Criminal Donald has to throw idiot labels at Dems ("communism") for a reason, Kelli.
As Heather says in hers here today, "Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump."
He's doing that because, as Heather also recounts here today, Republicans have almost zero interest in the practical needs of people abroad the land. They still just keep caving to their wannabe dictator, the criminal defacing everything he touches from the White House.
Of course he wants to take over or just seriously extort universities, elite law, major legacy media, and the monopolies or near monopolies of his social media billionaire allies, too. He can't help himself. Never got any schooling in the actual lives of actual, ordinary people.
He's soured. Inside he's probably as wizened, pickle green as the fetid swamp he's made of our formerly proud, decent, reflecting pool.
Friday at noon in Hartford, CT, a Black man stood on Main Street in front of the Old State House and removed his cloths and stood naked facing traffic. His arms were outstretched. Yes one could suggest that he was having a mental breakdown. I suggest that is symptomatic of our discombobulated times. The police and fire personal placed a gown on him and continued to talk rather than subdue him but eventually he agreed to enter an ambulance only to push himself out at which point police had to handcuff him to the gurney and take him to an institution. I was performing on the other side of the fence line.
The incident reminded me of the social and economic chaos permeating the land; an almost Fellini dystopian thunder of human behavioral response to the madness of Americana.
I don't think people quite realize yet how much trump has damaged not just "America" - but the mental health of MANY people, including many in other countries.
TDS really IS a "thing" - just, not the thing Donald thinks it is. I get anxiety at the prospect of reading the news - and depression when I DO read it.
Lady E., it’s the people who aren’t distressed at the news who are the ones we need to worry about, and they seem to comprise roughly a third of the US population (in America at least).
Mr. Ruth, they do seem to reflect a solid 33-34% of the population. My thought (musing only, no research involved) that the percentage is derived in great part by those who represent the “Lost Cause” of the old antebellum south. Fed by religion that has its roots in racism and sexism grooming people to obey what the white man at the front of the church says.
Sorry Husband of Ruth, but no. Those people have always existed and always will. One third of anything does not control anything. What we need to worry about is the media that gives the idiots a voice while suppressing the majority.
Some suffer terribly. According to poll optimism regarding the future is way down. Why? Who needs this $#@%? We don't have to go there, or at least not so deep. We are not just consumers. Not just spectators. We are officially citizen/managers of our own collective fate.
The idea that Republicans are moving to the right (becoming more conservative) is a convenient falsehood. The idea that they are moving down (becoming less moral) is the inconvenient truth. When everyone is attached to convenient falsehoods, authoritarianism wins. To defeat authoritarianism, we the people must start facing the inconvenient truth.
For the record, the truth is only inconvenient in the short term. Regardless, please, everyone, stop saying they are moving to the right!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s hard to be depressed when you’re angry. Anger about what these traitors are doing, when properly channeled, is a virtue. It can fuel protests, calling representatives and senators, boycotting companies that support Trump, etc. Properly channeled anger about all this is a virtue. Depression is acquiescence. Let’s choose the former.
I wish early on it had been correctly defined as "Trump DEVOTION Syndrome."
There are days that I can't tolerate the firehose. I have a friend who sends multiple articles to me, and I don't want to tell her to stop, and yet, I often just delete them. I've gone through periods when I don't stop reading the news, but I greatly reduce it and don't look at the comment section, even here. (When fights break out here it really disturbs me! Other than the occasional trolls, we're on the same side!!)
Same with calling Congress--some days I can fire off a dozen phone calls, and some days I get tightness in my chest as I leave a message, so I need to back off for a bit. I am so encouraged by Megan's daily posting of the spreadsheet, and with each new person who joins the forum. I know when I'm supersaturated, someone else will pick up my slack for a while.
THANK YOU, Lady E, and also each and every person who pays for a subscription and takes time to add a comment. It shows the power to us who feel we are flailing.
Lady E, there is no question that this country is suffering great mental anguish. The only point I'd argue is that Trump is the tool being utilized by our home-grown oligarchs, who saw an ignorant, narcissistic, racist, but wealthy and recognizable figure who, with the proper flattery and incentive to do their bidding, would enable them to create what is becoming their ideal country. In return, he has become the "billionaire" that he always claimed to be, and he is now the figurehead leader of the most powerful country in the world. All of what he is demanding has been engineered by others - including the mostly anonymous Project 25 "advisors." Trump is their useful idiot.
Lady, no one I know is happy and often make efforts to enjoy life vis a vis shared meals, photos of nature, etc. Our garden helper is moving to Portugal although I did tell her she is not going to escape climate change. We were in Portugal during the first regime and our young taxi driver noted death star's ruining the rest of the world as well.
Circa 2012, I was on a flight to Hartford. The "one-time" friend sitting next to me had worked for the State of Connecticut in the 1950's through the early 1980's. She worked at a CT state mental facility which she said saw budget cut after budget cut, until they no longer took in patents.
Of course, her story is not unique to CT. My daughter worked 3 blocks from a homeless shelter in Jax Beach, FL. Almost every night multiple homeless people would come into the store to get warm. She would usually allow them to stay for several minutes before she had them leave the store. Most of them were mentally ill and would leave the store without incident. But once in a while she called the Jax Beach police who almost always immediately responded and would take the people back to the shelter or on very rare occasion arrest them.
That's how most state's deal with mental illness for the masses.
PS. As an aside, the Jax Beach Police Department (not to be confused with the JSO which covers most of Duval County) is a well run compassionate and efficient police department. Kudos to the entire staff.
Peter Early’s book, *Crazy*, chronicles the terrible state of mental health services in the southern US. I worked in FL for the past 15 years. He’s not wrong. It is a very broken system, and the southeastern states routinely rank in the absolute bottom of the 50 states for provision of mental health services. It’s a symptom of the disease of GOPism; elimination of any and all services for anyone not fitting their white-male-ChristoNazi template.
To be fair, this move to release mental health patients was universal but probably more advocated by Raegan’s push to downsize government in the belief that new psychotropic meds were able to normalize behavior if and only if the meds were taken. But they were not so many of these former patients found themselves deter committing more serious crimes, found themselves with lengthy prison sentences. This is our America.
Let's face it- they routinely rank in the bottom of many issues that support health and productivity of citizens, including healthcare in general, maternal health, education.... I could go on!
As a young girl I watched local mental institutions close and homelessness rise. As a child I remember worrying about where all these people would live.
The US underwent deinstitutionalization primarily between the 1950s and 1980s. This movement shifted patients from long-term psychiatric asylums to community-based care. The institutionalized population dropped by over 90% during this period.
A terrible tragedy,,,. As a college student I worked at a summer camp in 1960 at the muscatatuck state hospital in Indiana and that week was exhilarating for many of them. I think many of the patients had not been outside for years. It appeared to me They were housed in deplorable condition without little therapy I could see. A few years after some friends and I painted one of the wards. As I recall when the hospital closed these patients, who I remind you were real people, were not prepared for the outside world and the outside world was not prepared for them. The communities did not step up. They were not safe or treated humanely with help and support before or after.
A friend who I invited to enjoy my performance at the Old State House was once a youth comrade of the streets in the 1960’s and the better option of being arrested was to be sent to a mental health facility for 30 days. My friend related one of our street people was arrested for drugs and was spending time at the local jail. The kid contrived a way to get send to the 30 day o.an at either of two mental health facilities. His apparent plan was to place a cord around his neck in his cell and his toes were to touch the ground so that jail personal would come in and take him to Norwich state hospital. Unfortunately for the kid, he was short and when he allegedly pushed off from the cot his feet would touch the floor and he hung himself. He might still be alive today had he measured correctly.
Your "story" was heartrending....a desperate call for help by a fellow human.
How many others are hurting, feeling hopeless and alone?
Agree with you, Bill, this administration is so consumed with itself and the accumulation of personal wealth, that it has lost sight of humanity ie the needs of families and the most vulnerable within our population.
When we have "turned our backs on the least of these" we have turned our backs on America.
It's the same with all his lawsuits -- hit first and hard and you'll damage your target no matter what happens down the road. The cost and reputational damage alone is a good part of the point.
"Facts," klutt, come mediated by words in novels, memoirs, essays, histories.
Or arrive mediated by images in movies, photographs, murals, online videos.
Imagine if our schools focused more, more, more on our skills to cite, quote, mention, refer to any and all arts human-centered and nature-centered.
But this would oblige schools to honor the literacy of asking questions, when this is foreclosed to students and teachers, who must submit only to testing, where all understand only the billionaire testers and their rationally neutered, anonymous minions put the questions, and they each have only one answer (no literacy for overlap, context considerations, complications, or any mixed nuance).
A brain is a terrible thing to waste. This truth is something that Dems should blast every republican with non stop. Are they going to lose by default? The ads write themselves but the blather continues. Except for Mamdani ..
Hello Phil... Abraham Lincoln was the Greatest 19th-Century GOP President.... Eisenhower, TDR, were the Greatest 20th-Century GOP Presidents... So Far, DJT is the All-Time Worst of Any Party...
When I look at my fellow Americans I realize that most of them either didn’t vote or voted for the wrong person. The great majority is so ignorant of voting responsibility.
I strongly believe that the responsibility of voting, not just to sound off, but to seek best outcomes for ALL of humanity, is not explained nor encouraged by us the people, nearly enough.
Required voting only works( and clearly would need massive compliance in this country) when the voters are educated about the issues. I do not know how it is possible to educate many Americans, because they either think they know it all already thanks to right wing media, or it is not possible to get their attention for more than 15 seconds at a time.
Civic education must be done in our schools, started early and consistently enlarged upon throughout the 12 years.
I wouldn't want anyone who did not know the facts or learn about the important issues to be forced to vote. Isn't that how we got into this mess? People were hoodwinked into voting for people who never were interested in helping their fellow human beings.
My state went all mail-in, but back when there were polling places, I looked forward to thanking always friendly poll workers for their service, and brought my daughter so she could see how it works.
I volunteered as a poll observer a few years ago and was very impressed. That was an education in itself. The election workers were amazingly patient and courteous, and the system worked.
You can’t know how much that means to us—people thanking us for doing what we do as they leave the polling place. In my place we help voters who run into problems solve the problem—I want them to leave with a good experience of voting.
I was also a poll worker and people were surprised that I volunteered to be one. Most were “drafted” by the courts to pay off traffic fines and other costs. I enjoyed meeting the people and as an “independent” I could serve in any of the 3 staffing positions as needed. Made life easier for the supervisor. Now I live in a vote-by-mail state so no longer needed to work the polls.
A national shame with unintended consequences. The intended consequences are bad enough, but really democrats. Political anemia is worse than losing a hard fought battle.
Before GWB, I thought I'd never see a president that made Nixon look better. Then I thought GWB had hit bottom. Now there is Trump and the whole damned "Party of Lincoln" is now corrupt as hell. We can't afford to go lower and we can't afford to stay here. It's frickin' pandemonium.
So get to work and help clean up the mess! I’d rather be reading novels, but instead, at 92, am writing GOTV postcards, never fewer than 10 a day, charter member of Indivisible.
Puts one’s brain on the spin cycle, doesn’t it. We need more of an amygdala response. Fight like our ability to live spoiled, entitled lives depends on it.
Apache, what amazes me is that 27% of the voters across the US claim to be Republicans and 27% Democrats. But, there really is no longer a Republican Party as Heather points out. It's the party of oligarchs who can buy elections with their slick ads that contain mis- and dis- information, but millions of voters believe their BS. Of course, many (most) of the 46% are low to no information voters that have no clue about what's happening to our country.
Check out the "One Nation" PACs website which is paying for much of the Republican adversing. They say their goal is to support Trump's agenda.
Donny was more than likely the sort of kid who was ripe for "souring" already by the time he was a toddler. Between them, Trump's cruel, tyrannical father and emotionally unavailable mother created a perfect garden for the seed of sociopathy to grow into the full bloom of ASPD in young Donald. According to his niece, he was an unmanageable handful almost from the cradle.
T L, yours is a good summary. I might add that the missing empathy and affection in the Trump household were replaced by an inordinate love of money. Although the Bible's origins are suspect and it is misused by most people, it does contain some wisdom, not least of which is the maxim which may or may not have been written by Paul to his protege, Timothy: "For the love of money is the root of all evil."
Donald's parents were certainly examples. Fred Trump was raised by a pimp. Mary Anne Macleod was a low-born Scottish immigrant who came to the U.S. in search of a wealthy man. Which reminds me that Melania is the same type of woman as Donald's mother.
In fact, all of Donald's wives married him for money. So we are not surprised that all of Donald's children have no concept of love and devote their lives to grubbing for money. The good news is that the children are not reproducing at the same rate as Donald. Hopefully, this Trump virus will finally die out.
Under communism, you are dominated by the state. Under fascism, you are dominated by the state. at least in practice, both seem tyrannical. Communists thought that they could somehow erase problematic self-interest at the source, even subscribing to a phony theory of genetics, but that's fantasy when not a con. Yes, we are born experiencing self-interest (waaah), but are also capable of caring beyond ourselves. In our better moments we admire and practice that urge to serve. It seems to me that a wise society maximizes opportunities to pursue individual happiness that contributes to, or at least does no significant harm to individual's rights and the common weal; and that to secure these rights, we construct and supervise a government, deriving just powers from the consent of the governed,
It seems to me that the right to exchange goods and services is fundamental, and the right to do so is part of my concept of liberty, but to achieve social justice we agree to do so in equitable ways, and also in ways that support an environment of social cooperation and earned trust. The state cannot micromanage that without the loss of liberty, yet we, as a people and a state, can encourage mutually beneficial behaviors and proscribe predatory or significantly irresponsible acts that negatively impact our society, and that, it seems to be is a cooperative and fundamentally transparent interaction between a private sector and a public state. Robust private enterprise and business competition, but transacted within rules that proscribe significant exploitation. Workers rights, civil rights, consumer protection, anti-monoply, social safety net, etc., all stuff that was widely accepted in my youth, or was gaining acceptance; and yet the world did not stop turning. That's not remotely communism, it's just a just and decent civil society.
Individual freedoms are enhanced in an equitable society. Properly constructed, a nation can embrace expansive social programs and also foster robust private enterprise. It works quite well in some European nations. The people pay high taxes and are the happiest in the world.
The Republican platform of 1956 sounds very much like that of the "progressive left" of today. It pains me that "moderates" in the Democratic Party are taking Trumps "communism" bait.
The letter Tom Suozzi (D-NY) is circulating condemning the victories of progressives in NYC is divisive and supportive of the false sentiment that millions have: "The two parties are the same old stuff. Why vote?"
I would ask Tom some questions:
Do you believe that all Americans deserve good healthcare?
Do you believe that students should be able to enter the workforce without crippling debt?
Do you believe that public schools should be fully funded and provide an education that is not tainted by religion and bigotry?
Do you believe that the Department of Defense receives too much money compared to what we spend on food and medicine for the poor - for children?
Do you believe the very rich should pay more in taxes?
Do you believe that the income cap on Social Security should be eliminated to fully fund the program?
Do you believe that our veterans should receive complete and prompt medical care the day they walk into a VA facility?
Do you believe that Republicans should be held accountable for the current corruption that is enriching the Trumps and the oligarchs that pander to him?
Do you believe that the Supreme Court has become corrupt and that some members should be impeached for taking bribes?
Do you believe that Donald J. Trump's illegal expensive failure of a war is an impeachable offense?
Do you believe that Donald J. Trump should be held responsible for the over 780,000 (and climbing) people who have died due to the destruction of USAID?
Do you believe that the Republican approach to energy is adding to the Climate Crisis and that it is bought by fossil fuel companies?
Tom, if you answered yes to most of those questions, you are a "progressive" Democrat. If not, you are a Republican in a "moderate" Democrat's suit.
There is a powerful movement across America now. It doesn't care what labels we apply. It is just fed up with barely getting by and going without. It is furious that each generation's quality of life and financial welfare is getting worse, not better as we all expected years ago.
The same anger and exasperation that exists in NYC is bubbling up in Missouri. Read Jess Piper for details. She is attracting a rapidly growing following and getting Democrats to run in one of the reddest states in the country. And she is using "progressive" ideas to attract the candidates. They are asking for the roads to be fixed, for the teachers to be paid a living wage, for citizens petitions to be respected by the ALL WHITE MALE state legislature that has reigned supreme. For hospitals to reopen, for women's reproductive rights to be restored. Really "radical" stuff, eh?
The "Progressive Democratic" and "Democratic Socialist" movement is sweeping the country. It ain't communism, Donnie. It's what Ike would have supported.
This November will see the biggest "throw the bums out" moment in modern history. We need to Believe and stick together.
We can sort out the details later. We can ask HOW MUCH MORE to spend on health care, child care, housing and education. Not if.
A nation that provides the basics of life for its citizens frees them to be innovative and productive. Empowers them to start small businesses. Encourages them to pursue their new ideas. But in America today, millions of people stay in jobs that pay poorly and that they hate doing just to maintain health insurance.
The current arrangements are two steps from slavery, one step from indentured servitude and are actually 21st century feudalism. The peasants are revolting.
'This November will see the biggest "throw the bums out" moment in modern history. We need to Believe and stick together' - if we enjoy a free and fair election.
You are exactly right- Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If food, housing, healthcare and other basics are addressed, people can use their brains and energy to innovate to make this country better!
I don’t understand why the Dem “leadership” isn’t working on a shared positive platform. Borrow it from Ike or from Al Gore - there are crises all around us that we can and must collectively address. Climate destruction, absurd levels of untaxed profiteering, open racism and hatred of immigrants, health care that is economically out of reach for many, unregulated tech monopolies forcing us to use their tools, whole communities stripped of access to food and housing, and so on. We have to articulate a different vision of America now or we will fight each other rather than demand change from the greed machine that is now running things.
I think that’s exactly what’s missing. We spend so much time reacting to the latest outrage that we rarely stop to articulate the kind of country we’re actually trying to build together.
Myra, I certainly hope they are working on this. It is pretty clear what the issues are- most based on affordability issues, but also clean air and water.
Yeah, it’s called socialism. There’s a fundamental lack of understanding of the differences between communism and socialism. I agree with your post, JL except for your statement about the fundamental right to the free exchange of goods and services, but only to the extent that I balk at the idea of any “fundamental rights”.
Rights are only those things which we can acquire and maintain. Most of the “inalienable” rights to which people subscribe: life, liberty, peace, order, good government, etc., are reasonable and logical for the healthy functioning of any state. But that they are neither rights nor are they inalienable is demonstrated daily to one degree or another anywhere people gather.
I would define what you describe as Social Capitalism, J L Graham, that requires a well-regulated capitalist system, more in the interest of society, where the citizens have more say in government than the wealthy elite and corporations. Where corporations are not considered people and money is considered speech.
There will always be sociopaths who are driven to use democracy, communism, fascism, or any other type of politics to capture and wield power for themselves and the elite, and take advantage of the majority of people.
I can't believe that now Yale is caving to his pressure. Have they learned nothing from seeing what has happened to others who have caved? There is no end, as you have proven you will succumb to pressure.
Can’t disagree with that, but convincing people that their enemies are the poor, the newer immigrants and the government itself—particularly whoever is in office now—was the strategy of the right wing then, and it still is. Racism is a tool as much as it is an ideology for manipulating the most weak-minded citizens to vote against their own interests. Yes, it’s a tired old cliché, and unfortunately it’s also true.
TV news can help racism by highlighting crimes committed by minorities. This generates fear and allows Republicans to run campaigns that pretend to have answers about how to Make America Great Again.
Where does Trump calling for the death penalty for the Central Park five fit in?They were, by the way, innocent.
“ He [Trump] spent a reported $85,000 (around £138,000 today) on four full-page adverts in New York newspapers titled: "Bring Back The Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police!".
He wrote: "I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
In an interview with CNN at the time, he said: "Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."
Chump, and anybody who supports him is a traitor in my book. They, Including SC vipers, are deliberately destroying America. The politically blind, deaf and dump will never agree because power and money negate the senses
Nah. He’s known for many decades and behaved in ways that have made that clear to those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
“Biblical Foundations: The phrase is deeply rooted in scripture, echoing passages like Deuteronomy 29:4, where a lack of understanding is described as having "eyes to see and ears to hear, but [not seeing] or [hearing]." In Matthew 13:16, Jesus praises his disciples, saying, "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear," indicating an awakened, receptive spirit.“
One contributing factor is the lack of knowledge of American history. Every ethnic group who came in numbers have been feared and resented by those “Americans” already here. And up until this century, many came from Northern Europe. The influx of brown skinned people have triggered the dual biases of people who do not possess the patience to allow assimilation into local culture.
Yeah and MAGA has sucked up that narrative so much that, at least here at the local station, they can't even see the truth. Every time something happens they automatically jump to it being a 'dumocrat' or an immigrant on all the message boards and social media.
And that is what they remember. Two days later when some 'god fearing', white bigot is arrested then obviously it was never a crime to begin with.
Exactly. The pattern only works if people are kept focused on who to fear instead of who benefits. That’s why labels become so powerful—they short-circuit the conversation before anyone examines the policy itself.
The policies of the 1956 Republicans as Heather lays out were preceded by the McCarthy era as outlined by the Miller Center of the University of Virginia:
“In the early 1950’s, American leaders repeatedly told the public that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination. This paranoia about the internal Communist threat—what we call the Red Scare—reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army. During Eisenhower’s first two years in office, McCarthy’s shrieking denunciations and fear-mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled disloyal.
“Any man who has been named by a either a senator or a committee or a congressman as dangerous to the welfare of this nation, his name should be submitted to the various intelligence units, and they should conduct a complete check upon him. It’s not too much to ask.”
“Have you no shame?” were the 4 words that destroyed McCarthy and drove him to drink himself to death. But his poison permeated the body politics of the land and we never fully recovered. You will recall elements of the Dixiecrat party became progressive in the 1960 yet promoted the idea of stopping communism by developing a take over of colonial invasion from the French in Indochina by fraud which led to the twisto politics of Barry Goldwater and extremism. I’m afraid that we are permanently broken. But I will fight the good fight because I cannot remain silent. Silence equals capitulation.
Roy Cohen was right hand to the horrid senator… and later in life was lawyer for Trump and his father. They were being sued by the US government for not renting to people of color. Cohen was loyal mentor and lawyer for Donald. Trump abandoned him when Roy was ill with AIDS .
They were all horrible people who made life difficult for tenants. Woody Guthrie who wrote a verse about old man trump in this land is your land….
"During President Donald Trump’s first term, he bemoaned the failure of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to protect him from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s efforts to elect Trump in 2016.
'Where’s my Roy Cohn?' Trump erupted, referring to his notorious former fixer who had also been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man during the 1950s Senate hearings into communist activity. Trump later fired Sessions."
Mr. Welch's four-word question would fall on deaf ears today. MAGA has no decency and no sense of shame. But we shall continue the fight until it is won or we are gone.
Roy Cohn mentored Trump. However, America had a strong racist, antisemitic, fascist streak long before Roy Cohn. There were some in my extended family, and they did not come from nowhere. They were raised that way, or became so because they thought that by doing so they would curry favor with their business bosses. It worked so long as they did not become too strident, thereby embarrassing their bosses.
These qualities: racism, antisemitism, fascism, are inherently opportunistic. They are not about creating a better society, but by denigrating, and eventually destroying others for one’s personal benefit. Those who make a living honestly respect others who do, and our most recent immigrants shine brightly in this category.
Carl B. -You're so right about racism being a feature of American life from the beginning. Unfortunately most people think racism only affects people with darker skin (i.e. "minorities").
When we study our history we can easily see how racism has affected all of us. The country has been shaped by it and it is still in full effect.
The cadre of white men that have been assembled to govern our nation now clearly exposes the myths of "meritocracy" and "liberty and justice for all".
The Pew Research Center notes that "the last time white voters were about equally split between the two parties was in 2008. After Obama was elected too many white voters who are the largest voting block supported the Rs. Fear and loathing of the "other" is causing us to lose democracy.
We'll see what impact white voters will have in 2026. Let's hope that most of us will see the light!
"racism has affected all of us. The country has been shaped by it and it is still in full effect." That something exists does not mean that it shapes the whole country. Pew polls consistently show antisemitism being more predominant than racism. And ironically, by far the most antisemitic groups are black and hispanic. Those are statisticallly facts.
"These qualities: racism, antisemitism, fascism, are inherently opportunistic."
We don't have fascism, but the party with the most racism and antisemitism is the Democrat party. DEI and quotas are pure race-based discrimination. Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, Crockett, Jayapal, Cortez and the newly chosen DSA crowd are all anti-Semitic. The right has a few but they are outliers like Carlson and Piker and that black lady on YouTube.
Hey Kauffman, if I told you I wish Israel never existed would I be anti-Semitic? If I told you that the Jews of Israel are practicing a very similar tactic that the Nazi government practiced in Germany in the early 20th century on Jews, namely ethnic cleansing, would you call me an antisemite? So an ultra orthodox dressed young person dressed in black asked me yesterday, “Are you Jewish?” My response was, “It’s none of your business.” Was I antisemitic? In truth, I was a bit kinder to him because he was quite young had it been an adult, my response would have been more negative so is that antisemitism?
So many questions Bill! You're on a virtue roll! The answer to most of them is yes, of course. Does France have a right to exist? Saudi? Jordan? Syria? The US?
Gotta admit, he's wrong about that. Many years ago I was in my first of 20+ visits to China. I took a group visit to Foshan and there was a real estate guy in the group. The Chinese interpreter with us asked him, what is real estate? The man answered "I buy a house for 100,000 yuan. I repair it. Then I sell it for $150,000 yuan." The Chinese interpreter then asked "why"?
An as far as he is concerned I think he thinks he IS God, insofar as anyone matters in his experiential universe. The one and only person who really matters.
Literally Joseph Welch said "Have you left no sense of decency?" but same idea. Sociopaths often don't. Roy Cohn was a heavy link between McCarthy and Trump, the latter sort of "Tail Gunner Joe" on steroids. That said, Republicans have been dusting off McCarthyism for a while now. The character of Goldwater shines in comparison to the current felon.
"I’m afraid that we are permanently broken. But I will fight the good fight because I cannot remain silent. Silence equals capitulation." Bill, suggestion: take two aspirin and then take a long walk. You'll feel much better.
Some people vote Republican because they believe the party is still the party of Eisenhower, Teddy — and Yes, Lincoln. Their lives are full and they don’t follow politics because it doesn’t affect them, just other people, those people. /irony
The momentum of the celebrated history of the Republican party clearly lends its current manifestation some rub-off legitimacy, but judging from their recorded sentiments, all three of the figures you mention could be expected to be appalled by today's "Republican Party". Indeed T.R. already felt betrayed by his own party's turn to plutocrats, and tied to start a third party. Ike called millionaires who wanted to slash public services "stupid".
A lot of it, at the "retail level," they want jobs and money. They don't want "good government" or "merit selection." They want s spoils system. In a red state, you have to be a party hack to work. Every job is "Republican." To be a school custodian, a garbage collector, etc, you had to work for the candidate who can provide those jobs.
Every institution, even charities, are arms of the Republican Party.
As #45, Trump tried to eliminate civil service in the hiring process, so he could appoint more hacks.
The CivilService was started about the time that Charles Guiteau, a disgrunteld job seeker, murdered President James Garfield, who wouldn't give him the job.
"Wealth blinds people to reality. Empathy becomes a casualty." Poverty does the same. Ideology does the same (read the comments here). And if some rich person doesn't feel empathy for someone, so? What does that do? If someone I don't know and will never know feels no empathy for me, so what?
Nice try! That is not a quote. If Richardson were your professor she'd hit you with a D: ". "Though widely believed to be her callous response to starving peasants, historians agree she never actually said it; the quote predates her and originated in a book by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau."
Misciting history aside, you do not address my point, which was, so what? So some rich guy (or girl, or "they") doesn't feel empathy, what does that do? Was Edison a sweetheart? Henry Ford was a virulent antisemite. General Patton, speaking of people in the displaced camps who'd been ripped from their homes, saw families murdered, and been beaten and starved, and said "those Jews look like animals."
All those people, and thousands more, were, to use a technical term, slimeballs. But they did things important to us. No empathy. Big deal.
Why wouldn't they be? If they wanted his choices they must have wanted his policies. It's not like what SCOTUS is doing is a surprise. We told them what was going to happen.
What better reason to never talk to a friend again than their feelings about Supreme Court nominees! Me? I hate people who like their steak medium. Chacun a son gôut, as the French say.
What are your problem with Gorsuch, Barrrett, Kavanaugh? They are all brilliant, competent judges, decidedly moreso than Jackson and Sotomayor. Kagan is a very good judge, but was totally inexperienced on courts. I infer you do not like the policy implicaitons of some decisions. But the Supreme Court is not constitutionally empowered to make policy. And on the law, lawyers and judges disagree all the time because it is not always clear. Breyer was an excellent justice but imposed his view that judges can make up things when the constitution is not clear. Some find that autocratic. But he was an excellent justice.
Funny but I feel the opposite. 90+% of voters tend to be ill informed on subjects at issue, surely including 90% of those commenting here in that grouping.I don't fell all wonderful when they vote. But idiots are allowed to vote too. So that's ok, but nothing to feel great about.
Yeah.. I've got mixed feeling about that. I know that in Australia voting is considered a civic duty required by law.
They say that it prevents the extremes that we get in American and Europe is because the race isn't going to be decided by who is 'energized' by the outrage. (AKA turnout) And it doesn't pay to piss off 50% of the voters because you might need them as elections are decided by the center. According to Monash University Political Scientist Waleed Aly "Australia has had some bad governments, but it hasn't had any truly extreme ones and it isn't nearly as vulnerable to demagogues." And he credits that to their compulsory voting system.
Which all sounds good to me.
But the rugged individualist, exceptional Americans are not big on civic duty... and while sometimes I think it might be interesting to try to get more people to vote even if it means requiring it. There is a philosophy that says that NOT voting is itself a choice.
One of Reagan's most celebrated faux-folksy quips was "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.", the very opposite of what Lincoln expressed above. The core of Reagan's con was to alienate millions from a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and to regard it as alien and in the way. Some years back, I recall a regular local TV news feature called "It's Your Money", which highlighted government waste, or superficially construed waste, but never any successful applications of tax money, and that kind of thing seemed common in the media back when I watched TV. I recall Bush, the First, saying on National TV that a government study of greenhouse gas methane emissions from livestock "would be funny if it was not so outrageous" and "the News" offered no explanation of why it was studied, lthough I knew at the time why it mattered.
In dealing with government one commonly encounters demands that we document our claims, yet we give politicians a pass who make all sorts of claims that affect our lives, in the absence of proof, or worse, claims that are provably wrong or dishonest. The government is increasingly permitted to lie to us with impunity, yet we can be punished if we lie to the government. THAT sort of government is NOT what Lincoln was talking about. By selling the notion that government is alien to the public's best interests, Reagan was laying out a self-fulfilling prophecy. Democracy is participatory, by the people, for the people, or it's not democracy.
Elon Musk and his DOGE nazi's paralyzed many agencies including the departments responsible for Social Security, the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, the IRS, Department of Agriculture etc. Elon and his moronic thugs illegally stole over 340 million identities in the SS database. Among the worst crimes committed by their actions was starving tens of thousands of Americans and taking away the health care of millions. When they shut down USIAD millions of people around the world starved. And their brownshirt masked army has killed dozens of American citizens with immunity and impunity while enriching the sadistic and greedy oligarchs with rich contracts for their concentration camps.
It weird how many of the very most privileged passionately like to bully and persecute the least protected. It's really pretty sick. Musk did not create the Tesla company, he took it over. Musk's father reportedly bragged that he made so much money from his emerald mines that he could not close the door to his safe.
Why do so many so people that live paycheck to paycheck assume the wealthy are more intelligent than they are? I have learned so much from hanging around with people that don't have two nickels to rub together, but very little from wealthy people except that they are short on the values we learned to be important when we were kids.
There are all sorts of ways that people gather money, some of which are respectable and some not. Ideally in an egalitarian society opportunities are reasonably even. Not that there won't be unevenness for all sorts of reasons, but at least governmental policy has potential to be even handed, with some fashion of liberty and justice for all, if that's what enough of us really intend.
I think if you were to honestly evaluate every governmental policy, much would be identified that keeps the poor poor and makes the wealthy wealthier for no justifiable purpose. That is actually a form of corruption, Yes, it's possible to gather money by working long and hard, and yes one may prosper by being clever, but there is so much more to the story, So much more, and as you indicate, virtue is by no means essential.
You should not have skipped history class. You apparently are not aware of what brown shirts did and what concentration camps are. And the so-called greedy oligarchs have created entirely new industries and technologies that have created over 45 million jobs and enriched all of us. So what if they are greedy (if they are -- you don't name names or explain who the nameless greedy people are).
Is it those with the most money who create jobs, Trump as one example? Or is it potential customers? Businesses sprang up in the remote and dangerous Yukon around prospectors seeking and occasionally finding gold. Where do workers fit in?
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits." - Lincoln
Sometimes, as in the Gilded Age, those benefits are not so mutual. A cliche of the Reagan era was "A high tide lifts all boats" but statistically after Reagan. the yachts became supersized, while the small crafts have been relatively becalmed, or are taking water. That contrasts with the period of middle class economic growth during post-Gilded-Age reforms.
Many of the wealthiest people inherited their money and don't understand anything about how you should treat your employees. I know, I've worked for several wealthy people.
I spent the Reagan years wondering if it was I who was mentally ill. I kept thinking that he was a complete fraud, being so out of step with even my Democratic ,progressive friends. It is now clear that Reagan’s terms were a great leap forward in the right wing oligarchs march toward the takeover of our government.
As my husband and his friends went from perfectly normal people to Reagan fans. And when I pointed out the people who were being hurt they told me I was being an alarmist 'the lower classes would just have to adjust'...
We all grew up together in a small town. None of their families even made Middle Class let alone Rich. But suddenly 'the poors were ruining this country'. It took both our $4 an hour salaries to pay the rent and they are going on about 'the welfare queens'?
My refusal to accept Yuppiedom made me a liability to his 'career'.
I didn't even care by the time we hit divorce court.
It is weird. I have seen some smart and caring people totally transform. Jekyll/Hyde? Of course it has been observed for centuries that power tends to corrupt, and Lord Acton added that absolute, unaccountable power corrupts absolutely. Money is a form of power. The Bible that all Christians claim to follow says that "the love of money", which I take to mean an exclusionary, morally indifferent obsession with obtaining it, is "the root of all evil" (or some translate "many evils". Of course that only applies to "other" people's lust for money and power, right? Money and power traded for one's soul is the traditional devil's bargain, and how many, many stories, personal, historical, and fictional, illustrate exactly that pattern?
The founders were well aware that political power (which in inherently corruptable societies, can go hand in hand with economic power) was both essential to governance yet an ongoing danger to liberty. Thus they divided the ultimate source of legitimate political power into shares. Equal rights, equal protection, equal justice, and fair and free elections, or at least held this up as the goal. Sometimes lost in the shuffle is that a democratic republic also demands accepting shares of responsibility for how that power is used. The opposite of that is a stratified autocratic or oligarchic society where power is horded by a few. The acid test for "unalienable rights" is whether we, as individuals and as a society, extend and protect them for all. As in, actually, all.
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that shift over the past few decades. Looking back, it’s remarkable how much the political center has moved while many of us were told nothing fundamental had changed.
It was not "government" per se that was the problem (see the Declaration of Independence); it is who it is controlled BY and who it works FOR. If the many it is called a democracy, or a democratic republic. If primarily for the few, it is what?
"The government is increasingly permitted to lie to us with impunity, yet we can be punished if we lie to the government." You're mixing up two concepts. Politicians are not under oath. When we are and when we lie, sure, we are punished. IF we weren't, society breaks down.
I am seeing simpleton MAGA locals pick up on the “communism” theme. When challenging them to actually define it the response is “Do your own homework, Libtard”
They’re angry about a word they can’t define and even if they could, they are blaming a cohort of people identified only because we oppose the White Nationalist MAGA Movement
“Owning the Libs” is the only goal they understand
Exactly. Once people are reacting to labels instead of evaluating ideas and policies on their own merits, critical thinking gets replaced by tribal thinking. That’s where we lose each other.
"Exactly. Once people are reacting to labels instead of evaluating ideas and policies on their own merits, critical thinking gets replaced by tribal thinking. That’s where we lose each other." Read the comments here.
The label did not take away the critical thinking because it was not there to begin with. It is unfortunate how long the Democrats have let the Republicans label them wrongly as socialist and other words that are not correct. It is a shame that the Republican party in its current form as MAGA even exists at all. It is unAmerican. It is an indictment of the people that have come together in the country that they be allowed to act like this. Right now, many "White" people, that is people who have identity in skin color which is not white, but is called "White" are having a resurgence of their ugliness as people.
Welcome to the Church of White Christian Nationalism, where Jesus has been politely removed for being too Middle Eastern, too compassionate, and frankly suspiciously fond of the poor.
The new savior is a spray-tanned real estate salesman who speaks in commandments such as “Thou shalt never admit losing” and “Blessed are the billionaires, for they shall receive another tax cut.” His disciples wave enormous Bibles they apparently purchased with the pages permanently sealed.
The theology is refreshingly simple. Love thy neighbor, unless the neighbor speaks Somali, fled Haiti, needs food assistance, or possesses enough melanin to trigger an emergency podcast from Stephen Miller. Welcome the stranger? That was clearly a mistranslation. The approved version reads, “Deport the stranger, cancel his legal status, and blame him for rent prices set by private equity.”
Naturally, these patriots adore America so deeply that they want to erase birthright citizenship, restrict voting, demonize immigrants, and reserve full membership in the nation for people who resemble the cast of a 1950s detergent commercial. Nothing says constitutional reverence like treating the Fourteenth Amendment as an unfortunate typo.
They insist they are defending Western civilization from its greatest threats: affordable health care, labor rights, honest government, hungry children receiving lunch, and citizens voting without first presenting a family portrait from the Mayflower.
The funniest part is the word “Christian.” Christ preached humility, mercy, generosity, and solidarity with the despised. White Christian nationalism offers vanity, vengeance, hoarding, and a border wall. It is less Sermon on the Mount than tantrum at the country club.
This is not Christianity with a political edge. It is white grievance wearing a plastic cross, shouting “America First” while excluding everyone who refuses its racial and religious hierarchy, then demanding applause for its courage and moral clarity.
Will have to put that brilliant metaphor to memory -- "less Sermon on the Mount than tantrum at the country club." A gift with words, to say the least.
The truly interesting question is why would anybody want to substitute the Sermon on the Mount for a white plastic cross, filled with vengeance, pettiness, hoarding and a border wall. A lot of small-witted dummies out there shriek about closing the border -- totally unaware of how interdependent we all are on the free flow of people, labor, ideas, cultures. Foreign-born workers pick our crops, milk our cows, take care of our elders -- who do they think will do that once they create an atmosphere of complete terror?
Britain has had 6 (shortly 7) Prime Ministers in the last 10 years. One ruled less than 2 years. The current PM won by an enormous majority, capturing over 400 seats. Two years later, he's resigning. Why all this instability? Because Britain left the European Union claiming it wanted to be "independent" and free of foreign influence. And Trump encouraged every bit of it. The result? A loss in GDP of between 6-10%, a permanently shrinking labor market, and Britons themselves self-deporting to other countries in search of better opportunities.
Another of the stupid things that the unthinking sheep who say they want an all white, male dominated society is the result of getting what they want……that that kind of culture and society is BORING!
No pizza? No dim sum? No curry? Just steak and potato until you die of boredom!
And if you ask them what communism means to them, they have no idea. Mind you, I would NEVER consider communism as a way to be governed; but most Americans do not know the difference between social democracy and communism. Some days I wonder if they know what real democracy is; and if they are aware of its glitches and its assets.
Ligia, there's always an irony with the MAGA crowd. It's a documented fact that 85% of MAGA are self-confessed evangelicals.
Here's the irony: Evangelicals revere what they call "The Early Church." This was the first generation of followers of Jesus. When they converted from Judaism to Christianity, they (get ready) sold all their possessions and gave the proceeds to church leaders. The followers lived in kibbutzes. Income the members derived from services rendered or barter was turned over to the church leaders. The church's leaders dispensed food and other provisions to members of the commune according to need. It was the original model of communism.
Exactly. One of the things Orwell understood so well was that controlling language changes how people think. Once words lose their meaning, reality becomes much easier to manipulate.
Let’s not forget that we don’t have universal healthcare because of racism. When other countries were developing their single payer systems, we were still segregated. It was considered “socialism” to let Black people have the same healthcare as everyone else.
The Koch Bros. and others were very successful in getting ordinary Americans to vote against their own best social and economic interests. Nancy MacLean reports this history in her book, "Democracy in Chains." The following was recently published by the New York Times:
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The Democrats need to promote a new New Deal, the form of government that created a huge Middle Class, which was destroyed, beginning with Reagan, by the ultra wealthy, stripping $39 trillion out of the economy. Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor and the person most responsible for our having Social Security said it best: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." It is the people who create wealth. If the U.S. population were only 3.4 million people, there might not be any billionaires. But the U.S. population is 340 million people, so we have 1100 billionaires. We need a redistribution plan in place, similar to what they have in the Scandinavian countries, i.e., Pragmatic Capitalism.
The Brennan Center numbers Richardson cites deserve more time than a paragraph allows. Ninety-two percent of Americans worried about government corruption, cutting evenly across party lines, is not a partisan reading of a partisan problem; it names something most of the public has reached the same conclusion about, regardless of which party captures the benefit in a given cycle. The 79% calling for a constitutional amendment to limit campaign finance contributions are not a faction. Richardson's historical comparison to the 1956 Republican platform is well-sourced, but a public consensus this broad and this cross-partisan ought to appear somewhere in the legislative record, and the more unsettling fact her data points to is that it doesn't.
92% of Americans concerned about corruption in government is why Democratic candidates should focus on corruption in the White House and among Republican members of Congress. Trump has made over $1 billion for himself and his family in the last year. This is outrageous and he should be held accountable. So should any members of Congress who have gotten rich off insider trading. He and his family are all grifters, and he is running this country like a mob boss.
In Hungary, Peter Magyar won over Victor Orban by making Orban’s corruption central to his platform. 80% of Hungarians voted in that election. The US will probably never see numbers like this, but we also need to focus getting out the vote and focusing on corruption is the way to do it.
You are actually understating the corruption in this case. According to the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker (https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/trump-family-corruption-tracker) They are at nearly 2.5 billion so far in the last 18 months. And that's just the NFTs, Memecoins and stuff (mostly pay for access and pardons). The illegal deals like Trump Gaza and Trump Albania are just more icing on the cake.
Absolutely! Kudos to Professor Richardson for the lengthy explanation of the Eisenhower platform. It demonstrates how far to the right both major parties have drifted - including the so-called centrist Democrats. Let's work to get progressives elected in November!
I mostly agree. But I have limits. Examples include Fetterman and Manchin, who are indistinguishable from MAGAts. And Schumer is not much better. Let them continue getting their funding from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and AIPAC. They are why I don't give to the DNC.
To say they are indistinguishable is not quite accurate, at least insofar are their voting records are concerned (we don't currently publish voting records for Manchin, now that he's out of office, but here is Fetterman's):
The Chamber Voting Map and Similar Legislators sections show Fetterman's voting pattern relative to the chamber at large.
The question your comment raises is: to whom does a representative owe their vote? Where their vote defies their own party, but reflect the interests of their constituents, should that be seen an unacceptable departure from party, or the representation their constituents deserve?
John Fetterman and Joe Manchin before him are proof that "no matter who" isn't the best policy. Democrat-affiliated candidates still need to be vetted. If the Democrat is found wanting, look for an Independent. I'd rather have a Bernie Sanders over a John Fetterman any day of the week.
I'll tell you right now.. "Vote Blue No Matter Who" is becoming incredibly toxic in a lot of circles.
The idea that we have to vote for whomever Ken Martin/DCCC/DSCC puts up instead of the candidates we want has soured many, many voters at this point. Especially as our candidates are winning.
"Progressives" have been sweeping where they are located. We are literally voting against your Democrats. So every time I see 'Vote Blue no matter who' I know it's a bid to keep the incumbents in office and continue the system as it is.
Which frankly I do not agree with. I'm not just voting against Trump. I'm voting against the oligarchy. I'm voting against MAGA and 99% of the Democrats who are perfectly happy with going back to another Bidenesque administration as long as it shuts us up.
BLB. you make some pretty sweeping generalizations about Democrats. I don't know where you came up with your numbers but, as an independent who tends to vote Democratic, I strongly disagree with your assessment that "99% of the Democrats who are perfectly happy with going back to another Bidenesque administration as long as it shuts us up." Not sure who you're referring to as "we" and "us" but you seem to overlook the fact that the Democratic socialists who won are registered as Democrats. Your conclusion also ignores that in our current politics, the 'center' has also shifted rightward. As Heather points out, the Republicans once wholeheartedly embraced bedrock principles of democracy but have now definitively rejected them in favor of fascism, white nationalism, cruelty and greed while the majority of Democrats continue to hold firm on those principles.
If I could have my pick of who should lead the Democratic party, it would be Pete Buttigieg as he is the only one I hear talking about moving forward with needed changes rather than trying to return to a previous status quo but doing so firmly immersed in the principles of democracy.
"We" in my case are the non-communist "Progressives". Those who supported Sanders. Mamdani. Platner. Lander. El-Sayed. Valdez... you get the idea.
The Democratic party spent millions that they couldn't afford to try to keep them from winning even though most are now the official Democratic candidate in their district.
I'm a boomer. I didn't need Heather to tell me that things have shifted rightward. I've seen it in every election. I believe the exact same things I believed 50 years ago. 50 years ago I was a moderate centrist. Today I'm an independent socialist with my President calling for my execution. Politics has changed. I haven't.
I was briefly a Democrat during the Bush/Obama years but after Trump I dropped them because the Democrats in charge have made it perfectly clear that they are not interested in actual change beyond campaign slogans.
You don't have to agree with me. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks. I'm just letting you know that 'Vote blue no matter who' is not the fight phrase you think it is. Many of us will be voting IN SPITE OF.. not BECAUSE OF the Democratic party.
Corporations should pay taxes similar to the taxes people pay. Nobody should be paid in common stock. These people should be paid a taxable paycheck and payroll taxes should be paid on the whole amount of the income received. Instead of paying an executive 35 million dollars worth of stock - pay him 35 million dollars and tax it and then the exec can buy stock with what is left.
I like the way AOC Ocasio Cortez described democratic socialism as a system where you can make as much money as you want, but nobody goes poor or hungry. I see her as a unifier and strong candidate for 2028.
I thnk that AOC is great. Every time she and Bernie campaign together, they reinforce my values. But just as the Dems have been unable to tolerate Bernie's views, I fear that the party will undermine a woman of color with the same views. While some of the elections in NY have shown that many people are open to those ideas, I'm skeptical that they will be embraced throughout the nation. Here's hoping that I'm wrong.
Please don't write off the millions of white women (and men) who have been activists for decades. Our strength comes from recognizing our common goals, creating overlapping and interacting diverse communities to pool our diverse talents, and recognizing Bernie's understanding that being united as "us" is what inspires and motivates our actions.
Sadly I agree. I love AOC too - and Bernie. Whoever is the candidate for 2028 needs to be able to win - and much of this country is still so stuck. I also hope I'm wrong. We need Schumer out and someone like AOC in his place.
No not at all Mike. In the coming decade the stats for voters of color will be bigger than those of us with Northern European ancestry. I say bring the change on . And racial categories are just social constructs used to oppressed and create divides. This is the major engine with MAGA people are afraid of losing their former ascendency ..
True, Mary but that sounds like all the more reason we need a woman. But Americans as you say may not be developed enough, emotionally and need to evolve from Australopithecus.
Well yes and two folks with Jewish heritage and a LBGQT plus human being. And oh my what happened to him and the swatting. An awful thing and the CPS didn’t seem to have the grounding of as a retired MSW I would have thought. Intake workers have supervisors but it might turn out to be a hard good in the end.
Here is where I disagree. Yes she would offer a breath of fresh air but likely lose. We need a leader that will bring various elements together. A Midwesterner. Someone like the governor of Illinois or senator from Arkansas.
JB and AOC just because it rhymes and both are very good but vastly different people. I would have a slate of cabinet members with Eli Mystsl has AG. Then Ted Lieu as Housing, Andy Kim as Education, Dr Amy Acton at Heath and Human Services , Maxwell Frost at State because he knows how to survive with different folks, then the rest to qualified women or LBGT plus expert folks I cannot name them all my brain is not deep enough but they have served in the Obama or Biden administration and I would have also so folks who are part of the Lincoln Project. Either Castro brother has th skills to be as one was in the cabinet. Shryn Iffel JD would be great have Eli Mystal ( because he is oh my ! ) work under her second perhaps and Joy Reid for the Communications head. I would have a nun as Vatican Ambassador or Phyllis Zavagno . The should be an all encompassing slate in place and we here can look into folks and put their names in and discuss and dialogue. Nothing is written in stone so flexible and malleable and yes where to put Pete B and Jaime Raskin? Some folks need to stay the course.Senators Ossof and Warnock need to stay in place. Dream Team and see what future thinking can do with creating energy and momentum. This would allow light to come into these dark times to see all the possibilities and bring in some new people and new ideas. This is my very very rough first draft. Fill in the blanks or cross out and refine as needed. .
If it were only one brach of government that had lost its mind...
The Supreme Court ruling against asylum-seekers fleeing from terror represents such a new low for this country it will be remembered long after it gets overturned (I hope), one far below the point many of us thought we could ever go. Alito's idiotic assertion that race played no role in the most race-obsessed White House in a century will go right up there with arguing that down is just another way of legally saying up. When has anybody ever heard Trump or Miller refer to Norwegians as pet-eating "vermin"?
The absurd has turned into our default mode. So much for game theory. Our idiot emperor-sans-clothes now rejects win-win situations in favor of lose-loses, just because it makes him feel safe and strong. Those who know better in Congress echo and rubber-stamp his shabbiness, illegality and unceasing efforts to turn us into a true idiocracy. Who could really have foreseen this day in all its embarrassment?
Those of us who once served our country with pride and honor watch with horror as routine purges take place against those with institutional memory, expertise, professional integrity, knowledge, or brains. They're replaced by idiots and assholes -- the very kinds of low-life that swatted Pete Buttigieg and his family anonymously yesterday, forcing the police to remove his two 4-year-olds from their Papa and Daddy to interview them alone -- scum who think getting paid to brutalize the innocent for sport is fair politics.
Once the institutions of a great nation are turned over to lackeys, whether the highest court in the land, the law enforcement branches of the Executive, or the checks-and-balances of the legislative branch, nothing is left. This is how empires self-destruct, hollowed out by fools from within first, then weakened and made irrelevant by pointless, useless, expensive wars of flailing and failing, both internal and external. Fear fills a once-proud nation; ignominy and injustice roll down like a mighty stream...
I try to remain hopeful that people will truly wake up and salvage what’s left of a great republic while they still can. So much damage has already been done. It will be a race against time, repression, intimidation, inertia and stupidity itself.
Mitch McConnell has probably done more than any politician to corrupt all three branches of government.
For instance.
The legislative by perverting protocols to deny both Obama and Biden Supreme Court appointments.
The judiciary by packing it with undeserved Trump appointees.
The executive by refusing to remove Trump and prevent him from running for office.
Then of course, there are Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. Mike Johnson is in the running - what with shutting down the House rather than consider legislation and swear in legislators he doesn't like.
Yes. And the Pete thing--anger, sadness, incredulity all rolled together to create a pit in the stomach. I'm glad the first account I read was Pete's own words--a relief to know that the first account of something is also the truth.
Yes, same here. As I commented on his Substack account, I recognize him to be one of the turn-the-other-cheek faithful. But the Great Pacifist was also known to flip tables and lash the mountebanks in the temple with a whip. Pete should follow the latter example and pursue the perpetrators with all vigor, seeing that they pay dearly.
Just Watch Nazi Republicans Jump Ship Like Rats In Coming Years
“It was out of my control.” “I had no idea that this was happening.”
“I had no say about what the RNC was doing.” “I’ve always said that there’s no place for big money in politics.”
No excuses. These sorry spineless racist warmongers who care little for the people they represent will try to hide behind worn out excuses but WE the People demand accountability for what they have collectively done to the country WE once proudly supported.
They could have done the only honorable thing possible. Leave the despicable group of racists that they colluded with. People from the Lincoln Project, Steve Schmidt, George Will, Liz Cheney, Jeff Duncan, Colin Powell, Tim Miller and many others have disavowed this lawlessly led Cheeto party and denounced it full heartedly. But there are still scumbags like DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Niki Halley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Pence, Burgham who will still support the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) despite the racist immoral positions that Project 2025 puts them in. These people should not be allowed to run for dog catcher. And I would argue that the electorate that supports Nazi Republicans are complicit in their avowed racism, corruption, and immorality. How disgusting that there are Americans to turn a blind eye to authoritarian rule.
To this latter group of ANO(Americans in Name Only) WE the People have one thing to say to you despots. There will be no excuses for you when karma comes knocking at your door. Game and career in politics is over. There should be no juicy positions in academia, lobbying firms, or the corporate world. They should be shunned and thrown into a political leper colony to rot with their greedy immoral racist worldviews. WE the People know who you are!!
This conflict is far from over. The midterms may be the acid test, but winning that battle does not mean we have won the war, IF WE DO WIN manage to them in spite of the voter suppression that exists even without SAVE.
All is in flux. The fact that we have held them back to the extent that we have is a tremendous thing but underestimating this cabal will be a HUGE error. The main push has not even begun in earnest.
There is some progress on "EPSTEIN. EPSTEIN, EPSTEIN":
A congressional Subpoenas were served on LEON BLACK who allegedly wrote the "NDAs" for Epstein to shut up Victims. Senator Comer Committee served a under-oath fixed deposition date of LEON BLACK now set forJuly 2026
Attorney KATIE PHANG filed a targeted lawsuit for ALL Epstein files to be produced, including the early FBI interviews & reports. The lawsuit was filed in U.S.D.C. in the District of Columbia & names TODD BLANCHE his DOJ as Defendants & violators of the ETA, Epstein Transparency Act.
Katie got some judicial results already: Judge Sullivan found the DOJ has violated the ETA & must produce certain specific Epstein documents. KATIE PHANG also got her focused Preliminary Injunction GRANTED. You, Go Girl. Go Judge.
"All is Flux". Got that right Annabel Ascher You & the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
I am so afraid you are correct. This is utterly hear breaking. The SCOTUS' corruption is totally unacceptable and nauseating. WE, THE PEOPLE NEED TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD , LOUD AND CLEAR, NO MATTER THE MEANS. OUR COUNTRY IS IN VERY DEEP PERIL!! THE WORLD AND HISTORY ARE WATCHING.
Case Docket number then SCOTUS Question presented:
I'm ready or Moday so ... Per Wikipedia & a few BSM edits:
(1) Trump v. Slaughter 25-332. Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled.
(2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law. September 22, 2025 December 8, 2025
West Virginia v. B. P. J. 24-43. Whether Title IX prevents a state from consistently designating girls' and boys' sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth.
(3) Whether the Equal Protection Clause prevents a state from offering separate boys' and girls' sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth. July 3, 2025 January 13, 2026
Little v. Hecox 24-38Whether laws that categorically require sports participants to compete based on their biological sex, rather than gender identity, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
[4] July 3, 2025January 13, 2026
Chatrie v. United States 25-112 Whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.January 16, 2026April 27, 2026
[5] Trump v. Barbara 25-365 the "Birthright" Case ! Who are We?
Whether the Executive Order complies on its face with the Citizenship Clause and with 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that Clause. December 5, 2025 April 1, 2026
[6] Watson v. Republican National Committee 24-1260. That's MARC 6LIAS' Vote count case !
Whether the federal election-day statutes preempt a state [MIss.] law that allows ballots that are cast by federal election day to be received by election officials after that day. November 10, 2025 March 23, 2026
[7] National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission 24-621
Whether the limits on coordinated party expenditures in 52 U.S.C. § 30116 violate the First Amendment, either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with "party coordinated communications" as defined in 11 CFR 109.37. June 30, 2025, December 9, 2025
[8]Trump v. Cook 25A312 Whether the Supreme Court should stay a district court ruling preventing the president from firing a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. October 1, 2025 January 21, 2026
FINAL October Term 2026 case
(9) Anderson v. Intel Corporation Investment Policy Committee25-498 Whether, for claims predicated on fund underperformance, pleading that an ERISA fiduciary failed to use the requisite "care, skill, prudence, or diligence" under the circumstances and thus breached ERISA's duty of prudence when investing plan assets requires alleging a "meaningful benchmark." January 16, 2026
That is a good question. I’ve had conversations with a few female “friends” (I use the term loosely; we are slightly more than acquaintances) where they say time and again (as moderately well-off straight women) that getting their birth and marriage certificates is “no big deal”. They are so anchored in the MAGA talking points that they cannot see beyond the end of their noses.
And their noses are detached from their brains. My wonderful friend was brilliant but had her nose up the Fox arsehole from day one and could rationalize with intellectual arguments. Never held water with me, but she was influential in NASA area South of Houston. I hate to think of what she contributed to the acceptance of W. I had moved by chump time so our conversations have been sparse, but she defended his SC aims one time too many. Still, I wonder.
PS. Got my passport as soon as I heard about the SAVE crap. It is deliberate, evil and too much ignored
Something implicitly grasped by our first President, who simply decided two terms was enough and left office without the psychotic, desperate need to control every last detail of national life until the moment of his death, let alone build gaudy, trashy, gilded memorials to himself, or violate the Emoluments Clause on a daily basis.
The first, most obvious, and most important lesson in looking back at the past 250 years --something completely ignored and trashed by today's Republican Party.
So the Republican Party in Eisenhower's time held the same beliefs as the Democrats. Seems they've kinda lost their way. The abject bowing to Trump's demands shows that the GOP is no longer working in the interests of the citizenry. A dereliction of duty on a grand scale. For which there should be no absolution. Round 'em up and charge them.
Would add even the Republicans of Nixon’s time are all dead as well. The Republican delegation of Congress that went to the White House to inform Nixon that his support had collapsed consisted of Senator Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes. Even Goldwater who was one of the most ardent and loyal defenders of Senator Joseph McCarthy told Nixon when he asked how many votes he had left in the Senate to fight conviction, Goldwater famously replied, "There's not more than 15 senators for you," making it crystal clear to Nixon that even Goldwater would vote to convict him.
I think it was Ali Velshi who has described Ds as fighters or folders. Fighters are beating folders in the D primaries. That gives me hope. The fact that folders like Chuck Schumer are still in positions of D leadership has lead me to focus on supporting Marc Elias's Democracy Docket along with historians like Drs Richardson, Ben-Ghiat and Snyder.
What leverage does Trump have that is so powerful that after a closed door session the Republican lawmakers that had briefly exhibited a backbone immediately backpedaled? They can’t all be in the Epstein files Trump is still refusing release.
Mike Johnson’s actions of continually sending Congress home so no work can be done to me is just a more overt example of what Mitch McConnell did during Obama’s presidency. Mitch just said if Obama was elected the Republican Party was going to vote against anything Obama proposed.
Speaking of Mitch, he’s been hospitalized and not seen for quite some time. So who is doing his work? This is another problem that’s becoming more apparent in both Parties, elected officials that largely due to advanced age , having significant health issues and then being hidden away. It seems along with so many reforms needed, that there should be something in place that requires an elected official to prove their mental and physical fitness to serve.
That's the real mystery, isn't it? The cult is dying. It isn't just senescing, it's exploding into a thousand jagged shards. Yet they stick with it, frozen, unable to budge. It's eerily psychotic -- ALL of them can see what's coming, yet almost none will do anything to prepare for the day.
Senescence has long been a problem in our larger political life. Dianne Feinstein sat there in the Senate every day not knowing when the balloon went up. Strom Thurmond could barely waddle across the floor at age 100. My own Eleanor Holmes-Norton here in DC could barely function until finally some aide gently asked her to resign this year, which she has. Kentucky Fried Voldemort is by now a wheezing old illusion incapable of much of anything.
Personally, I favor a voter being able to prove s/he's not a blithering idiot in the first place that just keeps re-electing animatronic voidoids despite the evidence, but maybe that's just me.
The quotes from the 1956 Republican platform, when the party was led by Dwight Eisenhower, a great statesman and military leader, are extraordinarily telling and almost painful to read.
In his retirement he and Mamie had a small farm near Gettysburg National Park. From the park/battlefield one can see their house. I always thought what a standby that housing choice was and is now.
Last night I wrote to my 2 pathetic (R) senators and invited them to read the 1956 GOP platform … as part of my usual excoriation of their blind adherence to Trumpism.
My own sense of the 1950s was that to go back on the New Deal changes would lead back to the depression. That fear has now gone which is why levels of inequality have returned to the 1920s levels. Ian
I’m currently reading a biography of Eisenhower. Reading about how the Allies fought the fascists…and won. Yet we now have a president and his toadies railing against “antifa.” Weren’t all those soldiers “antifa” as well?!
Republicans are proposing to repeal the 17th Amendment (which institutes the direct election of Senators) and to return appointment of Senators to state legislatures.
Meanwhile 'centrist' Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi has proposed Democrats take a loyalty oath to capitalism which Joe McCarthy would approve of and James Carville is agitating for progressives to leave the Democratic party.
It seems that Vote Blue No Matter Who only applies to progressives holding their nose to vote for neoliberals.
Who even needs the SAVE act, when corporate Democrats will help save the day for Republican ChristoFascism?
“The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality…”
It has been said by some that FDR’s New Deal saved American capitalism, even though many of Roosevelt’s well-heeled contemporaries called him a class traitor at the time. In the end, he saved their bacon.
It was personally interesting to me for Dr. Richardson to refer to the 1956 platform, because that was the year I began to become politically aware, largely due to the election and the crises in Hungary and the Suez Canal intervention. All very interesting to a nine-year-old boy who had just returned from his first visit to see his European relatives. Not once in his life did that boy ever think that his country would sink to the level of today's political culture, let alone international standing.
"As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, the global data we collect and analyze shows that the country is failing to “promote the general Welfare,” as the Constitution’s framers promised a little more than a decade later.
We are scholars of human rights. Alongside the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks how well more than 200 countries and territories are meeting the human rights commitments their governments have made, we annually update scores measuring whether people can actually get the basics of a decent life, such as healthcare, adequate food and a quality education.
The latest data our team has amassed shows that the U.S. is falling short compared with what it could achieve, given its US$32 trillion economy. This is not a one-year blip – the U.S. has been underperforming for the past 25 years."
Look, I agree with all of this, but.... Have you read some of the things Chevalier had said? Defund the police, close all prisons, no borders? She's rooting against the US in the World Cup (rooting for Senegal), and has acknowledged using an American flag to wipe her hands. This is crazy stuff. She's not a communist, just a crazy person. Now we all have to defend allowing her to be seated in the Democratic caucus.
Watching Fox News much? The quote about the flag was made 10 years ago, and was not meant to be disrespectful. I’ll leave it to you to consume the news more critically.
If the Brennan poll is to be believed the vast majority want to see the end of GOP rule. How does this reconcile with the 30 to 40% that still support maga?
The biggest trick wasn’t convincing Americans to hate healthcare or affordable housing.
It was convincing them that anything helping ordinary people is “communism.”
Labels became propaganda. Critical thinking became the casualty.
Criminal Donald has to throw idiot labels at Dems ("communism") for a reason, Kelli.
As Heather says in hers here today, "Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump."
He's doing that because, as Heather also recounts here today, Republicans have almost zero interest in the practical needs of people abroad the land. They still just keep caving to their wannabe dictator, the criminal defacing everything he touches from the White House.
Of course he wants to take over or just seriously extort universities, elite law, major legacy media, and the monopolies or near monopolies of his social media billionaire allies, too. He can't help himself. Never got any schooling in the actual lives of actual, ordinary people.
He's soured. Inside he's probably as wizened, pickle green as the fetid swamp he's made of our formerly proud, decent, reflecting pool.
Exactly. The label is the point. If people are reacting to a word, they never have to evaluate the policy itself.
Friday at noon in Hartford, CT, a Black man stood on Main Street in front of the Old State House and removed his cloths and stood naked facing traffic. His arms were outstretched. Yes one could suggest that he was having a mental breakdown. I suggest that is symptomatic of our discombobulated times. The police and fire personal placed a gown on him and continued to talk rather than subdue him but eventually he agreed to enter an ambulance only to push himself out at which point police had to handcuff him to the gurney and take him to an institution. I was performing on the other side of the fence line.
The incident reminded me of the social and economic chaos permeating the land; an almost Fellini dystopian thunder of human behavioral response to the madness of Americana.
I don't think people quite realize yet how much trump has damaged not just "America" - but the mental health of MANY people, including many in other countries.
TDS really IS a "thing" - just, not the thing Donald thinks it is. I get anxiety at the prospect of reading the news - and depression when I DO read it.
Husband of Ruth writing:
Lady E., it’s the people who aren’t distressed at the news who are the ones we need to worry about, and they seem to comprise roughly a third of the US population (in America at least).
Mr. Ruth, they do seem to reflect a solid 33-34% of the population. My thought (musing only, no research involved) that the percentage is derived in great part by those who represent the “Lost Cause” of the old antebellum south. Fed by religion that has its roots in racism and sexism grooming people to obey what the white man at the front of the church says.
Sorry Husband of Ruth, but no. Those people have always existed and always will. One third of anything does not control anything. What we need to worry about is the media that gives the idiots a voice while suppressing the majority.
As do I.
And me, too. This whole Nazi thing they've dredged up is mental illness. Erich Fromm saw it in the South in the 60s.
So do I.
Some suffer terribly. According to poll optimism regarding the future is way down. Why? Who needs this $#@%? We don't have to go there, or at least not so deep. We are not just consumers. Not just spectators. We are officially citizen/managers of our own collective fate.
The idea that Republicans are moving to the right (becoming more conservative) is a convenient falsehood. The idea that they are moving down (becoming less moral) is the inconvenient truth. When everyone is attached to convenient falsehoods, authoritarianism wins. To defeat authoritarianism, we the people must start facing the inconvenient truth.
For the record, the truth is only inconvenient in the short term. Regardless, please, everyone, stop saying they are moving to the right!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mr. Carey, I would argue that moving to the extreme right is moving downward…into the gutter of greed and bigotry.
Well, if the only place "right" of where they used to be is fascism, I'd say moving to the right is exactly what they've done.
People confuse it with conservatism and think it's harmless.
It most definitely is not.
There are no innocent bystanders in this democracy.
I think you've hit on a sentence the Ds should adopt. "The Rs aren't moving right. They are moving down!"
It’s hard to be depressed when you’re angry. Anger about what these traitors are doing, when properly channeled, is a virtue. It can fuel protests, calling representatives and senators, boycotting companies that support Trump, etc. Properly channeled anger about all this is a virtue. Depression is acquiescence. Let’s choose the former.
I wish early on it had been correctly defined as "Trump DEVOTION Syndrome."
There are days that I can't tolerate the firehose. I have a friend who sends multiple articles to me, and I don't want to tell her to stop, and yet, I often just delete them. I've gone through periods when I don't stop reading the news, but I greatly reduce it and don't look at the comment section, even here. (When fights break out here it really disturbs me! Other than the occasional trolls, we're on the same side!!)
Same with calling Congress--some days I can fire off a dozen phone calls, and some days I get tightness in my chest as I leave a message, so I need to back off for a bit. I am so encouraged by Megan's daily posting of the spreadsheet, and with each new person who joins the forum. I know when I'm supersaturated, someone else will pick up my slack for a while.
THANK YOU, Lady E, and also each and every person who pays for a subscription and takes time to add a comment. It shows the power to us who feel we are flailing.
Yes. Everyone is affected on some level and I have to take a vaca from media more and more these days. When I do come back to it nothing has changed.
'You can leave here for four days in space
but when you return it's the same old place.'
Translated from temple walls of Angkor Wat :-)
Lady E, there is no question that this country is suffering great mental anguish. The only point I'd argue is that Trump is the tool being utilized by our home-grown oligarchs, who saw an ignorant, narcissistic, racist, but wealthy and recognizable figure who, with the proper flattery and incentive to do their bidding, would enable them to create what is becoming their ideal country. In return, he has become the "billionaire" that he always claimed to be, and he is now the figurehead leader of the most powerful country in the world. All of what he is demanding has been engineered by others - including the mostly anonymous Project 25 "advisors." Trump is their useful idiot.
Lady, no one I know is happy and often make efforts to enjoy life vis a vis shared meals, photos of nature, etc. Our garden helper is moving to Portugal although I did tell her she is not going to escape climate change. We were in Portugal during the first regime and our young taxi driver noted death star's ruining the rest of the world as well.
Bandy Lee is trying to help. And Mary Trump wrote a book about it.
Now we in Canada have to worry that he won’t renew the free trade agreement we’ve had for decades. He’s starting in on 51st state talk again!
Circa 2012, I was on a flight to Hartford. The "one-time" friend sitting next to me had worked for the State of Connecticut in the 1950's through the early 1980's. She worked at a CT state mental facility which she said saw budget cut after budget cut, until they no longer took in patents.
Of course, her story is not unique to CT. My daughter worked 3 blocks from a homeless shelter in Jax Beach, FL. Almost every night multiple homeless people would come into the store to get warm. She would usually allow them to stay for several minutes before she had them leave the store. Most of them were mentally ill and would leave the store without incident. But once in a while she called the Jax Beach police who almost always immediately responded and would take the people back to the shelter or on very rare occasion arrest them.
That's how most state's deal with mental illness for the masses.
PS. As an aside, the Jax Beach Police Department (not to be confused with the JSO which covers most of Duval County) is a well run compassionate and efficient police department. Kudos to the entire staff.
Peter Early’s book, *Crazy*, chronicles the terrible state of mental health services in the southern US. I worked in FL for the past 15 years. He’s not wrong. It is a very broken system, and the southeastern states routinely rank in the absolute bottom of the 50 states for provision of mental health services. It’s a symptom of the disease of GOPism; elimination of any and all services for anyone not fitting their white-male-ChristoNazi template.
To be fair, this move to release mental health patients was universal but probably more advocated by Raegan’s push to downsize government in the belief that new psychotropic meds were able to normalize behavior if and only if the meds were taken. But they were not so many of these former patients found themselves deter committing more serious crimes, found themselves with lengthy prison sentences. This is our America.
I read that book
It was very compelling
Not easy to digest, but very brave
Let's face it- they routinely rank in the bottom of many issues that support health and productivity of citizens, including healthcare in general, maternal health, education.... I could go on!
As a young girl I watched local mental institutions close and homelessness rise. As a child I remember worrying about where all these people would live.
The US underwent deinstitutionalization primarily between the 1950s and 1980s. This movement shifted patients from long-term psychiatric asylums to community-based care. The institutionalized population dropped by over 90% during this period.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10302760/&ved=2ahUKEwjglYutuKeVAxUrvokEHQCHJr4Q0YISeggIAggACBYQAg&opi=89978449&cd&psig=AOvVaw1WFezYQ_g87oLUajYV-Q36&ust=1782650393734000
A terrible tragedy,,,. As a college student I worked at a summer camp in 1960 at the muscatatuck state hospital in Indiana and that week was exhilarating for many of them. I think many of the patients had not been outside for years. It appeared to me They were housed in deplorable condition without little therapy I could see. A few years after some friends and I painted one of the wards. As I recall when the hospital closed these patients, who I remind you were real people, were not prepared for the outside world and the outside world was not prepared for them. The communities did not step up. They were not safe or treated humanely with help and support before or after.
A friend who I invited to enjoy my performance at the Old State House was once a youth comrade of the streets in the 1960’s and the better option of being arrested was to be sent to a mental health facility for 30 days. My friend related one of our street people was arrested for drugs and was spending time at the local jail. The kid contrived a way to get send to the 30 day o.an at either of two mental health facilities. His apparent plan was to place a cord around his neck in his cell and his toes were to touch the ground so that jail personal would come in and take him to Norwich state hospital. Unfortunately for the kid, he was short and when he allegedly pushed off from the cot his feet would touch the floor and he hung himself. He might still be alive today had he measured correctly.
That’s very sad 😢
GJ Loft ME CA FL NE CT MI,
My husband and I enjoyed serving a gigantic breakfast with many others from our church, to tables full of homeless guys in Charlotte, NC.
They were all appreciative and we were glad to help.
We humans have all sorts of problems, struggles, etc. We can't always "fix" the broken places in our lives.
The shelter provides several areas of assistance for those who wanted it but many preferred to live their lives on the street.
God's love and grace are big. We should work at just helping in ways we are able and leave the rest to God.
In case you haven’t noticed your “God” isn’t answering.
Bill Katz,
Your "story" was heartrending....a desperate call for help by a fellow human.
How many others are hurting, feeling hopeless and alone?
Agree with you, Bill, this administration is so consumed with itself and the accumulation of personal wealth, that it has lost sight of humanity ie the needs of families and the most vulnerable within our population.
When we have "turned our backs on the least of these" we have turned our backs on America.
Fellini's work is such a good comparison
True. Every stop sign where I live has a naked man standing there. It's everywhere!
PS -- one learns early that extrapolation of one anecdote to 340,000,000 people is sort of faulty logic. You shouldn't have skipped statistics class.
Probably and statistics was my very first college course that summer to allow me to graduate high school.
It's the same with all his lawsuits -- hit first and hard and you'll damage your target no matter what happens down the road. The cost and reputational damage alone is a good part of the point.
‘If people are reacting to a word, they never have to evaluate the policy itself.’
That is the best description of uninvolved voters I’ve ever heard.
Exactly Kelli and we all know how MAGA reacts to words and not facts.
"Facts," klutt, come mediated by words in novels, memoirs, essays, histories.
Or arrive mediated by images in movies, photographs, murals, online videos.
Imagine if our schools focused more, more, more on our skills to cite, quote, mention, refer to any and all arts human-centered and nature-centered.
But this would oblige schools to honor the literacy of asking questions, when this is foreclosed to students and teachers, who must submit only to testing, where all understand only the billionaire testers and their rationally neutered, anonymous minions put the questions, and they each have only one answer (no literacy for overlap, context considerations, complications, or any mixed nuance).
This is really true.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste. This truth is something that Dems should blast every republican with non stop. Are they going to lose by default? The ads write themselves but the blather continues. Except for Mamdani ..
Yes, by default. Correct.
Hello Phil... Abraham Lincoln was the Greatest 19th-Century GOP President.... Eisenhower, TDR, were the Greatest 20th-Century GOP Presidents... So Far, DJT is the All-Time Worst of Any Party...
When I look at my fellow Americans I realize that most of them either didn’t vote or voted for the wrong person. The great majority is so ignorant of voting responsibility.
I strongly believe that the responsibility of voting, not just to sound off, but to seek best outcomes for ALL of humanity, is not explained nor encouraged by us the people, nearly enough.
Australia has mandatory voting; I think that’s a system worthy of further consideration for US.
Required voting only works( and clearly would need massive compliance in this country) when the voters are educated about the issues. I do not know how it is possible to educate many Americans, because they either think they know it all already thanks to right wing media, or it is not possible to get their attention for more than 15 seconds at a time.
Civic education must be done in our schools, started early and consistently enlarged upon throughout the 12 years.
I wouldn't want anyone who did not know the facts or learn about the important issues to be forced to vote. Isn't that how we got into this mess? People were hoodwinked into voting for people who never were interested in helping their fellow human beings.
Husband of Ruth writing:
It’ll never happen. It’ll be seen as an infringement on some arsehole’s liberties.
I think that is a great idea, but no one is pushing for it. I would hope that if people were compelled to vote they would educate themselves.
😰 as a polling clerk in my small rural town...all I can say is: you are not wrong.
My state went all mail-in, but back when there were polling places, I looked forward to thanking always friendly poll workers for their service, and brought my daughter so she could see how it works.
I volunteered as a poll observer a few years ago and was very impressed. That was an education in itself. The election workers were amazingly patient and courteous, and the system worked.
You can’t know how much that means to us—people thanking us for doing what we do as they leave the polling place. In my place we help voters who run into problems solve the problem—I want them to leave with a good experience of voting.
I was also a poll worker and people were surprised that I volunteered to be one. Most were “drafted” by the courts to pay off traffic fines and other costs. I enjoyed meeting the people and as an “independent” I could serve in any of the 3 staffing positions as needed. Made life easier for the supervisor. Now I live in a vote-by-mail state so no longer needed to work the polls.
A national shame with unintended consequences. The intended consequences are bad enough, but really democrats. Political anemia is worse than losing a hard fought battle.
Before GWB, I thought I'd never see a president that made Nixon look better. Then I thought GWB had hit bottom. Now there is Trump and the whole damned "Party of Lincoln" is now corrupt as hell. We can't afford to go lower and we can't afford to stay here. It's frickin' pandemonium.
As Heather said in her politics chat yesterday, (I’m paraphrasing) the GOP is now the fascist party of America.
That was a great video.
So get to work and help clean up the mess! I’d rather be reading novels, but instead, at 92, am writing GOTV postcards, never fewer than 10 a day, charter member of Indivisible.
Hello G L ... Unless the Government-For-People-By-The-People gets Reinvigorated, We Will Watch This Republic Fall...
Puts one’s brain on the spin cycle, doesn’t it. We need more of an amygdala response. Fight like our ability to live spoiled, entitled lives depends on it.
Apache, what amazes me is that 27% of the voters across the US claim to be Republicans and 27% Democrats. But, there really is no longer a Republican Party as Heather points out. It's the party of oligarchs who can buy elections with their slick ads that contain mis- and dis- information, but millions of voters believe their BS. Of course, many (most) of the 46% are low to no information voters that have no clue about what's happening to our country.
Check out the "One Nation" PACs website which is paying for much of the Republican adversing. They say their goal is to support Trump's agenda.
Hate, jealousy, and envy are so emblematic of Jesus.
And greed. Jesus so loved greed.
Right up there next to Nixon. We could use a JFK or Obama in the next election. Here’s hoping we find one.
Donny was more than likely the sort of kid who was ripe for "souring" already by the time he was a toddler. Between them, Trump's cruel, tyrannical father and emotionally unavailable mother created a perfect garden for the seed of sociopathy to grow into the full bloom of ASPD in young Donald. According to his niece, he was an unmanageable handful almost from the cradle.
Maybe it's the other way around...emotionally unavailable mother & tyrannical father as a result of baby Trump being a POS from day one!
T L, yours is a good summary. I might add that the missing empathy and affection in the Trump household were replaced by an inordinate love of money. Although the Bible's origins are suspect and it is misused by most people, it does contain some wisdom, not least of which is the maxim which may or may not have been written by Paul to his protege, Timothy: "For the love of money is the root of all evil."
Donald's parents were certainly examples. Fred Trump was raised by a pimp. Mary Anne Macleod was a low-born Scottish immigrant who came to the U.S. in search of a wealthy man. Which reminds me that Melania is the same type of woman as Donald's mother.
In fact, all of Donald's wives married him for money. So we are not surprised that all of Donald's children have no concept of love and devote their lives to grubbing for money. The good news is that the children are not reproducing at the same rate as Donald. Hopefully, this Trump virus will finally die out.
Under communism, you are dominated by the state. Under fascism, you are dominated by the state. at least in practice, both seem tyrannical. Communists thought that they could somehow erase problematic self-interest at the source, even subscribing to a phony theory of genetics, but that's fantasy when not a con. Yes, we are born experiencing self-interest (waaah), but are also capable of caring beyond ourselves. In our better moments we admire and practice that urge to serve. It seems to me that a wise society maximizes opportunities to pursue individual happiness that contributes to, or at least does no significant harm to individual's rights and the common weal; and that to secure these rights, we construct and supervise a government, deriving just powers from the consent of the governed,
It seems to me that the right to exchange goods and services is fundamental, and the right to do so is part of my concept of liberty, but to achieve social justice we agree to do so in equitable ways, and also in ways that support an environment of social cooperation and earned trust. The state cannot micromanage that without the loss of liberty, yet we, as a people and a state, can encourage mutually beneficial behaviors and proscribe predatory or significantly irresponsible acts that negatively impact our society, and that, it seems to be is a cooperative and fundamentally transparent interaction between a private sector and a public state. Robust private enterprise and business competition, but transacted within rules that proscribe significant exploitation. Workers rights, civil rights, consumer protection, anti-monoply, social safety net, etc., all stuff that was widely accepted in my youth, or was gaining acceptance; and yet the world did not stop turning. That's not remotely communism, it's just a just and decent civil society.
Very well said, J L.
Individual freedoms are enhanced in an equitable society. Properly constructed, a nation can embrace expansive social programs and also foster robust private enterprise. It works quite well in some European nations. The people pay high taxes and are the happiest in the world.
The Republican platform of 1956 sounds very much like that of the "progressive left" of today. It pains me that "moderates" in the Democratic Party are taking Trumps "communism" bait.
The letter Tom Suozzi (D-NY) is circulating condemning the victories of progressives in NYC is divisive and supportive of the false sentiment that millions have: "The two parties are the same old stuff. Why vote?"
I would ask Tom some questions:
Do you believe that all Americans deserve good healthcare?
Do you believe that students should be able to enter the workforce without crippling debt?
Do you believe that public schools should be fully funded and provide an education that is not tainted by religion and bigotry?
Do you believe that the Department of Defense receives too much money compared to what we spend on food and medicine for the poor - for children?
Do you believe the very rich should pay more in taxes?
Do you believe that the income cap on Social Security should be eliminated to fully fund the program?
Do you believe that our veterans should receive complete and prompt medical care the day they walk into a VA facility?
Do you believe that Republicans should be held accountable for the current corruption that is enriching the Trumps and the oligarchs that pander to him?
Do you believe that the Supreme Court has become corrupt and that some members should be impeached for taking bribes?
Do you believe that Donald J. Trump's illegal expensive failure of a war is an impeachable offense?
Do you believe that Donald J. Trump should be held responsible for the over 780,000 (and climbing) people who have died due to the destruction of USAID?
Do you believe that the Republican approach to energy is adding to the Climate Crisis and that it is bought by fossil fuel companies?
Tom, if you answered yes to most of those questions, you are a "progressive" Democrat. If not, you are a Republican in a "moderate" Democrat's suit.
There is a powerful movement across America now. It doesn't care what labels we apply. It is just fed up with barely getting by and going without. It is furious that each generation's quality of life and financial welfare is getting worse, not better as we all expected years ago.
The same anger and exasperation that exists in NYC is bubbling up in Missouri. Read Jess Piper for details. She is attracting a rapidly growing following and getting Democrats to run in one of the reddest states in the country. And she is using "progressive" ideas to attract the candidates. They are asking for the roads to be fixed, for the teachers to be paid a living wage, for citizens petitions to be respected by the ALL WHITE MALE state legislature that has reigned supreme. For hospitals to reopen, for women's reproductive rights to be restored. Really "radical" stuff, eh?
The "Progressive Democratic" and "Democratic Socialist" movement is sweeping the country. It ain't communism, Donnie. It's what Ike would have supported.
This November will see the biggest "throw the bums out" moment in modern history. We need to Believe and stick together.
We can sort out the details later. We can ask HOW MUCH MORE to spend on health care, child care, housing and education. Not if.
A nation that provides the basics of life for its citizens frees them to be innovative and productive. Empowers them to start small businesses. Encourages them to pursue their new ideas. But in America today, millions of people stay in jobs that pay poorly and that they hate doing just to maintain health insurance.
The current arrangements are two steps from slavery, one step from indentured servitude and are actually 21st century feudalism. The peasants are revolting.
'This November will see the biggest "throw the bums out" moment in modern history. We need to Believe and stick together' - if we enjoy a free and fair election.
Well written, Bill. How much of that funding has gone to support the military industrial complex? Lucian Truscott blew my socks off today. https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/the-military-problem-of-needing-a?r=6ptqj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
You are exactly right- Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If food, housing, healthcare and other basics are addressed, people can use their brains and energy to innovate to make this country better!
Oh my!!! I wish I could share this!!!
I don’t understand why the Dem “leadership” isn’t working on a shared positive platform. Borrow it from Ike or from Al Gore - there are crises all around us that we can and must collectively address. Climate destruction, absurd levels of untaxed profiteering, open racism and hatred of immigrants, health care that is economically out of reach for many, unregulated tech monopolies forcing us to use their tools, whole communities stripped of access to food and housing, and so on. We have to articulate a different vision of America now or we will fight each other rather than demand change from the greed machine that is now running things.
I think that’s exactly what’s missing. We spend so much time reacting to the latest outrage that we rarely stop to articulate the kind of country we’re actually trying to build together.
Myra, I certainly hope they are working on this. It is pretty clear what the issues are- most based on affordability issues, but also clean air and water.
Contact your local Indivisible organization. The phone banks for the election are starting soon. All hands on deck.
Husband of Ruth writing:
Yeah, it’s called socialism. There’s a fundamental lack of understanding of the differences between communism and socialism. I agree with your post, JL except for your statement about the fundamental right to the free exchange of goods and services, but only to the extent that I balk at the idea of any “fundamental rights”.
Rights are only those things which we can acquire and maintain. Most of the “inalienable” rights to which people subscribe: life, liberty, peace, order, good government, etc., are reasonable and logical for the healthy functioning of any state. But that they are neither rights nor are they inalienable is demonstrated daily to one degree or another anywhere people gather.
Republicans think a social safety net = I have to spend my tax money on people who are too lazy to work.
I would define what you describe as Social Capitalism, J L Graham, that requires a well-regulated capitalist system, more in the interest of society, where the citizens have more say in government than the wealthy elite and corporations. Where corporations are not considered people and money is considered speech.
There will always be sociopaths who are driven to use democracy, communism, fascism, or any other type of politics to capture and wield power for themselves and the elite, and take advantage of the majority of people.
It's the Fascist party and we need to refer to it as that.
Yes. At least re-brand MAGA as the fascist arm of the GOP.
I can't believe that now Yale is caving to his pressure. Have they learned nothing from seeing what has happened to others who have caved? There is no end, as you have proven you will succumb to pressure.
No one has mentioned DT’s relationship to Putin (?Communist?) in all of this. When will the phone calls be monitored?
And still these weirdos applaud and follow. Pathetic.
He and those who empower him are either evil or ignorant or both.Thank you for your wise input
If only was trump and not the whole right-wing establishment!
Phil, nicely put. I did notice that one of the local MAGAs has started to spout the word communism.
Can’t disagree with that, but convincing people that their enemies are the poor, the newer immigrants and the government itself—particularly whoever is in office now—was the strategy of the right wing then, and it still is. Racism is a tool as much as it is an ideology for manipulating the most weak-minded citizens to vote against their own interests. Yes, it’s a tired old cliché, and unfortunately it’s also true.
Fully agree. Oligarchs need to create an enemy for power…those are trans and people of color
Or, Janell, gypsies in parts of southeastern Europe.
Arabic-speaking, Muslim Uighurs in western China.
Native Hungarians in Rumanian Transylvania.
Native Palestinians in far-right settler West Bank.
Minority Tutsi in Hutu majority Rwanda.
Rohingya in Myanmar.
Jews in central and eastern European nations with nationalist governments.
Koreans (still?) in Japan.
And pathetically so in all lands where schools lack humanities and essay writing due to the rule of group- and category-oriented standardized testing.
In other words, just pick your favorite “ Other” to bash or scapegoat.
TV news can help racism by highlighting crimes committed by minorities. This generates fear and allows Republicans to run campaigns that pretend to have answers about how to Make America Great Again.
Chump just found his comfort zone, ignorance, greed, ideologues, snd fools. Perfect cult mix
Where does Trump calling for the death penalty for the Central Park five fit in?They were, by the way, innocent.
“ He [Trump] spent a reported $85,000 (around £138,000 today) on four full-page adverts in New York newspapers titled: "Bring Back The Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police!".
He wrote: "I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
In an interview with CNN at the time, he said: "Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48609693
Chump, and anybody who supports him is a traitor in my book. They, Including SC vipers, are deliberately destroying America. The politically blind, deaf and dump will never agree because power and money negate the senses
Never regretted a word, did he. Nor did any Nazi
Nah. He’s known for many decades and behaved in ways that have made that clear to those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
“Biblical Foundations: The phrase is deeply rooted in scripture, echoing passages like Deuteronomy 29:4, where a lack of understanding is described as having "eyes to see and ears to hear, but [not seeing] or [hearing]." In Matthew 13:16, Jesus praises his disciples, saying, "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear," indicating an awakened, receptive spirit.“
He’d found his comfort zone in the crib
One contributing factor is the lack of knowledge of American history. Every ethnic group who came in numbers have been feared and resented by those “Americans” already here. And up until this century, many came from Northern Europe. The influx of brown skinned people have triggered the dual biases of people who do not possess the patience to allow assimilation into local culture.
Fox regularly highlights any crime committed by an illegal alien, stretching it into a multi-day story. Similar crimes by white men, not so much.
Yeah and MAGA has sucked up that narrative so much that, at least here at the local station, they can't even see the truth. Every time something happens they automatically jump to it being a 'dumocrat' or an immigrant on all the message boards and social media.
And that is what they remember. Two days later when some 'god fearing', white bigot is arrested then obviously it was never a crime to begin with.
MAGA knows their role in the game.
Exactly. The pattern only works if people are kept focused on who to fear instead of who benefits. That’s why labels become so powerful—they short-circuit the conversation before anyone examines the policy itself.
The policies of the 1956 Republicans as Heather lays out were preceded by the McCarthy era as outlined by the Miller Center of the University of Virginia:
“In the early 1950’s, American leaders repeatedly told the public that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination. This paranoia about the internal Communist threat—what we call the Red Scare—reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army. During Eisenhower’s first two years in office, McCarthy’s shrieking denunciations and fear-mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled disloyal.
“Any man who has been named by a either a senator or a committee or a congressman as dangerous to the welfare of this nation, his name should be submitted to the various intelligence units, and they should conduct a complete check upon him. It’s not too much to ask.”
Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1953
Sound familiar?
“Have you no shame?” were the 4 words that destroyed McCarthy and drove him to drink himself to death. But his poison permeated the body politics of the land and we never fully recovered. You will recall elements of the Dixiecrat party became progressive in the 1960 yet promoted the idea of stopping communism by developing a take over of colonial invasion from the French in Indochina by fraud which led to the twisto politics of Barry Goldwater and extremism. I’m afraid that we are permanently broken. But I will fight the good fight because I cannot remain silent. Silence equals capitulation.
Roy Cohen was right hand to the horrid senator… and later in life was lawyer for Trump and his father. They were being sued by the US government for not renting to people of color. Cohen was loyal mentor and lawyer for Donald. Trump abandoned him when Roy was ill with AIDS .
They were all horrible people who made life difficult for tenants. Woody Guthrie who wrote a verse about old man trump in this land is your land….
Roy Cohn
I understand Trump has called Roy Cohn his mentor: deny, deny, deny, attack, attack, attack (repeat as needed, or at least desired.)
"During President Donald Trump’s first term, he bemoaned the failure of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to protect him from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s efforts to elect Trump in 2016.
'Where’s my Roy Cohn?' Trump erupted, referring to his notorious former fixer who had also been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man during the 1950s Senate hearings into communist activity. Trump later fired Sessions."
https://www.alternet.org/todd-blanche-went-from-democrat-to-trump-s-latest-roy-cohn-prosecuting-with-revenge-in-mind/
Mr. Welch's four-word question would fall on deaf ears today. MAGA has no decency and no sense of shame. But we shall continue the fight until it is won or we are gone.
#sad.
Roy Cohn mentored Trump. However, America had a strong racist, antisemitic, fascist streak long before Roy Cohn. There were some in my extended family, and they did not come from nowhere. They were raised that way, or became so because they thought that by doing so they would curry favor with their business bosses. It worked so long as they did not become too strident, thereby embarrassing their bosses.
These qualities: racism, antisemitism, fascism, are inherently opportunistic. They are not about creating a better society, but by denigrating, and eventually destroying others for one’s personal benefit. Those who make a living honestly respect others who do, and our most recent immigrants shine brightly in this category.
Carl B. -You're so right about racism being a feature of American life from the beginning. Unfortunately most people think racism only affects people with darker skin (i.e. "minorities").
When we study our history we can easily see how racism has affected all of us. The country has been shaped by it and it is still in full effect.
The cadre of white men that have been assembled to govern our nation now clearly exposes the myths of "meritocracy" and "liberty and justice for all".
The Pew Research Center notes that "the last time white voters were about equally split between the two parties was in 2008. After Obama was elected too many white voters who are the largest voting block supported the Rs. Fear and loathing of the "other" is causing us to lose democracy.
We'll see what impact white voters will have in 2026. Let's hope that most of us will see the light!
"racism has affected all of us. The country has been shaped by it and it is still in full effect." That something exists does not mean that it shapes the whole country. Pew polls consistently show antisemitism being more predominant than racism. And ironically, by far the most antisemitic groups are black and hispanic. Those are statisticallly facts.
You claim statistical facts, but offer no evidentiary link.
Ever the apologist, with a dose of deflection.
"These qualities: racism, antisemitism, fascism, are inherently opportunistic."
We don't have fascism, but the party with the most racism and antisemitism is the Democrat party. DEI and quotas are pure race-based discrimination. Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, Crockett, Jayapal, Cortez and the newly chosen DSA crowd are all anti-Semitic. The right has a few but they are outliers like Carlson and Piker and that black lady on YouTube.
Hey Kauffman, if I told you I wish Israel never existed would I be anti-Semitic? If I told you that the Jews of Israel are practicing a very similar tactic that the Nazi government practiced in Germany in the early 20th century on Jews, namely ethnic cleansing, would you call me an antisemite? So an ultra orthodox dressed young person dressed in black asked me yesterday, “Are you Jewish?” My response was, “It’s none of your business.” Was I antisemitic? In truth, I was a bit kinder to him because he was quite young had it been an adult, my response would have been more negative so is that antisemitism?
So many questions Bill! You're on a virtue roll! The answer to most of them is yes, of course. Does France have a right to exist? Saudi? Jordan? Syria? The US?
Trump has no shame. He still thinks he is a gift from god.
that was clear when he said that if he were a Communist, he'd be the best Communist of all times!!! sicko
Gotta admit, he's wrong about that. Many years ago I was in my first of 20+ visits to China. I took a group visit to Foshan and there was a real estate guy in the group. The Chinese interpreter with us asked him, what is real estate? The man answered "I buy a house for 100,000 yuan. I repair it. Then I sell it for $150,000 yuan." The Chinese interpreter then asked "why"?
That's communism. Trump would not like it.
A quintessential malignant narcissist.
An as far as he is concerned I think he thinks he IS God, insofar as anyone matters in his experiential universe. The one and only person who really matters.
If it makes him happy, so what?
Literally Joseph Welch said "Have you left no sense of decency?" but same idea. Sociopaths often don't. Roy Cohn was a heavy link between McCarthy and Trump, the latter sort of "Tail Gunner Joe" on steroids. That said, Republicans have been dusting off McCarthyism for a while now. The character of Goldwater shines in comparison to the current felon.
"I’m afraid that we are permanently broken. But I will fight the good fight because I cannot remain silent. Silence equals capitulation." Bill, suggestion: take two aspirin and then take a long walk. You'll feel much better.
I guess you are retired now.
Unlike about 95% of the people who comment here, I am very gainfully employed.
Well said Bill
The djt regime’s response to the four word question is “not one iota.”
Very relevant. Don't forget that Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, was head counsel for McCarthy.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240517-roy-cohn-the-mysterious-us-lawyer-who-helped-donald-trump-rise-to-power
Thank you Nancy.
McArthyism -- blotting out people because of affiliation, is more prevalent on the left.
Roy Cohn resurrected with chump
Some people vote Republican because they believe the party is still the party of Eisenhower, Teddy — and Yes, Lincoln. Their lives are full and they don’t follow politics because it doesn’t affect them, just other people, those people. /irony
The momentum of the celebrated history of the Republican party clearly lends its current manifestation some rub-off legitimacy, but judging from their recorded sentiments, all three of the figures you mention could be expected to be appalled by today's "Republican Party". Indeed T.R. already felt betrayed by his own party's turn to plutocrats, and tied to start a third party. Ike called millionaires who wanted to slash public services "stupid".
Exactly.
Wealth blinds people to reality. Empathy becomes a casualty and when that happens the guillotine becomes the power of the hopeless.
They do consider empathy a weakness
A lot of it, at the "retail level," they want jobs and money. They don't want "good government" or "merit selection." They want s spoils system. In a red state, you have to be a party hack to work. Every job is "Republican." To be a school custodian, a garbage collector, etc, you had to work for the candidate who can provide those jobs.
Every institution, even charities, are arms of the Republican Party.
As #45, Trump tried to eliminate civil service in the hiring process, so he could appoint more hacks.
The CivilService was started about the time that Charles Guiteau, a disgrunteld job seeker, murdered President James Garfield, who wouldn't give him the job.
"Wealth blinds people to reality. Empathy becomes a casualty." Poverty does the same. Ideology does the same (read the comments here). And if some rich person doesn't feel empathy for someone, so? What does that do? If someone I don't know and will never know feels no empathy for me, so what?
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984).
Which proves that...?
You ask “ And if some rich person doesn't feel empathy for someone, so? What does that do?”
Well, Marie Antoinette’s response to a severe shortage of bread leading to the deaths of many, she suggested “Let them eat cake.”
Oh, and the French Revolution.
Nice try! That is not a quote. If Richardson were your professor she'd hit you with a D: ". "Though widely believed to be her callous response to starving peasants, historians agree she never actually said it; the quote predates her and originated in a book by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau."
Misciting history aside, you do not address my point, which was, so what? So some rich guy (or girl, or "they") doesn't feel empathy, what does that do? Was Edison a sweetheart? Henry Ford was a virulent antisemite. General Patton, speaking of people in the displaced camps who'd been ripped from their homes, saw families murdered, and been beaten and starved, and said "those Jews look like animals."
All those people, and thousands more, were, to use a technical term, slimeballs. But they did things important to us. No empathy. Big deal.
Something like that
My ex friends (brilliant family) wanted his SC choices. I wonder if they are happy now.
Why wouldn't they be? If they wanted his choices they must have wanted his policies. It's not like what SCOTUS is doing is a surprise. We told them what was going to happen.
Indeed, I tried for decades, no ears attached to brain
What better reason to never talk to a friend again than their feelings about Supreme Court nominees! Me? I hate people who like their steak medium. Chacun a son gôut, as the French say.
What are your problem with Gorsuch, Barrrett, Kavanaugh? They are all brilliant, competent judges, decidedly moreso than Jackson and Sotomayor. Kagan is a very good judge, but was totally inexperienced on courts. I infer you do not like the policy implicaitons of some decisions. But the Supreme Court is not constitutionally empowered to make policy. And on the law, lawyers and judges disagree all the time because it is not always clear. Breyer was an excellent justice but imposed his view that judges can make up things when the constitution is not clear. Some find that autocratic. But he was an excellent justice.
And “don’t follow politics” is my greatest fear about citizens not showing up to vote in ALL elections! It is a very narrow and uninformed mindset.
Funny but I feel the opposite. 90+% of voters tend to be ill informed on subjects at issue, surely including 90% of those commenting here in that grouping.I don't fell all wonderful when they vote. But idiots are allowed to vote too. So that's ok, but nothing to feel great about.
Yeah.. I've got mixed feeling about that. I know that in Australia voting is considered a civic duty required by law.
They say that it prevents the extremes that we get in American and Europe is because the race isn't going to be decided by who is 'energized' by the outrage. (AKA turnout) And it doesn't pay to piss off 50% of the voters because you might need them as elections are decided by the center. According to Monash University Political Scientist Waleed Aly "Australia has had some bad governments, but it hasn't had any truly extreme ones and it isn't nearly as vulnerable to demagogues." And he credits that to their compulsory voting system.
Which all sounds good to me.
But the rugged individualist, exceptional Americans are not big on civic duty... and while sometimes I think it might be interesting to try to get more people to vote even if it means requiring it. There is a philosophy that says that NOT voting is itself a choice.
Yes, that is what I meant. You might even prefer democracy, but you’re oblivious.
Oblivious about what? Please elaborate.
I’m referring to the people who don’t vote. They’re oblivious to the harm being done to the world by MAGA.
One of Reagan's most celebrated faux-folksy quips was "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.", the very opposite of what Lincoln expressed above. The core of Reagan's con was to alienate millions from a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and to regard it as alien and in the way. Some years back, I recall a regular local TV news feature called "It's Your Money", which highlighted government waste, or superficially construed waste, but never any successful applications of tax money, and that kind of thing seemed common in the media back when I watched TV. I recall Bush, the First, saying on National TV that a government study of greenhouse gas methane emissions from livestock "would be funny if it was not so outrageous" and "the News" offered no explanation of why it was studied, lthough I knew at the time why it mattered.
In dealing with government one commonly encounters demands that we document our claims, yet we give politicians a pass who make all sorts of claims that affect our lives, in the absence of proof, or worse, claims that are provably wrong or dishonest. The government is increasingly permitted to lie to us with impunity, yet we can be punished if we lie to the government. THAT sort of government is NOT what Lincoln was talking about. By selling the notion that government is alien to the public's best interests, Reagan was laying out a self-fulfilling prophecy. Democracy is participatory, by the people, for the people, or it's not democracy.
Elon Musk and his DOGE nazi's paralyzed many agencies including the departments responsible for Social Security, the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, the IRS, Department of Agriculture etc. Elon and his moronic thugs illegally stole over 340 million identities in the SS database. Among the worst crimes committed by their actions was starving tens of thousands of Americans and taking away the health care of millions. When they shut down USIAD millions of people around the world starved. And their brownshirt masked army has killed dozens of American citizens with immunity and impunity while enriching the sadistic and greedy oligarchs with rich contracts for their concentration camps.
It weird how many of the very most privileged passionately like to bully and persecute the least protected. It's really pretty sick. Musk did not create the Tesla company, he took it over. Musk's father reportedly bragged that he made so much money from his emerald mines that he could not close the door to his safe.
Why do so many so people that live paycheck to paycheck assume the wealthy are more intelligent than they are? I have learned so much from hanging around with people that don't have two nickels to rub together, but very little from wealthy people except that they are short on the values we learned to be important when we were kids.
There are all sorts of ways that people gather money, some of which are respectable and some not. Ideally in an egalitarian society opportunities are reasonably even. Not that there won't be unevenness for all sorts of reasons, but at least governmental policy has potential to be even handed, with some fashion of liberty and justice for all, if that's what enough of us really intend.
I think if you were to honestly evaluate every governmental policy, much would be identified that keeps the poor poor and makes the wealthy wealthier for no justifiable purpose. That is actually a form of corruption, Yes, it's possible to gather money by working long and hard, and yes one may prosper by being clever, but there is so much more to the story, So much more, and as you indicate, virtue is by no means essential.
You should not have skipped history class. You apparently are not aware of what brown shirts did and what concentration camps are. And the so-called greedy oligarchs have created entirely new industries and technologies that have created over 45 million jobs and enriched all of us. So what if they are greedy (if they are -- you don't name names or explain who the nameless greedy people are).
Is it those with the most money who create jobs, Trump as one example? Or is it potential customers? Businesses sprang up in the remote and dangerous Yukon around prospectors seeking and occasionally finding gold. Where do workers fit in?
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits." - Lincoln
Sometimes, as in the Gilded Age, those benefits are not so mutual. A cliche of the Reagan era was "A high tide lifts all boats" but statistically after Reagan. the yachts became supersized, while the small crafts have been relatively becalmed, or are taking water. That contrasts with the period of middle class economic growth during post-Gilded-Age reforms.
Many of the wealthiest people inherited their money and don't understand anything about how you should treat your employees. I know, I've worked for several wealthy people.
Sorry but I don't see how that responds to anything under discussion.
I spent the Reagan years wondering if it was I who was mentally ill. I kept thinking that he was a complete fraud, being so out of step with even my Democratic ,progressive friends. It is now clear that Reagan’s terms were a great leap forward in the right wing oligarchs march toward the takeover of our government.
One of the things that tanked my first marriage.
As my husband and his friends went from perfectly normal people to Reagan fans. And when I pointed out the people who were being hurt they told me I was being an alarmist 'the lower classes would just have to adjust'...
We all grew up together in a small town. None of their families even made Middle Class let alone Rich. But suddenly 'the poors were ruining this country'. It took both our $4 an hour salaries to pay the rent and they are going on about 'the welfare queens'?
My refusal to accept Yuppiedom made me a liability to his 'career'.
I didn't even care by the time we hit divorce court.
It is weird. I have seen some smart and caring people totally transform. Jekyll/Hyde? Of course it has been observed for centuries that power tends to corrupt, and Lord Acton added that absolute, unaccountable power corrupts absolutely. Money is a form of power. The Bible that all Christians claim to follow says that "the love of money", which I take to mean an exclusionary, morally indifferent obsession with obtaining it, is "the root of all evil" (or some translate "many evils". Of course that only applies to "other" people's lust for money and power, right? Money and power traded for one's soul is the traditional devil's bargain, and how many, many stories, personal, historical, and fictional, illustrate exactly that pattern?
The founders were well aware that political power (which in inherently corruptable societies, can go hand in hand with economic power) was both essential to governance yet an ongoing danger to liberty. Thus they divided the ultimate source of legitimate political power into shares. Equal rights, equal protection, equal justice, and fair and free elections, or at least held this up as the goal. Sometimes lost in the shuffle is that a democratic republic also demands accepting shares of responsibility for how that power is used. The opposite of that is a stratified autocratic or oligarchic society where power is horded by a few. The acid test for "unalienable rights" is whether we, as individuals and as a society, extend and protect them for all. As in, actually, all.
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that shift over the past few decades. Looking back, it’s remarkable how much the political center has moved while many of us were told nothing fundamental had changed.
It was not "government" per se that was the problem (see the Declaration of Independence); it is who it is controlled BY and who it works FOR. If the many it is called a democracy, or a democratic republic. If primarily for the few, it is what?
"The government is increasingly permitted to lie to us with impunity, yet we can be punished if we lie to the government." You're mixing up two concepts. Politicians are not under oath. When we are and when we lie, sure, we are punished. IF we weren't, society breaks down.
I am seeing simpleton MAGA locals pick up on the “communism” theme. When challenging them to actually define it the response is “Do your own homework, Libtard”
They’re angry about a word they can’t define and even if they could, they are blaming a cohort of people identified only because we oppose the White Nationalist MAGA Movement
“Owning the Libs” is the only goal they understand
Exactly. Once people are reacting to labels instead of evaluating ideas and policies on their own merits, critical thinking gets replaced by tribal thinking. That’s where we lose each other.
"Exactly. Once people are reacting to labels instead of evaluating ideas and policies on their own merits, critical thinking gets replaced by tribal thinking. That’s where we lose each other." Read the comments here.
Exactly so.
The label did not take away the critical thinking because it was not there to begin with. It is unfortunate how long the Democrats have let the Republicans label them wrongly as socialist and other words that are not correct. It is a shame that the Republican party in its current form as MAGA even exists at all. It is unAmerican. It is an indictment of the people that have come together in the country that they be allowed to act like this. Right now, many "White" people, that is people who have identity in skin color which is not white, but is called "White" are having a resurgence of their ugliness as people.
A majority of American voters chose them in a free election. Are you opposed to democracy?
''The Gospel According to Grievance''
Welcome to the Church of White Christian Nationalism, where Jesus has been politely removed for being too Middle Eastern, too compassionate, and frankly suspiciously fond of the poor.
The new savior is a spray-tanned real estate salesman who speaks in commandments such as “Thou shalt never admit losing” and “Blessed are the billionaires, for they shall receive another tax cut.” His disciples wave enormous Bibles they apparently purchased with the pages permanently sealed.
The theology is refreshingly simple. Love thy neighbor, unless the neighbor speaks Somali, fled Haiti, needs food assistance, or possesses enough melanin to trigger an emergency podcast from Stephen Miller. Welcome the stranger? That was clearly a mistranslation. The approved version reads, “Deport the stranger, cancel his legal status, and blame him for rent prices set by private equity.”
Naturally, these patriots adore America so deeply that they want to erase birthright citizenship, restrict voting, demonize immigrants, and reserve full membership in the nation for people who resemble the cast of a 1950s detergent commercial. Nothing says constitutional reverence like treating the Fourteenth Amendment as an unfortunate typo.
They insist they are defending Western civilization from its greatest threats: affordable health care, labor rights, honest government, hungry children receiving lunch, and citizens voting without first presenting a family portrait from the Mayflower.
The funniest part is the word “Christian.” Christ preached humility, mercy, generosity, and solidarity with the despised. White Christian nationalism offers vanity, vengeance, hoarding, and a border wall. It is less Sermon on the Mount than tantrum at the country club.
This is not Christianity with a political edge. It is white grievance wearing a plastic cross, shouting “America First” while excluding everyone who refuses its racial and religious hierarchy, then demanding applause for its courage and moral clarity.
Will have to put that brilliant metaphor to memory -- "less Sermon on the Mount than tantrum at the country club." A gift with words, to say the least.
The truly interesting question is why would anybody want to substitute the Sermon on the Mount for a white plastic cross, filled with vengeance, pettiness, hoarding and a border wall. A lot of small-witted dummies out there shriek about closing the border -- totally unaware of how interdependent we all are on the free flow of people, labor, ideas, cultures. Foreign-born workers pick our crops, milk our cows, take care of our elders -- who do they think will do that once they create an atmosphere of complete terror?
Britain has had 6 (shortly 7) Prime Ministers in the last 10 years. One ruled less than 2 years. The current PM won by an enormous majority, capturing over 400 seats. Two years later, he's resigning. Why all this instability? Because Britain left the European Union claiming it wanted to be "independent" and free of foreign influence. And Trump encouraged every bit of it. The result? A loss in GDP of between 6-10%, a permanently shrinking labor market, and Britons themselves self-deporting to other countries in search of better opportunities.
Any lessons there for the taking, MAGAts?
Well said, Michael.
Another of the stupid things that the unthinking sheep who say they want an all white, male dominated society is the result of getting what they want……that that kind of culture and society is BORING!
No pizza? No dim sum? No curry? Just steak and potato until you die of boredom!
And if you ask them what communism means to them, they have no idea. Mind you, I would NEVER consider communism as a way to be governed; but most Americans do not know the difference between social democracy and communism. Some days I wonder if they know what real democracy is; and if they are aware of its glitches and its assets.
Ligia, there's always an irony with the MAGA crowd. It's a documented fact that 85% of MAGA are self-confessed evangelicals.
Here's the irony: Evangelicals revere what they call "The Early Church." This was the first generation of followers of Jesus. When they converted from Judaism to Christianity, they (get ready) sold all their possessions and gave the proceeds to church leaders. The followers lived in kibbutzes. Income the members derived from services rendered or barter was turned over to the church leaders. The church's leaders dispensed food and other provisions to members of the commune according to need. It was the original model of communism.
Kelli, 1984 again and again.
Exactly. One of the things Orwell understood so well was that controlling language changes how people think. Once words lose their meaning, reality becomes much easier to manipulate.
Let’s not forget that we don’t have universal healthcare because of racism. When other countries were developing their single payer systems, we were still segregated. It was considered “socialism” to let Black people have the same healthcare as everyone else.
Shades of McCarthyism. Have we learned nothing in 75 years?
Nope. I suspect it is a case of “humans gonna human” for good or evil as their dispositions dictate.
And by labeling Ho Chi Minh communist, the CIA eventually created the Vietnam war.
The Koch Bros. and others were very successful in getting ordinary Americans to vote against their own best social and economic interests. Nancy MacLean reports this history in her book, "Democracy in Chains." The following was recently published by the New York Times:
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Richard | Florida
The Democrats need to promote a new New Deal, the form of government that created a huge Middle Class, which was destroyed, beginning with Reagan, by the ultra wealthy, stripping $39 trillion out of the economy. Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor and the person most responsible for our having Social Security said it best: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." It is the people who create wealth. If the U.S. population were only 3.4 million people, there might not be any billionaires. But the U.S. population is 340 million people, so we have 1100 billionaires. We need a redistribution plan in place, similar to what they have in the Scandinavian countries, i.e., Pragmatic Capitalism.
Ain't Done Nothing If You Ain't Been Called A Red (Live / 1984)
Faith Petric
.https://youtu.be/63Tk9QxvZHo?si=Xiac0bt5-yesWgKq.
Agree—we see the word and stop thinking, listening, and researching.
The Brennan Center numbers Richardson cites deserve more time than a paragraph allows. Ninety-two percent of Americans worried about government corruption, cutting evenly across party lines, is not a partisan reading of a partisan problem; it names something most of the public has reached the same conclusion about, regardless of which party captures the benefit in a given cycle. The 79% calling for a constitutional amendment to limit campaign finance contributions are not a faction. Richardson's historical comparison to the 1956 Republican platform is well-sourced, but a public consensus this broad and this cross-partisan ought to appear somewhere in the legislative record, and the more unsettling fact her data points to is that it doesn't.
92% of Americans concerned about corruption in government is why Democratic candidates should focus on corruption in the White House and among Republican members of Congress. Trump has made over $1 billion for himself and his family in the last year. This is outrageous and he should be held accountable. So should any members of Congress who have gotten rich off insider trading. He and his family are all grifters, and he is running this country like a mob boss.
In Hungary, Peter Magyar won over Victor Orban by making Orban’s corruption central to his platform. 80% of Hungarians voted in that election. The US will probably never see numbers like this, but we also need to focus getting out the vote and focusing on corruption is the way to do it.
You are actually understating the corruption in this case. According to the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker (https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/trump-family-corruption-tracker) They are at nearly 2.5 billion so far in the last 18 months. And that's just the NFTs, Memecoins and stuff (mostly pay for access and pardons). The illegal deals like Trump Gaza and Trump Albania are just more icing on the cake.
Don't forget the Venezuelan oil money stashed in an offshore account which nobody seems to be talking about anymore.
That’s an interesting tracker. I should’ve said during the first year Trump made over $1 billion for himself and his family. But you get my point.
As James Carville might say now “It’s the corruption, stupid”
Absolutely! Kudos to Professor Richardson for the lengthy explanation of the Eisenhower platform. It demonstrates how far to the right both major parties have drifted - including the so-called centrist Democrats. Let's work to get progressives elected in November!
Let’s work to get democrats elected. Some places, progressives can win; some places, more moderates. But blue no matter who.
I mostly agree. But I have limits. Examples include Fetterman and Manchin, who are indistinguishable from MAGAts. And Schumer is not much better. Let them continue getting their funding from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and AIPAC. They are why I don't give to the DNC.
To say they are indistinguishable is not quite accurate, at least insofar are their voting records are concerned (we don't currently publish voting records for Manchin, now that he's out of office, but here is Fetterman's):
https://civik.us/legislators/cmoj96nb600g9t9vvsfajix8l?share=pxx5N
The Chamber Voting Map and Similar Legislators sections show Fetterman's voting pattern relative to the chamber at large.
The question your comment raises is: to whom does a representative owe their vote? Where their vote defies their own party, but reflect the interests of their constituents, should that be seen an unacceptable departure from party, or the representation their constituents deserve?
John Fetterman and Joe Manchin before him are proof that "no matter who" isn't the best policy. Democrat-affiliated candidates still need to be vetted. If the Democrat is found wanting, look for an Independent. I'd rather have a Bernie Sanders over a John Fetterman any day of the week.
I'll tell you right now.. "Vote Blue No Matter Who" is becoming incredibly toxic in a lot of circles.
The idea that we have to vote for whomever Ken Martin/DCCC/DSCC puts up instead of the candidates we want has soured many, many voters at this point. Especially as our candidates are winning.
"Progressives" have been sweeping where they are located. We are literally voting against your Democrats. So every time I see 'Vote Blue no matter who' I know it's a bid to keep the incumbents in office and continue the system as it is.
Which frankly I do not agree with. I'm not just voting against Trump. I'm voting against the oligarchy. I'm voting against MAGA and 99% of the Democrats who are perfectly happy with going back to another Bidenesque administration as long as it shuts us up.
BLB. you make some pretty sweeping generalizations about Democrats. I don't know where you came up with your numbers but, as an independent who tends to vote Democratic, I strongly disagree with your assessment that "99% of the Democrats who are perfectly happy with going back to another Bidenesque administration as long as it shuts us up." Not sure who you're referring to as "we" and "us" but you seem to overlook the fact that the Democratic socialists who won are registered as Democrats. Your conclusion also ignores that in our current politics, the 'center' has also shifted rightward. As Heather points out, the Republicans once wholeheartedly embraced bedrock principles of democracy but have now definitively rejected them in favor of fascism, white nationalism, cruelty and greed while the majority of Democrats continue to hold firm on those principles.
If I could have my pick of who should lead the Democratic party, it would be Pete Buttigieg as he is the only one I hear talking about moving forward with needed changes rather than trying to return to a previous status quo but doing so firmly immersed in the principles of democracy.
"We" in my case are the non-communist "Progressives". Those who supported Sanders. Mamdani. Platner. Lander. El-Sayed. Valdez... you get the idea.
The Democratic party spent millions that they couldn't afford to try to keep them from winning even though most are now the official Democratic candidate in their district.
I'm a boomer. I didn't need Heather to tell me that things have shifted rightward. I've seen it in every election. I believe the exact same things I believed 50 years ago. 50 years ago I was a moderate centrist. Today I'm an independent socialist with my President calling for my execution. Politics has changed. I haven't.
I was briefly a Democrat during the Bush/Obama years but after Trump I dropped them because the Democrats in charge have made it perfectly clear that they are not interested in actual change beyond campaign slogans.
You don't have to agree with me. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks. I'm just letting you know that 'Vote blue no matter who' is not the fight phrase you think it is. Many of us will be voting IN SPITE OF.. not BECAUSE OF the Democratic party.
Today’s Republican platform: “Whatever Donald J Trump says.“
Corporations should pay taxes similar to the taxes people pay. Nobody should be paid in common stock. These people should be paid a taxable paycheck and payroll taxes should be paid on the whole amount of the income received. Instead of paying an executive 35 million dollars worth of stock - pay him 35 million dollars and tax it and then the exec can buy stock with what is left.
Agreed.
Very true!!!
How many remember the good old days? Well they were for us wyte folx!
I like the way AOC Ocasio Cortez described democratic socialism as a system where you can make as much money as you want, but nobody goes poor or hungry. I see her as a unifier and strong candidate for 2028.
I thnk that AOC is great. Every time she and Bernie campaign together, they reinforce my values. But just as the Dems have been unable to tolerate Bernie's views, I fear that the party will undermine a woman of color with the same views. While some of the elections in NY have shown that many people are open to those ideas, I'm skeptical that they will be embraced throughout the nation. Here's hoping that I'm wrong.
From where I sit, it seems that the preponderance of active women in America ARE women "of colour".
Interesting observation. Could it be because they have been affected by the dysfunctional system most?
A reaction, then? Or a combination of sharp intellect, good education, and acquired fearlessness?
Maybe a bit of all? But my thinking is that women of color are feeling the shortcomings of our elected officials more than the rest of us.
Please don't write off the millions of white women (and men) who have been activists for decades. Our strength comes from recognizing our common goals, creating overlapping and interacting diverse communities to pool our diverse talents, and recognizing Bernie's understanding that being united as "us" is what inspires and motivates our actions.
Sadly I agree. I love AOC too - and Bernie. Whoever is the candidate for 2028 needs to be able to win - and much of this country is still so stuck. I also hope I'm wrong. We need Schumer out and someone like AOC in his place.
I agree. Schumer and other Dems cut from the same cloth need to get out of the way.
Must be my liberal NY upbringing!
No not at all Mike. In the coming decade the stats for voters of color will be bigger than those of us with Northern European ancestry. I say bring the change on . And racial categories are just social constructs used to oppressed and create divides. This is the major engine with MAGA people are afraid of losing their former ascendency ..
True, Mary but that sounds like all the more reason we need a woman. But Americans as you say may not be developed enough, emotionally and need to evolve from Australopithecus.
Well yes and two folks with Jewish heritage and a LBGQT plus human being. And oh my what happened to him and the swatting. An awful thing and the CPS didn’t seem to have the grounding of as a retired MSW I would have thought. Intake workers have supervisors but it might turn out to be a hard good in the end.
😂
Here is where I disagree. Yes she would offer a breath of fresh air but likely lose. We need a leader that will bring various elements together. A Midwesterner. Someone like the governor of Illinois or senator from Arkansas.
You’re right and we need to pull all the stops out. Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg are very impressive.
And mark kelly!
Totally!
JB and AOC just because it rhymes and both are very good but vastly different people. I would have a slate of cabinet members with Eli Mystsl has AG. Then Ted Lieu as Housing, Andy Kim as Education, Dr Amy Acton at Heath and Human Services , Maxwell Frost at State because he knows how to survive with different folks, then the rest to qualified women or LBGT plus expert folks I cannot name them all my brain is not deep enough but they have served in the Obama or Biden administration and I would have also so folks who are part of the Lincoln Project. Either Castro brother has th skills to be as one was in the cabinet. Shryn Iffel JD would be great have Eli Mystal ( because he is oh my ! ) work under her second perhaps and Joy Reid for the Communications head. I would have a nun as Vatican Ambassador or Phyllis Zavagno . The should be an all encompassing slate in place and we here can look into folks and put their names in and discuss and dialogue. Nothing is written in stone so flexible and malleable and yes where to put Pete B and Jaime Raskin? Some folks need to stay the course.Senators Ossof and Warnock need to stay in place. Dream Team and see what future thinking can do with creating energy and momentum. This would allow light to come into these dark times to see all the possibilities and bring in some new people and new ideas. This is my very very rough first draft. Fill in the blanks or cross out and refine as needed. .
Magats are misogynistic as well as racists. In my world anyway
If it were only one brach of government that had lost its mind...
The Supreme Court ruling against asylum-seekers fleeing from terror represents such a new low for this country it will be remembered long after it gets overturned (I hope), one far below the point many of us thought we could ever go. Alito's idiotic assertion that race played no role in the most race-obsessed White House in a century will go right up there with arguing that down is just another way of legally saying up. When has anybody ever heard Trump or Miller refer to Norwegians as pet-eating "vermin"?
The absurd has turned into our default mode. So much for game theory. Our idiot emperor-sans-clothes now rejects win-win situations in favor of lose-loses, just because it makes him feel safe and strong. Those who know better in Congress echo and rubber-stamp his shabbiness, illegality and unceasing efforts to turn us into a true idiocracy. Who could really have foreseen this day in all its embarrassment?
Those of us who once served our country with pride and honor watch with horror as routine purges take place against those with institutional memory, expertise, professional integrity, knowledge, or brains. They're replaced by idiots and assholes -- the very kinds of low-life that swatted Pete Buttigieg and his family anonymously yesterday, forcing the police to remove his two 4-year-olds from their Papa and Daddy to interview them alone -- scum who think getting paid to brutalize the innocent for sport is fair politics.
Once the institutions of a great nation are turned over to lackeys, whether the highest court in the land, the law enforcement branches of the Executive, or the checks-and-balances of the legislative branch, nothing is left. This is how empires self-destruct, hollowed out by fools from within first, then weakened and made irrelevant by pointless, useless, expensive wars of flailing and failing, both internal and external. Fear fills a once-proud nation; ignominy and injustice roll down like a mighty stream...
I try to remain hopeful that people will truly wake up and salvage what’s left of a great republic while they still can. So much damage has already been done. It will be a race against time, repression, intimidation, inertia and stupidity itself.
Mitch McConnell has probably done more than any politician to corrupt all three branches of government.
For instance.
The legislative by perverting protocols to deny both Obama and Biden Supreme Court appointments.
The judiciary by packing it with undeserved Trump appointees.
The executive by refusing to remove Trump and prevent him from running for office.
Then of course, there are Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. Mike Johnson is in the running - what with shutting down the House rather than consider legislation and swear in legislators he doesn't like.
Mitch screwed Obama from day one and has left this country in tatters. He and Rupert have earned a FHA (Fascists Hero’s Award)
"Who could have really foreseen this day in all its embarassment?"
Sarah Kendzior did and wrote books about it!
Well good for her. I didn't. Neither did millions with equally long memories.
Yes she did
Yes. And the Pete thing--anger, sadness, incredulity all rolled together to create a pit in the stomach. I'm glad the first account I read was Pete's own words--a relief to know that the first account of something is also the truth.
Yes, same here. As I commented on his Substack account, I recognize him to be one of the turn-the-other-cheek faithful. But the Great Pacifist was also known to flip tables and lash the mountebanks in the temple with a whip. Pete should follow the latter example and pursue the perpetrators with all vigor, seeing that they pay dearly.
ICCT, those military purges scare the living crap out of me. The loss of experience and institutional knowledge cannot be measured.
Just Watch Nazi Republicans Jump Ship Like Rats In Coming Years
“It was out of my control.” “I had no idea that this was happening.”
“I had no say about what the RNC was doing.” “I’ve always said that there’s no place for big money in politics.”
No excuses. These sorry spineless racist warmongers who care little for the people they represent will try to hide behind worn out excuses but WE the People demand accountability for what they have collectively done to the country WE once proudly supported.
They could have done the only honorable thing possible. Leave the despicable group of racists that they colluded with. People from the Lincoln Project, Steve Schmidt, George Will, Liz Cheney, Jeff Duncan, Colin Powell, Tim Miller and many others have disavowed this lawlessly led Cheeto party and denounced it full heartedly. But there are still scumbags like DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Niki Halley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Pence, Burgham who will still support the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) despite the racist immoral positions that Project 2025 puts them in. These people should not be allowed to run for dog catcher. And I would argue that the electorate that supports Nazi Republicans are complicit in their avowed racism, corruption, and immorality. How disgusting that there are Americans to turn a blind eye to authoritarian rule.
To this latter group of ANO(Americans in Name Only) WE the People have one thing to say to you despots. There will be no excuses for you when karma comes knocking at your door. Game and career in politics is over. There should be no juicy positions in academia, lobbying firms, or the corporate world. They should be shunned and thrown into a political leper colony to rot with their greedy immoral racist worldviews. WE the People know who you are!!
I hope Dems don’t blather the Gerald Ford excuses
Good point
This conflict is far from over. The midterms may be the acid test, but winning that battle does not mean we have won the war, IF WE DO WIN manage to them in spite of the voter suppression that exists even without SAVE.
All is in flux. The fact that we have held them back to the extent that we have is a tremendous thing but underestimating this cabal will be a HUGE error. The main push has not even begun in earnest.
There is some progress on "EPSTEIN. EPSTEIN, EPSTEIN":
A congressional Subpoenas were served on LEON BLACK who allegedly wrote the "NDAs" for Epstein to shut up Victims. Senator Comer Committee served a under-oath fixed deposition date of LEON BLACK now set forJuly 2026
Attorney KATIE PHANG filed a targeted lawsuit for ALL Epstein files to be produced, including the early FBI interviews & reports. The lawsuit was filed in U.S.D.C. in the District of Columbia & names TODD BLANCHE his DOJ as Defendants & violators of the ETA, Epstein Transparency Act.
Katie got some judicial results already: Judge Sullivan found the DOJ has violated the ETA & must produce certain specific Epstein documents. KATIE PHANG also got her focused Preliminary Injunction GRANTED. You, Go Girl. Go Judge.
"All is Flux". Got that right Annabel Ascher You & the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
Good one.
I am so afraid you are correct. This is utterly hear breaking. The SCOTUS' corruption is totally unacceptable and nauseating. WE, THE PEOPLE NEED TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD , LOUD AND CLEAR, NO MATTER THE MEANS. OUR COUNTRY IS IN VERY DEEP PERIL!! THE WORLD AND HISTORY ARE WATCHING.
Next SCOTUS Opinions drop Monday. As usual, I will be at SCOTUSblog.com with the Founder, "AMY" & will report on LFAA.
No longer worthy of being honored as SCOTUS, let's start calling it what it is: "the Robbers' Court."
October Term 2025 cases Not Published Yet:
********************************************
Case Docket number then SCOTUS Question presented:
I'm ready or Moday so ... Per Wikipedia & a few BSM edits:
(1) Trump v. Slaughter 25-332. Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled.
(2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law. September 22, 2025 December 8, 2025
West Virginia v. B. P. J. 24-43. Whether Title IX prevents a state from consistently designating girls' and boys' sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth.
(3) Whether the Equal Protection Clause prevents a state from offering separate boys' and girls' sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth. July 3, 2025 January 13, 2026
Little v. Hecox 24-38Whether laws that categorically require sports participants to compete based on their biological sex, rather than gender identity, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
[4] July 3, 2025January 13, 2026
Chatrie v. United States 25-112 Whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.January 16, 2026April 27, 2026
[5] Trump v. Barbara 25-365 the "Birthright" Case ! Who are We?
Whether the Executive Order complies on its face with the Citizenship Clause and with 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that Clause. December 5, 2025 April 1, 2026
[6] Watson v. Republican National Committee 24-1260. That's MARC 6LIAS' Vote count case !
Whether the federal election-day statutes preempt a state [MIss.] law that allows ballots that are cast by federal election day to be received by election officials after that day. November 10, 2025 March 23, 2026
[7] National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission 24-621
Whether the limits on coordinated party expenditures in 52 U.S.C. § 30116 violate the First Amendment, either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with "party coordinated communications" as defined in 11 CFR 109.37. June 30, 2025, December 9, 2025
[8]Trump v. Cook 25A312 Whether the Supreme Court should stay a district court ruling preventing the president from firing a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. October 1, 2025 January 21, 2026
FINAL October Term 2026 case
(9) Anderson v. Intel Corporation Investment Policy Committee25-498 Whether, for claims predicated on fund underperformance, pleading that an ERISA fiduciary failed to use the requisite "care, skill, prudence, or diligence" under the circumstances and thus breached ERISA's duty of prudence when investing plan assets requires alleging a "meaningful benchmark." January 16, 2026
Jeez. Nothing minor here. 🤯
The SAVE Act is a game changer, yet most I read about it does not mention that it is directed at the women. Why is that?
That is a good question. I’ve had conversations with a few female “friends” (I use the term loosely; we are slightly more than acquaintances) where they say time and again (as moderately well-off straight women) that getting their birth and marriage certificates is “no big deal”. They are so anchored in the MAGA talking points that they cannot see beyond the end of their noses.
And their noses are detached from their brains. My wonderful friend was brilliant but had her nose up the Fox arsehole from day one and could rationalize with intellectual arguments. Never held water with me, but she was influential in NASA area South of Houston. I hate to think of what she contributed to the acceptance of W. I had moved by chump time so our conversations have been sparse, but she defended his SC aims one time too many. Still, I wonder.
PS. Got my passport as soon as I heard about the SAVE crap. It is deliberate, evil and too much ignored
She really is brilliant but under the thumb of an overbearing magat. Yes I do wonder and marvel at the power some cretins wield
Seriously JD, you have to ask?
The greatest test of democracy is whether institutions remain stronger than the people who temporarily lead them.
Something implicitly grasped by our first President, who simply decided two terms was enough and left office without the psychotic, desperate need to control every last detail of national life until the moment of his death, let alone build gaudy, trashy, gilded memorials to himself, or violate the Emoluments Clause on a daily basis.
The first, most obvious, and most important lesson in looking back at the past 250 years --something completely ignored and trashed by today's Republican Party.
How much worse does it have to get before the "main push" begins in earnest?
Trump is now anarchic. I won't say what I would like to do to Stephen Miller.
Anne-Louise — I NEVER ask “how much worse” does it have to/can it get. I fear the answer will be demo-ed in real time.
So the Republican Party in Eisenhower's time held the same beliefs as the Democrats. Seems they've kinda lost their way. The abject bowing to Trump's demands shows that the GOP is no longer working in the interests of the citizenry. A dereliction of duty on a grand scale. For which there should be no absolution. Round 'em up and charge them.
Would add even the Republicans of Nixon’s time are all dead as well. The Republican delegation of Congress that went to the White House to inform Nixon that his support had collapsed consisted of Senator Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes. Even Goldwater who was one of the most ardent and loyal defenders of Senator Joseph McCarthy told Nixon when he asked how many votes he had left in the Senate to fight conviction, Goldwater famously replied, "There's not more than 15 senators for you," making it crystal clear to Nixon that even Goldwater would vote to convict him.
The Republicans of Eisenhower's time are all dead, and their descendants appear to have defective eyesight and hearing.
Those Republican defects are known as the Fox Factor.
Nope they are per JD the “deep state” that took down Nixon..
Ah. Oh. Poor things. Difficult to combat.
Eisenhower’s warning of the power of the military industrial complex has come to pass.
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/the-military-problem-of-needing-a?r=6ptqj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I think it was Ali Velshi who has described Ds as fighters or folders. Fighters are beating folders in the D primaries. That gives me hope. The fact that folders like Chuck Schumer are still in positions of D leadership has lead me to focus on supporting Marc Elias's Democracy Docket along with historians like Drs Richardson, Ben-Ghiat and Snyder.
Folders need to step aside!!
What leverage does Trump have that is so powerful that after a closed door session the Republican lawmakers that had briefly exhibited a backbone immediately backpedaled? They can’t all be in the Epstein files Trump is still refusing release.
Mike Johnson’s actions of continually sending Congress home so no work can be done to me is just a more overt example of what Mitch McConnell did during Obama’s presidency. Mitch just said if Obama was elected the Republican Party was going to vote against anything Obama proposed.
Speaking of Mitch, he’s been hospitalized and not seen for quite some time. So who is doing his work? This is another problem that’s becoming more apparent in both Parties, elected officials that largely due to advanced age , having significant health issues and then being hidden away. It seems along with so many reforms needed, that there should be something in place that requires an elected official to prove their mental and physical fitness to serve.
That's the real mystery, isn't it? The cult is dying. It isn't just senescing, it's exploding into a thousand jagged shards. Yet they stick with it, frozen, unable to budge. It's eerily psychotic -- ALL of them can see what's coming, yet almost none will do anything to prepare for the day.
Senescence has long been a problem in our larger political life. Dianne Feinstein sat there in the Senate every day not knowing when the balloon went up. Strom Thurmond could barely waddle across the floor at age 100. My own Eleanor Holmes-Norton here in DC could barely function until finally some aide gently asked her to resign this year, which she has. Kentucky Fried Voldemort is by now a wheezing old illusion incapable of much of anything.
Personally, I favor a voter being able to prove s/he's not a blithering idiot in the first place that just keeps re-electing animatronic voidoids despite the evidence, but maybe that's just me.
The quotes from the 1956 Republican platform, when the party was led by Dwight Eisenhower, a great statesman and military leader, are extraordinarily telling and almost painful to read.
In his retirement he and Mamie had a small farm near Gettysburg National Park. From the park/battlefield one can see their house. I always thought what a standby that housing choice was and is now.
Last night I wrote to my 2 pathetic (R) senators and invited them to read the 1956 GOP platform … as part of my usual excoriation of their blind adherence to Trumpism.
My own sense of the 1950s was that to go back on the New Deal changes would lead back to the depression. That fear has now gone which is why levels of inequality have returned to the 1920s levels. Ian
I’m currently reading a biography of Eisenhower. Reading about how the Allies fought the fascists…and won. Yet we now have a president and his toadies railing against “antifa.” Weren’t all those soldiers “antifa” as well?!
Yes! My Dad and uncle and aunts, as well.
Republicans are proposing to repeal the 17th Amendment (which institutes the direct election of Senators) and to return appointment of Senators to state legislatures.
Meanwhile 'centrist' Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi has proposed Democrats take a loyalty oath to capitalism which Joe McCarthy would approve of and James Carville is agitating for progressives to leave the Democratic party.
It seems that Vote Blue No Matter Who only applies to progressives holding their nose to vote for neoliberals.
Who even needs the SAVE act, when corporate Democrats will help save the day for Republican ChristoFascism?
Really!
“The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality…”
It has been said by some that FDR’s New Deal saved American capitalism, even though many of Roosevelt’s well-heeled contemporaries called him a class traitor at the time. In the end, he saved their bacon.
It was personally interesting to me for Dr. Richardson to refer to the 1956 platform, because that was the year I began to become politically aware, largely due to the election and the crises in Hungary and the Suez Canal intervention. All very interesting to a nine-year-old boy who had just returned from his first visit to see his European relatives. Not once in his life did that boy ever think that his country would sink to the level of today's political culture, let alone international standing.
Noted without comment.
"As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, the global data we collect and analyze shows that the country is failing to “promote the general Welfare,” as the Constitution’s framers promised a little more than a decade later.
We are scholars of human rights. Alongside the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks how well more than 200 countries and territories are meeting the human rights commitments their governments have made, we annually update scores measuring whether people can actually get the basics of a decent life, such as healthcare, adequate food and a quality education.
The latest data our team has amassed shows that the U.S. is falling short compared with what it could achieve, given its US$32 trillion economy. This is not a one-year blip – the U.S. has been underperforming for the past 25 years."
.https://theconversation.com/americans-are-not-as-well-off-as-people-in-peer-nations-us-safety-nets-shortfalls-show-up-in-global-data-284987.
Look, I agree with all of this, but.... Have you read some of the things Chevalier had said? Defund the police, close all prisons, no borders? She's rooting against the US in the World Cup (rooting for Senegal), and has acknowledged using an American flag to wipe her hands. This is crazy stuff. She's not a communist, just a crazy person. Now we all have to defend allowing her to be seated in the Democratic caucus.
Watching Fox News much? The quote about the flag was made 10 years ago, and was not meant to be disrespectful. I’ll leave it to you to consume the news more critically.
What we've got is a crazy person running the country now. I'm ready to switch to a new crazy person. I doubt Chevalier governs by tweets.
If the Brennan poll is to be believed the vast majority want to see the end of GOP rule. How does this reconcile with the 30 to 40% that still support maga?