Rumors that he is about to be indicted in New York in connection with the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels have prompted former president Donald Trump to pepper his alternative social media site with requests for money and to double down on the idea that any attack on him is an attack on the United States.
The sooner we can get that dangerous, old wanker out of circulation, the better it will be for all of us so, until He’ll freezes, vote BLUE! We can’t afford the folly of electing another Republican for at least a generation. At this point, there is no trustworthy republican to be had. It’s sad but it’s the truth. We are still too close to the edge of the abyss to take chances.
You are so right! But it's worse than that. Most Republicans are more than untrustworthy. Many of them are nuts. Seriously, deranged. Here are amusing side notes about Ali Alexander (in Heather's last paragraph) who is "retired" (at age 38). Mr. "Stop the Steal".
"Alexander supported the gubernatorial campaign of Kari Lake in Arizona, claiming on his podcast that he could will Lake's victory "into existence". Alexander claimed on the same podcast episode that he was capable of time travel, saying that "time travel is easier than you think." Alexander further claimed that "the Jews time travel".[72] Lake would later lose the election to Katie Hobbs.[73]"
Among other inanities, Alexander claimed that Kamala Harris was "not black enough".
"In February 2021, on a Trovo livestream, Alexander began soliciting donations to build a "MAGA mega-city" and another planned community in South America called the "City of Alexander".[30][31] He also stated he would organize further Stop the Steal rallies and that he was creating "tools of creation and tools of chaos".[31] He also called for the abolition of the free press, labeling them "systems that control us," and challenged law enforcement to combat if they attempted to arrest him.[31]"
They are nuts and they are thieves: "Alexander was convicted of felony property theft and credit card abuse charges in 2007 and 2008."
South America has had enough dictators.....they want to be free also. We need to work for freedom, train our younger ones about what it means to be free...to respect one another, young and old, brilliant and those simple minded ones like myself.....each of us has a role to play in the living out the ideal of a free world where everyone has a chance.
The role of good governance, knowledge of ways we can work together throughout our country and the world should be the goal. Of course there will always be barriers to the ideal of freedom but it is worthy of the best in us to strive for this goal.
Here here ! My favorite thought borrowed - Ladies, please pardon my irreverent sense of humor as fact. > “Once you’ve seen a woman take off her bra without removing her shirt, it just makes more sense why they should be in charge of many more things.”
You’ve got that so right! It’s long past time for this “shining beacon on the hill” to finally be progressive enough, smart enough to realize that as a rule, women are just as capable and as smart as men. Of course women can be as evil too;Carrie Lake for instance.
Dear Emily Pfaff, thank you for your reminder of how we can work together for the good of all. In focusing on the bad or abnormal behavior and speech of a loud few among us, we can overlook the beauty and intelligence, uniqueness and integrity of most of the people around us. Thank you.
I was thinking the solution would be an island that was currently uninhabited, off South America or Australia, where we could deliver them without enough food but plenty of weapons. They could take care of their problem themselves.
Yes! I’ve actually dreamt of this. We can watch their cut throat skills flourish trying to survive! And Fox Not News can run it 24/7 for all their fans enjoyment. It might actually be a great lesson in community and humility. Except no tropical islands allowed. Rather they have to experience harsh winters.
They need to go to a deserted island when no one else lives...can't destroy their lives. They can just all live together and fight for 'king of the hill'.
Ahh Libor, and anyone else clicking here, beware once. And, secondly, should you happen to 'journey' into Libor's "at-the-gates-of-hell" deserogertory... "beware" I would offer as advice, for a second time. As you should take heed..before.. reading/taking that journey to the edge of that lava pit. Having stood there recently, breathing tose noxious fumes, I believe I saw images of Ted Cruz, MTG, & Gym entwined with Boburr & Mace diving in and out of that molten lake while the family-of-trump floated nearby only to disappear in a flashing splash. I must admit, I had to have help getting back on my motorcycle and getting "the hell" out of there.
Thank you Liz; good to see a Subtack Author recall an excellent example of ALI A's intent. Please resend your comment to the Content Moderation Department, if that Department actually exists. Regards, I am respectful of Your & HCR's work product.
Please remember and rewatch her love note to Reagan at the beginning of her Jan6 final speech. I was rooting for her up till then. Plus her father ! Never forget what he put us through.
When Mitt became governor, he said and did some good things but it was all for show. Republican’ts can’t change their spots 🐆👿🤮🤢💩
Lil bush, like mitt co-opted the Democratically legislature controlled in respective states by signing into law top priority legislation, in Mass it was healthcare bill, in Texas school reform. Unfortunately, lil bush used phony education stats from the Houston school district to ‘infect ‘ the No Child left behind act! Recall his Sec of Ed was the Superintendent of Schools from Houston!
Did not know that about Houston. Mitt was done after a couple years and spent the last 2 traveling the country to run for president. A man with no backbone. How can he even walk. Jimmy Carter gave us the Dept. Of Education. The media really did a job on him especially wapo. Reagan took his solar cells off the White House roof. Reagan-Bushes-donthecon. What a different world it would be if they never got to the White House. Whoops, almost forgot trickydick.
Keep in mind that 'Lil Bush' grandfather Sen Prescott Bush was the organizer of the attempted "White House Putsch" (aka "Business Coup") of 1933.
Sen Bush was the organizer of the wishes of the 1933 version of the Billionaire Class' desire to oust FDR almost before he was inaugurated in April 1933 by a semi-military organized putsch.
They liked Italy's Benito Mussolini and a newly emerged Austrian named Adolph better....
The Bush crime family has a long history including the Walker branch. But death star and his family take criminality to a new high. Both loved and love dictators.
Romney was a decent governor, though not as good as Charlie Baker, and he did vote for impeachment.
As for Liz Cheney, I think I missed the love note to Reagan, and the damage inflicted on our country by Reagan was huge. Things are almost never black and white, and Liz Cheney played a critical role on the Jan 6 committee, almost certainly knowingly sacrificing her political career in the process.
MAGAts are black, but outside of them, it's extremely rare for anything not to be black and white.
I suspect Liz Cheney made a strategic bet that the MAGA trend would self destruct, leaving her, Kinzinger and a few others in a position to pick up the pieces of the Republican Party. She is incredibly smart, tough and a die-hard conservative. We’ll see if her bet pays off.
The only payoff for Liz Cheney, well two payoffs, are that A-She can do her best to salvage constitutional democracy and B-Sh can look at herself in the mirror. The third payoff that she wasn’t even aiming for was ...Ar-Ee-es-pee-Ee-cee-tee. (Just a little bit).
I wonder how long it will take to pay off. If this last very long, the Republican Party might go the lay of the old Libertarians, or dim of the early parties that tried to crank up, in the name of democracy, of course.
Did they stand up for democracy? Where were they before Trump was elected? Where was Mitt before Trump was elected? Their sense of decorum was offended, yes, but where were they when their party was building the network of voting restrictions and gerrymandered seats that made electing Trump possible? Why isn't Mitt, a US Senator, calling for investigations into Russia's continuing tampering with US elections? Are the Bushes and Romneys powerless to whip the remaining GOP moderates, or have GOP moderates ceased to exist?
Not one Republican, other than Cheney and Kissinger who were on the January 6 committee, stood up for democracy. Not one of them. As far as I’m concerned, every Republican in Congress right now can go straight to hell and get out of office.
My point exactly, lock step all the way until he wanted to become the dictator in chief, and that they just couldn't do ...they helped create the insurrection.
The Republican narrative is corrupt and dishonest at its core. At its bedrock. It is aptly described in Barry Goldwater's book "Conscience of a Conservative" (ghost written actually by another). It questions the validity of an actual democracy, in favor of what we today call an "illiberal democracy". Which is no democracy at all. It has as its authority the conservative interpretation of God's will for an independent people, in constrast to scientifically informed governance. There is really no hiding it anymore - Republicans, at least the MAGA types, no longer mince words as much, instead broadcasting their views for all to see. Anyone who puts themselves under the Republican brand is someone to avoid. To not vote for. That includes Liz, and Adam, and Mitt. That is until they disavow themselves of the Republican Party - which they might. Am not holding my breath.
In case you haven't noticed, while both of them a Very Good on the issue of keeping the constitution, on just about everything else they are... Republicans.
Look up Liz Cheney’s thoughts on climate change. Liz voted with Trump 90% of the time, until his agenda, to seize power and rule as a dictator, started to infer with her long term plans, which has something to do with maximizing oil company profits as long as there are any to be had, I suppose, but that is one area where she is not quite so vocal and transparent. Adam Kinzinger I don’t know about.
Being that is the case, and I say this respectfully, Liz does not belong in in a leadership position where she denies half the citizens she serves basic human rights. It was a good thing a prolife zealot was ousted from a position of power, albeit replaced by a less experienced, less competent, more obnoxious politician. Stefanik doesn’t have the Cheney money, education or name recognition. Thank you for your service Liz, truly. But, above all, no one wants to go 70 years backward. It’s pretty much settled.
Susan, all you have to do is look at their voting record. They're both truthful, saying that they are conservative and they're opposed to abortion and other liberal social program goals, and Liz voted with Trump 93% of the time. The fact that they favored democracy above TFG doesn't mean that we'd be happy with their vision of America.
Liz Cheney is on video calling out Democrats for "murdering babies" by supporting legal abortion. I didn't find that link just now, but did find links to her consistent stands against legal abortion. Just because a person opposes violent overthrow of the government, does not tell you what they believe about anything else.
It is a powerful image , that of about a thousand , stop the steal rioters , in jail or headed there, with the fearless leader playing golf as he attempts to improve his thinning combover. But the fact is a large number of MAGA folks will never realize that they have been had. The fantasy they live in is too satisfying to give up , no matter how many facts disprove the false narratives of the liar -in -chief.
Here is the sentence from Professor Richardson in today’s Letter that stopped me right in my tracks…..
“But here’s what I wonder: What happens when people who have embraced a virtual world begin to figure out it’s fake? And then another question as she talked about the Russian people’s shaken faith in their leader and what result? “Will they rally around their leader, slide away, or turn against him? “
It is the question I ask every day as the truth tide reveals more and more about these white men….Trump, DeSantis, Carlson, Jordan, all of them. Cheap suits sucking on the teat of white Christian nationalism. No real belief in it. Just to play on fear of white being a minority and boots of women and anyone not white or straight or privileged being firmly on their necks. A caste system that must survive the way they want it ordered for them to breathe.
What do the believers do when they know it’s a fake bullsh*t patriarchal bargain basement facade?
I like the way you think! What so many of these crazy MAGA women don’t seem to understand is that there is only room for white MEN ONLY in their tight and white little club.
The only way to insure he's history is for Koch and Mercer to want him destroyed and Gon. But, they're not done using him yet to destroy the Federal Government, American Democracy and our Constitution.
Spot on Ben.... The wallet is the primary support - "Always, esp. democracies, 'Follow the money' and restrain or reveal. That would have been issue 1 or 2 had I run for Ohio's US senate seat vacated by Portman; tough call as to ranking - I believe they would have been co-planks as number one.
I'll ascribe to that philosophy as the better choice as of now (vote blue). Yet I would add vote blue with care. There exist many 'pretenders'. Eyes and intents wide open is what I caution. Educated cautions is the best we can do.
Ok, so maybe Trump is going down. Not enough. His cohort of toxic masculinity, indifferent oligarchs, and fellow political technologists have got to go
The thing about Unreality is that though I don't think it's penetrable by what we call facts, I do think it has a tendency to collapse from its own weight--or maybe better, to shred in a stiff breeze! The Unreal doesn't have as many pixels as the Real. It looks a bit stylized. Plus his fans got energy from our constant denouncements, or clicking on stories about him in order to go "Tsk, tsk!" A non-presidential, visibly weakened Trump, no longer drawing massive ire, will have less magnetic force. (What a 5-bean stew of metaphors I've made here!)
Nice metaphors--each one could be the basis for an essay! The Acultamuricans believe their facts are reality and that ours are the "Unreality." As Jonathan Swift may or may not have actually said, "You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into." When this mess-iah implodes, they'll just find another one.
It's a depressingly long story, but Steven Pinker and others have argued that overall historically compassion has been on the rise. That said, there is always an element that wants to keep the goodies science enabled, yet pull society back to feudalism and the "Dark Ages".
I have the knee-jerk response here of a medievalist. Having spent my life studying and teaching late classical and medieval literature and history, especially the history of everyday life, I'm pretty sure Pinker, not a historian, is wrong. (He's certainly dead wrong about how we're less violent now--I'm astonished he got away with that fairy tale!) One thing that would good for folks in Texas and Wyoming etc if we went back to the Middle Ages in Europe is that abortion was legal through about the 5th month....
Thanks for forgiving the conglomeration of them! But I don't think "they'll just find another one." I know some of these people. They didn't have one before. No one outside ancient Palestine has been so successfully promoted as the Messiah before--this was our first real Social Media President--and whatever he may be in terms of Trumpian ideas and "values," DeSantis is no Messiah figure.
My little thought for this Sunday morning: a man addressed Jesus as "Good Teacher." Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good? Only G-d is good." I'm certain that Jesus wanted nothing to do with the Messiah stuff.
The thing is, Trump diehards will never hear the truth emerging because they only listen to Fox News and Breitbart. During the two sets of impeachment hearings, my husband would watch segments of the evening “personalities” coverage. You never heard the articulate and learned testimony of the State Department personnel, or Alexander Vindeman. They didn’t broadcast it, just gave false statements about what was said and outraged, inaccurate defenses for former President Trump. You could hear some straight news reporting on the midday newscasts from the real journalists like Chris Wallace, but one by one, they all left in disgust. It was the same for the second impeachment hearings. They didn’t air testimony. Whoever heard of an impeachment investigation where the Senate called no witnesses?
Except for precious little, the film footage and extensive testimony of the January 6th committee hearings were not shown on Fox Entertainment. Bits like Carlson’s latest fantasy were shown, giving the impression it was mostly a peaceful crowd. The revelations from the Dominion voting machine suit with texts, emails and testimonies from Murdoch, Carlson, Hannity and Inagram have not been seen by Fox viewers because they refuse to watch anything else!
I send articles from the NYT to my dad, who was hijacked ages ago by faux nooz. I’m sure he considers factual reporting of legal proceedings the same way I view opinion pieces in the WSJ, but I try.
My parents passed away 10 years ago at age 90. They both had been republicans for much of their lives and I was eternally grateful they never saw the shit show that was and is trump and the republican party that exists today.
The first time my father "pulled the lever" for Obama (my mother was already on board), I told my brothers either "hell froze over" or "pigs could fly". :) Never-the-less, the last few years of their lives, my mother would call me daily -(groan!) to say my father was watching that G-D Hannity and she couldn't stand it! Full disclosure - he did have dementia by then.
The last few years, she moved to being more liberal in her thinking and was not always filtered as she let some in her circle know how set in their ways, intolerant and ignorant they were! It took her 85+ years to find her own voice and by God she was not going to shut up!! I like to think she got some of that from me :)
)- ; Ditto sistuh. Mom was a Kennedy closet democrat at heart; Dad an Eisenhower r., who became hostage to the 'Moral Majority' propaganda; so sadly too, as he was Korean war veteran Marine, who all his living days and lives on in my memory, as the embodiment of what real integrity and honor 'look like' as they walk the earth humbly with every living step.
I think facts play a part in it, they have a "nasty" habit of intruding and just won't go away. I think that part of the "own weight". The night Trump was elected a lot of my neighbors let off fireworks, but after a while the novelty seems to be wearing off, and what does anyone have to show for it except the .01%?
I agree - lies are much tougher to manage than truth. Ask any lying teenager. That is why I plead to all Democratic leaders to keep honest, keep clean, but be tough on the liars and cheats. Jamie Raskin comes to mind. However, there are skillful and devious liars out there. The climate denier movement is still strong. The election denier movement is too. And we have a large portion of our electorate who are still so gullible and fed up that they will glom onto what they like. Trump - part of me wants him to succeed until he doesn't. Let him destroy his competition during the primaries, just like 2016 only hopefully under several indictments and/or convictions. Then get destroyed in the general. But oh man - talk about playing Russian roulette! The other part of me wants him to go down in flames ASAP. He is just poisonous to our country's politics. Nothing good can come of it.
He is poisonous, and yet he is more a symptom of the post Nixon Republican Big Lie Strategy than it's cause. He is just more extreme to support it, and his minions and patrons rush to shield and support it, even once-target Pence who is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Yes, yes, yes. Be Truthful, be Responsible, be Fair, be emotionally "Adult", but give "em the Hell they deserve. Democrats need to be the adult in the room, and not let miscreants get away with it. The more they get away with, the worse they become.
I agree: this all began with Tricky Dick. Back in the day, sigh, when you could scare a crooked President into resigning instead of starting an insurrection.
It looks like the answer, unsurprisingly, is education. Why do think Republicans are so against educational debt relief and for religion based.charter schools?
I have been waiting to read that someone else thinks that education is the answer! Thank you. I couldn’t open the link to The Atlantic article because I don’t have a subscription.
I think the right wing extremists see that too. That’s why they’re doing everything they can to prevent the education of facts by hiding the facts via actions like banning books.
Last big book burning I know of was the Reichstag fire (?1933), which tells all except the story I wrote earlier about my Professor of medieval French who bragged that he got his PhD from Harvard “while it was still a university,” ie, the year before the business school was inaugurated.
The uneducated are easier to rule. Republicans have been starving public schools for years. And now they are demanding that history books be rewritten to make them look better.
Oh man, in the list of massive changes to America that need to be done yesterday to save even shreds of the American Dream, education is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Education is called upon in America to wear several hats. For the most part, it’s juggling too much, poorly. On top of that it has become a tool of the obstructionist bloc in America, thus subject to relentless subversion.
First of all, education must... well, educate. The great revolution in education in the Sixties is now largely a mere historical memory.
Teaching children as honestly as the known record allows? Gone in so much of the country.
Teaching children from the best sources available, regardless of age, gender, race? Gone if the writer offends some of our poor modern sensibilities, which must not be challenged. Thus the opportunity of teaching human striving towards these sensibilities is lost. We can learn from the most brilliant writers who held the stereotypes of their time in two ways. Instead we choose none by cleaving them from the curriculum.
Teaching children critical thinking. Gone, partly for fear of offending one side or another and partly because our current teachers are not *themselves* well educated enough to do this sensitively. Because the system has been steadily degrading for two generations minimum, rot runs riot.
And lest you think otherwise, I take my hat to these uneducated teachers. Most labor heroically and with love. They just don’t have the depth of education to light the spark.
Teaching to the standardized test? Very much present. A cruel and ultimately pointless game, if education is reformed.
Making teachers’ education more rigorous and then paying them proportionately more? A consummation devoutly to be wished for.
Adjusting the relationship between parents and teachers. Needed. In some schools teachers are surrogate parents, taking on responsibilities that have been abdicated. In some schools parents tremble in fear of parents, who ruthlessly take a hatchet to them to advance their own, often demented, goals.
The famous adage of teachers bears repeating here: Everybody thinks they can teach because they went to school. How many people storm firehalls?
All of this costs money. Make it an infrastructure project spread over ten years and do it.
It is an axiom that college-educated voters do not vote for the Trumps of the world. Let’s have more of them.
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric. I get that you strive to be brief and concise; alas, lest meaning be only insinuated where expansion, space, and agency compete. I feel you, and will happily seek out your space. One thing expansion worthy is quality and effective education, which often gets lost in the hustle. I have lived experiences that I might be tempted to share in your space. Thanks again ~
You got it James. Age old. An uneducated populace is much less likely to see through the wrongdoings and all-around skullduggery of a non-representative leadership of any kind that wants to stay in power or get it. Be it a monarchy, a dictatorship, or an outsized religious institution.
James, education opens the door. You are exactly right. Exactly. In American sub-cultures isolation is key to creating and maintaining an intact body politic. One of the most effective methods of creating isolation is to limit education. A good example is to keep English a second language not spoken or learned in early childhood. Also prevalent is to curtail the process to the eighth grade. If you can include a religious philosophy that exists exclusively then you have really put the lid on the the container. Geographic or communal isolation caps the process. When combined these phenomena turn out the lights. Teach your children well.
Absolutely. That being said, I think our system needs to evolve to focus more on asking questions and being engaged than being "smart" and knowing the answers. Rewarding for knowing the answers has been causing problems where insecurity and lack of confidence are not addressed and knowing answers becomes an issue of its own--status, bullying, feral competition, etc. We need kinder, more empathetic intelligent, thoughtful citizens not smarty pants bullies knocking others down to get theirs.
This is a brilliant comment. Thank you Kim. Competition is so in the American bloodstream though. This will be a hard pull.
I spent my life in education, especially with gifted kids. They most often have deeply low self-esteem and dread competition - even in their area of particular acuity.
The hardest competitors come from (in my Canadian experience) the “best” private schools where parents fight to get their kids in. And then push the hell out of them. The biggest competitors are the smart, not gifted, kids. Most elite private schools do not accept gifted kids unless they are low maintenance - not a trait of the gifted who are often afflicted with two exceptionalities and also don’t fit in.
I once interviewed a parent whose best friend was a school nurse at two “elite” private schools for girls. She told me the rate of anorexia was 40-50%. I didn’t believe it. The school I ran, admittedly smaller, had 1 kid we worried about for anorexia (my school was for gifted only).
You won’t believe the next part. Two months later the Head of Admissions for one of the 2 girls’ schools noted above, visited me to see if I would take her Grade 8 daughter in. Nice irony.
I told her what I’d heard about anorexia at her school and the others - 40-50%. Of course I said that it couldn’t possibly be true, so it wouldn’t sound like an accusation.
She paused, clearly doing a mental inventory. Then she replied, “Yes, that would be about right”.
I had many more eye-opening experiences like that.
Thank you for writing Eric. And thank you for supporting my thinking.What an interesting and relevant perspective you have. I must say Admire that head who wanted the right thing for her daughter but wonder what her challenges were (in heading her school) that her school couldn't be that school. As a woman, it does not surprise me one iota that girls have anorexia or some eating adorer at that rate. Not one bit. And recently a study said that girls start being concerned about their weight at age 6. I myself was obsessed with food through high school and college and later on I realized how much energy and time I could have been doing great things. That's the crime, that girls are not free to be who they are and free to explore what they want to do and what they love. Of course, having the right answer is implicated in much of our current political discourse: the polarization, the media people choose to watch/listen to. Do they want to learn or do they want to be right? An interesting discussion. Thanks so much and take care. Will look up your Substack pieces.
Thanks. I’m just hitting the first two decades of this century now - when all the chickens have come to roost. It’s been a perfect storm, building in all its different facets since the Fifties. So I’ve covered it chronologically.
Anyways…the problems with girls and body image is hopelessly sad. It sounds like you managed to escape the trap in a relatively short time. I hope it wasn’t too much of a nightmare for you.
I have a daughter and 5 granddaughters. The strongest belief I have in regard to this is that sports are immensely good for girls. They build a can-do attitude and they focus most who play away from their looks and weight as being the dominant factors in their worth. Obviously much more goes into it than just playing sports - but I think it’s kind of a tentpole thing. I’ve seen a ton of girls avoid the worst of teenage angst by being deeply into sports.
Caveat: Girls can be spectacularly harmed by coaches, male and female, who coach to enjoy power over girls. I coached both genders. Boys - you had to break them down and then build them up. They’re often very cocky and know it all. Girls don’t come in with that ego. You can coach straightaway. However the control the coach has is too intoxicating to some and they abuse it in vile ways.
One final point.
Having said that about girls, it’s boys who are in deep trouble societally. They are going off the cliff like lemmings. It is scary to see how easily turned off education they are. Girls are blowing them out of the water in university and then in the job market. There’s a direct correlation to computers there, as well as the changing nature of work.
All kids have it so rough now, but in extraordinarily different ways. I do not envy today’s parents.
To 'push' responsibility and cost *off to 'others'. I've long called out the gop as being the party 'leadership' of as a prime policy exemplary of "kick shit down the road."
Nothing practical Joanne. Publish and broadcast only the facts as dispassionately as possible for my part. And hope lessons have been learned and indelibly imprinted on all concerned, including me; a blessed democracy if we are to keep it, is Not a spectator sport.
Yes, that’s what’s made me a phone banker and postcard-writer. That’s the work of Get Out the Vote efforts. Which have expanded the electorate in the last 10 years. We have to keep it up!
I'm writing letters via Vote Forward to Wisconsin voters for their April 4th election. Deadline is March 28th, still time to sign up to write or to write more letters. Please help!
Thank you Mary. Yes , we have to keep it up. Our County Democratic Women's Club has been doing these 2 things, plus doorknocking and lots of outreach events like our children's Egg Hunt in April, exhibiting at the Green Expo in May, the NAACP Day at the Farm in June, etc., for 4 years now. It's a lot of work by dedicated volunteers!
Yes the millions of hours we all put into it and still do. I heard the first warning bell of the Biden presidency ring when Biden, in his litany of thanks after his election was declared, didn’t think to mention us. What a missed opportunity—thousands of those people were under 25 and new to politics, and had had to swallow bitter disappointment at the losses of their primary choices, Sanders and Warren, and were still out there in every kind of weather or home on the phones for him and his party…
Tax the crap out of them. Claw back the billions stolen by the Oligarchs and Oiligarchs. The Earth and its resources belong to the people as a whole - not just big corporations.
I'd love to, but it's the same problem we have getting serious about passing drunk driving laws. It's nearly impossible to get legislators to pass laws against crimes they are routinely committing.
I have always said that DUII is everyman's crime. Oregon has some pretty stringent DUII laws (Currently a minimum blood alcohol content--BA-- of .08%, use of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) when other substances than alcohol impact driving, mandatory driver's license suspensions (no acronym for those) and Implied Consent (that when receiving your drivers' license, you consent in advance to perform field sobriety tests (FST) and submit to an Intoxylizer for measuring the alcohol content of the driver's blood. Where DUI investigations bog down is with the case law that makes determinations on just how the "request" to submit to tests is phrased, and other minutiae that comes down about 2 or 3 times a year.
Same protocols in VT. Having DRE's making judgement calls lack scientific basis, and therefore can be used disproportionately against minorities, and current sparse statistics indicate this is what's happening.
But the main problem isn't administrative or even procedural details; current penalties and sentencing precedents result in 4th, 5th, 6th offenses with some regularity. In many European countries, this doesn't happen; 1st offense gets license suspended for several years, second offense means permanent revocation. As with their more sensible gun laws, it results in greater respect for the laws, and a more civilized culture around drinking and impaired driving. My son, who's a cop, confirms the broad discretion police officers have, and the relatively low priority this work has in urban PDs.
... And so embodied and practiced in places like Alaska, where it's (for now) settled law that plunderers are required to share the profit they 'would not' share otherwise. Watch out for the challenges to continue anew attacking those laws... by guess who. *edit in > My personal heart and soul bleeds for places like Appalachia who suffer still from the consequences of the rapacious extractors ! There's far more to that conviction that I'll belay here; However, the origin of my convictions in that regard are real and lived as I'm forever a 'Son' of Appalachia to begin with. Proud... and sad.
And I’m a daughter of those same mountains. But my area is being forever raped by the tourist and all that a continual, turnover of those who treat my loved environment as their playground from which they will depart after their Air B&B week or two runs out. I realize our damage is slower than the god awful mountaintop mining that made me sick when I had to fly over the extensive environmental rape of an historic mountain range. Unforgivable that those who should have been looking out for the environment and all who lived in it sold it all out to the highest nasty coal bidder.
It breaks my heart. They don’t realize what they’ve done. They can’t possibly know and continue to do it. How often these days the fox is put in charge of the henhouse.
Believe when I say, I 'feel' that pain. The hint in your comment tells me just where you live, I suppose anyway. Might it be a 'tell' for you if I told you my uncle was a builder of that bridge from start to finish, and has shared a vast library of photo's, etc., of the entire build with me ?
The removing of oil from deep in the ground, blasting, gouging, poisoning, injecting, razing off mountain tops, using the rivers and oceans as dump sights, filling the air with particles of poison, all that and more. It’s as though the connection between The Earth Mother and her multifarious offspring is not noticed not respected or not even realized. This is what I call un-woke.
Jerry, agreed. Maybe he will, maybe not. The finer point is that bag of bones that is nearing his end anyway isn't the problem. It's his MAGA clones , in office and out. I'm more concerned about a MAGA gun toting idiot that lives in my village than I will ever care about Donald Trump.
I spent two hours today with several dozen other volunteers from Indivisible, St. Paul writing postcards to Wisconsin voters in support of Judge Janet Protasiewicz (Pro ta SAY wits) for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Everyone who said they would come, who had texted back after a call for volunteers, showed. That's 100 percent attendance- never happens. The organizers were honestly a bit gobsmacked by the turnout. Several more showed up that hadn't RSVP'd. They found more chairs and table and put them to work.
A young African American man, who'd seen the signs for the postcard writing in the hallway (we were in a public library in St. Paul) came to the room for more information. The Indivisible staff/volunteers happily answered his questions and invited his participation. The organizer for Indivisible for our region (MN, WI, MI, IN) mentioned in his remarks that he was heading to Wisconsin on Sunday to do door-knocking in support of Protasiewicz and would welcome other volunteers. He reassured people that they could come and just listen and learn how to answer questions. Several folks said yes. Love it!
In short, I spent several glorious hours today surrounded by like-minded defenders of democracy, doing their small part to help get out the vote for our good neighbors to the east. As we wrote, the folks at my table talked about the incredible speed that MN's trifecta D government has passed good legislation - including my personal favorite, a 100% renewable energy standard by 2040. By the way, that policy was written more than 15 years ago by several staff at one of my former employers. Just waiting for the right moment to introduce it and move it through. We vote for a trifecta blue government and boom. Done! Think about the possibilities!
Whatever you do, whatever your response may be to Trump's continued efforts to undermine democracy and incite violence, please consider doing something active in support of democracy. Jessica Cravens writes a 6 day a week newsletter here on Substack with daily ideas of what to do called Chop Wood, Carry Water. more info here: https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com
Indivisible is all about grassroots actions across the country - if today's meeting was any indication, they are efficient, effective, knowledgeable and getting it done. Here's the link: https://www.indivisible.org/ If you are active with other effective organizations, start a thread below. Please.
The Republican MAGA judge in Wisconsin has recently received $20M in donations, much of the from the Uihlein Family - ultra conservative billionaire family whose last-minute contribution to the last Supreme Court election in Wisconsin moved the needle on a close race - and the Republican won. We have work to do. And that's just one election in one state. Lots more out there!
By all means come here and comment about Trump's shenanigans and how much you hope for an indictment. But then please consider doing something, anything, actively in support of our precious democracy.
Yes, I do have popcorn and beer in reserve. If it happens, I can't pretend I won't be cheering and doing a happy dance and making snarky jokes with my friends. But my mom always said, "when you pray, move your feet," a quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. On it, mom.
Such a wonderfully detailed, encouraging, and wise post, Sheila. I can feel the energy of that session radiating from MN to here in NC. Yes, action like you report makes the difference; it must! I am grateful to have had a mom who was similarly motivating.
Sheila, so happy to see your post about positive actions and grassroots organizations; I too write postcards when I can (150 for the WI SC race!) I just listened to a podcast with the founder of Indivisible as a guest, and it was riveting. Carry on!
I just googled Indivisible Montana and they have a Facebook page. So if you are on Facebook, check it out. (The search term was Indivisible Montana)
Otherwise, go to the Indivisible link I posted and check out their list of actions in your area - you should be able to search with your zip code. Also, I learned of the Indivisible St. Paul meeting from Field Team 6’s weekly Mobilize email. FT6 coordinates with other groups to get more people actively helping. So you can also sign up to receive emails from Field team 6 that will show you local/regional actions you can take. Good luck and thank you!
You can also go to Mobilize and get a list of actions in or related to your area/zip code. I know you just got a terrible abortion law passed in MN (so sorry) so there will be more action. And RideShare2Vote may have spread to MN by now—who do the often crucial work of providing free rides to the polls and back, including to people in wheelchairs.
No no bad abortion law here in Minnesota, Mary. Not sure which terrible state law you are referring to but it isn’t here. We have Democrats in charge of the Senate, House and Governor.ship. We are ready and able to protect reproductive rights in this state, including the right to an abortion.
Yes, I just looked that up to double-check this morning. I’m always (weirdly) mixing up Wyoming and Montana, even though I’ve been to the gorgeous state of Montana, where I had friends, and experienced bliss in the midst of Missoula, letting the river rush my post-siesta body for a cool mile every evening…. My apologies!
Apologies are totally not necessary Mary. I have friends in Missoula (perhaps that's wishful on my part), but none the less, I saw them, they saw and heard me to my ever delight and gratitude - just wonderful souls ! I remain in touch with them, another thing on my daily gratitude list. Anyway, I sense the hopeless romantic in you, and perhaps even a writer who may someday delight others.
Sheila, for my part I choose to term that conceptually as "reproductive privacy and self determination" , unalienable / inalieanable rights. 'Every woman' / whole human being has / owns (if they claim/ own them) certain unalienable (born and exist with) rights of self determination. To carry, nuture, carry to term a medical condition inseparable from that whole person, is first and foremost, a privacy intrusion on said whole person. So very much can and does go horribly and tragically wrong with 'potential' successful. and legally 'private' condition, it's a damn miracle when the condition is successful. The best 'meme' I own and display again and again since the beginning to this misguided debate decades ago, is the image of an elephant wearing a blanket / sign of "GOP" with it's trunk up under the skirt of a random 'any woman' - succinctly illustrating my position - "it's simply none of anyone else's damn business" including me, and the wanna' be rights thieves of the gop, religious zealots, etc., ad nauseum ! (rant over... 😂)
😂 On second thought.. no it's not over. Somehow, I have an innate ability to articulate my thoughts, perspectives, and distillations; I don't know the how or why, it just is what is. Any and all here *of good conscience who can get their minds around this particular distillation have my express permission and invitation to borrow and use it if you find it useful in your quest to inform and suggest to any and all others. I've found it comfortable, compact, and useful and would have been one of the very first 'planks' if you will, had I chose to challenge for the vacant U.S. Ohio Senate seat vacated by worn out perhaps Ohio U.S. senator Rob Portman. First and honest conviction revelation I would have made for it's sheer 'fundamental importance' for the nation we believe we are and the citizens of Ohio who ascribe and legally subscribed to. That was my humble plan and some more - but that first of all without shame. Now, that clearly stated, I don't like laying any claim / right to carry on at greater length on our dear professors platform, unless of course asked *or permitted by her to shed more on her space. The thought I'd love (somewhat) to share is a personally lived example in our *personal lives that perfectly illustrates the lived experience that informs my conviction regards self privacy/ self determination of and by the whole person - a woman who is my spouse that I got to share in.
Thank you Sheila, have forwarded to our County Democratic Women's Club to incorporate it into our work, such good info for us and an inspiration too. So appreciate your sharing all this! So helpful!
I have a new packet of postcards for Wisconsin from Workers Circle waiting to be written up and decorated in different colors. And am phonebanking on Mondays with Swing Blue Alliance. We only call likely Democrats so there’s very little friction—and often gratitude.
It’s a lot easier than it used to be now we have better lists and a better, more sociable way of talking with people. We do a lot of listening—which has been enlightening.
Thank you Heather for again weaving the disparate bits into a whole. At first I had thought Bragg was ill-advised to go after the Stormy Daniels indictments first but now I see the logic. Trump will swing with full force at anything threatening and this exposes him for the grifter he is in the smallest and pettiest of his many crimes. It is one where it is most likely to start peeling off adherents who have to ask themselves if jail is worth it to protect the emperor's naked vanity.
The Ali Alexander quote is so perfect. Thre rats are leaving the sinking ship...
But hopefulness aside the Russian propaganda machine is still hard at work and it is not clear what can be done to weed it of social media. It remains one of the bigger threats to national security.
So far, all we know is the former guy will be charged with paying off Stormy Daniels, a misdemeanor. But I don’t believe DA Bragg would go to all this trouble over a misdemeanor, so what is the possible second crime that will kick the charge up to a criminal case? That’s the news I’m waiting for.
As I understand it, the beef revolves around the payoff but could have several components, depending on where DA Bragg wants to take the case. The initial component isn't that the payoff, however tawdry a thing that may be, was made but that it was misrepresented on the former guy's books as payments to Cohen for legal services. That would be falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor in NY state. Another component, which could elevate the matter to a felony, could be that the initial crime was committed to conceal another crime. Still another component could be a charge of having made an illegal campaign contribution, a violation of federal election law, the theory being that the former guy's campaign benefited by keeping information hidden that would have been damaging to his election chances had the voting public known about it. Some legal experts are saying that it could be quite tricky to tie a federal case to a state case; others seem to think there's a pretty navigable path in this case. I don't know (am not a lawyer) but I'm pretty darn sure Bragg is well aware of the advice that if you're going to go after the king, you had better not miss, and has prepared accordingly.
Exactly what or how many charges will Bragg bring? What does he think he can prove in court? What other evidence does he have? No way to know for sure -- grand jury proceedings are famously secret -- until or unless an indictment is handed down. The drums along the Hudson seem to be saying that's going to happen any day now.
You also need to look at the amount of the payoff, $130,000, which could easily, under any of the described actions you have shown, elevate this to a felony case, be it state or federal.
It’s like if you walk into a store and steal, shoplift, items. It all bound down to the cost of the items as to the charges. Petty theft, or grand theft.
Everyone knows about Stormy, I won't be surprised if this isn't about a pattern of behavior much larger than her. Has anyone ever been sent to jail or ruined financially because of a campaign violation? I don't think NY, NYC, or the feds would spend millions just to tweek his nose . I am very curious about GA ever since the juror basically said "if the people knew what I know there would be no political division." That goes back to the immense power of the truth over the false impressions spewed by foxy personalities. I'm not getting my hopes up but I eagerly await the trial.
Well, if TFG wants a defensive force to gather around Mar-A-Lago, I hope he's planning to feed them, house them, and let them use his bathrooms. It could be a long stay.
Do you think he will have some of his fellows as cell mates? What about the secret service protecting him in jail? I hope the people he has called to action realize that they could share a cell or cell block with him.
I’ve got some toilet paper with his picture on each square, with his mouth in an O ready to receive the next offering, that I will be happy to lend to the need for toilet paper.
# me too ! My adult daughter's bought me a roll as a 'gag gift', all knowing my contempt that I never hide. To borrow a phrase from Kevin Hart "It's what I do"! And that's how I roll in real life.. *edit in > 😂
If the attorneys in NY know the indictment is imminent, then putting out that he’s going to be arrested on Tuesday makes no sense. Contrary to everyone’s belief , I think Trump can be considered a ‘flight risk’. He has a lot of friends worldwide, he has a passport, jet, and he’s displayed that he’s not afraid to do anything to escape prosecution. That’s from years gone past. So, the smart move would be to obtain the secret indictment, then knock on his Mar-a-Lago door about 3am some morning when he’s not expecting it. And yes, I’d parade his sorry ass out in handcuffs.
I disagree; law enforcement and DOJ need be well prepared to protect, yet - yet let allow them to show their azz's for all to see. Rope enough to hang themselves - again !
Dream on. Remember when the first daughter wouldn’t let her Secret Service protection use her Georgetown bathroom facilities. This family is not noted for their generous spirit.
Really. I will believe this coming indictment when I see it. Trump never does anything without a calculation of how it will benefit himself. That includes an outcry that he is about to be arrested. He's looking for money, and notoriety, and victimhood. A good setup for his upcoming Texas rally. I do however want to see the indictments fall post haste. The time has come.
Ironically--and serendipitously--when your newsletter arrived, I had just finished viewing a wonderful documentary about a little town in Connecticut (population 1300) that in 1937, refused to allow the German American Bund to build one of their (25 already existed across the US ) Hitler Youth-style training camps in Southbury. "YANKEE Home of the Brave: When Southbury Said NO to the Nazis," shows what Americans can do when faced with fascism. (Reminds me of the women of Rosenstrasse.) Part of the Sousa Mendes Foundation's Sunday Speaker series, this documentary and the panel discussion on 3/19/23 can be accessed via registration at: http://sousamendesfoundation.org/events/ . Here is a Youtube link to the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04KXvT40yIE
The town was able to form a consensus because their church services were almost community meetings, and they all knew each other, or knew of each other. They had strong voices in their midst, well-educated in the ideas of democracy. “The Nazis are stronger than your politics.”
What perfect timing!
I wish Merrick Garland would watch this, and pay heed.
You're so welcome. So true about why they succeeded. Is democracy even possible for large, diverse groups of people who have mutually exclusive goals? Does "for/by/of the people" only work with small, well-educated, homogeneous groups?
Ahhh Joanne.. three cheers for sweet serendipity ! At my best that I strive for, I learn the most from serendipity ! A calm, discerning state of mind can be such a blessed spring of revelations I've found.
One wonders if they will come out and defend their homes like Mark and Patricia McCloskey did in St. Louis. I always thought they looked like a joke; he in his pink polo shirt, brandishing what appears to be a semi-automatic rifle. She barefoot and towering over him, holding her silver pistol like it was a cigarette lighter from back in the day.
The McCloskeys ARE a joke and a disgrace to those of us who live here in St. Louis, but we have an entire Legislature in Jefferson City who are just like them--just not as wealthy 🤬.
This is a rerun in many ways. Especially the immediate "fundraising appeal." TFG's past fundraising has amounted to grift. TFG is the victim of the deep state. TFG will save his supporters and the country, if only they save him first. Will there be violence? Probably at least some skirmishes. NYPD is probably not too happy with this.
Several police agencies are not happy, NYPD, as you noted; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); "coordination" with the Secret Service; Court security personnel & likely others.
As Homer Bannon told Hud, “Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.” Unfortunately, 74 million Americans admire Trump and will, even after he is indicted, if he is indicted, and after he is convicted, if he is convicted. We are stuck with the 74 million, even if by some miracle we manage to wrest the government out of the hands of their obstructive representatives. That affects the look of the country. It isn’t a good look, but it’s the look we have.
He's going to be indicted many times. Next up after NY is Georgia by the end of March, and then many federal charges stemming from Jan. 6 and stolen classified documents.
Trump is toast. And knows it. His supporters aren't going to protect him. The federal prosecution of the Jan. 6 insurrections is a huge deterrent.
Michael - my heart is with you all the way. But I am going to challenge you. I think there is something delaying indictments, perhaps all of them. I do not know exactly what that something is, but increasingly I am starting to believe there is something. I would put money on there NOT being an indictment next week, nor in March. Perhaps not in 2023.
My ever hope I cling to, is the supposition that 'this is how justice in the real world works' - we've all no doubt heard the saw (hopeful truth) that "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine" - variously attributed in variations by Sun Tzu, Empericus, and Longfellow.
This is what has always concerned me. Trump is not just a cause but a symptom. There are so many millions of Americans who were longing to come out of the woodwork either to live out their racism, defend their deadly gun culture, enforce their backward religious beliefs on everybody else or just not pay their fair share of taxes. This has been a deadly mix and for me, a teacher. I ask myself how are we ever going to be able to teach these people the values of the Enlightenment upon which our constitution was based. Happy for any suggestions.
They've always been with us . . . always festering while they waited for their mess-iah to legitimize, galvanize and encourage their weaponization. They can't be taught. We have to win over the "Independents," the disaffected, and the new voters.
On the contrary, I think they HAVE been taught to weaponize. This is exactly the danger of Fox News peddling lies on the daily. Perhaps a daily dose of the truth might chip away at the rotten foundations of their foul edifice. Or at least drive them back into its woodwork.
My comment, "They can't be taught" was specifically in response to a previous comment ". . . how are we ever going to be able to teach these people the values of the Enlightenment upon which our constitution was based?" This is not to assert that "they" can't be taught about hate and weaponizing. As Rodgers and Hammerstein taught us, when it comes to hate, you have to be carefully taught."
My question, as a teacher, is how can we reach at least some of these people. I think that it’s gotta be one on one. Maybe this is happening on a small scale but no one reports on it.
True Believers can't be reached. The others can be "reached" via non-political affinity groups where they can feel comfortable and respected while being exposed to different perspectives. Just as in a classroom, adults can open up to new ways of perceiving and thinking when they feel supported.
Yes, this can work for people who have been misled/manipulated because of their own personal weaknesses/issues. Unfortunately, not all of them have been "programmed." For too many of them, it's who they actually are. They inhabit a different reality.
I truly don't think so. Some will. Not many. They did that once already and almost 1000 of them were arrested and charged--and 350 more suspects remain on the FBI's list. Many have recanted or actually repented. Many are in jail. It isn't fun anymore.
Unfortunately, in Las Vegas, which is a stronghold of very wealthy right-wingers whose only commitment is to their perception of what is necessary to protect their wealth, it's never been about "fun." They'd never tarnish themselves with conspicuous tacky vigilantism.
Have you met all 74 million? Well, neither have I! We're both speculating. Me because I'm from Ohio, and have spent a fair amount of time in rural America, including in the last 5 years. I've met many Trump voters (and more recently some DeSantis fans in Florida), but no big enthusiasts. And really, the proportion of Trump warriors arrested and charged already, with more to come, must be a bit sobering.
The wealthy, powerful Republicans are not renegades. They are sophisticated, organized, professionals and philanthropists who are not interested in "facts."
True, but they’re powerless without the 74 million. The 74 milllion are fhe problem. Unsolvable as far as I can tell, but that’s never kept me from trying.
I lived in Kansas for 18 years and in Oklahoma, which is substantially worse, for 21 years. I think I’ve paid my dues and met and talked to enough of the 74 million to speculate with some confidence. But it’s speculation, nevertheless. You’re right about that.
I tried to post an answer to your TCM question, but it seems to have gone into the bit bucket, where maybe it belongs but I’m reviving it anyway. I saw part of Hud tonight. Not that line, but that’s the line I remember the movie for. That and the cinematography.
So hard to reconcile gorgeous Paul with being a villain. Cognitive dissonance is so uncomfortable. Wonder if any right-wingers are experiencing cognitive dissonance . . .
Also, I think Paul Newman was a good man. He found that character somewhere inside, though, and brought it to life. Good for him. Dissonance has its benefits. Comfort is overrated.
Wonderful link. Pictures do speak louder than words, especially a real-world Cartoon like Trump world. I need to get a fresh cup of coffee now. (now where are the paper towels?) Where's the Bailey's?
When indicted in New York, Feds and New York law enforcement are not involved in arrest. Instead, state of New York sends a request for arrest and extradition to the Governor of Florida, which allows Florida law enforcement to arrest, state prosecutors to represent New York and have a bail and extradition hearing in state Florida courts. Ha ha Gov. Ron DeSantos will have some touchy issues to deal with if Trump does not fly to New York and surrender, which he will do to avoid being held prior to trial. BTW 'Stop the Steal' clown Ali Alexander saying he is retired but will 'pray for Trump', LOL like he prays for gun violence victims, it's a classic toss 'under the bus'.
This story is my gift from the NY TIMES about how Ben Barnes and John B Connally negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran in 1981, AFTER Reagan was in office. Cheaters from beginning to end:
Thank you for the link. An interesting story. I always thought there was some skulduggery going on in the Reagan campaign; this is as good an explanation as we're going to get. One more bit of evidence that I was right in my opinion that the last Republican to hold the Oval office with honor was Dwight David Eisenhower.
I had been hearing the rumor for years. The Republican Party sold it's soul to the Devil with Reagan. Nixon's treachery had not been party-wide, and even Nixon had some seeming genuine concern for the general welfare, especially on the environment. The lesson Republicans took from Nixon's disgrace was to lie without shame and never ever admit a fault. Reagan set the tone for Trump.
We need @ least a 2 party system but healthy ones. I listened to the Lincoln project during the T years. There was a woman who was/is politically active in the NEern states. She has a reasonable approach even re women's rights. Will people like Michael Steele & Conway & some others step up?
Democracy can thrive on disagreement, even intense controversy when the preponderance of citizens negotiate in good faith. It's the narcissistic delusion of inherent superiority (racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, culturally pure nationalism, religious superiority, and just plain extreme narcissism, along seductive urge to cheat, to trump decency because of that superiority, that is the bane of the democratic process. It's easy to spot except when you are doing it, and I expect we all do at times, but some learn to tame it. Absolute power in the hands of anyone tends to corrupt absolutely, even from a starting point of "good intentions".
Science can inform everything, although science alone cannot solve everything. Notably , even though people are people, everything in science is open (at least eventually) to revision if observable and repeatable evidence supports the change. Wolfgang Pauli was a Nobel winning physicist who reportedly did not suffer fools gladly, but was keen to get it right.
“There will be no heavy duties,” Wolfgang Pauli told the physicist who was to serve as his assistant. “Your job is, every time I say something, contradict me with the strongest arguments.” - Barbara Lovett Cline, quoted in Mad About Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities
Agnew was a crime, but Nixon's abuses of power, although intolerable, was mild compared to what followed with Reagan, and there were enough decent Republicans in Nixon's reign to refuse corrupt orders, to demand that Nixon bow out. The Reagan organization was more like tightly regimented organized crime. The JaneDough56 citation of the NYT article above is vivid illustration of that.
Ike tolerated too much corruption for reasons of realpolitik, but he had the "decency" Joe McCarthy lacked:
"The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
It is the Joe McCarthy playbook the "GOP" has embraced fully today.
Sorry I didn't see this before I posted something this morning. I find it beyond annoying that Ben Barnes sat on this story for 43 years. So many people were lined up waiting for a payday from Reagan, and we still haven't recovered.
I think the secret was who did it and when and how it was done. That Reagan supporters did it was pretty well known (at least suspected and accepted as highly probable). The timing of the release of the prisoners was dramatic even by Hollywood standards, don't you think? Interesting confession. Does it mean they committed a crime? Just like when the Republicans interfered with ending the Vietnam War? I can't recall what they did more recently, but wasn't there a more recent case of lobbying in opposition to US government policy? Did anyone end up paying a price?
Republicans also interfered with the beginning of the VN "war." Former Ford pres. and Machiavellian Sec of Defense, Robert McNamara lied to LBJ about the Gulf of Tonkin.
And if they don't get fed? I'd like to see them swarming over those pseudo-Spanish walls, splashing in the swimming pool, climbing up to the tower with their banners, banging on the wrought-iron doors, smashing windows to get in. And the rest.
Hmmm . . . a huge, well-funded and organized encampment outside of M-A-L --comprised of all levels of the community could be very powerful! Kind of like those tea-party encampments that totally transformed the R party.
Of course not but I think word is beginning to seep out into the atmosphere. I just heard today that the latest polls are showing a softening of support by some formerly bedazzled republicans who are now realizing how damaging tfg has been and is continuing to be to the R party. Like, duh. How thick does the fog of war have to be for one to be so totally oblivious to what’s happening to the party one claims to love?
The most disturbing part is not Trump’s lies & behavior - it’s that over 60% of Republican redcoat ‘citizens’ are duped enough to blindly believe and do his bidding. We will always have kooks - that 40M people by into the tripe is the truly scary thing.
That % is so high due to the financing behind what they hear on their local radios stations...& Fox propaganda. Driving through the south scanning stations is a revelation, folks are being insidiously programmed on their daily commutes.
The sooner we can get that dangerous, old wanker out of circulation, the better it will be for all of us so, until He’ll freezes, vote BLUE! We can’t afford the folly of electing another Republican for at least a generation. At this point, there is no trustworthy republican to be had. It’s sad but it’s the truth. We are still too close to the edge of the abyss to take chances.
You are so right! But it's worse than that. Most Republicans are more than untrustworthy. Many of them are nuts. Seriously, deranged. Here are amusing side notes about Ali Alexander (in Heather's last paragraph) who is "retired" (at age 38). Mr. "Stop the Steal".
From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Alexander#Social_media
"Alexander supported the gubernatorial campaign of Kari Lake in Arizona, claiming on his podcast that he could will Lake's victory "into existence". Alexander claimed on the same podcast episode that he was capable of time travel, saying that "time travel is easier than you think." Alexander further claimed that "the Jews time travel".[72] Lake would later lose the election to Katie Hobbs.[73]"
Among other inanities, Alexander claimed that Kamala Harris was "not black enough".
"In February 2021, on a Trovo livestream, Alexander began soliciting donations to build a "MAGA mega-city" and another planned community in South America called the "City of Alexander".[30][31] He also stated he would organize further Stop the Steal rallies and that he was creating "tools of creation and tools of chaos".[31] He also called for the abolition of the free press, labeling them "systems that control us," and challenged law enforcement to combat if they attempted to arrest him.[31]"
They are nuts and they are thieves: "Alexander was convicted of felony property theft and credit card abuse charges in 2007 and 2008."
Please, please let them form their own city in South America and all go there.
South America has had enough dictators.....they want to be free also. We need to work for freedom, train our younger ones about what it means to be free...to respect one another, young and old, brilliant and those simple minded ones like myself.....each of us has a role to play in the living out the ideal of a free world where everyone has a chance.
The role of good governance, knowledge of ways we can work together throughout our country and the world should be the goal. Of course there will always be barriers to the ideal of freedom but it is worthy of the best in us to strive for this goal.
When women are in power, perhaps? Men have had thousands of years to make it work; it's time for women to lead the way.
Here here ! My favorite thought borrowed - Ladies, please pardon my irreverent sense of humor as fact. > “Once you’ve seen a woman take off her bra without removing her shirt, it just makes more sense why they should be in charge of many more things.”
It’s a trick but oh so satisfying.
LOL!
You’ve got that so right! It’s long past time for this “shining beacon on the hill” to finally be progressive enough, smart enough to realize that as a rule, women are just as capable and as smart as men. Of course women can be as evil too;Carrie Lake for instance.
Dear Emily Pfaff, thank you for your reminder of how we can work together for the good of all. In focusing on the bad or abnormal behavior and speech of a loud few among us, we can overlook the beauty and intelligence, uniqueness and integrity of most of the people around us. Thank you.
You call it “simple-mindedness,” I call it wisdom.
AMEN
I was thinking the solution would be an island that was currently uninhabited, off South America or Australia, where we could deliver them without enough food but plenty of weapons. They could take care of their problem themselves.
We can make it into a survival experience made for television !! All the traitors on one island !! Who wants to watch !!
Yes! I’ve actually dreamt of this. We can watch their cut throat skills flourish trying to survive! And Fox Not News can run it 24/7 for all their fans enjoyment. It might actually be a great lesson in community and humility. Except no tropical islands allowed. Rather they have to experience harsh winters.
Antarctica, in summer, so they can anticipate the coming winter.
🤣🤣🤣
Second exile of Napoleon, but without cell phones, might be a good place.
The Philippines have over 900 islands, many of them at sea level.
An island in the Philippines would be awesome! Then they could experience Global Warming for themselves!
No tropical vacations for them! I would suggest Hershel Island except it’s too special of a place for such vermin.
! What a fine idea.
I agree with the “Build their own city”, however I wouldn’t wish that on South America. I say an uninhabited island somewhere FAR AWAY!
Or they can follow Elon to Mars.
What an excellent idea
Next damn place for all of them. Mars! By very slow spaceship!
Don't Look Up!
Ha ha
I'll supply the Kool-aid.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think they should move in with Putin. He's looking for as many functioning bodies as he can find - to send to fight and die in Ukraine
Right, and I hear there's room in Siberia for the lot of them.
I think we are stuck “them”. Why foist them on some unsuspecting country?
They need to go to a deserted island when no one else lives...can't destroy their lives. They can just all live together and fight for 'king of the hill'.
Ahh Libor, and anyone else clicking here, beware once. And, secondly, should you happen to 'journey' into Libor's "at-the-gates-of-hell" deserogertory... "beware" I would offer as advice, for a second time. As you should take heed..before.. reading/taking that journey to the edge of that lava pit. Having stood there recently, breathing tose noxious fumes, I believe I saw images of Ted Cruz, MTG, & Gym entwined with Boburr & Mace diving in and out of that molten lake while the family-of-trump floated nearby only to disappear in a flashing splash. I must admit, I had to have help getting back on my motorcycle and getting "the hell" out of there.
Not Iceland. It has good government, is very ecologically aware. In short, we shouldn’t wish autocratic climate change deniers on Iceland.
Oh god no! Not Madagascar! It’s way to dear an ecosystem for the likes of what we want to send into a preferred oblivion.
I’m a non-practicing Jew. Is that why I never received any time travel lessons?
😎
?Libor.., you need to get a new bicycle :))
Thank you Liz; good to see a Subtack Author recall an excellent example of ALI A's intent. Please resend your comment to the Content Moderation Department, if that Department actually exists. Regards, I am respectful of Your & HCR's work product.
Thank you. Love your 'Wild West Diversity'.
What about Liz?
Please remember and rewatch her love note to Reagan at the beginning of her Jan6 final speech. I was rooting for her up till then. Plus her father ! Never forget what he put us through.
When Mitt became governor, he said and did some good things but it was all for show. Republican’ts can’t change their spots 🐆👿🤮🤢💩
Lil bush, like mitt co-opted the Democratically legislature controlled in respective states by signing into law top priority legislation, in Mass it was healthcare bill, in Texas school reform. Unfortunately, lil bush used phony education stats from the Houston school district to ‘infect ‘ the No Child left behind act! Recall his Sec of Ed was the Superintendent of Schools from Houston!
Did not know that about Houston. Mitt was done after a couple years and spent the last 2 traveling the country to run for president. A man with no backbone. How can he even walk. Jimmy Carter gave us the Dept. Of Education. The media really did a job on him especially wapo. Reagan took his solar cells off the White House roof. Reagan-Bushes-donthecon. What a different world it would be if they never got to the White House. Whoops, almost forgot trickydick.
Keep in mind that 'Lil Bush' grandfather Sen Prescott Bush was the organizer of the attempted "White House Putsch" (aka "Business Coup") of 1933.
Sen Bush was the organizer of the wishes of the 1933 version of the Billionaire Class' desire to oust FDR almost before he was inaugurated in April 1933 by a semi-military organized putsch.
They liked Italy's Benito Mussolini and a newly emerged Austrian named Adolph better....
The Bush crime family has a long history including the Walker branch. But death star and his family take criminality to a new high. Both loved and love dictators.
Check out _Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years_, by Russ Baker.
The family has been hip deep in self-dealing and dirty deeds for generations.
That does sound well worth reading. Thank you.
I prefer "Bush lite" to Lil Bush. But I'm not going to be dogmatic about it.
Romney was a decent governor, though not as good as Charlie Baker, and he did vote for impeachment.
As for Liz Cheney, I think I missed the love note to Reagan, and the damage inflicted on our country by Reagan was huge. Things are almost never black and white, and Liz Cheney played a critical role on the Jan 6 committee, almost certainly knowingly sacrificing her political career in the process.
MAGAts are black, but outside of them, it's extremely rare for anything not to be black and white.
I suspect Liz Cheney made a strategic bet that the MAGA trend would self destruct, leaving her, Kinzinger and a few others in a position to pick up the pieces of the Republican Party. She is incredibly smart, tough and a die-hard conservative. We’ll see if her bet pays off.
The only payoff for Liz Cheney, well two payoffs, are that A-She can do her best to salvage constitutional democracy and B-Sh can look at herself in the mirror. The third payoff that she wasn’t even aiming for was ...Ar-Ee-es-pee-Ee-cee-tee. (Just a little bit).
That goes for Kinzinger too.
I wonder how long it will take to pay off. If this last very long, the Republican Party might go the lay of the old Libertarians, or dim of the early parties that tried to crank up, in the name of democracy, of course.
Mitt’s factories in Asia (with barbed wire) seem to be forgotten along with the 47% speech.
I do remember that speech, but is his 47% worse than Hillary Clinton's "deplorables"?
I'm unaware of the fctories in Asia, though. If you have a link, please post it.
They supported Trump until they didn't. But at least they stood up for democracy and that will be their legacy.
Did they stand up for democracy? Where were they before Trump was elected? Where was Mitt before Trump was elected? Their sense of decorum was offended, yes, but where were they when their party was building the network of voting restrictions and gerrymandered seats that made electing Trump possible? Why isn't Mitt, a US Senator, calling for investigations into Russia's continuing tampering with US elections? Are the Bushes and Romneys powerless to whip the remaining GOP moderates, or have GOP moderates ceased to exist?
Not one Republican, other than Cheney and Kissinger who were on the January 6 committee, stood up for democracy. Not one of them. As far as I’m concerned, every Republican in Congress right now can go straight to hell and get out of office.
My point exactly, lock step all the way until he wanted to become the dictator in chief, and that they just couldn't do ...they helped create the insurrection.
The Republican narrative is corrupt and dishonest at its core. At its bedrock. It is aptly described in Barry Goldwater's book "Conscience of a Conservative" (ghost written actually by another). It questions the validity of an actual democracy, in favor of what we today call an "illiberal democracy". Which is no democracy at all. It has as its authority the conservative interpretation of God's will for an independent people, in constrast to scientifically informed governance. There is really no hiding it anymore - Republicans, at least the MAGA types, no longer mince words as much, instead broadcasting their views for all to see. Anyone who puts themselves under the Republican brand is someone to avoid. To not vote for. That includes Liz, and Adam, and Mitt. That is until they disavow themselves of the Republican Party - which they might. Am not holding my breath.
...and Adam?
In case you haven't noticed, while both of them a Very Good on the issue of keeping the constitution, on just about everything else they are... Republicans.
True, and yet not near pure enough for the RNC.
That’s a clue folks…
Truth!
I heard that said. So hard to believe either would be anti abortion. They seem so sensible.
Look up Liz Cheney’s thoughts on climate change. Liz voted with Trump 90% of the time, until his agenda, to seize power and rule as a dictator, started to infer with her long term plans, which has something to do with maximizing oil company profits as long as there are any to be had, I suppose, but that is one area where she is not quite so vocal and transparent. Adam Kinzinger I don’t know about.
Kinzinger and Cheney are both republicans. Don't ever forget that. They voted the republican line on everything important.
Cheney is virulently anti-abortion
Being that is the case, and I say this respectfully, Liz does not belong in in a leadership position where she denies half the citizens she serves basic human rights. It was a good thing a prolife zealot was ousted from a position of power, albeit replaced by a less experienced, less competent, more obnoxious politician. Stefanik doesn’t have the Cheney money, education or name recognition. Thank you for your service Liz, truly. But, above all, no one wants to go 70 years backward. It’s pretty much settled.
Wyoming bans access to abortion medication.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1164515347/wyoming-ban-abortion-pills
She useful to be anti-gay. She isn't anymore.
This is Liz Cheney. Yes, she stood firm on democracy. There is literally nothing else to admire. Nothing.
https://youtu.be/gEjAejXvSpE
Yup. Agreed.
Susan, all you have to do is look at their voting record. They're both truthful, saying that they are conservative and they're opposed to abortion and other liberal social program goals, and Liz voted with Trump 93% of the time. The fact that they favored democracy above TFG doesn't mean that we'd be happy with their vision of America.
Liz Cheney is on video calling out Democrats for "murdering babies" by supporting legal abortion. I didn't find that link just now, but did find links to her consistent stands against legal abortion. Just because a person opposes violent overthrow of the government, does not tell you what they believe about anything else.
Amen, Joan!
Also in their favor TC is that the two ARE Republicans. Not frothing at the mouth cult followers.
But, yeah, I stand corrected.
And I’m going to look into who she is.
Apt label ‘old wanker’!
It is a powerful image , that of about a thousand , stop the steal rioters , in jail or headed there, with the fearless leader playing golf as he attempts to improve his thinning combover. But the fact is a large number of MAGA folks will never realize that they have been had. The fantasy they live in is too satisfying to give up , no matter how many facts disprove the false narratives of the liar -in -chief.
Here is the sentence from Professor Richardson in today’s Letter that stopped me right in my tracks…..
“But here’s what I wonder: What happens when people who have embraced a virtual world begin to figure out it’s fake? And then another question as she talked about the Russian people’s shaken faith in their leader and what result? “Will they rally around their leader, slide away, or turn against him? “
It is the question I ask every day as the truth tide reveals more and more about these white men….Trump, DeSantis, Carlson, Jordan, all of them. Cheap suits sucking on the teat of white Christian nationalism. No real belief in it. Just to play on fear of white being a minority and boots of women and anyone not white or straight or privileged being firmly on their necks. A caste system that must survive the way they want it ordered for them to breathe.
What do the believers do when they know it’s a fake bullsh*t patriarchal bargain basement facade?
I think about it every day. A lot.
Salud.
🗽
I like the way you think! What so many of these crazy MAGA women don’t seem to understand is that there is only room for white MEN ONLY in their tight and white little club.
The only way to insure he's history is for Koch and Mercer to want him destroyed and Gon. But, they're not done using him yet to destroy the Federal Government, American Democracy and our Constitution.
Spot on Ben.... The wallet is the primary support - "Always, esp. democracies, 'Follow the money' and restrain or reveal. That would have been issue 1 or 2 had I run for Ohio's US senate seat vacated by Portman; tough call as to ranking - I believe they would have been co-planks as number one.
I really fear you’re right. That variety of Libertarian cancer metastases throughout the body in all sorts of nasty ways.
I'll ascribe to that philosophy as the better choice as of now (vote blue). Yet I would add vote blue with care. There exist many 'pretenders'. Eyes and intents wide open is what I caution. Educated cautions is the best we can do.
Agreed. With all people, keep one eye open at all times.
Ok, so maybe Trump is going down. Not enough. His cohort of toxic masculinity, indifferent oligarchs, and fellow political technologists have got to go
True. What to do about the millions of people who made it all possible by voting for him?
The thing about Unreality is that though I don't think it's penetrable by what we call facts, I do think it has a tendency to collapse from its own weight--or maybe better, to shred in a stiff breeze! The Unreal doesn't have as many pixels as the Real. It looks a bit stylized. Plus his fans got energy from our constant denouncements, or clicking on stories about him in order to go "Tsk, tsk!" A non-presidential, visibly weakened Trump, no longer drawing massive ire, will have less magnetic force. (What a 5-bean stew of metaphors I've made here!)
Nice metaphors--each one could be the basis for an essay! The Acultamuricans believe their facts are reality and that ours are the "Unreality." As Jonathan Swift may or may not have actually said, "You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into." When this mess-iah implodes, they'll just find another one.
It's a depressingly long story, but Steven Pinker and others have argued that overall historically compassion has been on the rise. That said, there is always an element that wants to keep the goodies science enabled, yet pull society back to feudalism and the "Dark Ages".
I have the knee-jerk response here of a medievalist. Having spent my life studying and teaching late classical and medieval literature and history, especially the history of everyday life, I'm pretty sure Pinker, not a historian, is wrong. (He's certainly dead wrong about how we're less violent now--I'm astonished he got away with that fairy tale!) One thing that would good for folks in Texas and Wyoming etc if we went back to the Middle Ages in Europe is that abortion was legal through about the 5th month....
Thanks for forgiving the conglomeration of them! But I don't think "they'll just find another one." I know some of these people. They didn't have one before. No one outside ancient Palestine has been so successfully promoted as the Messiah before--this was our first real Social Media President--and whatever he may be in terms of Trumpian ideas and "values," DeSantis is no Messiah figure.
Always room for the next “redeemer”, sadly.
My little thought for this Sunday morning: a man addressed Jesus as "Good Teacher." Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good? Only G-d is good." I'm certain that Jesus wanted nothing to do with the Messiah stuff.
That quote is good. It applies to fear and hate of all kinds and especially hate of skin pigmentation.
She has her good points.
The thing is, Trump diehards will never hear the truth emerging because they only listen to Fox News and Breitbart. During the two sets of impeachment hearings, my husband would watch segments of the evening “personalities” coverage. You never heard the articulate and learned testimony of the State Department personnel, or Alexander Vindeman. They didn’t broadcast it, just gave false statements about what was said and outraged, inaccurate defenses for former President Trump. You could hear some straight news reporting on the midday newscasts from the real journalists like Chris Wallace, but one by one, they all left in disgust. It was the same for the second impeachment hearings. They didn’t air testimony. Whoever heard of an impeachment investigation where the Senate called no witnesses?
Except for precious little, the film footage and extensive testimony of the January 6th committee hearings were not shown on Fox Entertainment. Bits like Carlson’s latest fantasy were shown, giving the impression it was mostly a peaceful crowd. The revelations from the Dominion voting machine suit with texts, emails and testimonies from Murdoch, Carlson, Hannity and Inagram have not been seen by Fox viewers because they refuse to watch anything else!
I send articles from the NYT to my dad, who was hijacked ages ago by faux nooz. I’m sure he considers factual reporting of legal proceedings the same way I view opinion pieces in the WSJ, but I try.
My parents passed away 10 years ago at age 90. They both had been republicans for much of their lives and I was eternally grateful they never saw the shit show that was and is trump and the republican party that exists today.
The first time my father "pulled the lever" for Obama (my mother was already on board), I told my brothers either "hell froze over" or "pigs could fly". :) Never-the-less, the last few years of their lives, my mother would call me daily -(groan!) to say my father was watching that G-D Hannity and she couldn't stand it! Full disclosure - he did have dementia by then.
The last few years, she moved to being more liberal in her thinking and was not always filtered as she let some in her circle know how set in their ways, intolerant and ignorant they were! It took her 85+ years to find her own voice and by God she was not going to shut up!! I like to think she got some of that from me :)
)- ; Ditto sistuh. Mom was a Kennedy closet democrat at heart; Dad an Eisenhower r., who became hostage to the 'Moral Majority' propaganda; so sadly too, as he was Korean war veteran Marine, who all his living days and lives on in my memory, as the embodiment of what real integrity and honor 'look like' as they walk the earth humbly with every living step.
Faux network talkin heads and those who provide them air time force me to believe that some people are innately evil!
Have you ever met an evil baby?
Mary I never met baby Trump.
That's it in a nutshell, Candace! I'm more worried about Kim's ICBMs ending life as we knew it.
That's certainly true of my extended family Fox-watchers.
I share your consternation Candace.. I've thought long, hard, and passionately about the nature of our consternations in that regard. Peace ~
I think facts play a part in it, they have a "nasty" habit of intruding and just won't go away. I think that part of the "own weight". The night Trump was elected a lot of my neighbors let off fireworks, but after a while the novelty seems to be wearing off, and what does anyone have to show for it except the .01%?
And when he was defeated in 2020, across the country people were dancing in the streets.
Across the world. My overseas friends were almost more excited than I was!
And the day after he “took” office (and that’s what he did) women marched all across the country wearing pussy hats. I still have mine.
Fireworks? That's some neighborhood you live in!
It was delicious.
I agree - lies are much tougher to manage than truth. Ask any lying teenager. That is why I plead to all Democratic leaders to keep honest, keep clean, but be tough on the liars and cheats. Jamie Raskin comes to mind. However, there are skillful and devious liars out there. The climate denier movement is still strong. The election denier movement is too. And we have a large portion of our electorate who are still so gullible and fed up that they will glom onto what they like. Trump - part of me wants him to succeed until he doesn't. Let him destroy his competition during the primaries, just like 2016 only hopefully under several indictments and/or convictions. Then get destroyed in the general. But oh man - talk about playing Russian roulette! The other part of me wants him to go down in flames ASAP. He is just poisonous to our country's politics. Nothing good can come of it.
Ah, Jamie Raskin…. Our first Jewish president?!
He is poisonous, and yet he is more a symptom of the post Nixon Republican Big Lie Strategy than it's cause. He is just more extreme to support it, and his minions and patrons rush to shield and support it, even once-target Pence who is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Yes, yes, yes. Be Truthful, be Responsible, be Fair, be emotionally "Adult", but give "em the Hell they deserve. Democrats need to be the adult in the room, and not let miscreants get away with it. The more they get away with, the worse they become.
I agree: this all began with Tricky Dick. Back in the day, sigh, when you could scare a crooked President into resigning instead of starting an insurrection.
Mary You’re on a marvelous metaphor roll. Put it to music and you have a a hummable hit.
You are ‘hurting’ your self chuckling at what you wrote! Brava!
lol Mary !
It looks like the answer, unsurprisingly, is education. Why do think Republicans are so against educational debt relief and for religion based.charter schools?
Why Congress doesn’t work https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/03/house-of-representatives-equity-research-institute-usc-analysis/673422/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I have been waiting to read that someone else thinks that education is the answer! Thank you. I couldn’t open the link to The Atlantic article because I don’t have a subscription.
I think the right wing extremists see that too. That’s why they’re doing everything they can to prevent the education of facts by hiding the facts via actions like banning books.
Why do you think white slave-owners made it illegal to teach a slave to read and write? "...la plus que la change".
It's sad that kids in FLA, TX, and most red states will not know this...or any of the other truths about their history .
Last big book burning I know of was the Reichstag fire (?1933), which tells all except the story I wrote earlier about my Professor of medieval French who bragged that he got his PhD from Harvard “while it was still a university,” ie, the year before the business school was inaugurated.
The uneducated are easier to rule. Republicans have been starving public schools for years. And now they are demanding that history books be rewritten to make them look better.
Oh man, in the list of massive changes to America that need to be done yesterday to save even shreds of the American Dream, education is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Education is called upon in America to wear several hats. For the most part, it’s juggling too much, poorly. On top of that it has become a tool of the obstructionist bloc in America, thus subject to relentless subversion.
First of all, education must... well, educate. The great revolution in education in the Sixties is now largely a mere historical memory.
Teaching children as honestly as the known record allows? Gone in so much of the country.
Teaching children from the best sources available, regardless of age, gender, race? Gone if the writer offends some of our poor modern sensibilities, which must not be challenged. Thus the opportunity of teaching human striving towards these sensibilities is lost. We can learn from the most brilliant writers who held the stereotypes of their time in two ways. Instead we choose none by cleaving them from the curriculum.
Teaching children critical thinking. Gone, partly for fear of offending one side or another and partly because our current teachers are not *themselves* well educated enough to do this sensitively. Because the system has been steadily degrading for two generations minimum, rot runs riot.
And lest you think otherwise, I take my hat to these uneducated teachers. Most labor heroically and with love. They just don’t have the depth of education to light the spark.
Teaching to the standardized test? Very much present. A cruel and ultimately pointless game, if education is reformed.
Making teachers’ education more rigorous and then paying them proportionately more? A consummation devoutly to be wished for.
Adjusting the relationship between parents and teachers. Needed. In some schools teachers are surrogate parents, taking on responsibilities that have been abdicated. In some schools parents tremble in fear of parents, who ruthlessly take a hatchet to them to advance their own, often demented, goals.
The famous adage of teachers bears repeating here: Everybody thinks they can teach because they went to school. How many people storm firehalls?
All of this costs money. Make it an infrastructure project spread over ten years and do it.
It is an axiom that college-educated voters do not vote for the Trumps of the world. Let’s have more of them.
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric. I get that you strive to be brief and concise; alas, lest meaning be only insinuated where expansion, space, and agency compete. I feel you, and will happily seek out your space. One thing expansion worthy is quality and effective education, which often gets lost in the hustle. I have lived experiences that I might be tempted to share in your space. Thanks again ~
Bravo!👏🏻👏🏻👍👍
You got it James. Age old. An uneducated populace is much less likely to see through the wrongdoings and all-around skullduggery of a non-representative leadership of any kind that wants to stay in power or get it. Be it a monarchy, a dictatorship, or an outsized religious institution.
So true. Brownstein nails it. If only the bureaucracy would allow education to take place.
The denial is a tactic of the Wealthy White Male “Christian” oligarchy.
James, education opens the door. You are exactly right. Exactly. In American sub-cultures isolation is key to creating and maintaining an intact body politic. One of the most effective methods of creating isolation is to limit education. A good example is to keep English a second language not spoken or learned in early childhood. Also prevalent is to curtail the process to the eighth grade. If you can include a religious philosophy that exists exclusively then you have really put the lid on the the container. Geographic or communal isolation caps the process. When combined these phenomena turn out the lights. Teach your children well.
I couldn’t agree with you more, education is the key to getting out of this mess, lack of it is what got us into it in the first place.
Absolutely. That being said, I think our system needs to evolve to focus more on asking questions and being engaged than being "smart" and knowing the answers. Rewarding for knowing the answers has been causing problems where insecurity and lack of confidence are not addressed and knowing answers becomes an issue of its own--status, bullying, feral competition, etc. We need kinder, more empathetic intelligent, thoughtful citizens not smarty pants bullies knocking others down to get theirs.
This is a brilliant comment. Thank you Kim. Competition is so in the American bloodstream though. This will be a hard pull.
I spent my life in education, especially with gifted kids. They most often have deeply low self-esteem and dread competition - even in their area of particular acuity.
The hardest competitors come from (in my Canadian experience) the “best” private schools where parents fight to get their kids in. And then push the hell out of them. The biggest competitors are the smart, not gifted, kids. Most elite private schools do not accept gifted kids unless they are low maintenance - not a trait of the gifted who are often afflicted with two exceptionalities and also don’t fit in.
I once interviewed a parent whose best friend was a school nurse at two “elite” private schools for girls. She told me the rate of anorexia was 40-50%. I didn’t believe it. The school I ran, admittedly smaller, had 1 kid we worried about for anorexia (my school was for gifted only).
You won’t believe the next part. Two months later the Head of Admissions for one of the 2 girls’ schools noted above, visited me to see if I would take her Grade 8 daughter in. Nice irony.
I told her what I’d heard about anorexia at her school and the others - 40-50%. Of course I said that it couldn’t possibly be true, so it wouldn’t sound like an accusation.
She paused, clearly doing a mental inventory. Then she replied, “Yes, that would be about right”.
I had many more eye-opening experiences like that.
Thank you for writing Eric. And thank you for supporting my thinking.What an interesting and relevant perspective you have. I must say Admire that head who wanted the right thing for her daughter but wonder what her challenges were (in heading her school) that her school couldn't be that school. As a woman, it does not surprise me one iota that girls have anorexia or some eating adorer at that rate. Not one bit. And recently a study said that girls start being concerned about their weight at age 6. I myself was obsessed with food through high school and college and later on I realized how much energy and time I could have been doing great things. That's the crime, that girls are not free to be who they are and free to explore what they want to do and what they love. Of course, having the right answer is implicated in much of our current political discourse: the polarization, the media people choose to watch/listen to. Do they want to learn or do they want to be right? An interesting discussion. Thanks so much and take care. Will look up your Substack pieces.
Thanks. I’m just hitting the first two decades of this century now - when all the chickens have come to roost. It’s been a perfect storm, building in all its different facets since the Fifties. So I’ve covered it chronologically.
Anyways…the problems with girls and body image is hopelessly sad. It sounds like you managed to escape the trap in a relatively short time. I hope it wasn’t too much of a nightmare for you.
I have a daughter and 5 granddaughters. The strongest belief I have in regard to this is that sports are immensely good for girls. They build a can-do attitude and they focus most who play away from their looks and weight as being the dominant factors in their worth. Obviously much more goes into it than just playing sports - but I think it’s kind of a tentpole thing. I’ve seen a ton of girls avoid the worst of teenage angst by being deeply into sports.
Caveat: Girls can be spectacularly harmed by coaches, male and female, who coach to enjoy power over girls. I coached both genders. Boys - you had to break them down and then build them up. They’re often very cocky and know it all. Girls don’t come in with that ego. You can coach straightaway. However the control the coach has is too intoxicating to some and they abuse it in vile ways.
One final point.
Having said that about girls, it’s boys who are in deep trouble societally. They are going off the cliff like lemmings. It is scary to see how easily turned off education they are. Girls are blowing them out of the water in university and then in the job market. There’s a direct correlation to computers there, as well as the changing nature of work.
All kids have it so rough now, but in extraordinarily different ways. I do not envy today’s parents.
Ditto Kim, and to Eric !
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric.
To 'push' responsibility and cost *off to 'others'. I've long called out the gop as being the party 'leadership' of as a prime policy exemplary of "kick shit down the road."
Nothing practical Joanne. Publish and broadcast only the facts as dispassionately as possible for my part. And hope lessons have been learned and indelibly imprinted on all concerned, including me; a blessed democracy if we are to keep it, is Not a spectator sport.
Ever wonder if half the electorate who never to rarely vote, DID?
.
Yes, that’s what’s made me a phone banker and postcard-writer. That’s the work of Get Out the Vote efforts. Which have expanded the electorate in the last 10 years. We have to keep it up!
I'm writing letters via Vote Forward to Wisconsin voters for their April 4th election. Deadline is March 28th, still time to sign up to write or to write more letters. Please help!
I'm writing postcards!
Thank you Mary. Yes , we have to keep it up. Our County Democratic Women's Club has been doing these 2 things, plus doorknocking and lots of outreach events like our children's Egg Hunt in April, exhibiting at the Green Expo in May, the NAACP Day at the Farm in June, etc., for 4 years now. It's a lot of work by dedicated volunteers!
Yes the millions of hours we all put into it and still do. I heard the first warning bell of the Biden presidency ring when Biden, in his litany of thanks after his election was declared, didn’t think to mention us. What a missed opportunity—thousands of those people were under 25 and new to politics, and had had to swallow bitter disappointment at the losses of their primary choices, Sanders and Warren, and were still out there in every kind of weather or home on the phones for him and his party…
What? Who, me? I never voted for that dude.
We can be sure that there are many armed lunatics heading for Mar. Lardo right now. Don and his kids should be so proud.
Deplorable!😳
"What to do about the millions of people who made it all possible by voting for him?"
Perhaps they could be sent to reeducation camps to understand the errors of their choice.
Tax the crap out of them. Claw back the billions stolen by the Oligarchs and Oiligarchs. The Earth and its resources belong to the people as a whole - not just big corporations.
I'd love to, but it's the same problem we have getting serious about passing drunk driving laws. It's nearly impossible to get legislators to pass laws against crimes they are routinely committing.
I have always said that DUII is everyman's crime. Oregon has some pretty stringent DUII laws (Currently a minimum blood alcohol content--BA-- of .08%, use of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) when other substances than alcohol impact driving, mandatory driver's license suspensions (no acronym for those) and Implied Consent (that when receiving your drivers' license, you consent in advance to perform field sobriety tests (FST) and submit to an Intoxylizer for measuring the alcohol content of the driver's blood. Where DUI investigations bog down is with the case law that makes determinations on just how the "request" to submit to tests is phrased, and other minutiae that comes down about 2 or 3 times a year.
Same protocols in VT. Having DRE's making judgement calls lack scientific basis, and therefore can be used disproportionately against minorities, and current sparse statistics indicate this is what's happening.
But the main problem isn't administrative or even procedural details; current penalties and sentencing precedents result in 4th, 5th, 6th offenses with some regularity. In many European countries, this doesn't happen; 1st offense gets license suspended for several years, second offense means permanent revocation. As with their more sensible gun laws, it results in greater respect for the laws, and a more civilized culture around drinking and impaired driving. My son, who's a cop, confirms the broad discretion police officers have, and the relatively low priority this work has in urban PDs.
That’s more or less what we have in Oregon. Doesn’t stops few of them from driving.
... And so embodied and practiced in places like Alaska, where it's (for now) settled law that plunderers are required to share the profit they 'would not' share otherwise. Watch out for the challenges to continue anew attacking those laws... by guess who. *edit in > My personal heart and soul bleeds for places like Appalachia who suffer still from the consequences of the rapacious extractors ! There's far more to that conviction that I'll belay here; However, the origin of my convictions in that regard are real and lived as I'm forever a 'Son' of Appalachia to begin with. Proud... and sad.
And I’m a daughter of those same mountains. But my area is being forever raped by the tourist and all that a continual, turnover of those who treat my loved environment as their playground from which they will depart after their Air B&B week or two runs out. I realize our damage is slower than the god awful mountaintop mining that made me sick when I had to fly over the extensive environmental rape of an historic mountain range. Unforgivable that those who should have been looking out for the environment and all who lived in it sold it all out to the highest nasty coal bidder.
It breaks my heart. They don’t realize what they’ve done. They can’t possibly know and continue to do it. How often these days the fox is put in charge of the henhouse.
I feel sad for you having to see and experience this rape of your home.
I think of the indigenous people a lot these days.
Believe when I say, I 'feel' that pain. The hint in your comment tells me just where you live, I suppose anyway. Might it be a 'tell' for you if I told you my uncle was a builder of that bridge from start to finish, and has shared a vast library of photo's, etc., of the entire build with me ?
The removing of oil from deep in the ground, blasting, gouging, poisoning, injecting, razing off mountain tops, using the rivers and oceans as dump sights, filling the air with particles of poison, all that and more. It’s as though the connection between The Earth Mother and her multifarious offspring is not noticed not respected or not even realized. This is what I call un-woke.
We need to have Citizens’ United repealed so the fascist, billionaire Crime lords can’t buy puppets--seditious, incendiary, traitorous PUPPETS.
It’s a very old story, follow the money.
Jerry, agreed. Maybe he will, maybe not. The finer point is that bag of bones that is nearing his end anyway isn't the problem. It's his MAGA clones , in office and out. I'm more concerned about a MAGA gun toting idiot that lives in my village than I will ever care about Donald Trump.
“Sack of shit”. .....more appropriate
Hale, yes it is.
If Putin and Trump go down simultaneously, there will be a huge sigh throughout the world...the sound of people taking in a breath of freedom.
I spent two hours today with several dozen other volunteers from Indivisible, St. Paul writing postcards to Wisconsin voters in support of Judge Janet Protasiewicz (Pro ta SAY wits) for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Everyone who said they would come, who had texted back after a call for volunteers, showed. That's 100 percent attendance- never happens. The organizers were honestly a bit gobsmacked by the turnout. Several more showed up that hadn't RSVP'd. They found more chairs and table and put them to work.
A young African American man, who'd seen the signs for the postcard writing in the hallway (we were in a public library in St. Paul) came to the room for more information. The Indivisible staff/volunteers happily answered his questions and invited his participation. The organizer for Indivisible for our region (MN, WI, MI, IN) mentioned in his remarks that he was heading to Wisconsin on Sunday to do door-knocking in support of Protasiewicz and would welcome other volunteers. He reassured people that they could come and just listen and learn how to answer questions. Several folks said yes. Love it!
In short, I spent several glorious hours today surrounded by like-minded defenders of democracy, doing their small part to help get out the vote for our good neighbors to the east. As we wrote, the folks at my table talked about the incredible speed that MN's trifecta D government has passed good legislation - including my personal favorite, a 100% renewable energy standard by 2040. By the way, that policy was written more than 15 years ago by several staff at one of my former employers. Just waiting for the right moment to introduce it and move it through. We vote for a trifecta blue government and boom. Done! Think about the possibilities!
Whatever you do, whatever your response may be to Trump's continued efforts to undermine democracy and incite violence, please consider doing something active in support of democracy. Jessica Cravens writes a 6 day a week newsletter here on Substack with daily ideas of what to do called Chop Wood, Carry Water. more info here: https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com
Field Team 6 is focused on registering Democrats. More information here: https://www.fieldteam6.org/
Indivisible is all about grassroots actions across the country - if today's meeting was any indication, they are efficient, effective, knowledgeable and getting it done. Here's the link: https://www.indivisible.org/ If you are active with other effective organizations, start a thread below. Please.
The Republican MAGA judge in Wisconsin has recently received $20M in donations, much of the from the Uihlein Family - ultra conservative billionaire family whose last-minute contribution to the last Supreme Court election in Wisconsin moved the needle on a close race - and the Republican won. We have work to do. And that's just one election in one state. Lots more out there!
By all means come here and comment about Trump's shenanigans and how much you hope for an indictment. But then please consider doing something, anything, actively in support of our precious democracy.
Yes, I do have popcorn and beer in reserve. If it happens, I can't pretend I won't be cheering and doing a happy dance and making snarky jokes with my friends. But my mom always said, "when you pray, move your feet," a quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. On it, mom.
My 85 year old mom and I just sent 100 postcards, from CA, in support of Judge Protasiewicz to be elected to the WI State Supreme Court!
Susan, thank you! I hope I can still do this when I’m 85! Woot!
FYI a group of HCR Substackers has formed to support “walk the talk” like Sheila’s Indivisible group postcarding. Email your interest to:
heathersherd@gmail.com
Indivisible is the real deal. They get done what needs doing. Great report. Actions do speak louder than words.
Thanks, Rhea. They ARE the real deal. And it is energizing to be around like-minded people!
Wonderful, timely and most apropos commentary, Sheila.
And your Mother was a saint!
Daniel, nearly choked on my coffee just now laughing. My mom’s name was Frances. Lol.
Such a wonderfully detailed, encouraging, and wise post, Sheila. I can feel the energy of that session radiating from MN to here in NC. Yes, action like you report makes the difference; it must! I am grateful to have had a mom who was similarly motivating.
Sheila, so happy to see your post about positive actions and grassroots organizations; I too write postcards when I can (150 for the WI SC race!) I just listened to a podcast with the founder of Indivisible as a guest, and it was riveting. Carry on!
AND VOTE FORWARD! votefwd.org
Original hand written letters and cards make people read them.
Thank you! It is way fun to gather with luck minded people and work for democracy! We all have something to contribute!
Are there any Indivisible groups in MT. ?
I just googled Indivisible Montana and they have a Facebook page. So if you are on Facebook, check it out. (The search term was Indivisible Montana)
Otherwise, go to the Indivisible link I posted and check out their list of actions in your area - you should be able to search with your zip code. Also, I learned of the Indivisible St. Paul meeting from Field Team 6’s weekly Mobilize email. FT6 coordinates with other groups to get more people actively helping. So you can also sign up to receive emails from Field team 6 that will show you local/regional actions you can take. Good luck and thank you!
You can also go to Mobilize and get a list of actions in or related to your area/zip code. I know you just got a terrible abortion law passed in MN (so sorry) so there will be more action. And RideShare2Vote may have spread to MN by now—who do the often crucial work of providing free rides to the polls and back, including to people in wheelchairs.
No no bad abortion law here in Minnesota, Mary. Not sure which terrible state law you are referring to but it isn’t here. We have Democrats in charge of the Senate, House and Governor.ship. We are ready and able to protect reproductive rights in this state, including the right to an abortion.
Yes, I just looked that up to double-check this morning. I’m always (weirdly) mixing up Wyoming and Montana, even though I’ve been to the gorgeous state of Montana, where I had friends, and experienced bliss in the midst of Missoula, letting the river rush my post-siesta body for a cool mile every evening…. My apologies!
Apologies are totally not necessary Mary. I have friends in Missoula (perhaps that's wishful on my part), but none the less, I saw them, they saw and heard me to my ever delight and gratitude - just wonderful souls ! I remain in touch with them, another thing on my daily gratitude list. Anyway, I sense the hopeless romantic in you, and perhaps even a writer who may someday delight others.
Sheila, for my part I choose to term that conceptually as "reproductive privacy and self determination" , unalienable / inalieanable rights. 'Every woman' / whole human being has / owns (if they claim/ own them) certain unalienable (born and exist with) rights of self determination. To carry, nuture, carry to term a medical condition inseparable from that whole person, is first and foremost, a privacy intrusion on said whole person. So very much can and does go horribly and tragically wrong with 'potential' successful. and legally 'private' condition, it's a damn miracle when the condition is successful. The best 'meme' I own and display again and again since the beginning to this misguided debate decades ago, is the image of an elephant wearing a blanket / sign of "GOP" with it's trunk up under the skirt of a random 'any woman' - succinctly illustrating my position - "it's simply none of anyone else's damn business" including me, and the wanna' be rights thieves of the gop, religious zealots, etc., ad nauseum ! (rant over... 😂)
😂 On second thought.. no it's not over. Somehow, I have an innate ability to articulate my thoughts, perspectives, and distillations; I don't know the how or why, it just is what is. Any and all here *of good conscience who can get their minds around this particular distillation have my express permission and invitation to borrow and use it if you find it useful in your quest to inform and suggest to any and all others. I've found it comfortable, compact, and useful and would have been one of the very first 'planks' if you will, had I chose to challenge for the vacant U.S. Ohio Senate seat vacated by worn out perhaps Ohio U.S. senator Rob Portman. First and honest conviction revelation I would have made for it's sheer 'fundamental importance' for the nation we believe we are and the citizens of Ohio who ascribe and legally subscribed to. That was my humble plan and some more - but that first of all without shame. Now, that clearly stated, I don't like laying any claim / right to carry on at greater length on our dear professors platform, unless of course asked *or permitted by her to shed more on her space. The thought I'd love (somewhat) to share is a personally lived example in our *personal lives that perfectly illustrates the lived experience that informs my conviction regards self privacy/ self determination of and by the whole person - a woman who is my spouse that I got to share in.
Thank you Sheila, have forwarded to our County Democratic Women's Club to incorporate it into our work, such good info for us and an inspiration too. So appreciate your sharing all this! So helpful!
👋 👋 👋 👋 👋 👋 👋
I have a new packet of postcards for Wisconsin from Workers Circle waiting to be written up and decorated in different colors. And am phonebanking on Mondays with Swing Blue Alliance. We only call likely Democrats so there’s very little friction—and often gratitude.
Thank you for phonebanking. That can be hard work but so important. Kudos!
It’s a lot easier than it used to be now we have better lists and a better, more sociable way of talking with people. We do a lot of listening—which has been enlightening.
Thank you.
Feels good to DO and this group was great to hang with. Happy to help, neighbor!
Thank you Heather for again weaving the disparate bits into a whole. At first I had thought Bragg was ill-advised to go after the Stormy Daniels indictments first but now I see the logic. Trump will swing with full force at anything threatening and this exposes him for the grifter he is in the smallest and pettiest of his many crimes. It is one where it is most likely to start peeling off adherents who have to ask themselves if jail is worth it to protect the emperor's naked vanity.
The Ali Alexander quote is so perfect. Thre rats are leaving the sinking ship...
But hopefulness aside the Russian propaganda machine is still hard at work and it is not clear what can be done to weed it of social media. It remains one of the bigger threats to national security.
So far, all we know is the former guy will be charged with paying off Stormy Daniels, a misdemeanor. But I don’t believe DA Bragg would go to all this trouble over a misdemeanor, so what is the possible second crime that will kick the charge up to a criminal case? That’s the news I’m waiting for.
As I understand it, the beef revolves around the payoff but could have several components, depending on where DA Bragg wants to take the case. The initial component isn't that the payoff, however tawdry a thing that may be, was made but that it was misrepresented on the former guy's books as payments to Cohen for legal services. That would be falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor in NY state. Another component, which could elevate the matter to a felony, could be that the initial crime was committed to conceal another crime. Still another component could be a charge of having made an illegal campaign contribution, a violation of federal election law, the theory being that the former guy's campaign benefited by keeping information hidden that would have been damaging to his election chances had the voting public known about it. Some legal experts are saying that it could be quite tricky to tie a federal case to a state case; others seem to think there's a pretty navigable path in this case. I don't know (am not a lawyer) but I'm pretty darn sure Bragg is well aware of the advice that if you're going to go after the king, you had better not miss, and has prepared accordingly.
Exactly what or how many charges will Bragg bring? What does he think he can prove in court? What other evidence does he have? No way to know for sure -- grand jury proceedings are famously secret -- until or unless an indictment is handed down. The drums along the Hudson seem to be saying that's going to happen any day now.
You also need to look at the amount of the payoff, $130,000, which could easily, under any of the described actions you have shown, elevate this to a felony case, be it state or federal.
It’s like if you walk into a store and steal, shoplift, items. It all bound down to the cost of the items as to the charges. Petty theft, or grand theft.
Trump’s biggest wrath against Stormy is because she referred to his tiny pecker.
That it the penisultimate Trump insult.
Apparently he doesn’t know how to make the size of the ship matter!
Nice dissection pts. Bravo ~
Hey, Trump’s the one that’s unzipped this can of worms. No ‘pun’ intended here talking about his well advertised ‘little worm’!
The felony is the financial mismanagement of labeling the payoff an "office expense", which then kicks the misdemeanor up to felony.
Everyone knows about Stormy, I won't be surprised if this isn't about a pattern of behavior much larger than her. Has anyone ever been sent to jail or ruined financially because of a campaign violation? I don't think NY, NYC, or the feds would spend millions just to tweek his nose . I am very curious about GA ever since the juror basically said "if the people knew what I know there would be no political division." That goes back to the immense power of the truth over the false impressions spewed by foxy personalities. I'm not getting my hopes up but I eagerly await the trial.
Unreported campaign expense?
I believe that’s the most obvious charge. Low hanging fruit?
Shot across the bow?
Well, if TFG wants a defensive force to gather around Mar-A-Lago, I hope he's planning to feed them, house them, and let them use his bathrooms. It could be a long stay.
He can throw out rolls of toilet paper . . .
His next residence is going to have a stainless steel can in it,....
Do you think he will have some of his fellows as cell mates? What about the secret service protecting him in jail? I hope the people he has called to action realize that they could share a cell or cell block with him.
Well, there may be some of his former Secret Service agents serving time with him.
Ahh Carole... what a delightful audio / visual that conjures in my mind !@ 😂
😂
I’ve got some toilet paper with his picture on each square, with his mouth in an O ready to receive the next offering, that I will be happy to lend to the need for toilet paper.
# me too ! My adult daughter's bought me a roll as a 'gag gift', all knowing my contempt that I never hide. To borrow a phrase from Kevin Hart "It's what I do"! And that's how I roll in real life.. *edit in > 😂
😂
🤣
I’d like to see them go in and arrest him right now, don’t wait for his clan to organize
If the attorneys in NY know the indictment is imminent, then putting out that he’s going to be arrested on Tuesday makes no sense. Contrary to everyone’s belief , I think Trump can be considered a ‘flight risk’. He has a lot of friends worldwide, he has a passport, jet, and he’s displayed that he’s not afraid to do anything to escape prosecution. That’s from years gone past. So, the smart move would be to obtain the secret indictment, then knock on his Mar-a-Lago door about 3am some morning when he’s not expecting it. And yes, I’d parade his sorry ass out in handcuffs.
I totally agree with your postulation Daniel. All baked down, I think he and his advisors are fishing for funding - bottom line.
That’s all Trump’s ever been interested in. Lining his pockets with everyone else’s hard earned money. He’s still doing it.
I disagree; law enforcement and DOJ need be well prepared to protect, yet - yet let allow them to show their azz's for all to see. Rope enough to hang themselves - again !
That works too, but I’d prefer less drama
Possibly two (2) witnesses. Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, has put Michael Cohen on notice thiat he may be called as a rebuttal witness today.
Dream on. Remember when the first daughter wouldn’t let her Secret Service protection use her Georgetown bathroom facilities. This family is not noted for their generous spirit.
Really. I will believe this coming indictment when I see it. Trump never does anything without a calculation of how it will benefit himself. That includes an outcry that he is about to be arrested. He's looking for money, and notoriety, and victimhood. A good setup for his upcoming Texas rally. I do however want to see the indictments fall post haste. The time has come.
He forgot to add "Be there. It will be wild!"
Ironically--and serendipitously--when your newsletter arrived, I had just finished viewing a wonderful documentary about a little town in Connecticut (population 1300) that in 1937, refused to allow the German American Bund to build one of their (25 already existed across the US ) Hitler Youth-style training camps in Southbury. "YANKEE Home of the Brave: When Southbury Said NO to the Nazis," shows what Americans can do when faced with fascism. (Reminds me of the women of Rosenstrasse.) Part of the Sousa Mendes Foundation's Sunday Speaker series, this documentary and the panel discussion on 3/19/23 can be accessed via registration at: http://sousamendesfoundation.org/events/ . Here is a Youtube link to the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04KXvT40yIE
Thanks for this documentary, Joanne.
The town was able to form a consensus because their church services were almost community meetings, and they all knew each other, or knew of each other. They had strong voices in their midst, well-educated in the ideas of democracy. “The Nazis are stronger than your politics.”
What perfect timing!
I wish Merrick Garland would watch this, and pay heed.
You're so welcome. So true about why they succeeded. Is democracy even possible for large, diverse groups of people who have mutually exclusive goals? Does "for/by/of the people" only work with small, well-educated, homogeneous groups?
Ahhh Joanne.. three cheers for sweet serendipity ! At my best that I strive for, I learn the most from serendipity ! A calm, discerning state of mind can be such a blessed spring of revelations I've found.
I’m sure the rich neighbors of Mer a Lago would not take kindly to any far right militia parading by their million dollar homes.
One wonders if they will come out and defend their homes like Mark and Patricia McCloskey did in St. Louis. I always thought they looked like a joke; he in his pink polo shirt, brandishing what appears to be a semi-automatic rifle. She barefoot and towering over him, holding her silver pistol like it was a cigarette lighter from back in the day.
Looking like a “modern” Bonnie and Clyde pointing their weapons at innocent peaceful people. Pathetic despicable couple.
The McCloskeys ARE a joke and a disgrace to those of us who live here in St. Louis, but we have an entire Legislature in Jefferson City who are just like them--just not as wealthy 🤬.
Please don't tred on the Tweedia.
You'd be surprised; many of them voted for ТЯцм₽, and are willing to look the other way with a smug smile as long as they get their tax breaks.
Thank-you. If not for TFG you would have gotten a much-deserved night off.
May ask what TGF stands for?
Usually "the former guy", though there's a less polite variant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-CPWOMQqU
This is a rerun in many ways. Especially the immediate "fundraising appeal." TFG's past fundraising has amounted to grift. TFG is the victim of the deep state. TFG will save his supporters and the country, if only they save him first. Will there be violence? Probably at least some skirmishes. NYPD is probably not too happy with this.
Several police agencies are not happy, NYPD, as you noted; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); "coordination" with the Secret Service; Court security personnel & likely others.
As Homer Bannon told Hud, “Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.” Unfortunately, 74 million Americans admire Trump and will, even after he is indicted, if he is indicted, and after he is convicted, if he is convicted. We are stuck with the 74 million, even if by some miracle we manage to wrest the government out of the hands of their obstructive representatives. That affects the look of the country. It isn’t a good look, but it’s the look we have.
He's going to be indicted many times. Next up after NY is Georgia by the end of March, and then many federal charges stemming from Jan. 6 and stolen classified documents.
Trump is toast. And knows it. His supporters aren't going to protect him. The federal prosecution of the Jan. 6 insurrections is a huge deterrent.
Michael - my heart is with you all the way. But I am going to challenge you. I think there is something delaying indictments, perhaps all of them. I do not know exactly what that something is, but increasingly I am starting to believe there is something. I would put money on there NOT being an indictment next week, nor in March. Perhaps not in 2023.
If nothing happens to Trump, the rule of law is dead.
My ever hope I cling to, is the supposition that 'this is how justice in the real world works' - we've all no doubt heard the saw (hopeful truth) that "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine" - variously attributed in variations by Sun Tzu, Empericus, and Longfellow.
This is what has always concerned me. Trump is not just a cause but a symptom. There are so many millions of Americans who were longing to come out of the woodwork either to live out their racism, defend their deadly gun culture, enforce their backward religious beliefs on everybody else or just not pay their fair share of taxes. This has been a deadly mix and for me, a teacher. I ask myself how are we ever going to be able to teach these people the values of the Enlightenment upon which our constitution was based. Happy for any suggestions.
They've always been with us . . . always festering while they waited for their mess-iah to legitimize, galvanize and encourage their weaponization. They can't be taught. We have to win over the "Independents," the disaffected, and the new voters.
On the contrary, I think they HAVE been taught to weaponize. This is exactly the danger of Fox News peddling lies on the daily. Perhaps a daily dose of the truth might chip away at the rotten foundations of their foul edifice. Or at least drive them back into its woodwork.
My comment, "They can't be taught" was specifically in response to a previous comment ". . . how are we ever going to be able to teach these people the values of the Enlightenment upon which our constitution was based?" This is not to assert that "they" can't be taught about hate and weaponizing. As Rodgers and Hammerstein taught us, when it comes to hate, you have to be carefully taught."
My question, as a teacher, is how can we reach at least some of these people. I think that it’s gotta be one on one. Maybe this is happening on a small scale but no one reports on it.
True Believers can't be reached. The others can be "reached" via non-political affinity groups where they can feel comfortable and respected while being exposed to different perspectives. Just as in a classroom, adults can open up to new ways of perceiving and thinking when they feel supported.
Essentially, the same way that cult members are "deprogramed". One-on-one, and using very specific tactics and methods.
Yes, this can work for people who have been misled/manipulated because of their own personal weaknesses/issues. Unfortunately, not all of them have been "programmed." For too many of them, it's who they actually are. They inhabit a different reality.
Oh my Joanne.... you truly 'get it' - that is entirely the point I've tried long to make, and so well and economically stated ! Bravo sistuh !
Thanks so much, D4N, both for "getting it," and for your gracious comments!
Spot on Betty !
Very timely analogy--Did you see "Hud" tonight on TCM? Those 74 million will galvanize to take action to save their martyred mess--iah.
I truly don't think so. Some will. Not many. They did that once already and almost 1000 of them were arrested and charged--and 350 more suspects remain on the FBI's list. Many have recanted or actually repented. Many are in jail. It isn't fun anymore.
Unfortunately, in Las Vegas, which is a stronghold of very wealthy right-wingers whose only commitment is to their perception of what is necessary to protect their wealth, it's never been about "fun." They'd never tarnish themselves with conspicuous tacky vigilantism.
They can always send petty cash to proxy cosplaytriot "militias".
Yes indeed, and they have done so repeatedly throughout history.
Ah--so are you worried they'll be DeSantis donors?
Or a candidate still to be named. T couldn't have been elected without Las Vegas money and political backing.
Do you have any suggestions about a possible non-DeSantis candidate?
“Many” in this context is hundreds or thousands, which is as nothing compared to 74 million.
Have you met all 74 million? Well, neither have I! We're both speculating. Me because I'm from Ohio, and have spent a fair amount of time in rural America, including in the last 5 years. I've met many Trump voters (and more recently some DeSantis fans in Florida), but no big enthusiasts. And really, the proportion of Trump warriors arrested and charged already, with more to come, must be a bit sobering.
The wealthy, powerful Republicans are not renegades. They are sophisticated, organized, professionals and philanthropists who are not interested in "facts."
Philanthropists?
C'mon... This is phil-entropy.
And they are philentropists.
Promoters of chaos, not lovers of mankind.
Such a scary image. I know it's true. Trump never really had his own power, they loaned it to him and he applied his weird "charisma."
True, but they’re powerless without the 74 million. The 74 milllion are fhe problem. Unsolvable as far as I can tell, but that’s never kept me from trying.
I lived in Kansas for 18 years and in Oklahoma, which is substantially worse, for 21 years. I think I’ve paid my dues and met and talked to enough of the 74 million to speculate with some confidence. But it’s speculation, nevertheless. You’re right about that.
I tried to post an answer to your TCM question, but it seems to have gone into the bit bucket, where maybe it belongs but I’m reviving it anyway. I saw part of Hud tonight. Not that line, but that’s the line I remember the movie for. That and the cinematography.
So hard to reconcile gorgeous Paul with being a villain. Cognitive dissonance is so uncomfortable. Wonder if any right-wingers are experiencing cognitive dissonance . . .
Also, I think Paul Newman was a good man. He found that character somewhere inside, though, and brought it to life. Good for him. Dissonance has its benefits. Comfort is overrated.
Get his memoir that was published last fall. It's good. He dived pretty deep.
So true.
Rex, that number might be lower. Don’t forget, over 1 million are dead because he lied about Covid. In that respect, he should be charged with murder.
Marlene Learner-Bigley: Are you saying the 1 million+ covid deaths were Trumpers?
A million down, 73 million to go.
I hope on Tuesday that someone releases a children's book called Donald Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
It would be an instant Best Seller.
And immediately added to the list of banned books.
Not precisely a children's book, but there is this: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/vroom-vroom
Wonderful link. Pictures do speak louder than words, especially a real-world Cartoon like Trump world. I need to get a fresh cup of coffee now. (now where are the paper towels?) Where's the Bailey's?
OK, that was funny. Thanks for the chuckle.
🤣🤣🤣
One way ticket to the Australian outback - not onto sacred lands, though. (Couldn't resist; every year my 2nd graders loooved that book.)
When indicted in New York, Feds and New York law enforcement are not involved in arrest. Instead, state of New York sends a request for arrest and extradition to the Governor of Florida, which allows Florida law enforcement to arrest, state prosecutors to represent New York and have a bail and extradition hearing in state Florida courts. Ha ha Gov. Ron DeSantos will have some touchy issues to deal with if Trump does not fly to New York and surrender, which he will do to avoid being held prior to trial. BTW 'Stop the Steal' clown Ali Alexander saying he is retired but will 'pray for Trump', LOL like he prays for gun violence victims, it's a classic toss 'under the bus'.
If this is accurate, it’s an interesting twist. Perhaps in one fell swoop, we can take them BOTH down. One couldn’t script it better!
This story is my gift from the NY TIMES about how Ben Barnes and John B Connally negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran in 1981, AFTER Reagan was in office. Cheaters from beginning to end:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html?unlocked_article_code=cKNBI00jZaSAVQRF1b6sWkSs75zgcbfYnaoUncTTkOwvX-FYArjo7XpGruPwrxY7lHOcErGnMjop9M6kTKaReAKGon_-3ienE9vMze_8lzh5LNOt3V1i-K6YsLOqRIgRxWblQ50VUYGLkci8pcQb1Tj54g043C9zj9PFgYt62YPc5j-isFybypGHTm3Ac-p_FmphscX7cK4oyXA5IH16lsz_gUa5ysW52PbqU4pEdcrlC_Un-NlEU5U7opKwJYaaiyMSn5BWKjR5etQrxQ_h2b7NTMMCsUoVtX84cWxCsYTO4fYiqbEMOuoMCR7PlhigFBSKlqPYQSmSEM6zOmyipDL5tJzGTcawEk6VhEDDI_wIuDFXLrv3ogk&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Thank you for the link. An interesting story. I always thought there was some skulduggery going on in the Reagan campaign; this is as good an explanation as we're going to get. One more bit of evidence that I was right in my opinion that the last Republican to hold the Oval office with honor was Dwight David Eisenhower.
I had been hearing the rumor for years. The Republican Party sold it's soul to the Devil with Reagan. Nixon's treachery had not been party-wide, and even Nixon had some seeming genuine concern for the general welfare, especially on the environment. The lesson Republicans took from Nixon's disgrace was to lie without shame and never ever admit a fault. Reagan set the tone for Trump.
We need @ least a 2 party system but healthy ones. I listened to the Lincoln project during the T years. There was a woman who was/is politically active in the NEern states. She has a reasonable approach even re women's rights. Will people like Michael Steele & Conway & some others step up?
Democracy can thrive on disagreement, even intense controversy when the preponderance of citizens negotiate in good faith. It's the narcissistic delusion of inherent superiority (racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, culturally pure nationalism, religious superiority, and just plain extreme narcissism, along seductive urge to cheat, to trump decency because of that superiority, that is the bane of the democratic process. It's easy to spot except when you are doing it, and I expect we all do at times, but some learn to tame it. Absolute power in the hands of anyone tends to corrupt absolutely, even from a starting point of "good intentions".
Science can inform everything, although science alone cannot solve everything. Notably , even though people are people, everything in science is open (at least eventually) to revision if observable and repeatable evidence supports the change. Wolfgang Pauli was a Nobel winning physicist who reportedly did not suffer fools gladly, but was keen to get it right.
“There will be no heavy duties,” Wolfgang Pauli told the physicist who was to serve as his assistant. “Your job is, every time I say something, contradict me with the strongest arguments.” - Barbara Lovett Cline, quoted in Mad About Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities
Wonder when/if MS will walk his talk and start organizing. George Conway?
Yes--Nixon paved the way for contemporary "Republicans." Imagine Eisenhower with Agnew as VP.
Agnew was a crime, but Nixon's abuses of power, although intolerable, was mild compared to what followed with Reagan, and there were enough decent Republicans in Nixon's reign to refuse corrupt orders, to demand that Nixon bow out. The Reagan organization was more like tightly regimented organized crime. The JaneDough56 citation of the NYT article above is vivid illustration of that.
Ike tolerated too much corruption for reasons of realpolitik, but he had the "decency" Joe McCarthy lacked:
"The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
It is the Joe McCarthy playbook the "GOP" has embraced fully today.
When the highest tax rates were in the 90’s...hmm
Sorry I didn't see this before I posted something this morning. I find it beyond annoying that Ben Barnes sat on this story for 43 years. So many people were lined up waiting for a payday from Reagan, and we still haven't recovered.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/lawmaker-admits-1980-gop-plot-to-prolong-iran-hostage-crisis.html
I think the secret was who did it and when and how it was done. That Reagan supporters did it was pretty well known (at least suspected and accepted as highly probable). The timing of the release of the prisoners was dramatic even by Hollywood standards, don't you think? Interesting confession. Does it mean they committed a crime? Just like when the Republicans interfered with ending the Vietnam War? I can't recall what they did more recently, but wasn't there a more recent case of lobbying in opposition to US government policy? Did anyone end up paying a price?
Lyndon Johnson was in peace talks with Vietnam when Nixon contacted the VN and promised them a better deal when he was elected.
Republicans also interfered with the beginning of the VN "war." Former Ford pres. and Machiavellian Sec of Defense, Robert McNamara lied to LBJ about the Gulf of Tonkin.
We need way more information about this.
THAT is a long-delayed gut punch.
Picturing: A homeless encampment defending Mar a Lago. And I hope he feeds them his signature. MacDonalds …and porta potties
(Where is Terry Southern and Peter Sellers when we need them!?)
Shades of Quaddafi hiding in his hole in the ground
And if they don't get fed? I'd like to see them swarming over those pseudo-Spanish walls, splashing in the swimming pool, climbing up to the tower with their banners, banging on the wrought-iron doors, smashing windows to get in. And the rest.
The scene when the monsters turn on their master? Though the real masters will be far away.
Ugh. Shiver with delight...
I believe by then Trump will be wearing his Jesus outfit and multiplying fish and hamburger rolls. Hunter Thompson, where are you?
Hmmm . . . a huge, well-funded and organized encampment outside of M-A-L --comprised of all levels of the community could be very powerful! Kind of like those tea-party encampments that totally transformed the R party.
I worry that the MAGA Republicans won't know about the revelations about the Fox News Corporation. It's not being reported on Fox News.
They won't know and even if they did, it wouldn't matter. They'd come up with a self-serving rationale to nourish their confirmation bias.
Of course not but I think word is beginning to seep out into the atmosphere. I just heard today that the latest polls are showing a softening of support by some formerly bedazzled republicans who are now realizing how damaging tfg has been and is continuing to be to the R party. Like, duh. How thick does the fog of war have to be for one to be so totally oblivious to what’s happening to the party one claims to love?
The most disturbing part is not Trump’s lies & behavior - it’s that over 60% of Republican redcoat ‘citizens’ are duped enough to blindly believe and do his bidding. We will always have kooks - that 40M people by into the tripe is the truly scary thing.
That % is so high due to the financing behind what they hear on their local radios stations...& Fox propaganda. Driving through the south scanning stations is a revelation, folks are being insidiously programmed on their daily commutes.