Today Tennessee state representative Justin Jones burned a Confederate battle flag in the rotunda of the Tennessee State Capitol in protest of the legislature’s redrawing of the state’s congressional district maps to erase the majority-Black 9th Congressional District.
A rare complaint—"...the administration has been badly off the mark in its public statements about the war" should read "the administration has lied about the war."
Lawrence O'Donnell made a similar comment about a survey that instead of asking Catholics if they approved or disapproved of Trump's lies about the Pope only asked if they approved or disapproved of Trump's statement about the Pope. It's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back while following all the rules against an opponent that gets to make all the rules.
James, I’ve posted this here a bit ago, but never know who sees it, so here it is once more: From “The Secret Commonwealth”; “Book of Dust” series, Vol 2, Philip Pullman
IMHO this speaks to our society’s current despair and lost ways.
Pan, Lyra’s daemon (one’s external “soul” in the form of an animal) , is speaking to her:
“….Sort of a stalemate. But it’s worse’n that. The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has noting to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ‘em.” Ah, the conundrum!
Barbara ... I get it, but if I act based on the assumption that I won't catch a fish, then I won't fish, and then I won't catch a fish. I think it's better when David and Goliath stories (like Minneapolis v. ICE or Ukraine v. Russia) come to mind.
In the April 27 episode of “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” titled “Mikie Sherrill Runs New Jersy Like a Busy Mom,” the governor talks about her surprise coming from a mutually respectful military career and expecting the same in the House Democratic Caucus only to be told on day one, “That’s not how things work here. It’s every man for themselves.”
Speaking at Jesse Jackson’s memorial, Al Sharpton said, “don’t leave here feeling sanctified and then act like you don’t have an assignment yourself.” He talked about how Jackson “never let us get away with making excuses.” Then he said, “the problem is not Trump … the problem is us.” And he ended by asking, “What happened to us?”
I think the answer to the “what happened to the pro-democracy movement” question is that too many of us get so busy remembering to think about “me” that we forget to think about “us.” Then we look around one day and all we can see is what “they” are doing and that “they” need to change.
When the problem becomes an excuse, then the problem is no longer the problem because the excuse made us as ineffective as the bull who can’t figure out why it keeps aiming at the matador and keeps hitting the cape.
I think the problem is no longer in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Almost everyone in a community directly facing a crisis quickly forgets about self-interest. I think the problem is we need more voices talking like Al Sharpton. And the more I do, the happier I’ll be that I’m not the matador.
A circular firing squad is the opposite of what I am proposing. Ironically, a circular firing squad is what you just proposed.
I'm proposing conversations involving trust and verification. Your proposing statements involving some version of "they're the ones that need to change, so don't tell me that I have to change." And guess what MAGA is saying? You guessed it: "the radical left needs to change, so don't tell me that I have to change."
You're saying you don't want shite. Trust me, I'm not giving you shite.
I've mostly stayed away from HCR commentary of late. Recently (April 14) I posted to 60 Congressional Dem leaders and the DNC a serious 20-page 'essay' (as in 'an attempt at something'). It is a bit of policy analysis seeking to spur attention to the wide range of profound challenges DJT's second regime has revealed to the very survival of the Republic.
Four weeks later I've not received a single peep from any of the recipients.
What I HAVE received in that same span of time is a flood of requests from DCCC, DSCC, DNC and innumerable PAC's claiming or implying that they are Democratic entities and exoriating me for
for failing to continue to contribute as I had in 2024 in Harris' and the Democrats last failed campaign. I don't have the energy or the will to print and first-class mail any more. Any interested parties can e-mail me at gideonse@midmaine,com with your own e-mail address and I'll happily send you back a digital copy of the essay for your examination.
[Just for fun here are the last names of the recipients of my essay from the cover page: Jeffries, Schumer, Clark, Aguilar, Booker, Raskin, Warren, Schiff, Ocasio-Cortez, Murphy. Sanders, Rochester, Schatz, Kelly, Slotkin, Blumenthal, Bennet, Baldwin, Cantwell, Coons, Crockett, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Thompson, Lieu, Neguse, Green, Dingell, Gottheimer, Craig, Clyburn, Horsford, Clarke, Sewell, Crow, Deluzio, Goodlander. Houlahan, Evans, Boyle, Scanlon, Larson, DeLauro, Frankel, Thanadar, Schneider, Costa, King, Pingree, Golden, Martin (DNC-5 copies) And JV Last (Bulwark)],
Very interesting philosophical discussions here today; interesting response from Lady Emsworth as well. Apache had written to me yesterday and I wrote back about my good vs evil puzzle. It was born of the articles I read https://alisav.substack.com/ that Ally House sent to me.
The lessons of history dictate that when laws allow unfettered and unlimited financial access to influence the ballot, it will divide and cont any democracy anywhere. That’s just one side and the other being a populist or popular government plagued with weak leadership that ironically would to benefit the other side. Some major flaws in democratic leadership; President Jimmy Carter and his huge blunder sending a military rescue mission to save the American embassy personal only to lose to a second-rate actor that began the modern destruction of a broad-based economic system. Later we elected the first of two Bush regressives and his obvious flaw was an unnecessary war and later a Supreme Court appointment to spite Thurgood Marshall demise. We know Bill Clinton and his picadillos with Big Lips Monica and not leaving anything for what might have been the best leadership in Al Gore but instead electing man who failed at anything he involved himself in including government and the naming of more inferior Justices. And then the BIG GAZUNTITE taking office in 2016 that has led to the almost total destruction of America.
Btw, in curious. Is Rick Senders still around? I blocked him and when you block, it’s a total block.
Which leads to an even more critical philosophical question - "Why are some of us trying to be "good" and some of us seem to manage to be "Bad" without any expenditure of effort?
What is the benefit of being "good"?
I can only postulate that being "good" seems to be a benefit to the whole and wider community - a selfless act that is good for all.
Whereas being "bad" is often self centered, and aids no one but self - or a small group at most. Mutual dependence in "badness."
Goodness is outgoing - Badness is humanity turned in upon itself.
I am constantly reminded of a hymn I sang at church as a small child:
"Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light
Like a little candle burning in the night.
In this world of darkness, we must shine
You in your small corner, and I in mine."
That message applies whether you are religious or not. As Martin Luther King Jr. said ""Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that,"
I guess we'll have to keep our candles burning for a wee while yet. . .
Yes ... we're either working together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all) or working at cross purposes like three stooges (all for one and that one is "me").
Patrice, yes, then after the stabbing, we whine that "they made me do it." The "hatred" of Hillary ?Clinton is truly disgusting and worse on the Democrat's side than Republican. The Biden "take-down" calling him "Sleepy Joe" and other BS undermined so much of what he tried to do, and actually was successful with. Those with the anti-Democrat whines say nothing or nearly nothing about Trump's dementia which has been obvious to anyone who has ever lived with someone who had dementia at least since 2019 (when I noticed it). The people around Trump knew it, but Democrats couldn't get into motion to call him and his handlers out on the medical lies the white house was telling. Biden's AG Garland was partly to blame too, unable or unwilling to indict Trump on his insurrection incitement for which there was a lot of evidence, and Republicans just couldn't manage to convict Trump after his impeachment when the evidence was clear. Then, Democrats couldn't get fully behind Harris and Walz. Why not! Not clear to me except maybe that Dems are pretty racist and misogynistic too. There was cheating by Musk and the AI-ers who became DOGE, but if a huge Democratic turnout had happened, the fraud would have been detected or even in many places cancelled. Why Democrats do this stupid stuff is beyond comprehension to me. I know Schumer and Jeffries are scared of the progressives, so undermine them regularly, but they do need to be called out by the rest of the party as old-timers who have lost touch and should step down on their own rather than being forced out by the progressives who are looking for something better. And, there are a lot better available in both Houses and for the executive branch too. We just need to recognize them, share what we know about them all over the country, and help those good candidates get elected with a strong social media presence, billboards that tell the truth about Trumplandia and its super rich white boys who want to rule the world. Maybe we need some comic books published that show Democratic candidates as superheroes trying to fight the Lex Luthers of Trumplandia. We have to get creative, to respect the white voters being used to bring back Jim Crow and help them to understand they are being used and abused, and to find ways to bring some joy into the world in this massive Trumplican-created darkness.
Don’t discount the forces strategically manipulating us to be at each other’s throats. Social media is the perfect instrument to inject poisonous impulses to the body politic. We are influenceable. We are persuadable. There has been trillions of dollars invested to research HOW to manipulate us away from our more natural state of collaborative community. They are keeping us stuck in an illusion of conflict. And it’s to make money and gain power for themselves. HOW to rise above the manipulation, yet still use the tools of social media is the task at hand. We are struggling to learn -in real time- how to fight a beast that wants to crush us. HOW do we pull together the 99% of us “Not-In-The-Club”? How do we see and align our needs and interests and fortify our truth of commonality? This is the battle of our Age.
Don't just trust, but also verify, that I am not discounting the forces you are referring to. In return, please don't discount the force of truth Obama is talking about in the following quote I transcribed from of a recent "The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell" episode (S2026:Ep33).
"In our (Obama Foundation), a lot of the work that I do is working with the young civic leaders, political leaders, journalists, human rights leaders, not just here in the United States, but around the world. And one of the first things I say to them is, 'Know what you really believe. That’s your starting point. First of all, if you understand your convictions, you got a moral compass — you’ve got a code — you’ve spent time wrestling with what it is that you care about and what you believe. Then it’s a lot easier now to be open and actually listen to other people as opposed to constantly trying to beat off anybody who might contradict your current perspective.' And I think a guy like (James Talarico), his starting point is, 'let me say what I believe.'"
"Yes ... we're either working together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all) or working at cross purposes like three stooges (all for one and that one is "me")." JHC
"Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”" - HCR
The next stop is the ballot box.
Some odds are against us, but in a significant number of instances, nominally opposition voters are more resistant to voting in Democrats than to voting out Republicans.
The antidemocratic Republican electorate understands that voting is a united joint exercise in taking power. While antiDemocratic leftish wingers use voting as an individual exercise in personal expression. Who are the stooges now?
Barbara, I am a Pullman fan/reader and am re-reading The Secret Commonwealth, and finding so many elements that describe our current society - and the conundrum Pan describes!!!!!!!!
Or, how about asking if they recognize which statements about the Pope are lies. Then asking them which ones are not. That would really get to the heart of the matter.
Linda, who should do the asking and of whom. I like the idea. It can be hard to tell since each media report has a slightly different take on what was said or what happened. It reminds me of the part of the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" where the contestant has to tell truth from fiction with a story of the week. Those are often silly, but maybe politicians could be encouraged to play "which statement is true?" with 4 or 5 statements or events to choose from. That would be fun. Maybe the congressional committees could play it with their "witnesses." That would have been fun with Bondi or Lutnick. Maybe Jamie Raskin could put together such a "game." I think we'd all learn a lot!
I remember that. Our family loved that show. I was really good at it. My teacher skills perhaps. I love your idea of politicians being invited to tell which statement is true and which is a lie, and they have to invite both Republican and Democrats on. I also think it could be suggested to some select people in Congress.
There is also a school game called Two truths and a lie, and the person says three things about themselves and you have to tell which is the lie. That would be good. At least they would know one was a lie and two were true, though we should hold politicians to higher standards of political knowledge.
I really like this idea. I can easily see Raskin putting something like that together. We still have plenty more rats to hear from.
Linda, thanks. I listen to "Wait Wait" every Saturday. My weekend isn't the same without it. How can we get the idea to someone who could try it. I like Raskin doing it because he doesn't get ruffled and he can keep an even tone presenting the statements for the persons consideration. It would be really fun if he actually used statements from the person being questioned to see what the person will admit to and if they can remember what they have said.
The good liars on YouTube try logic all the time. The Magas are finally backed into a complete corner (on logical grounds) to which they respond: “…of course I still support Trump… why would you ask?”
William, it's like a part of their brain, their reasoning is shut down so they can pretend Trump is good for them and America when he and his toddler pool clearly are not!
Now I have proof positive that I’m a grouchy ole man when the Pope is younger than I. I can’t handle it. I’m going out and try to run 3 miles today to get myself in shape for a 5 K race in June.
James, You are right, so we need to find ways to get the word "lie" into reports more often. Trump lies nearly all the time and I am no longer sure that he knows the difference between the lies and the rare times he tells a truth. That truth usually comes when he is threatening someone and telling them how he will harm them. Pretty much everything else is just a lie and needs to be labeled as such. It would be funny to have online in many places "lie-o-meters to show people how many public lies Trump tells each day or each week with a few examples. Maybe it could wake a few people up. I must say, even in news sources that claim to try to tell the truth, they can't manage the word "lie" for the crap pumped out by this Trumpian regime. That includes NPR/PBS (even though Trump and his white house toddler pool and Republicans in Congress deliberately cut their funding), MS Now, and NBC News (which hasn't been absorbed into right-wing corporate junk news yet). Hey folks, a lie is a lie so you should call it that and call out the liars by name!
Ruth ... I suggest going one level deeper. Why would someone choose to lie versus tell the truth? To serve an interest. So, the question is not whether they are lying. The questions is, what does the lie say about what interest is being served?
I know what interest is being served by HCR in every paragraph of every newsletter: America, the last best hope of the Earth.
Ligia, lawyers might not like it, but if one can prove something is a lie, there is nothing they can do except sue, and the suit would be dismissed on the grounds that the statement was the truth. Courage is not very prominent right now. It is true that Trumplandia targets people, but we need to find ways to fight back against Trumplandia's authoritarian, anti-American intimidation actions.
The BIG question for our times: Why do 39-40% of our fellow Americans believe that is it's OK for our leaders to abuse and lie to us? In fact the abuse and lying might be good for us???
We can be sure the our Abuser and Liar in Chief, still knows in his bones that he could shoot a person on 5th Ave and not lose a supporter.
The big question of our times might be why the culture in the Republican Party is less like a functioning political party and more like an abusive relationship, but that not the only conclusion.
Viktor Frankl said, "When we are no longer able to challenge a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." So, that's a different conclusion.
Karl Popper's "falsification" theory suggests that your conclusion, like Frankl's, is only as strong as how far it can resist potentially falsifying evidence. I can't tell you which of the two would survive rigorous skepticism without doing the work, but when I adopt Frankl's conclusion, I know what to do.
Once one calls Trump a liar, there is a bias intended and/or unintended. That sets up an internal conflict and a response from that if one respects the Pope but also likes Trump. I disagree with O'Donnell... as exasperating as it can be to back off from saying Trump lies in order to get answers.
Good point. O'Donnell's comment caught my attention and got me thinking in one direction, then your comment caught my attention and got me thinking in the other direction. But that's because my philosophy is not "I think, therefore I am." Instead, my philosophy is "I think, therefore I am making potentially erroneous -- but testable -- assumptions." The "biased" philosophy is "I think, therefore I am right."
Susan I agree and I have complained to the media I read about them not using clear language. Having recently reread Orwell's "1984" I am aware of the role that language plays in fascism. Here is a piece I wrote on how Trump uses autocratic language.
I also just wrote a piece on a campaign Indivisible Abroad is supporting to impeach Trump and his cronies. It includes a link to sign up. Please read this piece and consider signing the petition. We aim to get 2 million signatures.
I call it "Fox News is not news, it is legally listed as Entertainment-- like The Kardashians or the WWE. It looks real, but it's highly scripted and highly produced to reach a target audience.
Exactly Patrice. However, if preceded by the word "Faux" or "Pretend" or "Satyrical" it might work. In fact, might be more explicit about what it is. I complained to The Guardian this week about their use of language with Trump. I said that parroting him without at least pointing out that the Iranians said something completely different is misleading and pointed them to Orwell's "1984" to better understand the dangers of doing that.
Linda, Oooo! I like Faux Fox! It has a kind of ring to it! It would be great if we could get something like that around so Faux ?Fox can be seen by more people as the junk, garbage it is and has always been.
One way is to use it a lot. TACO and NACHO caught on that way too. We eschew the Faux Fox too! Faux Fox is short and catchy, but not one word. Perhaps Fauxfox. Or FOFOX. Maybe even FOFX.
More important than insulting Fox News is listening to it. For real. “Decoding Fox News” on Substack compares Fox soundbites to NPR. One listen and you understand why MAGA still supports the direction of the country. THEY never hear what we read here.
Listen. Understand. It’s the way into the minds and motivations of MAGA.
It is important not to listen to that sort of thing. It erodes one's ability to tell truths from lies. I have seen it happen to a friend who was listening just to keep up with what the other side is saying, and now sounds more and more like that.
Linda, I appreciate that POV. I even feel myself being pulled toward the Fox News logic and assessment. But that feeling creates an understanding of its power. (And, I'm to the left of AOC.)
The Substack "Decoding Fox News" plays a week of sound bites in 45 minutes. The commentary throughout debunks the claims with evidence and humor.
Thank you Linda. “Language of a fascist regime” will be very helpful when engaging in excruciating conversations with those who still do not see the reality of this mess.
Dissecting the “doublespeak” is a clever strategy.
Like Jiang Xueqin, but from an American sensibility, Douglas Macgregor seems to comprehend the entirety of the Hormuz stand-off. Trump needs to find a way to avoid humiliation. Dear Donnie... Herein: the road to redemption: Pull all American soldiers and ships out of the Middle East region immediately and win the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war you started.
Or, all his U.S. evangelicals and white racist nationalists with their Rapture! Rapture! Rapture! support of and goading of Israeli far-right murderous settlers stealing ever more West Bank land started it.
Netanyahu may have had the idea to start the war and asked Trump to join, but both of them started it. Remember, it was the US that bombed the girls' school right from the gitgo. That is on the US.
Great idea Greg, although Trump is not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize. We have to make up a different one for Trump. It is called the Ending the [unnecessary and illegal] War You Started Peace Prize.
LET's HAVE REALITY CHECK ABOUT THE STATUS OF trump's WAR IN IRAN. Per Time Magazine, "Since 2/28/26 Iranian military forces have damaged or destroyed 228 U.S. military structures across 15 to 17 nations in the Middle East" including but, not limited to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan & the UAE. "13 to 15 U.S. service members have been killed with 400 to 537 personnel wounded" per Time Mag.
As Heather points out, "British energy giant Shell announced its profits were up 24% in the first three months of 2026." So apparently that's why an oil war was needed.
Lady Emsworth, the problem, the "reason" for the war changes regularly because there was none, well except to get Iranian oil or maybe to prove Trump's/Hegseth's manhood (can't be proven even with war), or maybe to cause oil prices to rise for the benefit of the oil donors to Trump, or . . . .
TIME has become a strange facsimile of itself, but one that seems much more committed to Truth instead of the complicity of "neutrality" and "both sides"
Well, Time like Anne Applebaum is less conservative in its reporting. Jacob Heilbrunn, in his book "America Last" reminded me that Anne Applebaum used to be conservative too, which makes sense since she is married to a Polish politician who is in a Center Right party, which appears Center compared to the far-right, as is often the case.
I'd rather listen to a chainsaw going off next to my ear than listen to anything the GOP has to say. This administration has come to be an endurance test in excruciating torture, given the lack of power anyone seems to have to thwart them. And that's just reading about their obscene antics. My heart goes out to all those who've sustained real harms. Hope, and hope, and more hope for better days.
You mean you don’t enjoy listening to that sing-songy, whiny-bitchy nasal voice dribble out incoherent, mispronounced, carnival-barking demented bullshit while pumping an invisible concertina back and forth? You have problems when he says “one big glow coming out of Iran” should it violate his cease-fire? You don’t enjoy listening to Lindsey Graham sob with self-pity as Democrats question the integrity of GOP-nominated Supreme Court-designates?
Hello Kazz... Welcome Back!!! ... How's Australia?.... From HCR Today: "And finally, today the president himself is in the news…or, rather, out of it. Trump, both of whose hands have been covered in makeup lately, apparently to hide bruises, was supposed to have a meeting today with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil at 11:15 that was open to the press. The reporters waited three hours, but the event never happened. At 1:22, Trump’s social media account simply posted that “[t]he meeting went very well” and that representatives from the two countries would continue to meet." || The Andean Shamans at the beginning of this Year, predicted that DJT would have a Health Crisis that would force him to leave Office... My 'Little Birds' whisper that DJT around August will pull a 'Nixon', and Resign around August with a Pardon from JD Vance... OBW: Netanyahu is trying to do this in Israel to Escape his Legal Jeopardy...
Apache, I am wondering how Trump is going to make it to and in China next week. He can hardly stand and walk, he falls asleep often, he can't speak coherently and gets easily distracted by a simple word like "sea." The problem, Vance is either no better or worse. He is an opportunist who thinks he deserves whatever power he can grab. The only positive is that no one likes Vance. He has no charisma (OK Trump didn't either, particularly in the past 30 years or so), and he walks all over anyone he thinks gets in his way. He lies like a rug, just like Trump, so he has that part of Trumplandia down. He has worked as a hedgefunder or whatever it was he did with money, so really can't be trusted to help anyone but himself and his rich donor buddies. We need the entire Trumplandia impeached and voted off the island! None of them is worthy of the positions they hold, even nearly all the Republicans in Congress whose seats were bought and paid for by those same oligarchs of Trumplandia. We do have to get PAC and dark money out of elections and no foreign operatives should be able to contribute to anything related to elections here. That should be one of the first fixes accomplished when Democrats regain some power and every damn Democrat needs to be on board with that or voted out of office ASAP.
Racism in Tennessee and across the South, the administration lies about the war damage and conduct, Pope Leo holds his own, immigration efforts hurt children, and the President avoids public contact. President Trump passing up a media event is probably the most concerning. Just America and the world today. Contact your representatives and vote Blue.
The news media organizations are still all too often trying to appear unbiased instead of calling balls and strikes. But the administration’s lies will not be effective against Iran and they won’t convince Americans that gasoline and food aren’t absolutely out of control. And killing nonviolent protesters and tear-gassing children won’t help their cause either.
I think silence would have served him better! But it's like a kid having chocolate smeared all over their mouth and claiming they didn't eat the last chocolate covered donut!
So all the pronouncements of the war being over, meant to juice the stock market, are a cover for his plan to continue for 3-4 months! I'd trust the CIA before I'd trust this charlatan.
Reporters lost the battle over truth when they allowed Trump to dismiss reality by spouting the phrase “fake news.” His dismissive language is evident when he calls an exchange of fire in the Gulf a “love tap” in order to avoid the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act. Where’s the follow up question? The “journalists” covering the White House are often almost as gutless as the Republicans in Congress. Almost. We’ve already checked off “Ignorance is Strength.” Now Big Brother is telling us “War is Peace.” All that’s left of the 1984 trifecta is “Freedom Is Slavery.”
In the matter of Gerrymandering. When the votes of a group are neutralized that neutralizes the vote of every individual within that group. When the target is African American men and women it is a Constitutional violation of the 15th and 19th Amendments, it is disenfranchisement. It is deeply rooted in the same hate, bigotry and contempt that divided the United States into the Civil War in which the South lost. Moreover, to be respected the rule of law requires stability, if change is to occur it must be gradual over time. That is the reason behind lifetime appointments in the federal judiciary and a decade between each census. Gerrymandering by it’s nature creates an unstable pendulum swing of frequent and untried changes in laws and politics every time a different political party gains power in a State Legislature. The Citizens United lie is based in the corporate personhood lie created by the Court in 1886 during rapid corporate expansion of the Industrial Revolution era. The result is the creation of a King who has the power to remove those who dare to not be loyal to him. IOW, once the mega-rich win the White Caste they will enforce loyalty to their King as it is in their financial interest to do so. The Roberts Six are the authors of the corporate takeover of America, UnitedWeAmend.org.
How can we honestly call ourselves a republic without a fair and free process with which to vote? "Equal Justice"? "Equal Protection"? "Liberty and Justice for All"? It's just not possible without fair and fee elections, in which every vote is equal; no more, no less.
Perhaps there will always be imperfections, but we can still identify negligence and malice. Gerrymandering is as corrupt as hell, and patently inimical to America's founding ideals. Failing to oppose it is also necessarily corrupt as hell. Is that not obvious?
If we want to retain a republic, corruption of the right to vote, and be equally counted, cannot be compromised. Schemes to dilute the will of the public expressed in the most just and accurate ways is what despots do.
We need to get Trump out of office. He is the head of a criminal enterprise and he is a madman. There is a campaign to impeach Trump. Please read my piece on it and sign the petition and help us get to 2 mil.
Trump is still in office, not despite his incompetence and corruption but because of them. He is someone's useful sock puppet only we don't know whose hand is wearing the sock. Scary!
Talia, we know some of the hands wearing the socks, and all of them are evil and corrupt people. Steve Miller, Russ Vought, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc...
nixon, reagan, begin, bush, ehud, thiel, putti, bush, orban, khameni, bush, cheney, trump, vought, trump, bukele, ... the order may be a big off but the Permanent War agenda is clear ... permanent oil, permanent war, democracy to kleptocracy...
Permanent war is part of the picture. We also read Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" which was another dystopian and a sci-fi-like novel about a totalitarian state with forever wars.
many men's hands wear the sock. it is the Patriarchy. it is what Women have been grappling with since Abraham descended from the Mountain with the fn Stone Tablet of 10 black and white, patriarchal commandments
Patrice, it was Moses who came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments. It's a story of humanity being given the rubrics for a fair and equal society. In part they command everyone: no bearing false witness (lying), no stealing from your neighbor (everybody gets to have security), no betrayal of others' relationships, no killing, and beyond that, there are the commandments to honor parents and to rest on one-seventh of your life. Where's the patriarchy?
An excellent book on the development of the patriarchy from the time of Jesus is Riane Eisler's *The Chalice and the Blade*. She shows how women disciples were written out of the Bible, and how religion has been used for now 2 thousand years to subjugate women. Eisler uses anthropological analysis as well as historical documents and other relevant scientific perspectives.
In an honest to goodness government of, by and for the people, the ultimate buck stops with us, but yes the leadership we choose to hire should be entirely accountable. That needs to be part of the job description. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
He is not really the head, he is the distraction while the real heads do the damage - Heritage Foundation, ALEC, Federalists Society, American for Prosperity, and virtually every conservative non-profit. They make the decisions and get him to follow. Think about how he embraced gays, Hispanics and Blacks while the guys behind the scenes started the dismantling of protective policies and then he supported those policies. He is the distraction. NONE of the and I mean NONE of this happens without the republican party permission. They approve and I have stated that to my republican reps. None of them seem to be offended at the accusation.
The whole point of the House of Representatives is that the people are represented…
A Tennessee Republican said that yesterday in an interview. “The problems of cities are very different from those of rural areas,” she added, making it clear she opposed this artificial attempt to refashion the House into a sort of second Senate, which isn’t supposed to represent a community, but an entire state.
I hope the NAACP makes precisely this argument in its rejoinder, because not only is it the right one to make, it doesn’t rely on shame, which — as we all know — is a concept wholly alien to those those Trump-appointed mushrooms making up fantastic bullshit to justify everything MAGA wants to do to us.
In Virginia and California, as we also know, voters in both states were given the opportunity to approve or disapprove a gerrymander.
Nobody bothered to ask Tennessee, Texas or Missouri voters for the fucking time of day.
Best to my knowledge, there are 18 states where Dems have full control of state government. Yet only 2 have countered the maga gerrymander power play. WTF, over
We need to order the Democrats to lineup in a straight line, identify them for what they’re worth, primary the hell out of the bad apples and replace them with Democratic socialists or, if we have to bottom feed, a few more milquetoast Democrats.
“Nobody bothered to ask Tennessee, Texas or Missouri voters for the fucking time of day.” And the thing that grinds one’s gears to no end is that they’ll take it and support it. They’ll take everything their maggot lords shove down their ignorant throats and ask for more, please. I was encouraged last year when the Indiana stare legislature voted not to gerrymander. And so what was their reward for doing the right thing? The goddam voters kicked them out of office this week, all to please Stinky Diapers. When shit like this goes down, it’s impossible not to think, fuck the voters, they’re too damned stupid to know what is the right thing to do. Fuck the stupid farmers for voting for the orange sack of shit 3 damned times. Diesel and fertilizer is their reward for putting that criminal back in office. Yes, it’s the guys running the show who are at fault here, but equally at fault are the idiots who continue to let them run the show.
and as a retired public educator - I can say that the "accountability push" on public ed has never been applied to private ed...never, even when they started getting public dollars. Charter schools were the first step toward public funds being sed for religious schools.
Many among us may say climate change is the existential threat of our time. That means it’s a risk high enough to potentially cause our extinction. Indeed, each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than the decade before. The past decade has been ranked as the warmest on record in the 145 years since records have been recorded. However, consider the attacks on us by the Supreme Court creating Corporate Personhood, and the more recent attack by the Roberts Five in Citizens United claiming money is the protected speech of Super PACs and Dark Money of nonprofit groups to influence elections and law-making. Consider the Roberts Six attacks with decisions on Gerrymandering neutralizing votes being the intent of our Constitution. Combine that with the fact that to address the catastrophic threat of Climate Change we need plenary control of our elections and it becomes clear that the Roberts Six are are the existential threat of our time. The only way to override the Court is by Amendment. We must unite as One people and ratify a Rampart Amendment. UnitedWeAmend.org.
I agree. We also need to impeach people on the court who are doing impeachable things.
We need to get Trump out of office. He is the head of a criminal enterprise and he is a madman. There is a campaign to impeach Trump. Please read my piece on it and sign the petition and help us get to 2 mil.
But now that we know the ChristoNazis are going to gerrymander the "Democratic" (sic) Party to death, we also know there is not the chance of a snowball in hell of winning the midterms -- or of ever again winning any other USian federal election. That should ignite the process leading to the formation of a World-War-II-caliber overseas shadow government...and all that logically follows thereafter. But it appears the fires of effective resistance have already been drowned by a tsunami of ChristoNazi urine.
NOPE. Voters have Flipped 30+ seats from Red to Blue in RED districts in the past year, and Zero from Blue to RED. Americans are NOT as dumb as the Repos (and you I guess?) believe.
Stop Naysaying and Get Out The Vote,
because they can Gerrymander, but it don't work if the White voters are Waking UP!! Get Out The Vote!
FairFightAction, MoveOn, Sunrise, Leaders We Deserve and Your LOCAL candidates need you to Stop dooming and Step UP!
Actually, look at Hungary. If you read about it, Orbán had set elections up so that each rural vote counted 3 to an urban 1 vote, and still Magyar swept the country because he did not give up. Loren, be a Magyar! Don't give up.
Orban did not have the means to inflict any atrocity of the magnitude we should now rationally anticipate from the ChristoNazis -- that they will act upon their slanderous rhetoric and outlaw the "Democratic" (sic) Party, declaring it a terrorist organization.
I'm most assuredly (not) giving up, Linda; I am merely urging us to refocus on the only path to Liberation I believe remains possible, the first step of which is formation of a shadow government in an overseas locale the ChristoNazis won't dare invade or bomb -- most likely London, Paris or Berlin.
I see. Let's hope. As an American overseas I do not see how that sort of group will be formed on the center or left, when most of the global networking has been done by the far right. In fact, we just were discussing this article in Indivisible Abroad about Israel and the US trying to destabilize Mexico and other Latin American countries and make them far right.
Shared from Indivisible Abroad (IA). The person says.
"Juan Orlando Hernandez, the Honduran ex-president pardoned by Trump for narcotrafficking, seemingly caught on tape in dozens of conversations (if true), discussing plans with GOP and other figures to attack left-wing governments, and saying Israel paid for his pardon from Trump."
In IA we were also discussing how the UK Labor party squandered their lead and have now been overtaken by the far-right Reform Party. The AfD has surpassed the CDU in the latest poles in Germany, so it is on ascendency. In fact, I am going to a Demo against them tomorrow. The National Rally is doing well in France and seems to threaten Macron's party. In fact, while Spain also has a far-right party, it seems like Pedro Sánchez's Socialist Workers party is still in charge. Madrid might be a better place to do this.
Me and this other fellow worked together. He was a Flathead. He turned to me at sunset and leaning on his shovel asked, “ Do you know what the most dangerous animal on the planet is?”
Dominionists, christo fascist, Christian nationalist, christoNazi-christoNazi-ChristoNazi-ChristoNazi-please Loren’s needle is stuck in the phonograph. Can someone give it a nudge? I like this artist but the needle is stuck. I want to hear the whole song without sticking. Have you ever wandered a bit dazed out of the bar and ended up hugging a parking meter while sitting on the curb trying to get your bearings when your buddy staggers out behind you and pisses on your head. Clarity’s child. Can you reach sobriety before the fight breaks out? The next guy out of the bar is just as full of piss and vinegar and he’s a damned atheist. They all gonna piss somewhere. There I was and there they was and here we is.
What can we do? Other than write ✍ letters, march in protest, and vote? It's so upsetting to witness this bonfire. All decency, humanity, and morality buried under the lies, greed and grift. I'm praying we are able to vote our way out of this disaster. 🙏
Vote our way out. Activate a lot of unused, wasted votes; and realize that solidarity is and always was the antidote to a top-down, stratified society.
I do understand where you come from, I think the best next change would be to wait and vote because I'm starting to doubt that others are not being as effective.
Oops. you are Discouraging votingl Please clarify.
ie I am holding on to my just arrived CA ballot to see which TWO dem candidate for Governor have a path to eliminating the crazy MAGA Repos in the race,
because our "jungle" primaries only allow the Top 2 winners to advance to the NOV run off. arg!
If you have ever raised chickens the hawk or the faux gets the last one to come in at dark. Hasten to the poll. Watch for the skunk cause she likes eggs and is the trickiest.
And help out with campaigns. Knock on doors, talk to people, get young people involved. Make phone calls through organizations like Swing Blue Alliance. Volunteer to be a driver to get people to the polls or volunteer to be a poll watcher. The ACLU in some areas are holding classes for volunteers to get voters through to the polls in case trump goes through with his rant about ICE showing up at our election stations. Every single Democrat will need to vote. Independents will need to vote and I know a number of Republicans who will be voting Democratic. Orban rigged the Hungarian election to favor him. There were just too many voters that came out against him. And if the tallies seem off, DEMAND for a recount of actual ballots cast.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
Listen pal. I want your life. I need your liberty. And I don’t give two shits about your happiness. (Just a note from corporate, what they call it? Memo?)
I want to read read it. I am beginning to wonder if the Roberts Six have inspired our professor to write another book, "How the Corporatist Fascist Nazi's of WWII won the World".
There are many arts, Albert, counter to the U.S. fascists you cite:
films like “The Florida Project,” “Knives Out,” “The Verdict,” “Nomadland,” “The Big Short,” and “Winter’s Bone”;
novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” Tom Hanks’ “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” and many by Richard Russo, Elmore Leonard, and Stephen King;
memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Joan Didion’s “Where I Was From,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” Sarah Kendzior’s “The Last American Road Trip,” Tia Levings’ “A Well-Trained Wife,” Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” and Beth Macy’s “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”;
essay collections such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Stolen Pride,” Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America”; Sarah Smarsh’s “Bone of the Bone, and George Packer’s “The Unwinding”;
biographies such as Lindsey Stonebridge’s “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience”;
histories like Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel,” Heather Cox Richardson’s “How the South Won the Civil War,” and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”;
poems such as Philip Levine’s Detroit factory poems, and those in the three volumes of Garrison Keillor’s “Good Poems”;
songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Seger’s “Feel Like a Number,” Carsie Blanton’s “Rich People,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” and any John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
I had to guffaw when Chief Justice Roberts said yesterday that the Supreme Court was not partisan -- who is he kidding? His justification was that Tenn could not take 'race into account' when districting -- but the result of his decision is just that - to divide the black vote into little pieces of other districts to dilute it of all effect. disgusting.
These voters are not top 1% of income earners. So, voting for the party actually hurts them. If DEMs put up good candidates and explain, they may vote for them.
There is too much criticism of others' comments recently. It just discourages people who read the comments. Please - just write your comment and move on. there's no need to be critical of others.
It is such a beautiful state. How sad that it is taken over by evil times and a dark spirit. The trees, hills and deer will still be there a hundred years from now. Maybe your children can return then. Get yourselves to a safe place for now. Now we know how the ppl who fled Europe felt during the 30s. This is so sad.
Well, it’s Tennessee, what can you say. The state that gave us the Scopes Trial a century ago and continues to send luminaries like Marsha-Marsha-Marsha Blackburn to the Senate — uncontestable evidence that shit really does float.
In recent polls, 67% of Tennessee Republicans still believe “evolution is just a theory” (and disproven by a district court) because they know the world was actually created in 4004 BC, no matter what Hillary Clinton says. Nearly 85% think tens of millions undocumented little boys with vaginas are right this very minute pouring across the Rio Grande, all determined to force your grandchildren to attend graduate-level seminars in critical race theory.
Reportedly, 79% are sure “The Origin of Species” is book about witchcraft, and 75% are making weekend plans for bonfires for all those Harry Potter books, alongside Charles Darwin. More than 80% are uneasy with the Theory of Gravity as well, and all of them know viruses don't exist because they're too small to be seen. Oddly enough, they’re all pretty much fine with the Virgin Birth thing, failing to recognize it as a tale straight out of Egyptian mythology.
Their school system has been failing them since at least the 90s. Is the ignorance not just sad but intentional? Does someone have their school system in a stranglehold? idk If so, then who is doing it and why are they pumping ignorance into the populace?
Just like I always say to my friends, work in a company where there are no older people in the higher ups who operated in the 60s, coz that time was different and so is this, the company never grows and dies out, leaving employees nowhere while the boss flies out.
Now, imagine this happening with a whole goddamn country.
I know im a simpleton who understands nothing more than tv but even i can see right through this.
Thanks for sharing this comment Rebecca, had me vent a bit.
The Iran War is the greatest grift of all time, going far beyond the oil futures speculation. It will include all of the preferential government no-bid contracts going to Trump-family-related entities, and all of the gifts from the Middle Eastern Kingdoms that are now turning against Trump because his promises to them are not working out as planned. The linchpin there is Jared Kushner. And let's not forget the Board of Peace...
The real cost to America includes the casualties in the war--Trump is sacrificing lives as well as billions of dollars of our money.
I recall one year ago this month TrumpStein was visiting several countries in the Middle East. A large number of the worlds richest and most powerful people were there also. I believe he bagged a $1B jet, lots of land and God only knows how much of his meme coin named $TRUMP his TrumpStein-affiliated entities (CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC) sold of his $1B supply on the trip. Could it be this war is a quid pro quo deal serving the countries that fear Iran?
“The top one percent of all households now hold a staggering 32% of all wealth.”
This is from a Scott Galloway podcast earlier today, where he added that this one percent equals the “bottom 90%” of all the U.S.’s other households.
He adds that the top ten percent own 90% of all stocks, and that “the proportion of GDP going to workers just hit its lowest level in 75 years.”
In Heather’s own podcast today she returns to the way a recent highest-court-in-the-land killing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has immediately translated into mostly former Confederacy states reducing voting rights for millions of persons of color.
It’s a big ball of things, the rich getting much richer. Many lose voting rights. More lose access to health care. Still more suffer from the rising prices across America and the world from criminal Donald’s capricious and failed war.
It's a war to the bottom, its many components interwoven in ways Heather bravely tracks.
And as this war goes on, we can ask: how many of our rich ever cite any humanities on how the “bottom 90%” fall further behind as the rich grow their wealth gap? How many public officials or media persons cite any humanities for the wider costs of the rich getting so much richer?
Have we normalized our own anesthetization to the growing hurt amidst us?
Can we free our teachers from the billionaire testers so they may assign whole novels, memoirs, and histories for their students’ human literacy?
Phil, you're reminding me of a stat I learned early in my corporate career: In 1990, the average Japanese CEO earned roughly 35 times more than their employees. Today, they earn roughly 50 times more. In the U.S. today, CEOs earn approximately 400 times more--400 times.
This comparison is simplified, and U.S. corporate incentives are not the same as in Japan, but still. I'm not sure how much is "anesthetization," as you say, or something worse. But it's a historical fact that healthy democracies do not survive without a thriving middle class.
I doubt any in the 1% cares about future survival, Susan.
Their lives instead self-isolate in ahistorical abstractions, market quantities, commodities, and all the other packaging which their dehumanized schools have taught them.
It's as if that 1%, J L, has morphed into a creature totally beyond the rest of us.
They seem to see the world through the prism only of numbering, abstracting, quantifying, commodifying everything. There's a derangement in this -- one which I owe some debt to Elmore Leonard and his great novels dwelling on the perversities of the criminal mind.
Of course we've had Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Joan Didion, Ross Macdonald, Cormac McCarthy, and many more -- as if some berserk sociopathy, gnawing lawlessness has ever permeated the American fabric.
There's no single one formula to them. But with a mad, narcissist, rapacious criminal now for ten years atop our society, we can well worry how unready we all are to gauge this monstrosity he rides, this 1% so totally beyond the rest of us.
''Republicans Unveil New Democracy Reform: Picking the Voters First''
Republican officials announced this week that democracy remains a sacred American tradition, provided it is properly supervised, pre-sorted, geographically contorted, and delivered in districts shaped like a salamander having a nervous breakdown.
The announcement came as GOP strategists defended their latest redistricting efforts, explaining that elections work best when voters are permitted to participate only after the outcome has been tastefully insulated from public opinion.
“Democracy is very important to us,” said a party official who definitely values democracy very deeply, standing beside a congressional map that appeared to have been drawn by a raccoon trapped inside a printer. “That is why voters should have every opportunity to take part in elections that have already been responsibly stabilized.”
The official rejected claims that gerrymandering undermines representative government.
“That is unfair,” he said. “We are not against representation. We are simply improving it by making sure certain people are represented more efficiently than others.”
Under the new approach, Republicans say they will honor the will of the people by first deciding which people count, where they live, how they are grouped, and whether their votes should carry the political weight of a bowling ball or a packing peanut.
Party leaders described the strategy as a commonsense response to the growing crisis of Americans voting incorrectly.
“For years, we tried persuading people,” another strategist explained. “But that required policies, accountability, and occasionally listening. Then we realized maps don’t talk back.”
The new model, tentatively called “Pre-Approved Freedom,” allows citizens to enjoy the emotional experience of voting without the disruptive risk of choosing their government. Voters still receive stickers, candidates still give speeches, and cable news still uses dramatic music, but the map quietly handles the dangerous part.
Critics argue that gerrymandering enables minority rule, weakens fair representation, and turns elections into theatrical exercises in managed legitimacy. Republicans countered that this is precisely the point.
“Look, voters are unpredictable,” one official said. “Maps are stable. Maps are loyal. Maps understand election integrity.”
The party also emphasized that its reforms are fully consistent with constitutional principles, at least the parts of the Constitution that can be folded into a district shaped like a corkscrew.
Asked whether voters should choose their representatives instead of representatives choosing their voters, the official looked confused.
“Of course,” he said. “But only in a district where that answer has already been approved.”
This week the Whirlpool water heater in my house stopped working after 10 years. My plumber-friend suggested that he will repair it because there are no new ones on the market to buy. I have always believed that appliances, electronics, & vehicles ought to be repaired instead of discarded. Sadly, the state of affairs that prevent people of our country from easily buying the things for which we have depended is further hurting those of us who are not in the class of the wealthy. I want a world for my grandchildren of peace & prosperity, the opportunity to do what they want for a decent wage, to own a house, to enjoy the great outdoors, to breathe healthy air, & have access to the best health options.
My wife and I just became first-time grandparents. Fortunately, our grandson, our son and his partner are all citizens of Canada. It is our sincere hope that all their futures will be much brighter and certain there. It’s abundantly clear that we here in the U.S. are in for nonstop chaos, lies, incompetence and criminality, even if the midterm elections result in Democratic majorities in Congress. Trump has always been a criminal. The corruption and grifting will continue, with the permission granted by the immunity ruling of the Supreme Court and Trump’s psychological disorders.
My daughter just got her Canadian passport. She went to college in Canada, met the right person and now resides in the True North. I am sad to see US and Canadian relations, as well as our with many other nations being trashed. That won't serve us in the log run. Likely not even in the short run. it's stupid.
I have had Whirlpool washer and dryer for 40 years. I'd like to keep them going. I don't know about Whirlpool's problems, but they have cut the dividend on their stock and it's declined very badly over the past few years
I don't know specifically about Whirlpool as a company. Based on my limited experience, and more or less ordinary circumstances, a water heater should last more than 10 years. There has been a highly visible trend toward making expensive products disposable rather than easily repairable, and that is irresponsible. Canonized Milton Friedman, hero of the "Reagan Revolution" decreed that " The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits." It should be obvious that that is BS, but America's legislators took it to heart. It's a formula for sociopathy. Every one of us has a duty to the common good, else liberty and justice for all, including generations yet to come, is a fantasy, and shoveling the planets resources into deliberately dead end products is dereliction of that duty. That said a water heater has a finite lifespan, but there are decisions made that extend or limit it's usefulness. Short term profits can be made cutting coroners or even "planned obsolescence", but long term customer satisfaction would seem like the most sustainable strategy, for the company, for the customer, and posterity.
I am not a plumber, but I gather that heating elements and thermostats are generally replaceable with aftermarket parts. The tank itself would seem to be impractical to repair if it rusts though.
Yep. Once the tank goes, it is done. I suppose one could save the T&P, element and or the gas valve thermostat or hot plate igniter. Applying heat to water makes it do pretty crazy and dangerous things.
Thank you for all you do to keep us informed, Heather. I think it’s a big story that the CIA is leaking. I’d also like to know the real story of US casualties.
The government of my home state of TN continues to be an embarrassment. Kudos to Rep Justin Jones.
I truly do not understand GOP voters anymore. They used to have a vision for our country. It was different from my vision, but it was a vision. Now they are so focused on their "team" winning that they will support a mad man who has involved us in a disasterous war overseas, alienated our allies, and plunged us into an economic disaster that will likely outlive the old wreck no matter what we do to fix it. Are they really so anti-Black people that they'll destroy their own country? It seems so.
I have only heard tell of Ike in history books. I was born during Johnson and the first political thing I remember was Watergate because it pre-empted the shows I liked to watch at night with my parents.
My memory of Republicans growing up was these holier-than-thou people who were better than the likes of us working-class Catholic immigrant grandchildren. (I used to ride horses with their kids.) I remember them always going on about "Character" and "Integrity" (which I grew up to discover was code for "my family was here before the Revolution"). Where is their integrity and character now? I never loved the Dems, but they didn't prostrate themselves in front of a madman and violate their oaths for a little bit of payola. I used to at least respect Republicans. Now their party is synonymous with "will do anything to win and then salt the fields". I wish there was a better way to punish them for their perfidy than just vote them out of office so they can retire on their stolen fortunes.
(The irony of misspelling "perfect" in your last sentence. I love it, JL!)
How do the GOP candidates convince voters that they care about affordability when they know they care more about the rich and powerful maintaining their stranglehold on Congress and even their local state governments.
If voters use logic, they cannot. The problem is this "my team" mentality that means GOP voters will vote for the GOP regardless of how badly it is for them. That is what has been happening for the past ten years. I don't expect that to change.
What is more likely to happen is that Republican voters will stay home and hopefully the Democrats and Independents will vote in record numbers. The biggest danger is disenfranchisement of these people.
In many states the independents and non-affiliated voters have more voters than the GOP or the Democrats. How do you gerrymander 1/3 of the voters when their votes can go either way. I don't really think it's as scientific as the Republicans want us to believe. Time will tell.
I hope you're right about the Midterms. I fear that so many GOP voters have been poisoned with the idea that the Dems are not just wrong about governing but "evil". They could turn out just to stop "the blue wave". But I do hope they just stay home. I know no Dem is staying home in November. My pipe dream is that the gerrymandering completely backfires and previously safe GOP districts go Dem for the first time. That would be sweet. But I don't hope anymore, not after 2024 when a liar we never met stopped my husband and I from having our votes counted.
Maybe we should re-draw state lines now, based on population size. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the Dakotas would be one state, whereas California would be -- what? 15 or 20 different states. Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana could be one state. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, one state. New York would be several states. Each state gets 2 Senators. Just let's imagine this. State representation based on population, not empty space. Lines that make sense.
I appreciate your optimism, but showing up for a protest is a far cry from moving a household to Wyoming and staying there long enough to get voting residency.
And that's the thing about gerrymandering. It's all based on demographics as of the last census or election. People are still moving and dying and 18 year olds are reaching voting age. They say that the gerrymandered lines are drawn scientifically, but isn't it all a SWAG in the end.
Moving blues has had a big effect in Colorado and some other states. Have you thought that the R's might decide to move into DE, ME, VT , not to mention swing states, to turn them red?
Putin Is Losing His War And Authoritarian Cheeto Is F**ked
As Ukrainian drone strikes continue to pummel Russian oil and gas infrastructure deeper and deeper into Russian territory it's clear that Putin's economy under this attack is gradually collapsing Putin is becoming more and more paranoid and hunkered down in his bunker while there are schisms happening within his corrupt government And with its May 7 military parade no vehicles or armaments are set for the celebration parade and men are being pulled off the Ukrainian front lines to participate in the parade
The war events are happening fast and it is now apparent that Putin's regime cannot sustain nearly 1.5m casualties, untold loss of military armaments, weather economic sanctions without consequences that imperil his oligarchic dictatorship The end is coming clearer into focus as Putin considers how to capitulate
Meanwhile Putin's main ally Cheeto took a bet on the Russian authoritarian state and it's not looking good for the orange demented one He lost an ally in Orban who lost his re-election last month, will lose the fascist Zionist Netanyahu based on public opinion, and in the near future will lose his favorite Russian counterpart But one thing WE the People can count on, Cheeto will perversely double down until the electorate renders him impotent with the 2026 midterms
Hopefully, Republican voters in the gerrymandered states will react like they did in Indiana this week. Democrats had 80,000+ voters show up for the primaries, Republicans = 19000+.
If the Democrats are able to get 60% of Hispanics and Blacks across the Red states to vote for the Democratic candidates, it will be a bloodbath regardless of the gerrymandering. Will people that are paying 66 percent more for gasoline and everything else is also more expensive as well, vote for their favorite Trump loving candidate.
Impeach Trump Now and the entire Republican Party will be in chaos for years.
This is something completely undiscussed by most media, still lost in their unconvincing attempts to sound non-partisan. True not just for Indiana but particularly for Texas. Emerging now is a distinct pattern — Republicans are LOSING elections, while Independents are WINNING them.
Another very real possibility exists as well. Public disgust with MAGA is now at such high levels, the vewy, vewy smart Elmer Fudds who just redrew Tennessee’s districts might find that new black and white, new urban and rural coalitions in THREE districts suddenly get together to send THREE new Democratic representatives to Congress, instead of none.
Never underestimate the power of sheer fuckupery as the gun you just loaded blows up in your own face instead when you try to fire.
Absolutely ICTT. There was a story a few months ago about the Texas redistricting as being "wishful thinking" because of the guesswork caused by voter migration and the darn Independents being such a huge block.
Where did you get those numbers for turnout? Do you just mean IndianaPOLIS? I live in Indiana and watched many results come in and was very disheartened by the overwhelmingly higher number of Republican votes vs Democrats. Plus several (5?) state reps were voted out because of Trump support in retaliation for them voting against redistricting.
Sorry dude, they’re all racist. Just because they’re not all waving swasticas and kkk symbols around doesn’t mean they’re not racist.
Many people don’t even know they’re racist, but they are. At least 80% of white people carry unconscious bias (and yes, I’m white). Surprisingly large numbers of POC also have unconscious bias. In addition to unconscious bias, Republicans are all also totally fine with systemic racism and perpetuating the American caste system…which means they’re racist.
Anyone who voted for T or any of the current R’s in Congress or any of the R’s in these red state legislatures is racist by the very fact that these politicians have used coded language to perpetuate the caste system. And the voters have been cool with it.
Even if the voters didn’t like their “racist” policies but just wanted cheaper eggs, the very fact that they could ignore the racist policies and still give them a vote, makes them racist.
This Supreme Court decision didn’t happen by accident. It was because of R voters voting in racist politicians for decades, allowing racist SC justices to take power. How else do you explain what just happened in the SC and the response in state houses in red states? This isn’t just some crazy thing that just happened spontaneously.. it’s the consequence of decades of voting… by racist republicans.
It costs $1 million per day to house 1,400 detainees. That comes to about $714 per detainee per day. That’s about $89 per hour per day per detainee. For a lot less than that, we could pay each of the detainees and let them go about their lives. The math for detaining or incarcerating people never makes sense (other than for series, violent crimes). Especially at for profit detention centers/prisons. Also, for $714 per day, you could put them up in a 3-4 star hotel with great meals and turn down service. Hell, for $714 a day, you could send them on a mid-level cruise and they could have the times of their lives!
Ah, but it's a great deal for those who run these concentration camps...oops, if anybody's reading, I meant "detention centers." Just part of the grift...
The kind of partisan wrangling and bickering over electoral districting could literally not happen in Australia. Electoral districts (and election procedures in general) are managed at the Commonwealth level by the Australian Electoral Commision. Districting is based on population density and is not easily influenced by extraneous factors like party affiliation or ethnic categories. (Registering with a political party is optional in Australia. Voting is not. Therein lie some of the important differences between the two countries' systems of government.)
It could not happen in ANY modern electoral democracy — something else that passes practically unnoticed and unreported on by our lazy media.
In Canada, independent commissions are appointed by federal judges, not by political parties, and the procedures under which those commissions may operate are nothing if not highly regulated and scrutinized. Should a political party tried to interfere, it wouldn’t pass a simple giggle test, much less the court of public opinion, but be struck down by the federal judiciary at once.
Tte same is true with Britain’s more than 500 individual constituencies. The same is true with virtually any other modern republic. In South Arica, complex algebraic formulations are used to ensure NO party gets an edge before the race begins.
We’re virtually the only “modern” republic that gives to foxes the right not just to guard the henhouse, but to name their favorite hens things like “Giblet,” “Mushroom Gravy,” “Finger-Lickin’ Good” and the like.
A rare complaint—"...the administration has been badly off the mark in its public statements about the war" should read "the administration has lied about the war."
Lawrence O'Donnell made a similar comment about a survey that instead of asking Catholics if they approved or disapproved of Trump's lies about the Pope only asked if they approved or disapproved of Trump's statement about the Pope. It's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back while following all the rules against an opponent that gets to make all the rules.
James, I’ve posted this here a bit ago, but never know who sees it, so here it is once more: From “The Secret Commonwealth”; “Book of Dust” series, Vol 2, Philip Pullman
IMHO this speaks to our society’s current despair and lost ways.
Pan, Lyra’s daemon (one’s external “soul” in the form of an animal) , is speaking to her:
“….Sort of a stalemate. But it’s worse’n that. The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has noting to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ‘em.” Ah, the conundrum!
Barbara ... I get it, but if I act based on the assumption that I won't catch a fish, then I won't fish, and then I won't catch a fish. I think it's better when David and Goliath stories (like Minneapolis v. ICE or Ukraine v. Russia) come to mind.
In the April 27 episode of “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” titled “Mikie Sherrill Runs New Jersy Like a Busy Mom,” the governor talks about her surprise coming from a mutually respectful military career and expecting the same in the House Democratic Caucus only to be told on day one, “That’s not how things work here. It’s every man for themselves.”
Speaking at Jesse Jackson’s memorial, Al Sharpton said, “don’t leave here feeling sanctified and then act like you don’t have an assignment yourself.” He talked about how Jackson “never let us get away with making excuses.” Then he said, “the problem is not Trump … the problem is us.” And he ended by asking, “What happened to us?”
I think the answer to the “what happened to the pro-democracy movement” question is that too many of us get so busy remembering to think about “me” that we forget to think about “us.” Then we look around one day and all we can see is what “they” are doing and that “they” need to change.
When the problem becomes an excuse, then the problem is no longer the problem because the excuse made us as ineffective as the bull who can’t figure out why it keeps aiming at the matador and keeps hitting the cape.
I think the problem is no longer in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Almost everyone in a community directly facing a crisis quickly forgets about self-interest. I think the problem is we need more voices talking like Al Sharpton. And the more I do, the happier I’ll be that I’m not the matador.
pls don't keep the circular firing squad going. the nuclear bombs and drones are being detonated over there,
beyond the Dem circle,
and they, the Repos, the Living Dead who walk for the pathological War Barons,
don't give a shite about "Us"
A circular firing squad is the opposite of what I am proposing. Ironically, a circular firing squad is what you just proposed.
I'm proposing conversations involving trust and verification. Your proposing statements involving some version of "they're the ones that need to change, so don't tell me that I have to change." And guess what MAGA is saying? You guessed it: "the radical left needs to change, so don't tell me that I have to change."
You're saying you don't want shite. Trust me, I'm not giving you shite.
I've mostly stayed away from HCR commentary of late. Recently (April 14) I posted to 60 Congressional Dem leaders and the DNC a serious 20-page 'essay' (as in 'an attempt at something'). It is a bit of policy analysis seeking to spur attention to the wide range of profound challenges DJT's second regime has revealed to the very survival of the Republic.
Four weeks later I've not received a single peep from any of the recipients.
What I HAVE received in that same span of time is a flood of requests from DCCC, DSCC, DNC and innumerable PAC's claiming or implying that they are Democratic entities and exoriating me for
for failing to continue to contribute as I had in 2024 in Harris' and the Democrats last failed campaign. I don't have the energy or the will to print and first-class mail any more. Any interested parties can e-mail me at gideonse@midmaine,com with your own e-mail address and I'll happily send you back a digital copy of the essay for your examination.
[Just for fun here are the last names of the recipients of my essay from the cover page: Jeffries, Schumer, Clark, Aguilar, Booker, Raskin, Warren, Schiff, Ocasio-Cortez, Murphy. Sanders, Rochester, Schatz, Kelly, Slotkin, Blumenthal, Bennet, Baldwin, Cantwell, Coons, Crockett, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Thompson, Lieu, Neguse, Green, Dingell, Gottheimer, Craig, Clyburn, Horsford, Clarke, Sewell, Crow, Deluzio, Goodlander. Houlahan, Evans, Boyle, Scanlon, Larson, DeLauro, Frankel, Thanadar, Schneider, Costa, King, Pingree, Golden, Martin (DNC-5 copies) And JV Last (Bulwark)],
Very interesting philosophical discussions here today; interesting response from Lady Emsworth as well. Apache had written to me yesterday and I wrote back about my good vs evil puzzle. It was born of the articles I read https://alisav.substack.com/ that Ally House sent to me.
The lessons of history dictate that when laws allow unfettered and unlimited financial access to influence the ballot, it will divide and cont any democracy anywhere. That’s just one side and the other being a populist or popular government plagued with weak leadership that ironically would to benefit the other side. Some major flaws in democratic leadership; President Jimmy Carter and his huge blunder sending a military rescue mission to save the American embassy personal only to lose to a second-rate actor that began the modern destruction of a broad-based economic system. Later we elected the first of two Bush regressives and his obvious flaw was an unnecessary war and later a Supreme Court appointment to spite Thurgood Marshall demise. We know Bill Clinton and his picadillos with Big Lips Monica and not leaving anything for what might have been the best leadership in Al Gore but instead electing man who failed at anything he involved himself in including government and the naming of more inferior Justices. And then the BIG GAZUNTITE taking office in 2016 that has led to the almost total destruction of America.
Btw, in curious. Is Rick Senders still around? I blocked him and when you block, it’s a total block.
I do not miss him, but like all the devotional sycophants, I am sure he is out there defending this Mafioso government
I collapse him when I see him. But let me know how I can block him and I will. I tried, but was not able to!
Which leads to an even more critical philosophical question - "Why are some of us trying to be "good" and some of us seem to manage to be "Bad" without any expenditure of effort?
What is the benefit of being "good"?
I can only postulate that being "good" seems to be a benefit to the whole and wider community - a selfless act that is good for all.
Whereas being "bad" is often self centered, and aids no one but self - or a small group at most. Mutual dependence in "badness."
Goodness is outgoing - Badness is humanity turned in upon itself.
I am constantly reminded of a hymn I sang at church as a small child:
"Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light
Like a little candle burning in the night.
In this world of darkness, we must shine
You in your small corner, and I in mine."
That message applies whether you are religious or not. As Martin Luther King Jr. said ""Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that,"
I guess we'll have to keep our candles burning for a wee while yet. . .
Leonard Cohen: "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rumi: "The wound is the place where the light enters you."
Yes ... we're either working together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all) or working at cross purposes like three stooges (all for one and that one is "me").
if only. we're usually stabbing each other in the back with our Perfectionism.
I agree. We don't need perfectionism. We just need adult conversations.
Patrice, yes, then after the stabbing, we whine that "they made me do it." The "hatred" of Hillary ?Clinton is truly disgusting and worse on the Democrat's side than Republican. The Biden "take-down" calling him "Sleepy Joe" and other BS undermined so much of what he tried to do, and actually was successful with. Those with the anti-Democrat whines say nothing or nearly nothing about Trump's dementia which has been obvious to anyone who has ever lived with someone who had dementia at least since 2019 (when I noticed it). The people around Trump knew it, but Democrats couldn't get into motion to call him and his handlers out on the medical lies the white house was telling. Biden's AG Garland was partly to blame too, unable or unwilling to indict Trump on his insurrection incitement for which there was a lot of evidence, and Republicans just couldn't manage to convict Trump after his impeachment when the evidence was clear. Then, Democrats couldn't get fully behind Harris and Walz. Why not! Not clear to me except maybe that Dems are pretty racist and misogynistic too. There was cheating by Musk and the AI-ers who became DOGE, but if a huge Democratic turnout had happened, the fraud would have been detected or even in many places cancelled. Why Democrats do this stupid stuff is beyond comprehension to me. I know Schumer and Jeffries are scared of the progressives, so undermine them regularly, but they do need to be called out by the rest of the party as old-timers who have lost touch and should step down on their own rather than being forced out by the progressives who are looking for something better. And, there are a lot better available in both Houses and for the executive branch too. We just need to recognize them, share what we know about them all over the country, and help those good candidates get elected with a strong social media presence, billboards that tell the truth about Trumplandia and its super rich white boys who want to rule the world. Maybe we need some comic books published that show Democratic candidates as superheroes trying to fight the Lex Luthers of Trumplandia. We have to get creative, to respect the white voters being used to bring back Jim Crow and help them to understand they are being used and abused, and to find ways to bring some joy into the world in this massive Trumplican-created darkness.
Don’t discount the forces strategically manipulating us to be at each other’s throats. Social media is the perfect instrument to inject poisonous impulses to the body politic. We are influenceable. We are persuadable. There has been trillions of dollars invested to research HOW to manipulate us away from our more natural state of collaborative community. They are keeping us stuck in an illusion of conflict. And it’s to make money and gain power for themselves. HOW to rise above the manipulation, yet still use the tools of social media is the task at hand. We are struggling to learn -in real time- how to fight a beast that wants to crush us. HOW do we pull together the 99% of us “Not-In-The-Club”? How do we see and align our needs and interests and fortify our truth of commonality? This is the battle of our Age.
Don't just trust, but also verify, that I am not discounting the forces you are referring to. In return, please don't discount the force of truth Obama is talking about in the following quote I transcribed from of a recent "The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell" episode (S2026:Ep33).
"In our (Obama Foundation), a lot of the work that I do is working with the young civic leaders, political leaders, journalists, human rights leaders, not just here in the United States, but around the world. And one of the first things I say to them is, 'Know what you really believe. That’s your starting point. First of all, if you understand your convictions, you got a moral compass — you’ve got a code — you’ve spent time wrestling with what it is that you care about and what you believe. Then it’s a lot easier now to be open and actually listen to other people as opposed to constantly trying to beat off anybody who might contradict your current perspective.' And I think a guy like (James Talarico), his starting point is, 'let me say what I believe.'"
"What's your's is mine - and what's mine's my own".
"Yes ... we're either working together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all) or working at cross purposes like three stooges (all for one and that one is "me")." JHC
"Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”" - HCR
The next stop is the ballot box.
Some odds are against us, but in a significant number of instances, nominally opposition voters are more resistant to voting in Democrats than to voting out Republicans.
The antidemocratic Republican electorate understands that voting is a united joint exercise in taking power. While antiDemocratic leftish wingers use voting as an individual exercise in personal expression. Who are the stooges now?
(Hint: Putin fan-girl Jill Stein helping elect Putin fan-boy Donald Trump.)
I Love the “busy mom” analogy. What comes to my mind is that she cares, has empathy, but doesn’t put up with bad behavior.
And thus the price yet persistence of Integrity. Its the internal value that makes leaders followable after the victory
Barbara, I am a Pullman fan/reader and am re-reading The Secret Commonwealth, and finding so many elements that describe our current society - and the conundrum Pan describes!!!!!!!!
Or, how about asking if they recognize which statements about the Pope are lies. Then asking them which ones are not. That would really get to the heart of the matter.
Linda, who should do the asking and of whom. I like the idea. It can be hard to tell since each media report has a slightly different take on what was said or what happened. It reminds me of the part of the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" where the contestant has to tell truth from fiction with a story of the week. Those are often silly, but maybe politicians could be encouraged to play "which statement is true?" with 4 or 5 statements or events to choose from. That would be fun. Maybe the congressional committees could play it with their "witnesses." That would have been fun with Bondi or Lutnick. Maybe Jamie Raskin could put together such a "game." I think we'd all learn a lot!
I remember that. Our family loved that show. I was really good at it. My teacher skills perhaps. I love your idea of politicians being invited to tell which statement is true and which is a lie, and they have to invite both Republican and Democrats on. I also think it could be suggested to some select people in Congress.
There is also a school game called Two truths and a lie, and the person says three things about themselves and you have to tell which is the lie. That would be good. At least they would know one was a lie and two were true, though we should hold politicians to higher standards of political knowledge.
I really like this idea. I can easily see Raskin putting something like that together. We still have plenty more rats to hear from.
Linda, thanks. I listen to "Wait Wait" every Saturday. My weekend isn't the same without it. How can we get the idea to someone who could try it. I like Raskin doing it because he doesn't get ruffled and he can keep an even tone presenting the statements for the persons consideration. It would be really fun if he actually used statements from the person being questioned to see what the person will admit to and if they can remember what they have said.
We the people can put this together Linda. What is the first step?
The good liars on YouTube try logic all the time. The Magas are finally backed into a complete corner (on logical grounds) to which they respond: “…of course I still support Trump… why would you ask?”
William, it's like a part of their brain, their reasoning is shut down so they can pretend Trump is good for them and America when he and his toddler pool clearly are not!
Ruth, I often think they say they will vote for him again just to get a reaction. Because surely no one is this stupid.
So I see. Except for those who are breaking with Trump and turning on him. See MTG, Candice Owens, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, etc...
Now I have proof positive that I’m a grouchy ole man when the Pope is younger than I. I can’t handle it. I’m going out and try to run 3 miles today to get myself in shape for a 5 K race in June.
Go Bill!
James, You are right, so we need to find ways to get the word "lie" into reports more often. Trump lies nearly all the time and I am no longer sure that he knows the difference between the lies and the rare times he tells a truth. That truth usually comes when he is threatening someone and telling them how he will harm them. Pretty much everything else is just a lie and needs to be labeled as such. It would be funny to have online in many places "lie-o-meters to show people how many public lies Trump tells each day or each week with a few examples. Maybe it could wake a few people up. I must say, even in news sources that claim to try to tell the truth, they can't manage the word "lie" for the crap pumped out by this Trumpian regime. That includes NPR/PBS (even though Trump and his white house toddler pool and Republicans in Congress deliberately cut their funding), MS Now, and NBC News (which hasn't been absorbed into right-wing corporate junk news yet). Hey folks, a lie is a lie so you should call it that and call out the liars by name!
Ruth ... I suggest going one level deeper. Why would someone choose to lie versus tell the truth? To serve an interest. So, the question is not whether they are lying. The questions is, what does the lie say about what interest is being served?
I know what interest is being served by HCR in every paragraph of every newsletter: America, the last best hope of the Earth.
James you are right. At the same time the lie is revealed, there should be a "because" or "for the benefit of" phrase to follow.
I have a feeling highly paid legal council would not allow the media to use the word "lies" when quoting the administration.
Ligia, lawyers might not like it, but if one can prove something is a lie, there is nothing they can do except sue, and the suit would be dismissed on the grounds that the statement was the truth. Courage is not very prominent right now. It is true that Trumplandia targets people, but we need to find ways to fight back against Trumplandia's authoritarian, anti-American intimidation actions.
I agree 100%.
Me too.
The BIG question for our times: Why do 39-40% of our fellow Americans believe that is it's OK for our leaders to abuse and lie to us? In fact the abuse and lying might be good for us???
We can be sure the our Abuser and Liar in Chief, still knows in his bones that he could shoot a person on 5th Ave and not lose a supporter.
Grim..
The big question of our times might be why the culture in the Republican Party is less like a functioning political party and more like an abusive relationship, but that not the only conclusion.
Viktor Frankl said, "When we are no longer able to challenge a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." So, that's a different conclusion.
Karl Popper's "falsification" theory suggests that your conclusion, like Frankl's, is only as strong as how far it can resist potentially falsifying evidence. I can't tell you which of the two would survive rigorous skepticism without doing the work, but when I adopt Frankl's conclusion, I know what to do.
Once one calls Trump a liar, there is a bias intended and/or unintended. That sets up an internal conflict and a response from that if one respects the Pope but also likes Trump. I disagree with O'Donnell... as exasperating as it can be to back off from saying Trump lies in order to get answers.
Good point. O'Donnell's comment caught my attention and got me thinking in one direction, then your comment caught my attention and got me thinking in the other direction. But that's because my philosophy is not "I think, therefore I am." Instead, my philosophy is "I think, therefore I am making potentially erroneous -- but testable -- assumptions." The "biased" philosophy is "I think, therefore I am right."
Susan I agree and I have complained to the media I read about them not using clear language. Having recently reread Orwell's "1984" I am aware of the role that language plays in fascism. Here is a piece I wrote on how Trump uses autocratic language.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/the-language-of-the-fascist-regime?r=f0qfn
I also just wrote a piece on a campaign Indivisible Abroad is supporting to impeach Trump and his cronies. It includes a link to sign up. Please read this piece and consider signing the petition. We aim to get 2 million signatures.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/indivisible-abroad-supports-the-impeach?r=f0qfn
ie Never put the word "news" after the word "fox."
Legally, it is listed as Entertainment.
I call it "Fox News is not news, it is legally listed as Entertainment-- like The Kardashians or the WWE. It looks real, but it's highly scripted and highly produced to reach a target audience.
Yes, that's a mouthful.
Hence, I try not to talk about Fox.
I just write Faux News. That says it all, for me.
Exactly Patrice. However, if preceded by the word "Faux" or "Pretend" or "Satyrical" it might work. In fact, might be more explicit about what it is. I complained to The Guardian this week about their use of language with Trump. I said that parroting him without at least pointing out that the Iranians said something completely different is misleading and pointed them to Orwell's "1984" to better understand the dangers of doing that.
Do both. Faux Noise.
😂 I love it! I think that is what we should call it from now on. Let people figure it out. Faux Noise.
I've always called it "Fox Spews," but I like Faux Noise, too.
Linda, Oooo! I like Faux Fox! It has a kind of ring to it! It would be great if we could get something like that around so Faux ?Fox can be seen by more people as the junk, garbage it is and has always been.
One way is to use it a lot. TACO and NACHO caught on that way too. We eschew the Faux Fox too! Faux Fox is short and catchy, but not one word. Perhaps Fauxfox. Or FOFOX. Maybe even FOFX.
Linda, his voters probably don't know what 'faux' means.
Reminds me of the song The Name Game (I think that’s right). You know, banananama fo fama
always use Faux News
I like that too.
More important than insulting Fox News is listening to it. For real. “Decoding Fox News” on Substack compares Fox soundbites to NPR. One listen and you understand why MAGA still supports the direction of the country. THEY never hear what we read here.
Listen. Understand. It’s the way into the minds and motivations of MAGA.
https://decodingfoxnews.substack.com/?r=4j5a4&utm_medium=ios
FOX is why we are where we are.
It is important not to listen to that sort of thing. It erodes one's ability to tell truths from lies. I have seen it happen to a friend who was listening just to keep up with what the other side is saying, and now sounds more and more like that.
Linda, I appreciate that POV. I even feel myself being pulled toward the Fox News logic and assessment. But that feeling creates an understanding of its power. (And, I'm to the left of AOC.)
The Substack "Decoding Fox News" plays a week of sound bites in 45 minutes. The commentary throughout debunks the claims with evidence and humor.
Truth. I watched it happen to a beloved family member.
There is never a good reason to subject yourself to systematic propaganda units you're trained to withstand its repercussions.
In common sense terms, there's never a good reason to listen to anything Fox News says.
Hey Linda, yes the language is a bit ...
I had signed it yesterday Linda.
Linda, already signed!
Thanks so much Ruth! ❤️✌🏾
Thank you Linda. “Language of a fascist regime” will be very helpful when engaging in excruciating conversations with those who still do not see the reality of this mess.
Dissecting the “doublespeak” is a clever strategy.
Pope Leo is seems to have mastered this skill.
Like Jiang Xueqin, but from an American sensibility, Douglas Macgregor seems to comprehend the entirety of the Hormuz stand-off. Trump needs to find a way to avoid humiliation. Dear Donnie... Herein: the road to redemption: Pull all American soldiers and ships out of the Middle East region immediately and win the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war you started.
You’d think that might occur to him. But no, plans to invade Cuba proceed on course…
Greg, that gave me a good laugh, the out-loud kind, especially thinking about Trump getting the Peace Prize for ending the war he started. Thanks!
Maybe it’s me but I just don’t find any of this either funny or laughable. Pathetic and nauseating but not laughable.
Ruth. I said the same thing. See my comment.
Netanyahu started that war, Greg.
Or, all his U.S. evangelicals and white racist nationalists with their Rapture! Rapture! Rapture! support of and goading of Israeli far-right murderous settlers stealing ever more West Bank land started it.
Netanyahu may have had the idea to start the war and asked Trump to join, but both of them started it. Remember, it was the US that bombed the girls' school right from the gitgo. That is on the US.
Yes, Linda.
Along with My Lai, Wounded Knee, the Japanese-American internment camps, the Trail of Tears, and Abu Ghraib.
Add: The "Great Wall of Amerika" and Amerikan concentration camps.
Yup!
Humiliation is indeed Trump’s Kryptonite in all things.
Great idea Greg, although Trump is not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize. We have to make up a different one for Trump. It is called the Ending the [unnecessary and illegal] War You Started Peace Prize.
It will be called the Trump Excursion Prize.
LET's HAVE REALITY CHECK ABOUT THE STATUS OF trump's WAR IN IRAN. Per Time Magazine, "Since 2/28/26 Iranian military forces have damaged or destroyed 228 U.S. military structures across 15 to 17 nations in the Middle East" including but, not limited to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan & the UAE. "13 to 15 U.S. service members have been killed with 400 to 537 personnel wounded" per Time Mag.
And - remind me again, I've lost it - WHAT are we fighting for?
🎶 I don't know & don't give a damn ... next stop * 🎶 is the not-so Funny Land.
*All apologies to County Joe McDonald
Bryan, I was thinking of that song too and trying to fit current words into it! Great!
Don't forget, among the Community we have the self described "Human Juke Box" ... maybe we will hear from her.
As Heather points out, "British energy giant Shell announced its profits were up 24% in the first three months of 2026." So apparently that's why an oil war was needed.
And the far-right Reform party just got the largest percentage of the vote. So, what are the Brits taking from this war?
Lady Emsworth, the problem, the "reason" for the war changes regularly because there was none, well except to get Iranian oil or maybe to prove Trump's/Hegseth's manhood (can't be proven even with war), or maybe to cause oil prices to rise for the benefit of the oil donors to Trump, or . . . .
Yup to all of the above.
Trump's family enrichment! It is always about the money. More for him, less for us in everything he does.
TIME has become a strange facsimile of itself, but one that seems much more committed to Truth instead of the complicity of "neutrality" and "both sides"
First time I've cited TIME in I can't remember when. I much prefer Anne Applebaum or Professor Heather Cox Richardson.
Well, Time like Anne Applebaum is less conservative in its reporting. Jacob Heilbrunn, in his book "America Last" reminded me that Anne Applebaum used to be conservative too, which makes sense since she is married to a Polish politician who is in a Center Right party, which appears Center compared to the far-right, as is often the case.
All your points are correct to my knowledge. Thanks Linda.
And yet, Saudi Arabia seems to want more damage by agreeing again to let Trump use their airspace.
I'd rather listen to a chainsaw going off next to my ear than listen to anything the GOP has to say. This administration has come to be an endurance test in excruciating torture, given the lack of power anyone seems to have to thwart them. And that's just reading about their obscene antics. My heart goes out to all those who've sustained real harms. Hope, and hope, and more hope for better days.
You mean you don’t enjoy listening to that sing-songy, whiny-bitchy nasal voice dribble out incoherent, mispronounced, carnival-barking demented bullshit while pumping an invisible concertina back and forth? You have problems when he says “one big glow coming out of Iran” should it violate his cease-fire? You don’t enjoy listening to Lindsey Graham sob with self-pity as Democrats question the integrity of GOP-nominated Supreme Court-designates?
I can’t imagine why.
Hahahaha, as we say downunder, I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork.
Or as the British would say "poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick"!
Hello Kazz... Welcome Back!!! ... How's Australia?.... From HCR Today: "And finally, today the president himself is in the news…or, rather, out of it. Trump, both of whose hands have been covered in makeup lately, apparently to hide bruises, was supposed to have a meeting today with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil at 11:15 that was open to the press. The reporters waited three hours, but the event never happened. At 1:22, Trump’s social media account simply posted that “[t]he meeting went very well” and that representatives from the two countries would continue to meet." || The Andean Shamans at the beginning of this Year, predicted that DJT would have a Health Crisis that would force him to leave Office... My 'Little Birds' whisper that DJT around August will pull a 'Nixon', and Resign around August with a Pardon from JD Vance... OBW: Netanyahu is trying to do this in Israel to Escape his Legal Jeopardy...
Oh how I love the Andean Sharmans and your little birds Apache, let us pray they’re right. Whatever gets the foul ton of lard out of office will do.
Apache, I am wondering how Trump is going to make it to and in China next week. He can hardly stand and walk, he falls asleep often, he can't speak coherently and gets easily distracted by a simple word like "sea." The problem, Vance is either no better or worse. He is an opportunist who thinks he deserves whatever power he can grab. The only positive is that no one likes Vance. He has no charisma (OK Trump didn't either, particularly in the past 30 years or so), and he walks all over anyone he thinks gets in his way. He lies like a rug, just like Trump, so he has that part of Trumplandia down. He has worked as a hedgefunder or whatever it was he did with money, so really can't be trusted to help anyone but himself and his rich donor buddies. We need the entire Trumplandia impeached and voted off the island! None of them is worthy of the positions they hold, even nearly all the Republicans in Congress whose seats were bought and paid for by those same oligarchs of Trumplandia. We do have to get PAC and dark money out of elections and no foreign operatives should be able to contribute to anything related to elections here. That should be one of the first fixes accomplished when Democrats regain some power and every damn Democrat needs to be on board with that or voted out of office ASAP.
I thought that's what it meant, sardonically expressed. It's a given that the administration lies.
as Trump lies, America dies.
Thank you for highlighting these, Susan.
Racism in Tennessee and across the South, the administration lies about the war damage and conduct, Pope Leo holds his own, immigration efforts hurt children, and the President avoids public contact. President Trump passing up a media event is probably the most concerning. Just America and the world today. Contact your representatives and vote Blue.
The news media organizations are still all too often trying to appear unbiased instead of calling balls and strikes. But the administration’s lies will not be effective against Iran and they won’t convince Americans that gasoline and food aren’t absolutely out of control. And killing nonviolent protesters and tear-gassing children won’t help their cause either.
Why not Susan, the regime lies about everything....constantly, non stop, 24 hours a day.
And speaking of lying - I had to guffaw when Chief Justice Roberts said yesterday that the Supreme Court was not partisan -- who is he kidding?
What do you expect him to say luriemcf?
At least we now know he is feeling a little bit embarrassed. Not that that helps in any way…🫣
I think silence would have served him better! But it's like a kid having chocolate smeared all over their mouth and claiming they didn't eat the last chocolate covered donut!
His comment shows that, at least him, out of the six “conservative” judges, is feeling some heat. Not much but a little bit something.
Thanks for your reply 👍
So all the pronouncements of the war being over, meant to juice the stock market, are a cover for his plan to continue for 3-4 months! I'd trust the CIA before I'd trust this charlatan.
You misspelled “everything”
And about everything else, major or minor, as well.
Reporters lost the battle over truth when they allowed Trump to dismiss reality by spouting the phrase “fake news.” His dismissive language is evident when he calls an exchange of fire in the Gulf a “love tap” in order to avoid the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act. Where’s the follow up question? The “journalists” covering the White House are often almost as gutless as the Republicans in Congress. Almost. We’ve already checked off “Ignorance is Strength.” Now Big Brother is telling us “War is Peace.” All that’s left of the 1984 trifecta is “Freedom Is Slavery.”
Duh! What took the crooked CIA so long!!??
In the matter of Gerrymandering. When the votes of a group are neutralized that neutralizes the vote of every individual within that group. When the target is African American men and women it is a Constitutional violation of the 15th and 19th Amendments, it is disenfranchisement. It is deeply rooted in the same hate, bigotry and contempt that divided the United States into the Civil War in which the South lost. Moreover, to be respected the rule of law requires stability, if change is to occur it must be gradual over time. That is the reason behind lifetime appointments in the federal judiciary and a decade between each census. Gerrymandering by it’s nature creates an unstable pendulum swing of frequent and untried changes in laws and politics every time a different political party gains power in a State Legislature. The Citizens United lie is based in the corporate personhood lie created by the Court in 1886 during rapid corporate expansion of the Industrial Revolution era. The result is the creation of a King who has the power to remove those who dare to not be loyal to him. IOW, once the mega-rich win the White Caste they will enforce loyalty to their King as it is in their financial interest to do so. The Roberts Six are the authors of the corporate takeover of America, UnitedWeAmend.org.
How can we honestly call ourselves a republic without a fair and free process with which to vote? "Equal Justice"? "Equal Protection"? "Liberty and Justice for All"? It's just not possible without fair and fee elections, in which every vote is equal; no more, no less.
Perhaps there will always be imperfections, but we can still identify negligence and malice. Gerrymandering is as corrupt as hell, and patently inimical to America's founding ideals. Failing to oppose it is also necessarily corrupt as hell. Is that not obvious?
If we want to retain a republic, corruption of the right to vote, and be equally counted, cannot be compromised. Schemes to dilute the will of the public expressed in the most just and accurate ways is what despots do.
We need to get Trump out of office. He is the head of a criminal enterprise and he is a madman. There is a campaign to impeach Trump. Please read my piece on it and sign the petition and help us get to 2 mil.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/indivisible-abroad-supports-the-impeach?r=f0qfn
The buck stops and starts with him being in the WH. His cronies are included in the list of people who need to be impeached.
I wish we could have the election watchers that Hungary had. We need about 35 times the number though. It would be worth it.
Trump is still in office, not despite his incompetence and corruption but because of them. He is someone's useful sock puppet only we don't know whose hand is wearing the sock. Scary!
Talia, we know some of the hands wearing the socks, and all of them are evil and corrupt people. Steve Miller, Russ Vought, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc...
nixon, reagan, begin, bush, ehud, thiel, putti, bush, orban, khameni, bush, cheney, trump, vought, trump, bukele, ... the order may be a big off but the Permanent War agenda is clear ... permanent oil, permanent war, democracy to kleptocracy...
Yup Patrice. That is why I wrote this piece after the people in my book club read or reread Orwell's "1984."
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/the-language-of-the-fascist-regime?r=f0qfn
Permanent war is part of the picture. We also read Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" which was another dystopian and a sci-fi-like novel about a totalitarian state with forever wars.
many men's hands wear the sock. it is the Patriarchy. it is what Women have been grappling with since Abraham descended from the Mountain with the fn Stone Tablet of 10 black and white, patriarchal commandments
Patrice, it was Moses who came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments. It's a story of humanity being given the rubrics for a fair and equal society. In part they command everyone: no bearing false witness (lying), no stealing from your neighbor (everybody gets to have security), no betrayal of others' relationships, no killing, and beyond that, there are the commandments to honor parents and to rest on one-seventh of your life. Where's the patriarchy?
An excellent book on the development of the patriarchy from the time of Jesus is Riane Eisler's *The Chalice and the Blade*. She shows how women disciples were written out of the Bible, and how religion has been used for now 2 thousand years to subjugate women. Eisler uses anthropological analysis as well as historical documents and other relevant scientific perspectives.
The patriarchy is in the men who live it out. There is a double standard.
Follow the Dollar.
and the petro dollar. both sinking. plant a garden, for you And for your neighbors.
Albert….dollar = power….power = dollar….sadly same as it ever was.
Always FTM -follow the money
In an honest to goodness government of, by and for the people, the ultimate buck stops with us, but yes the leadership we choose to hire should be entirely accountable. That needs to be part of the job description. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
trump is the "head" of one of Medusa's snakes; Medusa being a projection of mens' projections (the mirror)
😂😂 ✌🏾
Has Trump turned himself into stone? Has Putin turned himself into stone?
He is not really the head, he is the distraction while the real heads do the damage - Heritage Foundation, ALEC, Federalists Society, American for Prosperity, and virtually every conservative non-profit. They make the decisions and get him to follow. Think about how he embraced gays, Hispanics and Blacks while the guys behind the scenes started the dismantling of protective policies and then he supported those policies. He is the distraction. NONE of the and I mean NONE of this happens without the republican party permission. They approve and I have stated that to my republican reps. None of them seem to be offended at the accusation.
I get that too.
The whole point of the House of Representatives is that the people are represented…
A Tennessee Republican said that yesterday in an interview. “The problems of cities are very different from those of rural areas,” she added, making it clear she opposed this artificial attempt to refashion the House into a sort of second Senate, which isn’t supposed to represent a community, but an entire state.
I hope the NAACP makes precisely this argument in its rejoinder, because not only is it the right one to make, it doesn’t rely on shame, which — as we all know — is a concept wholly alien to those those Trump-appointed mushrooms making up fantastic bullshit to justify everything MAGA wants to do to us.
In Virginia and California, as we also know, voters in both states were given the opportunity to approve or disapprove a gerrymander.
Nobody bothered to ask Tennessee, Texas or Missouri voters for the fucking time of day.
Best to my knowledge, there are 18 states where Dems have full control of state government. Yet only 2 have countered the maga gerrymander power play. WTF, over
look again and stop complaining about Democrats. The Whole Coup is Republican run. We need UNITY not the perennial Circular Firing Squa.
Be The Change.
I agree there should be no circular firing squads -- but to look at ourselves and our party critically in order to do better is a good thing.
That kind of critical look is precisely the intent of the essay I posted to them.
We need to order the Democrats to lineup in a straight line, identify them for what they’re worth, primary the hell out of the bad apples and replace them with Democratic socialists or, if we have to bottom feed, a few more milquetoast Democrats.
“Nobody bothered to ask Tennessee, Texas or Missouri voters for the fucking time of day.” And the thing that grinds one’s gears to no end is that they’ll take it and support it. They’ll take everything their maggot lords shove down their ignorant throats and ask for more, please. I was encouraged last year when the Indiana stare legislature voted not to gerrymander. And so what was their reward for doing the right thing? The goddam voters kicked them out of office this week, all to please Stinky Diapers. When shit like this goes down, it’s impossible not to think, fuck the voters, they’re too damned stupid to know what is the right thing to do. Fuck the stupid farmers for voting for the orange sack of shit 3 damned times. Diesel and fertilizer is their reward for putting that criminal back in office. Yes, it’s the guys running the show who are at fault here, but equally at fault are the idiots who continue to let them run the show.
In your first few lines here, John, I thought you were citing standardized testing.
and as a retired public educator - I can say that the "accountability push" on public ed has never been applied to private ed...never, even when they started getting public dollars. Charter schools were the first step toward public funds being sed for religious schools.
Many among us may say climate change is the existential threat of our time. That means it’s a risk high enough to potentially cause our extinction. Indeed, each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than the decade before. The past decade has been ranked as the warmest on record in the 145 years since records have been recorded. However, consider the attacks on us by the Supreme Court creating Corporate Personhood, and the more recent attack by the Roberts Five in Citizens United claiming money is the protected speech of Super PACs and Dark Money of nonprofit groups to influence elections and law-making. Consider the Roberts Six attacks with decisions on Gerrymandering neutralizing votes being the intent of our Constitution. Combine that with the fact that to address the catastrophic threat of Climate Change we need plenary control of our elections and it becomes clear that the Roberts Six are are the existential threat of our time. The only way to override the Court is by Amendment. We must unite as One people and ratify a Rampart Amendment. UnitedWeAmend.org.
I agree. We also need to impeach people on the court who are doing impeachable things.
We need to get Trump out of office. He is the head of a criminal enterprise and he is a madman. There is a campaign to impeach Trump. Please read my piece on it and sign the petition and help us get to 2 mil.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/indivisible-abroad-supports-the-impeach?r=f0qfn
The buck stops and starts with him being in the WH. His cronies are included in the list of people who need to be impeached.
"A republic, if you can keep it."
But now that we know the ChristoNazis are going to gerrymander the "Democratic" (sic) Party to death, we also know there is not the chance of a snowball in hell of winning the midterms -- or of ever again winning any other USian federal election. That should ignite the process leading to the formation of a World-War-II-caliber overseas shadow government...and all that logically follows thereafter. But it appears the fires of effective resistance have already been drowned by a tsunami of ChristoNazi urine.
NOPE. Voters have Flipped 30+ seats from Red to Blue in RED districts in the past year, and Zero from Blue to RED. Americans are NOT as dumb as the Repos (and you I guess?) believe.
Stop Naysaying and Get Out The Vote,
because they can Gerrymander, but it don't work if the White voters are Waking UP!! Get Out The Vote!
FairFightAction, MoveOn, Sunrise, Leaders We Deserve and Your LOCAL candidates need you to Stop dooming and Step UP!
Actually, look at Hungary. If you read about it, Orbán had set elections up so that each rural vote counted 3 to an urban 1 vote, and still Magyar swept the country because he did not give up. Loren, be a Magyar! Don't give up.
Orban did not have the means to inflict any atrocity of the magnitude we should now rationally anticipate from the ChristoNazis -- that they will act upon their slanderous rhetoric and outlaw the "Democratic" (sic) Party, declaring it a terrorist organization.
I'm most assuredly (not) giving up, Linda; I am merely urging us to refocus on the only path to Liberation I believe remains possible, the first step of which is formation of a shadow government in an overseas locale the ChristoNazis won't dare invade or bomb -- most likely London, Paris or Berlin.
I see. Let's hope. As an American overseas I do not see how that sort of group will be formed on the center or left, when most of the global networking has been done by the far right. In fact, we just were discussing this article in Indivisible Abroad about Israel and the US trying to destabilize Mexico and other Latin American countries and make them far right.
Shared from Indivisible Abroad (IA). The person says.
"Juan Orlando Hernandez, the Honduran ex-president pardoned by Trump for narcotrafficking, seemingly caught on tape in dozens of conversations (if true), discussing plans with GOP and other figures to attack left-wing governments, and saying Israel paid for his pardon from Trump."
https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-07/hondurasgate-the-alleged-us-and-israeli-interference-plot-to-destabilize-mexico-and-other-progressive-governments.html#
In IA we were also discussing how the UK Labor party squandered their lead and have now been overtaken by the far-right Reform Party. The AfD has surpassed the CDU in the latest poles in Germany, so it is on ascendency. In fact, I am going to a Demo against them tomorrow. The National Rally is doing well in France and seems to threaten Macron's party. In fact, while Spain also has a far-right party, it seems like Pedro Sánchez's Socialist Workers party is still in charge. Madrid might be a better place to do this.
Me and this other fellow worked together. He was a Flathead. He turned to me at sunset and leaning on his shovel asked, “ Do you know what the most dangerous animal on the planet is?”
I said, “ I give up, what?”
He said, “A middle aged Christian white lady.”
It should certainly ignite - something.
Dominionists, christo fascist, Christian nationalist, christoNazi-christoNazi-ChristoNazi-ChristoNazi-please Loren’s needle is stuck in the phonograph. Can someone give it a nudge? I like this artist but the needle is stuck. I want to hear the whole song without sticking. Have you ever wandered a bit dazed out of the bar and ended up hugging a parking meter while sitting on the curb trying to get your bearings when your buddy staggers out behind you and pisses on your head. Clarity’s child. Can you reach sobriety before the fight breaks out? The next guy out of the bar is just as full of piss and vinegar and he’s a damned atheist. They all gonna piss somewhere. There I was and there they was and here we is.
What can we do? Other than write ✍ letters, march in protest, and vote? It's so upsetting to witness this bonfire. All decency, humanity, and morality buried under the lies, greed and grift. I'm praying we are able to vote our way out of this disaster. 🙏
Vote our way out. Activate a lot of unused, wasted votes; and realize that solidarity is and always was the antidote to a top-down, stratified society.
I do understand where you come from, I think the best next change would be to wait and vote because I'm starting to doubt that others are not being as effective.
Oops. you are Discouraging votingl Please clarify.
ie I am holding on to my just arrived CA ballot to see which TWO dem candidate for Governor have a path to eliminating the crazy MAGA Repos in the race,
because our "jungle" primaries only allow the Top 2 winners to advance to the NOV run off. arg!
YES. Voting is CHESS.
Your move must be defeat the "enemy"
but remember, it's NOT just about You;
it's about your World.
I will personally never discourage voting, that is the only thing we have in our power that honestly could make a change.
GET OUT THE VOTE! Locally.
Search "data centers near me" (use ECOSIA search, not Google, for better results)
and Join That Fight to save your Local community
AND to get involved in the Primaries
and GOTV for NOV.
If you have ever raised chickens the hawk or the faux gets the last one to come in at dark. Hasten to the poll. Watch for the skunk cause she likes eggs and is the trickiest.
And help out with campaigns. Knock on doors, talk to people, get young people involved. Make phone calls through organizations like Swing Blue Alliance. Volunteer to be a driver to get people to the polls or volunteer to be a poll watcher. The ACLU in some areas are holding classes for volunteers to get voters through to the polls in case trump goes through with his rant about ICE showing up at our election stations. Every single Democrat will need to vote. Independents will need to vote and I know a number of Republicans who will be voting Democratic. Orban rigged the Hungarian election to favor him. There were just too many voters that came out against him. And if the tallies seem off, DEMAND for a recount of actual ballots cast.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
Except where partisan advantage is involved.
Or not ???
Listen pal. I want your life. I need your liberty. And I don’t give two shits about your happiness. (Just a note from corporate, what they call it? Memo?)
Have you read Heather’s book “ how the South won the Civil War”?
It’s eye opening!
I want to read read it. I am beginning to wonder if the Roberts Six have inspired our professor to write another book, "How the Corporatist Fascist Nazi's of WWII won the World".
There are many arts, Albert, counter to the U.S. fascists you cite:
films like “The Florida Project,” “Knives Out,” “The Verdict,” “Nomadland,” “The Big Short,” and “Winter’s Bone”;
novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” Tom Hanks’ “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” and many by Richard Russo, Elmore Leonard, and Stephen King;
memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Joan Didion’s “Where I Was From,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” Sarah Kendzior’s “The Last American Road Trip,” Tia Levings’ “A Well-Trained Wife,” Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” and Beth Macy’s “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”;
essay collections such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Stolen Pride,” Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America”; Sarah Smarsh’s “Bone of the Bone, and George Packer’s “The Unwinding”;
biographies such as Lindsey Stonebridge’s “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience”;
histories like Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel,” Heather Cox Richardson’s “How the South Won the Civil War,” and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”;
poems such as Philip Levine’s Detroit factory poems, and those in the three volumes of Garrison Keillor’s “Good Poems”;
songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Seger’s “Feel Like a Number,” Carsie Blanton’s “Rich People,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” and any John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
I had to guffaw when Chief Justice Roberts said yesterday that the Supreme Court was not partisan -- who is he kidding? His justification was that Tenn could not take 'race into account' when districting -- but the result of his decision is just that - to divide the black vote into little pieces of other districts to dilute it of all effect. disgusting.
These voters are not top 1% of income earners. So, voting for the party actually hurts them. If DEMs put up good candidates and explain, they may vote for them.
thank you for this insight, Albert. I am getting to learn so much.
Albert, I would support a national redistricting that divides every district into 50/50 Dems/GOP. Make every politician campaign for votes.
The wisdom of this strategy only works, however, if campaign funding is capped as well.
the CONservatives are showing their true selves - bigots and racists.
And John Roberts has the colossal chutzpah to say that people shouldn't be saying that SCOTUS is political. 🙄
Excellent article breaking down the corruption of SCOTUS - another thing we need to keep amplifying. https://www.ms.now/opinion/john-roberts-supreme-court-political-actors-americans
The Roberts six should not be called “conservative”. They are partisan. Callais proved that.
Modern "Republicans" say all kinds of $#@%!
It’s their my pillow nightly subliminal message.
It is now the Subtrump Court.
LOL.
The Tennessee decision is making me despair; to see those old white guys laughing in the faces of protesters is sickening.
This is a state that has whole shelves of books on the Rapture at the airport and in hotel gift stores. Absolute troglodytes.
Heartbreaking for those in the minority who live in that state 💔
Truly tragic. I don't know how they're coping.
Black Americans have been coping with things worse than this for 400 years.
Are you somehow under the impression that I'm unaware of that?
No. I’m certain you needed no reminder from me. I’m supporting your point.
There is too much criticism of others' comments recently. It just discourages people who read the comments. Please - just write your comment and move on. there's no need to be critical of others.
We are hoping to sell our house and move!
It is such a beautiful state. How sad that it is taken over by evil times and a dark spirit. The trees, hills and deer will still be there a hundred years from now. Maybe your children can return then. Get yourselves to a safe place for now. Now we know how the ppl who fled Europe felt during the 30s. This is so sad.
I hope you do! Good luck.
As a friend used to say, our freedoms and rights as citizens were never in such peril as when the Tennessee Legislature was in session.
Amen
But have the southern states including TX and FL seen net in-migration from other states?
Had not occurred to me.
Well, it’s Tennessee, what can you say. The state that gave us the Scopes Trial a century ago and continues to send luminaries like Marsha-Marsha-Marsha Blackburn to the Senate — uncontestable evidence that shit really does float.
In recent polls, 67% of Tennessee Republicans still believe “evolution is just a theory” (and disproven by a district court) because they know the world was actually created in 4004 BC, no matter what Hillary Clinton says. Nearly 85% think tens of millions undocumented little boys with vaginas are right this very minute pouring across the Rio Grande, all determined to force your grandchildren to attend graduate-level seminars in critical race theory.
Reportedly, 79% are sure “The Origin of Species” is book about witchcraft, and 75% are making weekend plans for bonfires for all those Harry Potter books, alongside Charles Darwin. More than 80% are uneasy with the Theory of Gravity as well, and all of them know viruses don't exist because they're too small to be seen. Oddly enough, they’re all pretty much fine with the Virgin Birth thing, failing to recognize it as a tale straight out of Egyptian mythology.
Sometimes, you just gotta laugh.
Their ignorance is just sad and dangerous
It’s also funny as hell. You gotta laugh or you’ll explode.
That's the way I feel; just about all the time. . .
Their school system has been failing them since at least the 90s. Is the ignorance not just sad but intentional? Does someone have their school system in a stranglehold? idk If so, then who is doing it and why are they pumping ignorance into the populace?
I totally agree. It's inhumane and sickens me.
Just like I always say to my friends, work in a company where there are no older people in the higher ups who operated in the 60s, coz that time was different and so is this, the company never grows and dies out, leaving employees nowhere while the boss flies out.
Now, imagine this happening with a whole goddamn country.
I know im a simpleton who understands nothing more than tv but even i can see right through this.
Thanks for sharing this comment Rebecca, had me vent a bit.
So she burned a flag that they once invented themselves the Democrats. The inventors of the confederacy and the KKK. Oooops
The Iran War is the greatest grift of all time, going far beyond the oil futures speculation. It will include all of the preferential government no-bid contracts going to Trump-family-related entities, and all of the gifts from the Middle Eastern Kingdoms that are now turning against Trump because his promises to them are not working out as planned. The linchpin there is Jared Kushner. And let's not forget the Board of Peace...
The real cost to America includes the casualties in the war--Trump is sacrificing lives as well as billions of dollars of our money.
I recall one year ago this month TrumpStein was visiting several countries in the Middle East. A large number of the worlds richest and most powerful people were there also. I believe he bagged a $1B jet, lots of land and God only knows how much of his meme coin named $TRUMP his TrumpStein-affiliated entities (CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC) sold of his $1B supply on the trip. Could it be this war is a quid pro quo deal serving the countries that fear Iran?
Ya think? But now Saudia Arabia has put their foot down, not allowing US to use its airspace for attacks on Iran
No money for the commonwealth, yet Trump drains the treasury like a "drunken sailor".
“The top one percent of all households now hold a staggering 32% of all wealth.”
This is from a Scott Galloway podcast earlier today, where he added that this one percent equals the “bottom 90%” of all the U.S.’s other households.
He adds that the top ten percent own 90% of all stocks, and that “the proportion of GDP going to workers just hit its lowest level in 75 years.”
In Heather’s own podcast today she returns to the way a recent highest-court-in-the-land killing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has immediately translated into mostly former Confederacy states reducing voting rights for millions of persons of color.
It’s a big ball of things, the rich getting much richer. Many lose voting rights. More lose access to health care. Still more suffer from the rising prices across America and the world from criminal Donald’s capricious and failed war.
It's a war to the bottom, its many components interwoven in ways Heather bravely tracks.
And as this war goes on, we can ask: how many of our rich ever cite any humanities on how the “bottom 90%” fall further behind as the rich grow their wealth gap? How many public officials or media persons cite any humanities for the wider costs of the rich getting so much richer?
Have we normalized our own anesthetization to the growing hurt amidst us?
Can we free our teachers from the billionaire testers so they may assign whole novels, memoirs, and histories for their students’ human literacy?
Phil, you're reminding me of a stat I learned early in my corporate career: In 1990, the average Japanese CEO earned roughly 35 times more than their employees. Today, they earn roughly 50 times more. In the U.S. today, CEOs earn approximately 400 times more--400 times.
This comparison is simplified, and U.S. corporate incentives are not the same as in Japan, but still. I'm not sure how much is "anesthetization," as you say, or something worse. But it's a historical fact that healthy democracies do not survive without a thriving middle class.
I doubt any in the 1% cares about future survival, Susan.
Their lives instead self-isolate in ahistorical abstractions, market quantities, commodities, and all the other packaging which their dehumanized schools have taught them.
The one thing that the Roberts acolytes most agree on is that the the rights of 1% tr*mp those of the other 99.
It's as if that 1%, J L, has morphed into a creature totally beyond the rest of us.
They seem to see the world through the prism only of numbering, abstracting, quantifying, commodifying everything. There's a derangement in this -- one which I owe some debt to Elmore Leonard and his great novels dwelling on the perversities of the criminal mind.
Of course we've had Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Joan Didion, Ross Macdonald, Cormac McCarthy, and many more -- as if some berserk sociopathy, gnawing lawlessness has ever permeated the American fabric.
There's no single one formula to them. But with a mad, narcissist, rapacious criminal now for ten years atop our society, we can well worry how unready we all are to gauge this monstrosity he rides, this 1% so totally beyond the rest of us.
''Republicans Unveil New Democracy Reform: Picking the Voters First''
Republican officials announced this week that democracy remains a sacred American tradition, provided it is properly supervised, pre-sorted, geographically contorted, and delivered in districts shaped like a salamander having a nervous breakdown.
The announcement came as GOP strategists defended their latest redistricting efforts, explaining that elections work best when voters are permitted to participate only after the outcome has been tastefully insulated from public opinion.
“Democracy is very important to us,” said a party official who definitely values democracy very deeply, standing beside a congressional map that appeared to have been drawn by a raccoon trapped inside a printer. “That is why voters should have every opportunity to take part in elections that have already been responsibly stabilized.”
The official rejected claims that gerrymandering undermines representative government.
“That is unfair,” he said. “We are not against representation. We are simply improving it by making sure certain people are represented more efficiently than others.”
Under the new approach, Republicans say they will honor the will of the people by first deciding which people count, where they live, how they are grouped, and whether their votes should carry the political weight of a bowling ball or a packing peanut.
Party leaders described the strategy as a commonsense response to the growing crisis of Americans voting incorrectly.
“For years, we tried persuading people,” another strategist explained. “But that required policies, accountability, and occasionally listening. Then we realized maps don’t talk back.”
The new model, tentatively called “Pre-Approved Freedom,” allows citizens to enjoy the emotional experience of voting without the disruptive risk of choosing their government. Voters still receive stickers, candidates still give speeches, and cable news still uses dramatic music, but the map quietly handles the dangerous part.
Critics argue that gerrymandering enables minority rule, weakens fair representation, and turns elections into theatrical exercises in managed legitimacy. Republicans countered that this is precisely the point.
“Look, voters are unpredictable,” one official said. “Maps are stable. Maps are loyal. Maps understand election integrity.”
The party also emphasized that its reforms are fully consistent with constitutional principles, at least the parts of the Constitution that can be folded into a district shaped like a corkscrew.
Asked whether voters should choose their representatives instead of representatives choosing their voters, the official looked confused.
“Of course,” he said. “But only in a district where that answer has already been approved.”
Wow, I didnt know these, if these are factual, then there's definitely a big change needed. Thanks for sharing Phil! I learn something new everyday!
This week the Whirlpool water heater in my house stopped working after 10 years. My plumber-friend suggested that he will repair it because there are no new ones on the market to buy. I have always believed that appliances, electronics, & vehicles ought to be repaired instead of discarded. Sadly, the state of affairs that prevent people of our country from easily buying the things for which we have depended is further hurting those of us who are not in the class of the wealthy. I want a world for my grandchildren of peace & prosperity, the opportunity to do what they want for a decent wage, to own a house, to enjoy the great outdoors, to breathe healthy air, & have access to the best health options.
My wife and I just became first-time grandparents. Fortunately, our grandson, our son and his partner are all citizens of Canada. It is our sincere hope that all their futures will be much brighter and certain there. It’s abundantly clear that we here in the U.S. are in for nonstop chaos, lies, incompetence and criminality, even if the midterm elections result in Democratic majorities in Congress. Trump has always been a criminal. The corruption and grifting will continue, with the permission granted by the immunity ruling of the Supreme Court and Trump’s psychological disorders.
My daughter just got her Canadian passport. She went to college in Canada, met the right person and now resides in the True North. I am sad to see US and Canadian relations, as well as our with many other nations being trashed. That won't serve us in the log run. Likely not even in the short run. it's stupid.
I have had Whirlpool washer and dryer for 40 years. I'd like to keep them going. I don't know about Whirlpool's problems, but they have cut the dividend on their stock and it's declined very badly over the past few years
I don't know specifically about Whirlpool as a company. Based on my limited experience, and more or less ordinary circumstances, a water heater should last more than 10 years. There has been a highly visible trend toward making expensive products disposable rather than easily repairable, and that is irresponsible. Canonized Milton Friedman, hero of the "Reagan Revolution" decreed that " The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits." It should be obvious that that is BS, but America's legislators took it to heart. It's a formula for sociopathy. Every one of us has a duty to the common good, else liberty and justice for all, including generations yet to come, is a fantasy, and shoveling the planets resources into deliberately dead end products is dereliction of that duty. That said a water heater has a finite lifespan, but there are decisions made that extend or limit it's usefulness. Short term profits can be made cutting coroners or even "planned obsolescence", but long term customer satisfaction would seem like the most sustainable strategy, for the company, for the customer, and posterity.
I am not a plumber, but I gather that heating elements and thermostats are generally replaceable with aftermarket parts. The tank itself would seem to be impractical to repair if it rusts though.
Yep. Once the tank goes, it is done. I suppose one could save the T&P, element and or the gas valve thermostat or hot plate igniter. Applying heat to water makes it do pretty crazy and dangerous things.
Thank you for all you do to keep us informed, Heather. I think it’s a big story that the CIA is leaking. I’d also like to know the real story of US casualties.
The government of my home state of TN continues to be an embarrassment. Kudos to Rep Justin Jones.
I truly do not understand GOP voters anymore. They used to have a vision for our country. It was different from my vision, but it was a vision. Now they are so focused on their "team" winning that they will support a mad man who has involved us in a disasterous war overseas, alienated our allies, and plunged us into an economic disaster that will likely outlive the old wreck no matter what we do to fix it. Are they really so anti-Black people that they'll destroy their own country? It seems so.
Nixon was a crook, yet not entirely. Reagan really mastered the televised "Big Lie". The vestiges of the Party of Lincoln died with Ike.
I should probably say "after Ike". Eisenhower is the last Republican president I recall with requisite integrity. Not prefect, but who is?
I have only heard tell of Ike in history books. I was born during Johnson and the first political thing I remember was Watergate because it pre-empted the shows I liked to watch at night with my parents.
My memory of Republicans growing up was these holier-than-thou people who were better than the likes of us working-class Catholic immigrant grandchildren. (I used to ride horses with their kids.) I remember them always going on about "Character" and "Integrity" (which I grew up to discover was code for "my family was here before the Revolution"). Where is their integrity and character now? I never loved the Dems, but they didn't prostrate themselves in front of a madman and violate their oaths for a little bit of payola. I used to at least respect Republicans. Now their party is synonymous with "will do anything to win and then salt the fields". I wish there was a better way to punish them for their perfidy than just vote them out of office so they can retire on their stolen fortunes.
(The irony of misspelling "perfect" in your last sentence. I love it, JL!)
You're not wrong.
Behold the power of the cult to turn a human brain into rancid orange jello in no time flat…
How do the GOP candidates convince voters that they care about affordability when they know they care more about the rich and powerful maintaining their stranglehold on Congress and even their local state governments.
If voters use logic, they cannot. The problem is this "my team" mentality that means GOP voters will vote for the GOP regardless of how badly it is for them. That is what has been happening for the past ten years. I don't expect that to change.
What is more likely to happen is that Republican voters will stay home and hopefully the Democrats and Independents will vote in record numbers. The biggest danger is disenfranchisement of these people.
In many states the independents and non-affiliated voters have more voters than the GOP or the Democrats. How do you gerrymander 1/3 of the voters when their votes can go either way. I don't really think it's as scientific as the Republicans want us to believe. Time will tell.
I hope you're right about the Midterms. I fear that so many GOP voters have been poisoned with the idea that the Dems are not just wrong about governing but "evil". They could turn out just to stop "the blue wave". But I do hope they just stay home. I know no Dem is staying home in November. My pipe dream is that the gerrymandering completely backfires and previously safe GOP districts go Dem for the first time. That would be sweet. But I don't hope anymore, not after 2024 when a liar we never met stopped my husband and I from having our votes counted.
And this is why we need to urge young people to vote.
As long as they're not those Turning Point-poisoned kids.
Maybe we should re-draw state lines now, based on population size. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the Dakotas would be one state, whereas California would be -- what? 15 or 20 different states. Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana could be one state. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, one state. New York would be several states. Each state gets 2 Senators. Just let's imagine this. State representation based on population, not empty space. Lines that make sense.
Ok, how do we support black voters now?
I think all the time that we should be moving enough blues into Wyoming to capture 2 senate seats. It wouldn't take many.
It would take between 20,000 and 25,000 new Democratic voters to outvote Wyoming Republicans statewide.
Exactly. I think we could do that easily. Look how many people are angry enough to turn out for Indivisible.
I appreciate your optimism, but showing up for a protest is a far cry from moving a household to Wyoming and staying there long enough to get voting residency.
I would do it. I think there are plenty of people who understand that at this point extreme measures are our only hope of holding on to democracy.
Okay. That’s one. Only 20,000 or so to go.
Well the Tetons, Sierra Madre and the Bighorns are all picture perfect but have you been to places like Wamsutter or Shirley Basin in the winter?
And that's the thing about gerrymandering. It's all based on demographics as of the last census or election. People are still moving and dying and 18 year olds are reaching voting age. They say that the gerrymandered lines are drawn scientifically, but isn't it all a SWAG in the end.
Moving blues has had a big effect in Colorado and some other states. Have you thought that the R's might decide to move into DE, ME, VT , not to mention swing states, to turn them red?
Of course I have. This is war.
It would seem the Pope is sending a powerful message for peace. Unfortunately Republicans only listen to one voice and it’s not the Pope.
If Jesus really did come again, they would line up to drive the nails.
He who shall not be named. The Same Old Serpent personified.
Putin Is Losing His War And Authoritarian Cheeto Is F**ked
As Ukrainian drone strikes continue to pummel Russian oil and gas infrastructure deeper and deeper into Russian territory it's clear that Putin's economy under this attack is gradually collapsing Putin is becoming more and more paranoid and hunkered down in his bunker while there are schisms happening within his corrupt government And with its May 7 military parade no vehicles or armaments are set for the celebration parade and men are being pulled off the Ukrainian front lines to participate in the parade
The war events are happening fast and it is now apparent that Putin's regime cannot sustain nearly 1.5m casualties, untold loss of military armaments, weather economic sanctions without consequences that imperil his oligarchic dictatorship The end is coming clearer into focus as Putin considers how to capitulate
Meanwhile Putin's main ally Cheeto took a bet on the Russian authoritarian state and it's not looking good for the orange demented one He lost an ally in Orban who lost his re-election last month, will lose the fascist Zionist Netanyahu based on public opinion, and in the near future will lose his favorite Russian counterpart But one thing WE the People can count on, Cheeto will perversely double down until the electorate renders him impotent with the 2026 midterms
Hopefully, Republican voters in the gerrymandered states will react like they did in Indiana this week. Democrats had 80,000+ voters show up for the primaries, Republicans = 19000+.
If the Democrats are able to get 60% of Hispanics and Blacks across the Red states to vote for the Democratic candidates, it will be a bloodbath regardless of the gerrymandering. Will people that are paying 66 percent more for gasoline and everything else is also more expensive as well, vote for their favorite Trump loving candidate.
Impeach Trump Now and the entire Republican Party will be in chaos for years.
This is something completely undiscussed by most media, still lost in their unconvincing attempts to sound non-partisan. True not just for Indiana but particularly for Texas. Emerging now is a distinct pattern — Republicans are LOSING elections, while Independents are WINNING them.
Another very real possibility exists as well. Public disgust with MAGA is now at such high levels, the vewy, vewy smart Elmer Fudds who just redrew Tennessee’s districts might find that new black and white, new urban and rural coalitions in THREE districts suddenly get together to send THREE new Democratic representatives to Congress, instead of none.
Never underestimate the power of sheer fuckupery as the gun you just loaded blows up in your own face instead when you try to fire.
Absolutely ICTT. There was a story a few months ago about the Texas redistricting as being "wishful thinking" because of the guesswork caused by voter migration and the darn Independents being such a huge block.
Where did you get those numbers for turnout? Do you just mean IndianaPOLIS? I live in Indiana and watched many results come in and was very disheartened by the overwhelmingly higher number of Republican votes vs Democrats. Plus several (5?) state reps were voted out because of Trump support in retaliation for them voting against redistricting.
He's dragging all of us down with him in his insanity.
Republicans are fascists, racist and nazis.
No such thing as a Republican; they’re all MAGA. But I agree with everything else you said. 😏
They are Nazis
Not all Republicans are MAGA. None of them that I know personally are fascists, racist or nazis.
None of them you know supports Trump? Did they vote for him?
Then they better get another name and a new party because it looks like they are.
Sorry dude, they’re all racist. Just because they’re not all waving swasticas and kkk symbols around doesn’t mean they’re not racist.
Many people don’t even know they’re racist, but they are. At least 80% of white people carry unconscious bias (and yes, I’m white). Surprisingly large numbers of POC also have unconscious bias. In addition to unconscious bias, Republicans are all also totally fine with systemic racism and perpetuating the American caste system…which means they’re racist.
Anyone who voted for T or any of the current R’s in Congress or any of the R’s in these red state legislatures is racist by the very fact that these politicians have used coded language to perpetuate the caste system. And the voters have been cool with it.
Even if the voters didn’t like their “racist” policies but just wanted cheaper eggs, the very fact that they could ignore the racist policies and still give them a vote, makes them racist.
This Supreme Court decision didn’t happen by accident. It was because of R voters voting in racist politicians for decades, allowing racist SC justices to take power. How else do you explain what just happened in the SC and the response in state houses in red states? This isn’t just some crazy thing that just happened spontaneously.. it’s the consequence of decades of voting… by racist republicans.
It costs $1 million per day to house 1,400 detainees. That comes to about $714 per detainee per day. That’s about $89 per hour per day per detainee. For a lot less than that, we could pay each of the detainees and let them go about their lives. The math for detaining or incarcerating people never makes sense (other than for series, violent crimes). Especially at for profit detention centers/prisons. Also, for $714 per day, you could put them up in a 3-4 star hotel with great meals and turn down service. Hell, for $714 a day, you could send them on a mid-level cruise and they could have the times of their lives!
Ah, but it's a great deal for those who run these concentration camps...oops, if anybody's reading, I meant "detention centers." Just part of the grift...
Nothing about it makes any sense at all. Dairy farmers who can’t find help in Iowa and Pennsylvania can tell you that as well.
A reminder that MAGA is falling to pieces precisely because nothing about it is based on anything factual or makes the slightest sense whatever.
Our tax dollars at work.
The kind of partisan wrangling and bickering over electoral districting could literally not happen in Australia. Electoral districts (and election procedures in general) are managed at the Commonwealth level by the Australian Electoral Commision. Districting is based on population density and is not easily influenced by extraneous factors like party affiliation or ethnic categories. (Registering with a political party is optional in Australia. Voting is not. Therein lie some of the important differences between the two countries' systems of government.)
It could not happen in ANY modern electoral democracy — something else that passes practically unnoticed and unreported on by our lazy media.
In Canada, independent commissions are appointed by federal judges, not by political parties, and the procedures under which those commissions may operate are nothing if not highly regulated and scrutinized. Should a political party tried to interfere, it wouldn’t pass a simple giggle test, much less the court of public opinion, but be struck down by the federal judiciary at once.
Tte same is true with Britain’s more than 500 individual constituencies. The same is true with virtually any other modern republic. In South Arica, complex algebraic formulations are used to ensure NO party gets an edge before the race begins.
We’re virtually the only “modern” republic that gives to foxes the right not just to guard the henhouse, but to name their favorite hens things like “Giblet,” “Mushroom Gravy,” “Finger-Lickin’ Good” and the like.