They have no shame, no conscience, these Republicans.
On the Clarence court, their taking bribes, perjuring themselves, and corrupting today’s law to serve that of the era of medieval witchcraft all self-exhibit.
When one has no respect for “others,” for the variations in American life, one can arrogate one’s ideology and impose it cookie-…
They have no shame, no conscience, these Republicans.
On the Clarence court, their taking bribes, perjuring themselves, and corrupting today’s law to serve that of the era of medieval witchcraft all self-exhibit.
When one has no respect for “others,” for the variations in American life, one can arrogate one’s ideology and impose it cookie-cutter on all.
And so congressional Republicans seek to outdo the vulgarity on the Clarence court. A presidential candidate who’s convicted in court, by a jury of his peers (more than one jury), of sexual abuse -- no problem. Same presidential candidate's business also convicted of widespread, deep, and many years of business fraud -- also no problem.
Whom do these Republicans serve, with their contempt for law, open embrace of vulgarity?
They serve the moneyed interests, the liars, the cheats, the greedy, the exploiters of both people and the planet. They do not serve the American people whom they attempt to disenfranchise. It you're not writing postcards to folks who haven't voted recently, now is the time to start.
How much good will they do so long as all U.S. K-12 serves primarily the billionaire standardized testers, in schools so intimidated that all just anymore teach to the test?
How much good will they do so long as all U.S. higher ed serves the corporate that has neutered all in silos (& personal safety identity zones) where no humanities need apply?
Studies show that as many as 4% of folks who haven't voted recently go to the polls when they get a postcard in the mail urging them to vote. Look at the slim margins, and in some states, that's enough to make a difference.
This has been true for the 50 years I have been involved in politics. Back when I worked in the California legislature running campaigns, postcards would be used as a community organizing tool. Organizations that supported a candidate would be asked to get their members to commit to sending personally signed postcards for the candidate to at least 10 friends, because it was known that a postcard was 80% more likely to be read and not thrown away as compared with the typical political mailers that flood my mailbox these days and go straight into the blue barrel.
It was stated last night on PBS that 16% of the base would NOT vote for TFG if found guilty but 80% said they still would …16% here…4% there…I’ll take every gain possible for the win!
There’s an outstanding rank of young Democrats already serving and in line for the next top dogs, impressive, willing, getting good review. Ousting these Complicits will take several years of voting cycles. Many Republicans jumped ship already realizing the ploy. Writers like Heather , historians , and others have laid bare the ‘aint pretty’ playbook of autocracy and the companies now at 100 planning 2025 clearly convinced of overthrow. But the American Dream is laced with the shiny schemes , the promises ( pointedly the tariff fiasco when nothing materialized to ‘build back better’ replacement) The holocaust/climate/election deniers prove the point-make it all shiny and pretty, build upon lies, promises,trust me and thoughts and prayers …’they will come’…
No the Dems don’t have the perfect solutions. Yes we’ve made some mistakes. But the turtle won the race.
We. Can. Do. This. But we got to do it at the ballot box…grab the 16% , the 4%, write post cards, share Heather’s , Joyce’s, Steve’s, Dan’s brilliant ‘letters’ …tell history as it is and plug away…WIN. THE. RACE.
I believe they were effective in the midterms during Trump's presidency to preserve the Democratic majority in the House. Postcard writing helped motivate people to vote by stirring them from their political hopelessness. The example of John Lewis' battle cry to "get in good trouble" remains pertinent today. It is a cry to do something; rather than to observe history, to be part of it; to be influential in some small way. By how many votes did Bush win Florida?
Though not sure about your "By how many votes did Bush win Florida?" Not sure because the far-right Supreme Court of that era would not countenance any actual final, legitimate counting of the votes then.
Our far right has long thought itself entitled to wreck its will upon the land -- damn any who think otherwise.
Bush "won" Florida by 500 votes. Had the recount continued 3 more days, it's likely Gore would have won by 1,500, with the momentum he was getting in the recount.
Actually 537 popular votes awarded to Bush/Cheney as I wrote to friends years ago:
"...The 2000 Florida election still grates with me, since Bush "won" 271 Electoral Votes to 266 (a 5 vote margin at just exactly the number required with the one abstention being one of the 3 D.C. Electors for Gore), 538 more votes if counted for Gore, would have given Gore 292 to Bush's 246 (a 46 Electoral vote margin). The Brooks Brother's Riot got the recount that the court said was justified (except they kept the deadline impossibly short) effectively halted so that Cheney/Bush ended up with a 537 vote lead (exactly as many popular votes as Electoral College voters that voted, since one abstained).
The attitude of one of the Republican poll workers I talked to seemed too hasty, too (eager to ignore any attempt to do an honest recount, back when I still considered many of our lower echelon Republican's honest brokers). During the 2016 primaries, I had a running issue with one of the D.C. Republican [alternate] delegates (I think), about the dozen different ways they assigned delegates in winner-take-all, winner-take-most, or proportional rules they got for states where my old party couldn't win in the general, so wanted every delegate (and later Elector) possible to skew the Electoral votes whichever way helped them the most..."
I have nothing but contempt for all the participants and supporters of the Brooks Brothers rioters for all the damage they did then and are still doing from the higher positions they have infiltrated into.
I'm disgusted to imagine even worse people that will be enabled to replace all that Trump promises to replace in his "Shallow State," should the electoral college be as counter to the popular vote winner (I suspect Trump will be an even bigger loser in the popular vote than both previous elections).
Oh, I agree that Bush likely didn't win Florida; that the Supreme Court interfered with — short circuited —the process of determining the legitimacy of the vote count. Contrastingly, all of Trump's spurious court challenges after his loss were given consideration.
While harboring for quite some time a strong mistrust for US justice, such blatant banana-republic-style interference with the democratic process by the country's highest jurisdiction seemed unbelievable.
The hubris, paranoia and gross incompetence of the Administration that followed defies belief, multiplying exponentially the damage inflicted on America by Al-Qaida at home and abroad, with effects in the Middle East and throughout the Old World that may last for centuries.
Oussama Ben Laden set out to cause lasting division throughout the world and died secure in the knowledge that he had manipulated America into delivering him victory beyond his wildest dreams.
A reality still misunderstood to this day by people, politicians, even the Pentagon, incapable of seeing 9/11 and the recent, even deadlier 12/7 attack on Israel for what they were: the deployment of strategic weapons to attain long-term objectives. Those with no sense of the long term are ill-matched against ruthless strategists, whether Islamists or the Chinese Communist Party.
I totally remember that moment, when they stopped the count. The count probably would have elected Al Gore, but it would have taken many more days of counting. That ending of the count was a Republican Overtake. GW managed the rigging of becoming the fake winner. He was so determined, and then he and Dick Cheyney and Donald Rumsfeld (and a fourth Republican) got what they had planned to do, go after the Iranian oil. They did not succeed.
No, he did win when the vote was stopped by the Supreme Court. Other votes that were waiting uncounted after that decision were discarded. We cannot go outside procedures like dead lines and Supreme Court rulings to get the result we want. What we got was a disaster - Iraq War and general incompetence. I wonder why George W. Bush is mute in the face of this travesty ! And I am represented by Byron Daniels in Lee ( still!) County, Florida…………… and he is a shoe in next November.
But for the politicized Supreme Court, there would be no Iraq war; a new ramping up of cascading lies for political ends; no Abu Graib and its attendant abuse of the term "torture".
There would have been the commencement of consciousness about global warming and political action to curb it. In essence, historically, then as now, Republican influence is usually destructive to our national interests and private freedoms and Democrats are constructive; they specifically tend to insure the general welfare; support respect for self-determination, equality before the law and promote the positive influence that a strong, true democracy exerts internationally.
If the Dems take both houses and the presidency, they should act IMMEDIATELY to enlarge the court to at least one justice per circuit, enact term limits, passing voting rights legislation and protect women’s reproductive health care. They need to flood us with legislation it’s been proven we need—no more relying on the republicans “good faith,” as if they actually have any.
Well, yes; I loose sleep over the insanity that we are actually living in this situation; living among so many selfish, racist, irrational people. This is another version of The Body Snatchers.
I agree. I only said "likely" because the Supreme Court stopped the count. Am I wrong;; did the count continue despite their interference? Was there an actual, final number?
I'll add that I was surprised Gore didn't loudly protest.
Do I remember correctly that there was a desire to avoid extending the (already) numerous challenges and counter challenges perilously close to January 6? To do so might challenge the tradition of "free and fair" US elections? The fact that Stone was involved in the Brooks Brothers (shut down the recount) Riot cast a dark shadow over the entire process.
I heard Al Gore speak at a presentation of An Inconvenient Truth, and he made a rather feeble joke that he wasn't very good at politics. Like Jimmy Carter, he had a good understanding of science, which of course is an affront to other forces. Let's not forget that before the latest Big Lie, there was Dick Cheney's insistence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
Want to thank you again for your note on how easily to edit. Since then, less than a week ago, I've posted several things which soon enough I realized needed editing -- which I could do easily enough thanks to you.
Just got a hundred AZ RTV postcards from Blue Wave Postcard Movement yesterday. As they came with pre-printed address labels and 2 sentences to write, can have all of them in the mail by Friday, latest. All 100 are labeled and 25 written (while I listened to MSNBC on the trial).
You are sending them out now? Wouldn't it be more strategic to wait until October? My letter and postcard writing campaigns instruct us to wait until October to send them out.
These are RTV (register to vote) postcards. Instructions are for two weeks maximum from the day there were received (5/14). I have others (GOTV) with an October date. I’m worried about DeJoy. Hope he will be gone by then. I’ll follow instructions, however.
Been a postcard writer for some time now. Given how many of us ignore/block calls and texts from unknown numbers, I feel like a postcard at least stands a chance.
His misconduct justifies their appetite for the same. "If he can get away with it, why can't I?"
TFG does not have a lock on despicable behavior, he just does it on stage for the world to see. Having lost any semblance of shame or self respect, he can make reality TV out of it. He openly does what many other power hungry individuals wish they had the chutzpah to do themselves. There's a really big gang of thugs out there in the DC pantheon of horribles.
He loves the spectacle, it may be draining but it serves his sick agenda since his ugly, putrid image is on every tv, computer and front page. Any publicity…
Tens of millions of Americans learned zero humanities in school, so cannot imagine artists beyond the vulgar, the stereotyped, the canned, formulaic, and soon eminently A.I.-mass-producible for more corporate profit, more of a cesspool for American public space.
Phil, as someone who's made his career through an audience of people who did get some education in the humanities, the truth is that 80% of Americans have ALWAYS been half-educated yokels, going back to the founding.
I worry much more about elites who never use any humanities, TCinLA.
I worry about the "educational" institutions that produced this dehumanization. I worry about the tens of millions who lost decent working-class jobs to offshoring, and their justifiable resentment of elites indifferent to them, our elites so largely unaware of, without literacy in the many fine novels, memoirs, films, songs, and other arts actually out there, available to us for helping to see, to experience what our neighbors have had to experience.
To which educational institutions are you referring? I'm a retired professor of mathematics. Are you accusing me of propagating dehuminization? Are you including me in your sweeping statement regarding elites?
I doubt that mathematics, part of liberal arts education, are part of the discussion. It’s the dehumanization of American universities which my favorite professor (Medieval French, Harvard PhD at 20) meant when he said that he graduated from
Harvard “while it was still a university—the year before Harvard put in the business school.”
I always say that if I had a magic educational wand, I would close ALL the business schools. The one at Columbia turned a friend of mine into someone convinced that the markets are always right and that executive pay should never be regulated when she already had a humanities degree from a different Ivy. When I would question any of this, she'd just say that smarter people than she believed this.
Ouch. Intelligence without grounding is wild. I have had a hard lesson in this from “intelligent” Trump voters. Because I remember WWII, had patriotic parents and a fierce teacher of history and civics who said that if we didn’t vote in every election we were entitled to vote in she would come back to haunt us, the aftermath (UN, Marshall Plan), followed by years in universities (sources, sources, sources) and doing music (right editions, precision of all sorts—pitch, beat, etc), Eisenhower was the only Republican I ever voted for. I looked at the Republican Party and saw the greed that underplay most of their thinking. With Reagan I had the end of even considering a Republican in any office. I also saw during 10 years in France what it means to have medicine and free undergraduate school for those who choose it, five weeks of paid vacation a year for everyone. And Europeans do not have business schools in their universities as far as I know. A pity that Tony Judt’s “Social Democracy” has not been taken seriously here.
After severe budget cuts by the State of Florida my beloved Florida State University accepted donations from the Koch brothers. In return they.gave final approval for professors in the school of business to the Koch’s who would teach the glory of a free market. I almost cried when I learned about it. Well regulated capitalism is arguably the best system. Unregulated capitalism is the worst. Free market to the Koch’s and other proponents is that the market does whatever the hell it wants.
Alas, Southern state legislatures are not friends in general to higher education. i used to think it would improve if more college educated legislators were elected, but that doesn't seem to have moved the needle much. It's about the money, don't you think?
I'm also a recipient of an old school education. I was taught vacuum tube circuitry using a slide rule. Digital computers weren't even in every university department. The engineers were still playing with analog computers.
It was a banner day when the instructor had yellow chalk as well as white.
No computer to do the heavy lifting. No computer to help you visualize things.
The watering down of curriculum worries me as well. As students rely more on the computer they rely less on developing their visualization skills.
Education is so different today. We had corporal punishment in public schools.
I'm just happy to have been able to complete my career. I saw over 10,000 students in my tenure, and many of them went on to accomplish their dreams. I'm honored to have been a small part of their journey.
Count the references to novels, films, songs, memoirs, histories.
Do the math.
As you do, note the tens of millions of embittered Americans whose jobs biz school elites offshored, whose lives most other elites learned to ignore, their instructors in dutifully neutered silos.
Sadly, that is the only way they were able to grab back the power in the Republican Party, they had an advisor who convinced the Republican Party to focus on the Abortion issue. That is how the Republicans recruited as many Right Wing Christian and More, orchestrated by Doris Schlafly. If she hadn't convinced them to focus on the abortion issue, they would never would have defeated the Democrats..
Yes he did. A couple of days ago at one of his rallies at a beach in New Jersey. It’s amazing how little to no coverage the MSM has given that comment. A psychopath praising another psychopath (even if a fictional one).
Do a search you’ll find a video clip of it with ease.
At this point I call the Speaker of the House, Mike "Goebbels" Johnson since he has become the mouthpiece to spin Trump's bad deads, just as Goebbels did for Hitler. The spin doctor. Let us hope the American people do not fall for it.
Tens of millions already have fallen for it, Linda.
They hate elites in the same proportion they love egregious lies. They hate gays in the same proportion they love their cult leader adorned with his Liberace coif and his drag queen orange encrusted make-up. They love pussy-grabbing in the same proportion they profess something they call "Christianity" or "Christian nationalism."
Embracing vulgarity is but a side effect of a much larger dynamic. What Trump has done, and the GOP has latched on to, is to tell voters what they want to hear without admitting their grievances are more due to GOP policies that have favored the rich since the 80's but instead they blame them on the worst progressive policy failures.
They have successfully demonized the left regardless of how liberal/progressive they might be. It's metastasized and it's here for generations. Because the facts didn't support the reality, they successfully reverted to story telling on right wing media and at political events.
The NIMBY progressive policies in deep blue cities have given fuel to GOP attacks. Look at the idiocy in SF for example and CA in general. This has been used to extend to the justice system and rule of law. Democrats are afraid of the maga movement and would rather avoid direct contact and believe they can win with reason.
It's why Biden can't break out of the perpetual deadlock with Trump in national polls. No matter how much Biden touts the economy and infrastructure it gets less traction than Trump/GOP false memes and storytelling. Democrats think they can debate their way out of a knife fight. That never works.
The only hope I see in 2024 comes from women willing to vote anti-GOP across the board because Biden has to risen to the level needed to counter Trump's erratic, yet effective, rhetoric.
Asking why is no longer an option, only a delaying mechanism.
The Putin finger on the polls is part of the problem too. I actually heard a learned member of the Orthodox Church say that Putin is a believer (he has “restored” the Orthodox Church in Russia, forbidden under Stalin to enhance his power). Those who spend time online for their news seem to have left all weighing of sources. The idea that a KGB trained member of the Stasi is suddenly Christian, in particular Putin, is mind boggling.
Let's be real. Religion for Putin and Trump is just another card in their decks of deception for the masses. They are not religious except for worshipping themselves.
Biden made me wish I'd waited to post my original remark. He did a gutsy thing today. Personally, I doubt the debates will happen but that doesn't upset me. While I would have LOVED to see Biden cross-examine Trump on his "Proud Boys stand down and stand by" remark, he can still do that whether there are debates or not.
I want to see Biden get nasty. I know he has it in him as he does it all the time behind the scenes. #littlesighofrelief
This is Christian Nationalism. It is ugly and it is here. We need to defeat it at every level. Think about it as the American Taliban. All Old Testament retribution and anger. No room for The Sermon on the Mount.
And to underscore your balking at "Christian nationalism" today, too, so-called Christian Mike Johnson (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives) now publicly aligns his version of Christianity with that of his friend Trump's pussy-grabbing, grabbing women for sex in high-end department store dressing rooms, inviting young women "for dinner" which turns out only to be forcing sex on them, too, in Las Vegas hotel room.
They have no shame, no conscience, these Republicans.
On the Clarence court, their taking bribes, perjuring themselves, and corrupting today’s law to serve that of the era of medieval witchcraft all self-exhibit.
When one has no respect for “others,” for the variations in American life, one can arrogate one’s ideology and impose it cookie-cutter on all.
And so congressional Republicans seek to outdo the vulgarity on the Clarence court. A presidential candidate who’s convicted in court, by a jury of his peers (more than one jury), of sexual abuse -- no problem. Same presidential candidate's business also convicted of widespread, deep, and many years of business fraud -- also no problem.
Whom do these Republicans serve, with their contempt for law, open embrace of vulgarity?
They serve the moneyed interests, the liars, the cheats, the greedy, the exploiters of both people and the planet. They do not serve the American people whom they attempt to disenfranchise. It you're not writing postcards to folks who haven't voted recently, now is the time to start.
They are the party of death as you have so neatly outlined for us.
Postcards, Betsy?
How much good will they do so long as all U.S. K-12 serves primarily the billionaire standardized testers, in schools so intimidated that all just anymore teach to the test?
How much good will they do so long as all U.S. higher ed serves the corporate that has neutered all in silos (& personal safety identity zones) where no humanities need apply?
Studies show that as many as 4% of folks who haven't voted recently go to the polls when they get a postcard in the mail urging them to vote. Look at the slim margins, and in some states, that's enough to make a difference.
This has been true for the 50 years I have been involved in politics. Back when I worked in the California legislature running campaigns, postcards would be used as a community organizing tool. Organizations that supported a candidate would be asked to get their members to commit to sending personally signed postcards for the candidate to at least 10 friends, because it was known that a postcard was 80% more likely to be read and not thrown away as compared with the typical political mailers that flood my mailbox these days and go straight into the blue barrel.
It was stated last night on PBS that 16% of the base would NOT vote for TFG if found guilty but 80% said they still would …16% here…4% there…I’ll take every gain possible for the win!
There’s an outstanding rank of young Democrats already serving and in line for the next top dogs, impressive, willing, getting good review. Ousting these Complicits will take several years of voting cycles. Many Republicans jumped ship already realizing the ploy. Writers like Heather , historians , and others have laid bare the ‘aint pretty’ playbook of autocracy and the companies now at 100 planning 2025 clearly convinced of overthrow. But the American Dream is laced with the shiny schemes , the promises ( pointedly the tariff fiasco when nothing materialized to ‘build back better’ replacement) The holocaust/climate/election deniers prove the point-make it all shiny and pretty, build upon lies, promises,trust me and thoughts and prayers …’they will come’…
No the Dems don’t have the perfect solutions. Yes we’ve made some mistakes. But the turtle won the race.
We. Can. Do. This. But we got to do it at the ballot box…grab the 16% , the 4%, write post cards, share Heather’s , Joyce’s, Steve’s, Dan’s brilliant ‘letters’ …tell history as it is and plug away…WIN. THE. RACE.
💙💙VOTE💙💙
Native American votes helped secure President Biden’s win in 2020.
✍️They have a very effective postcarding campaign that pairs voters with a local organizer.
https://neaznativedemocrats.org/
This is the organization I write postcards for. Well run and effective
Absolutely, demonstrably true.
I believe they were effective in the midterms during Trump's presidency to preserve the Democratic majority in the House. Postcard writing helped motivate people to vote by stirring them from their political hopelessness. The example of John Lewis' battle cry to "get in good trouble" remains pertinent today. It is a cry to do something; rather than to observe history, to be part of it; to be influential in some small way. By how many votes did Bush win Florida?
Good points, Russell.
Especially re Florida 2000.
Though not sure about your "By how many votes did Bush win Florida?" Not sure because the far-right Supreme Court of that era would not countenance any actual final, legitimate counting of the votes then.
Our far right has long thought itself entitled to wreck its will upon the land -- damn any who think otherwise.
Bush "won" Florida by 500 votes. Had the recount continued 3 more days, it's likely Gore would have won by 1,500, with the momentum he was getting in the recount.
Actually 537 popular votes awarded to Bush/Cheney as I wrote to friends years ago:
"...The 2000 Florida election still grates with me, since Bush "won" 271 Electoral Votes to 266 (a 5 vote margin at just exactly the number required with the one abstention being one of the 3 D.C. Electors for Gore), 538 more votes if counted for Gore, would have given Gore 292 to Bush's 246 (a 46 Electoral vote margin). The Brooks Brother's Riot got the recount that the court said was justified (except they kept the deadline impossibly short) effectively halted so that Cheney/Bush ended up with a 537 vote lead (exactly as many popular votes as Electoral College voters that voted, since one abstained).
The attitude of one of the Republican poll workers I talked to seemed too hasty, too (eager to ignore any attempt to do an honest recount, back when I still considered many of our lower echelon Republican's honest brokers). During the 2016 primaries, I had a running issue with one of the D.C. Republican [alternate] delegates (I think), about the dozen different ways they assigned delegates in winner-take-all, winner-take-most, or proportional rules they got for states where my old party couldn't win in the general, so wanted every delegate (and later Elector) possible to skew the Electoral votes whichever way helped them the most..."
I have nothing but contempt for all the participants and supporters of the Brooks Brothers rioters for all the damage they did then and are still doing from the higher positions they have infiltrated into.
I'm disgusted to imagine even worse people that will be enabled to replace all that Trump promises to replace in his "Shallow State," should the electoral college be as counter to the popular vote winner (I suspect Trump will be an even bigger loser in the popular vote than both previous elections).
…which is exactly why the rush to stop the count.
Yep, in GW's plan, along with Rumsfeld and two others, to get the oil.
Yup. That was the stolen election so of course Stop the Steal is now their mantra.
That's true!
Yes, that is the truth.
Oh, I agree that Bush likely didn't win Florida; that the Supreme Court interfered with — short circuited —the process of determining the legitimacy of the vote count. Contrastingly, all of Trump's spurious court challenges after his loss were given consideration.
Bush only "won" Florida because the Supreme Court stopped the recount.
I recall disbelief.
While harboring for quite some time a strong mistrust for US justice, such blatant banana-republic-style interference with the democratic process by the country's highest jurisdiction seemed unbelievable.
The hubris, paranoia and gross incompetence of the Administration that followed defies belief, multiplying exponentially the damage inflicted on America by Al-Qaida at home and abroad, with effects in the Middle East and throughout the Old World that may last for centuries.
Oussama Ben Laden set out to cause lasting division throughout the world and died secure in the knowledge that he had manipulated America into delivering him victory beyond his wildest dreams.
A reality still misunderstood to this day by people, politicians, even the Pentagon, incapable of seeing 9/11 and the recent, even deadlier 12/7 attack on Israel for what they were: the deployment of strategic weapons to attain long-term objectives. Those with no sense of the long term are ill-matched against ruthless strategists, whether Islamists or the Chinese Communist Party.
I totally remember that moment, when they stopped the count. The count probably would have elected Al Gore, but it would have taken many more days of counting. That ending of the count was a Republican Overtake. GW managed the rigging of becoming the fake winner. He was so determined, and then he and Dick Cheyney and Donald Rumsfeld (and a fourth Republican) got what they had planned to do, go after the Iranian oil. They did not succeed.
Bush v Gore was the point at which the Supreme Court lost all credibility and the GOP learned it could do as it pleased with no accountability
Wolfowitz?
Right!
I recall that Sandra Day O’Connor on her retirement that she was proud of her time on the court. Her only regret was the vote to give Florida to Bush.
No, he did win when the vote was stopped by the Supreme Court. Other votes that were waiting uncounted after that decision were discarded. We cannot go outside procedures like dead lines and Supreme Court rulings to get the result we want. What we got was a disaster - Iraq War and general incompetence. I wonder why George W. Bush is mute in the face of this travesty ! And I am represented by Byron Daniels in Lee ( still!) County, Florida…………… and he is a shoe in next November.
And that win should have been called out.
But for the politicized Supreme Court, there would be no Iraq war; a new ramping up of cascading lies for political ends; no Abu Graib and its attendant abuse of the term "torture".
There would have been the commencement of consciousness about global warming and political action to curb it. In essence, historically, then as now, Republican influence is usually destructive to our national interests and private freedoms and Democrats are constructive; they specifically tend to insure the general welfare; support respect for self-determination, equality before the law and promote the positive influence that a strong, true democracy exerts internationally.
If the Dems take both houses and the presidency, they should act IMMEDIATELY to enlarge the court to at least one justice per circuit, enact term limits, passing voting rights legislation and protect women’s reproductive health care. They need to flood us with legislation it’s been proven we need—no more relying on the republicans “good faith,” as if they actually have any.
I dreamed
Like an enigmatic smile, that begs a question.
Better than the simmering rage that I have had since..,
Well, yes; I loose sleep over the insanity that we are actually living in this situation; living among so many selfish, racist, irrational people. This is another version of The Body Snatchers.
More like mind snatchers
He didn’t
Russell Meyer
just now
I agree. I only said "likely" because the Supreme Court stopped the count. Am I wrong;; did the count continue despite their interference? Was there an actual, final number?
I'll add that I was surprised Gore didn't loudly protest.
He gave up too soon, did not need to, but why???????
Do I remember correctly that there was a desire to avoid extending the (already) numerous challenges and counter challenges perilously close to January 6? To do so might challenge the tradition of "free and fair" US elections? The fact that Stone was involved in the Brooks Brothers (shut down the recount) Riot cast a dark shadow over the entire process.
I think, Marleen: deeply embarrassed at losing his home state, Tennessee.
I heard Al Gore speak at a presentation of An Inconvenient Truth, and he made a rather feeble joke that he wasn't very good at politics. Like Jimmy Carter, he had a good understanding of science, which of course is an affront to other forces. Let's not forget that before the latest Big Lie, there was Dick Cheney's insistence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
Good to see you appear here now, progwoman.
Want to thank you again for your note on how easily to edit. Since then, less than a week ago, I've posted several things which soon enough I realized needed editing -- which I could do easily enough thanks to you.
Are there other options?
How much good will it do all of us to just lie down & let these crooks take over our country? Do you really think giving up is the answer?
Just got a hundred AZ RTV postcards from Blue Wave Postcard Movement yesterday. As they came with pre-printed address labels and 2 sentences to write, can have all of them in the mail by Friday, latest. All 100 are labeled and 25 written (while I listened to MSNBC on the trial).
You are sending them out now? Wouldn't it be more strategic to wait until October? My letter and postcard writing campaigns instruct us to wait until October to send them out.
These are RTV (register to vote) postcards. Instructions are for two weeks maximum from the day there were received (5/14). I have others (GOTV) with an October date. I’m worried about DeJoy. Hope he will be gone by then. I’ll follow instructions, however.
Thank you for clarifying, and especially for all you do to GOTV.
My group just did 300 of those cards!
Just mailed the 100 cards. The stick-on labels and two sentence message are a breeze.
Been a postcard writer for some time now. Given how many of us ignore/block calls and texts from unknown numbers, I feel like a postcard at least stands a chance.
His misconduct justifies their appetite for the same. "If he can get away with it, why can't I?"
TFG does not have a lock on despicable behavior, he just does it on stage for the world to see. Having lost any semblance of shame or self respect, he can make reality TV out of it. He openly does what many other power hungry individuals wish they had the chutzpah to do themselves. There's a really big gang of thugs out there in the DC pantheon of horribles.
He loves the spectacle, it may be draining but it serves his sick agenda since his ugly, putrid image is on every tv, computer and front page. Any publicity…
". . . make reality TV out of it."
Very good, Just Sayin'.
Tens of millions of Americans learned zero humanities in school, so cannot imagine artists beyond the vulgar, the stereotyped, the canned, formulaic, and soon eminently A.I.-mass-producible for more corporate profit, more of a cesspool for American public space.
Phil, as someone who's made his career through an audience of people who did get some education in the humanities, the truth is that 80% of Americans have ALWAYS been half-educated yokels, going back to the founding.
I worry much more about elites who never use any humanities, TCinLA.
I worry about the "educational" institutions that produced this dehumanization. I worry about the tens of millions who lost decent working-class jobs to offshoring, and their justifiable resentment of elites indifferent to them, our elites so largely unaware of, without literacy in the many fine novels, memoirs, films, songs, and other arts actually out there, available to us for helping to see, to experience what our neighbors have had to experience.
To which educational institutions are you referring? I'm a retired professor of mathematics. Are you accusing me of propagating dehuminization? Are you including me in your sweeping statement regarding elites?
I doubt that mathematics, part of liberal arts education, are part of the discussion. It’s the dehumanization of American universities which my favorite professor (Medieval French, Harvard PhD at 20) meant when he said that he graduated from
Harvard “while it was still a university—the year before Harvard put in the business school.”
I always say that if I had a magic educational wand, I would close ALL the business schools. The one at Columbia turned a friend of mine into someone convinced that the markets are always right and that executive pay should never be regulated when she already had a humanities degree from a different Ivy. When I would question any of this, she'd just say that smarter people than she believed this.
Ouch. Intelligence without grounding is wild. I have had a hard lesson in this from “intelligent” Trump voters. Because I remember WWII, had patriotic parents and a fierce teacher of history and civics who said that if we didn’t vote in every election we were entitled to vote in she would come back to haunt us, the aftermath (UN, Marshall Plan), followed by years in universities (sources, sources, sources) and doing music (right editions, precision of all sorts—pitch, beat, etc), Eisenhower was the only Republican I ever voted for. I looked at the Republican Party and saw the greed that underplay most of their thinking. With Reagan I had the end of even considering a Republican in any office. I also saw during 10 years in France what it means to have medicine and free undergraduate school for those who choose it, five weeks of paid vacation a year for everyone. And Europeans do not have business schools in their universities as far as I know. A pity that Tony Judt’s “Social Democracy” has not been taken seriously here.
After severe budget cuts by the State of Florida my beloved Florida State University accepted donations from the Koch brothers. In return they.gave final approval for professors in the school of business to the Koch’s who would teach the glory of a free market. I almost cried when I learned about it. Well regulated capitalism is arguably the best system. Unregulated capitalism is the worst. Free market to the Koch’s and other proponents is that the market does whatever the hell it wants.
Alas, Southern state legislatures are not friends in general to higher education. i used to think it would improve if more college educated legislators were elected, but that doesn't seem to have moved the needle much. It's about the money, don't you think?
The edit function, dear friend progwoman.
In your last line you say, "she'd just way that . . .," when the edit function would let you say, "she'd just say that . . .."
Thanks for clarifying.
I'm also a recipient of an old school education. I was taught vacuum tube circuitry using a slide rule. Digital computers weren't even in every university department. The engineers were still playing with analog computers.
It was a banner day when the instructor had yellow chalk as well as white.
No computer to do the heavy lifting. No computer to help you visualize things.
The watering down of curriculum worries me as well. As students rely more on the computer they rely less on developing their visualization skills.
Education is so different today. We had corporal punishment in public schools.
I'm just happy to have been able to complete my career. I saw over 10,000 students in my tenure, and many of them went on to accomplish their dreams. I'm honored to have been a small part of their journey.
Look, Bob, at the comment writers here.
Count the references to novels, films, songs, memoirs, histories.
Do the math.
As you do, note the tens of millions of embittered Americans whose jobs biz school elites offshored, whose lives most other elites learned to ignore, their instructors in dutifully neutered silos.
Agree with 70%
Sadly, that is the only way they were able to grab back the power in the Republican Party, they had an advisor who convinced the Republican Party to focus on the Abortion issue. That is how the Republicans recruited as many Right Wing Christian and More, orchestrated by Doris Schlafly. If she hadn't convinced them to focus on the abortion issue, they would never would have defeated the Democrats..
Phyllis.
Read about Paul Weyrich. Where we are today goes back to him and his diabolical, RW beliefs.
Nothing like tfg calling Hannibal Lecter a good guy : “the late, great Hannibal Lecter, a wonderful man”
He did? Funny, I was just thinking he reminds me of Louis XIV.
Yes he did. A couple of days ago at one of his rallies at a beach in New Jersey. It’s amazing how little to no coverage the MSM has given that comment. A psychopath praising another psychopath (even if a fictional one).
Do a search you’ll find a video clip of it with ease.
Good grief!
At this point I call the Speaker of the House, Mike "Goebbels" Johnson since he has become the mouthpiece to spin Trump's bad deads, just as Goebbels did for Hitler. The spin doctor. Let us hope the American people do not fall for it.
Tens of millions already have fallen for it, Linda.
They hate elites in the same proportion they love egregious lies. They hate gays in the same proportion they love their cult leader adorned with his Liberace coif and his drag queen orange encrusted make-up. They love pussy-grabbing in the same proportion they profess something they call "Christianity" or "Christian nationalism."
The spirit of Reagan, the original “ dismantler” of post-WW2 stability.
Embracing vulgarity is but a side effect of a much larger dynamic. What Trump has done, and the GOP has latched on to, is to tell voters what they want to hear without admitting their grievances are more due to GOP policies that have favored the rich since the 80's but instead they blame them on the worst progressive policy failures.
They have successfully demonized the left regardless of how liberal/progressive they might be. It's metastasized and it's here for generations. Because the facts didn't support the reality, they successfully reverted to story telling on right wing media and at political events.
The NIMBY progressive policies in deep blue cities have given fuel to GOP attacks. Look at the idiocy in SF for example and CA in general. This has been used to extend to the justice system and rule of law. Democrats are afraid of the maga movement and would rather avoid direct contact and believe they can win with reason.
It's why Biden can't break out of the perpetual deadlock with Trump in national polls. No matter how much Biden touts the economy and infrastructure it gets less traction than Trump/GOP false memes and storytelling. Democrats think they can debate their way out of a knife fight. That never works.
The only hope I see in 2024 comes from women willing to vote anti-GOP across the board because Biden has to risen to the level needed to counter Trump's erratic, yet effective, rhetoric.
Asking why is no longer an option, only a delaying mechanism.
The Putin finger on the polls is part of the problem too. I actually heard a learned member of the Orthodox Church say that Putin is a believer (he has “restored” the Orthodox Church in Russia, forbidden under Stalin to enhance his power). Those who spend time online for their news seem to have left all weighing of sources. The idea that a KGB trained member of the Stasi is suddenly Christian, in particular Putin, is mind boggling.
Let's be real. Religion for Putin and Trump is just another card in their decks of deception for the masses. They are not religious except for worshipping themselves.
Yes! Exactly. That’s why DT and his bibles are hilarious (or scary).
More like sad, sacrilegious and sick. But I'm very jaded. ;-)
Biden made me wish I'd waited to post my original remark. He did a gutsy thing today. Personally, I doubt the debates will happen but that doesn't upset me. While I would have LOVED to see Biden cross-examine Trump on his "Proud Boys stand down and stand by" remark, he can still do that whether there are debates or not.
I want to see Biden get nasty. I know he has it in him as he does it all the time behind the scenes. #littlesighofrelief
This is Christian Nationalism. It is ugly and it is here. We need to defeat it at every level. Think about it as the American Taliban. All Old Testament retribution and anger. No room for The Sermon on the Mount.
Yes, Susan.
And to underscore your balking at "Christian nationalism" today, too, so-called Christian Mike Johnson (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives) now publicly aligns his version of Christianity with that of his friend Trump's pussy-grabbing, grabbing women for sex in high-end department store dressing rooms, inviting young women "for dinner" which turns out only to be forcing sex on them, too, in Las Vegas hotel room.