Golovnin, In Search of Reagan's Brain is one of my favorite Doonesbury cartoons! I think Gary Trudeau got away with it, because he was not a psychiatrist.
Good point. He has create a huge "to do" list of things that need to be addressed immediately. The list is long, but the environmental issues stand out to me as blinking red lights on the dashboard of horror the next administration will have to address.
With respect Pam, I don't believe he is trying to tear our country apart, I don't think he's capable of looking that far ahead. Everything he does is simply the product of unleashed narcissism run rampant and supported by sycophants and those with ulterior motives like Yertle the Turtle and Scheiße Esser Miller.
Except in the mean time the EPA is gutted, are there still kids in cages? He really stuck it to he transgender population yesterday and it goes on and on. There's a long wake of destruction and he has normalized what we kept saying was #notnormal
i agree. this is the psychic manifestation of a toddler in an adderall deficient temper tamper who plans nothing and just can't stop himself crashing up against a sad old man afraid to die. as long as we are responding he knows he's still here.
“The Christian Medical Association, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, and the right-leaning Heritage Foundation all applauded the move, which is due to take effect by mid-August.”. I guess power is what these groups really stand for.... a sense of being able to influence something.. Funny, they all want to reduce government control except in the bedroom and regarding people’s bodies. Defining LGBTQ people as a problem to be dealt with by law is insane. Reducing abortions requires finding and making available alternatives, not passing unenforceable laws! I never cease to be amazed at what negative assumptions about the nature of mankind, and the notion that the Bible... and other scripture, are legal Constitutions, rather than libraries of inspirational literature, lead to such inhuman abuse.
When you stand up to a bully and he nolonger has his thug enforcers rooting so wholeheartedly for him...he backs off and shows his true nature and looses even more psycophantic support.
Trump always backs down when confronted, since he's a physical coward. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Vietnam before he became Guest of Honor at a single-fatality grenade explosion (aka a fragging).
I used to work in events in Manhattan and I met John Bolton there. He looks exactly as he appears on TV, and he is one the most unpleasant pieces of work I've ever dealt with. But he is so self assured ideologically and so settled is his loneliness personally that he is actually the perfect person to break Trump. He will never care what anyone thinks of him.
If he did not care about what people thought about him, why couldn't he have testified during the impeachment hearing. I know, because he wanted to make money on his books😠😠😠
it runs deeper than that with him. he is committed to his ideology. he didn't testify because he was still trying to get the WH to clear his book and to gain some level of ideological influence. and bec -- face it -- we all knew it didn't matter. the senate was never going to convict. if he'd testified they'd have stripped his books for parts and muted it's impact. but he's given up on the WH for approval and releasing it now will do Trump the most harm. and that's what Bolton wants. he believes he's the genius and that Trump didn't appreciate his genius sufficiently. this is personal. and if you are a white war hawk you too would think Bolton was a genius.
"Our numbers appeared to plateau last month, but that was because the hot spots in cities, especially New York City, had begun to cool. As that happened, other hot spots opened up in states that had previously been less affected."
I agree. The numbers in NY/NJ were such a high percentage of the US overall, that it appeared to minimize new case rates nationally. Now that the rates have decreased in the two States, the rates are seen as several fold. And they are -- 7-day averages of new cases are devastating.
That was predictable. There is always such disdain for New York City from the middle of the country: all that, "well, that's what New York gets for being New York." But this city managed an epic crisis it had no sufficient warning of or much info to go on at the start. And the governor warned that this would happen elsewhere, to prepare. Most didn't. Today I am glad I am a New Yorker. And one other thing: they told us exactly what was happening to the best of the their knowledge and what to do about it. All in all, a success story. So far anyway.
Let's not forget that the overwhelming cases in the tri-state area made this a New York story for media. It wasn't until media coverage of nursing home/ meat packing spread that Covid became a threat to the midwest and southeast. Also, Cuomo was and remains the most honest broker of information with regard to Covid.
indeed. andrew cuomo's been the man for the moment and he's moved more quickly than any other gov to make legislative change on race issues as they unfold.
California also did a good job-- better in many ways. All, apparently, thanks to the mayor of San Francisco, who saw early on that she had to act, and to Governor Newsome, who knows the mayor personally and listened to her. Or so I've read.
Yes but California’s infection rate is now rising, thanks to places like Orange County where the chief public health officer who ordered mandatory masking (California has county option on this, unlike my state of Virginia and ten others which have done the sensible thing and imposed a statewide order) was hounded out of office and her successor revoked the order. A local approach to this won’t help since people aren’t going to be stopped from moving between localities.
I meant to write 'covered as a threat, rather than 'became a threat'. Though I was raised in greater New York (Vermont), I have lived the last 40 years in Central Illinois. Similar to Gayle, I thought the national virus story was suffering due to its concentration out east. Cuomo kept the national perspective alive as part of his narrative.
Do you buy 'many friends and supports reached out about Juneteenth' and he hadn't realized? Once you blew that whistle, you dont get to unblow it. He's doing the same thing in Jacksonville. Think that date will change? If he's trying to pivot, I dont buy it.
I think they knew what they were doing, but didn't expect the backlash they got-- they thought they could push through it. But they've discovered the opposition to his race baiting is stronger than they thought.
And it is so late that there are no rooms available so they may enlist cruise ships for housing. If they keep this up there may be far fewer gops to vote in November. The mess just keeps getting deeper.
It's clear the political planner for all events Trump is Steven Miller, the self-hating Jew who should have been stuffed in a seabag and thrown off the Santa Monica pier during a storm, long ago.
I would love to read it if you could find it. A couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher said something along the lines that every police officer candidate should be first asked if they were ever stuffed in a locker. If they were, it's an indicator they might not be a good police officer candidate. Makes sense to me. There are some people you don't want to give a gun or have advise Presidents. Stuffees are probably not the best choices for those occupations
Rather than 'blinking' that resulted in changing the RNC date, I suspect he (his minders) are hoping to still get African American votes. How anyone can think that will help at this point....They will probably gaslight that "oh, we didn't know, and we're sorry" story line.
Really? I was thinking it would be *exactly* to provoke a riot and then blame it on the protesters rather than the real provacteurs, the organizers and the main candidate.
Don't think a riot would be good optics for Trump at this point. Too easy to say the Juneteenth date was selected as an intentional provocation. His base is shrinking and i think the majority of voters would see it for what it truly is.
Same as 2016, they are hoping to diminish African American enthusiasm for the other candidate. Even a 1% depression could make a significant difference in a close election.
It will be interesting what John Bolton has to say in his book, and if he will do interviews upon its release. I can only imagine his fury at Trump for delaying the release of his book. No doubt the delay cost him (and publisher0 dearly in sales. He is so much like Trump in many ways...particularly in his take-no-prisoners attitude.
He is not well. Memorial Day at ANC and his right arm. Photo op with he Bible, again right arm. Drinking water and the ramp incident today, both suggesting motor control issues on right side. Could this be the opportunity he needs to resign w/o admitting defeat?
"Increasingly, it appears that the president plans to run his campaign by stoking cultural, racial, and gender resentment." Do you think he is rethinking this strategy now? He backed away from the Juneteenth rally, withdrawn national guard from DC.. if there is one thing that his reptilian brain registers is reading public sentiment and moving accordingly
Totally unrelated to today's letter. I was speaking to a Trump supporting neighbor. He told me he likes Tucker Carlson, but has turned off media for the past few weeks. I asked him if he liked Sesame Street. He stated that he loved it. I then showed him the video. Blew him away. Then we got to talking about the history of the Republican party. Guess who is now watching HCR's videos. He is in his mid-40's, and like most people had no clue. I am now conversing with a much more humble man.
Well, this is lovely to hear!
I'm trying to learn my way around this technology. What Sesame Street video? Is that on here or did I miss something? And I'm not a troll/bot, just a confused senior who used to be more tech savvy than she is now. (I'm also behind on the videos)
honestly, i don't know about the videos so maybe someone can educate us both.
Same here!
I went there. Takes me to HCR’s videos on YouTube. I have watched them all live on FB. But I don’t get the Sesame Street reference. Can you explain, please?
Carlson just did a diatribe about Sesame Street and how discussions of racism on it are "propaganda." He's getting skewered for it. The episode featured Elmo, and It said people should be treated fairly.
Elmo's dad Louie talking about racism on Sesame Street. It was great. https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/elmo-and-his-dad-discuss-protesting-and-racism-in-sesame-street-and-cnn-town-hall/ar-BB15ak74
Thank you!
Like Judith Montgomery, no idea WHICH episode is the Sesame Street video. Help please.
Julian see my reply to BetsyC . There is a link to a CNN article with video
Thanks!
I love the HCR videos
Every time Trump chooses a day to celebrate his bigotry I learn something more about American history. Schoolgirl history classes were pretty poor.
Juneteenth should be a national holiday.
Also, "Loving Day" (June 12) which is one of those embarrassing reminders of American Apartheid that they don't teach in history classes.
http://www.lovingday.org/
I agree that "it appears that the president plans to run his campaign by stoking cultural, racial, and gender resentment." And I think this stoking is more than a re-election bid. I'm afraid he is trying to tear our country apart, to bring our democracy, our union, fragile and imperfect as it is, down. I really believe we, the citizens of the United States have a long, deep and strong understanding of the value and preciousness of our democracy, and that we will emerge from this series of attack on our country, by our president, using and abusing his considerable powers.
I posted before I was done--- To finish, I don't know how this era of abuse and threat will end, but I hope it is peaceful, legal and soon.
Amen.
I hope it ends that way too
Oh, I'm not buying into that at all. He's just a man and with every passing day, with every absurd step he takes, he's imploding. More people are engaged because of this reprobate and more people see the lives of others as they never have before. Yeah, he needs to be gone, preferably incarcerated. But he's don't more for the advancement of so-called 'progressive' values than sanders or warren could have done in a hundred years, because fast action on substantial change is what it will take to save us all from the utter devastation he hath wrought. He's made it clear what's at stake and that it is in our hands now.
I agree, he is imploding. He is also mentally unstable. Undiagnosed legally because of the Goldwater Rule. But you are correct. Everything is moving at a quick pace.
Surprisingly, I had never heard of the Goldwater Rule. Just looked it up on wiki
Surprisingly, neither had I. God bless google. So here's the Leslie rule: best way to identify a troll, a bot or a schmuck online is when you reference well sourced public info or data online and someone demands that you 'explain yourself' instead of doing the research themselves. Anyone who can't use google to quickly enlighten themselves shouldn't be in the conversation, but they will do it to try to get people involved in a illogical spiral to hell.
Here is the Laurean rule. If you don't know something, don't take my word for it. Look it up yourself.
Just looked up Goldwater Rule as well. It didn't seem to stop Garry Trudeau from penning his comic strip 'In Search of Reagan's Brain'.
Stephen Golovnin, In Search of Reagan's Brain is one of my favorite Doonesbury cartoons! I think Gary Trudeau got away with it, because he was not a psychiatrist.
Good point. He has create a huge "to do" list of things that need to be addressed immediately. The list is long, but the environmental issues stand out to me as blinking red lights on the dashboard of horror the next administration will have to address.
yeah, when they get in, just the sheer scope of what this admin has either targeted or left to rot unattended will be bigger than what we can imagine
Exactly, and there is a part of me that wishes I could be part of the team that will be tasked with setting it right.
me too
With respect Pam, I don't believe he is trying to tear our country apart, I don't think he's capable of looking that far ahead. Everything he does is simply the product of unleashed narcissism run rampant and supported by sycophants and those with ulterior motives like Yertle the Turtle and Scheiße Esser Miller.
I have to agree Stephen and Gayle. The guy plays Chess with checkers pieces. He can't play a long game to save his life.
You're too kind. He uses belly button lint and stale french fries that he finds in the furniture cushions in the oval office.
John Doucet, that's pretty funny 😊
Except in the mean time the EPA is gutted, are there still kids in cages? He really stuck it to he transgender population yesterday and it goes on and on. There's a long wake of destruction and he has normalized what we kept saying was #notnormal
i agree. this is the psychic manifestation of a toddler in an adderall deficient temper tamper who plans nothing and just can't stop himself crashing up against a sad old man afraid to die. as long as we are responding he knows he's still here.
I believe we are witnessing genocide. Not just of the blacks, but of the oppressed in general. If he can't kill us off, he'll have us kill us off.
Interesting. I don't think we're there yet in terms of violence, but foreign observers have said this about Covid-19.
There is definitely deliberate indifference at any rate.
“The Christian Medical Association, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, and the right-leaning Heritage Foundation all applauded the move, which is due to take effect by mid-August.”. I guess power is what these groups really stand for.... a sense of being able to influence something.. Funny, they all want to reduce government control except in the bedroom and regarding people’s bodies. Defining LGBTQ people as a problem to be dealt with by law is insane. Reducing abortions requires finding and making available alternatives, not passing unenforceable laws! I never cease to be amazed at what negative assumptions about the nature of mankind, and the notion that the Bible... and other scripture, are legal Constitutions, rather than libraries of inspirational literature, lead to such inhuman abuse.
Can we just make it easy and refer to them all as the American Taliban now?
One thing Trump has done for me is confirm my lack of interest in ever watching a reality tv show!
When you stand up to a bully and he nolonger has his thug enforcers rooting so wholeheartedly for him...he backs off and shows his true nature and looses even more psycophantic support.
Trump always backs down when confronted, since he's a physical coward. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Vietnam before he became Guest of Honor at a single-fatality grenade explosion (aka a fragging).
Once he starts running backwards you've got to keep up the momentum until he falls
So true!
The John Bolton part makes me angry. However, I think even if he testified the outcome would have been the same.
I used to work in events in Manhattan and I met John Bolton there. He looks exactly as he appears on TV, and he is one the most unpleasant pieces of work I've ever dealt with. But he is so self assured ideologically and so settled is his loneliness personally that he is actually the perfect person to break Trump. He will never care what anyone thinks of him.
I hope you are right.
Interesting.
Thank you for that genuinely interesting perspective.
"So settled in his loneliness personally."
If he did not care about what people thought about him, why couldn't he have testified during the impeachment hearing. I know, because he wanted to make money on his books😠😠😠
it runs deeper than that with him. he is committed to his ideology. he didn't testify because he was still trying to get the WH to clear his book and to gain some level of ideological influence. and bec -- face it -- we all knew it didn't matter. the senate was never going to convict. if he'd testified they'd have stripped his books for parts and muted it's impact. but he's given up on the WH for approval and releasing it now will do Trump the most harm. and that's what Bolton wants. he believes he's the genius and that Trump didn't appreciate his genius sufficiently. this is personal. and if you are a white war hawk you too would think Bolton was a genius.
Great point
Yeah. Seconded.
This feels accurate, Gayle.
it would be heartbreaking if he were not so prepared to take it out on the world.
Absolutely! The impact of his book finally coming out this month is going to be interesting from what i read about it on CNN/NYT/Washington Post
"Our numbers appeared to plateau last month, but that was because the hot spots in cities, especially New York City, had begun to cool. As that happened, other hot spots opened up in states that had previously been less affected."
I agree. The numbers in NY/NJ were such a high percentage of the US overall, that it appeared to minimize new case rates nationally. Now that the rates have decreased in the two States, the rates are seen as several fold. And they are -- 7-day averages of new cases are devastating.
That was predictable. There is always such disdain for New York City from the middle of the country: all that, "well, that's what New York gets for being New York." But this city managed an epic crisis it had no sufficient warning of or much info to go on at the start. And the governor warned that this would happen elsewhere, to prepare. Most didn't. Today I am glad I am a New Yorker. And one other thing: they told us exactly what was happening to the best of the their knowledge and what to do about it. All in all, a success story. So far anyway.
Let's not forget that the overwhelming cases in the tri-state area made this a New York story for media. It wasn't until media coverage of nursing home/ meat packing spread that Covid became a threat to the midwest and southeast. Also, Cuomo was and remains the most honest broker of information with regard to Covid.
indeed. andrew cuomo's been the man for the moment and he's moved more quickly than any other gov to make legislative change on race issues as they unfold.
California also did a good job-- better in many ways. All, apparently, thanks to the mayor of San Francisco, who saw early on that she had to act, and to Governor Newsome, who knows the mayor personally and listened to her. Or so I've read.
Yes but California’s infection rate is now rising, thanks to places like Orange County where the chief public health officer who ordered mandatory masking (California has county option on this, unlike my state of Virginia and ten others which have done the sensible thing and imposed a statewide order) was hounded out of office and her successor revoked the order. A local approach to this won’t help since people aren’t going to be stopped from moving between localities.
I meant to write 'covered as a threat, rather than 'became a threat'. Though I was raised in greater New York (Vermont), I have lived the last 40 years in Central Illinois. Similar to Gayle, I thought the national virus story was suffering due to its concentration out east. Cuomo kept the national perspective alive as part of his narrative.
Do you buy 'many friends and supports reached out about Juneteenth' and he hadn't realized? Once you blew that whistle, you dont get to unblow it. He's doing the same thing in Jacksonville. Think that date will change? If he's trying to pivot, I dont buy it.
I think they knew what they were doing, but didn't expect the backlash they got-- they thought they could push through it. But they've discovered the opposition to his race baiting is stronger than they thought.
Agree, let's see if they move the JAX date.
And it is so late that there are no rooms available so they may enlist cruise ships for housing. If they keep this up there may be far fewer gops to vote in November. The mess just keeps getting deeper.
Just because trump says something, that doesn't always mean it's false. Perhaps he didn't realize anybody he cared about would object.
Have we ever seen him 'care' about anyone?
Good point. Perhaps he now thinks it might affect his re-election.
It's clear the political planner for all events Trump is Steven Miller, the self-hating Jew who should have been stuffed in a seabag and thrown off the Santa Monica pier during a storm, long ago.
You have to believe that someone stuffed him in a locker in high school. He comes off as such a hateful man. Locker time will do that to you I heard
There is a brutal article about him from the man who was his deskmate in kindergarten. I wonder if I can find it.
I would love to read it if you could find it. A couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher said something along the lines that every police officer candidate should be first asked if they were ever stuffed in a locker. If they were, it's an indicator they might not be a good police officer candidate. Makes sense to me. There are some people you don't want to give a gun or have advise Presidents. Stuffees are probably not the best choices for those occupations
Since I did not have anything better to do, I did some googling. Is this the article? https://freebeacon.com/politics/politico-runs-op-ed-stephen-millers-third-grade-classmate-complaining-untidy/
Rather than 'blinking' that resulted in changing the RNC date, I suspect he (his minders) are hoping to still get African American votes. How anyone can think that will help at this point....They will probably gaslight that "oh, we didn't know, and we're sorry" story line.
Actually, I'm guessing they're just hoping not to provoke a riot.
Really? I was thinking it would be *exactly* to provoke a riot and then blame it on the protesters rather than the real provacteurs, the organizers and the main candidate.
Don't think a riot would be good optics for Trump at this point. Too easy to say the Juneteenth date was selected as an intentional provocation. His base is shrinking and i think the majority of voters would see it for what it truly is.
Same as 2016, they are hoping to diminish African American enthusiasm for the other candidate. Even a 1% depression could make a significant difference in a close election.
That keeps me up at night:(
I agree. DJT didn't blink. It was intentional to make it look like he really cares about black lives.
No one could fall for that at this point, do you think?
One wouldn't think so, but every day I say that.
I hope not
It will be interesting what John Bolton has to say in his book, and if he will do interviews upon its release. I can only imagine his fury at Trump for delaying the release of his book. No doubt the delay cost him (and publisher0 dearly in sales. He is so much like Trump in many ways...particularly in his take-no-prisoners attitude.
Narcissists ARE the danger, always...
Amen.
I watched about as much of his West Point speech as i could stand. He is literally breaking down before our eyes.
@BandyXLee1 on Twitter explains it all. She is a premier mental health expert.
He is not well. Memorial Day at ANC and his right arm. Photo op with he Bible, again right arm. Drinking water and the ramp incident today, both suggesting motor control issues on right side. Could this be the opportunity he needs to resign w/o admitting defeat?
Amazing that Trump "blinked". How might that be understood by his "base?" Caving to the "fake news" or to the Dems?
Being magnanimous. That's how they'll spin it, is my guess.
"Increasingly, it appears that the president plans to run his campaign by stoking cultural, racial, and gender resentment." Do you think he is rethinking this strategy now? He backed away from the Juneteenth rally, withdrawn national guard from DC.. if there is one thing that his reptilian brain registers is reading public sentiment and moving accordingly